He’s full of shit, right? He must have known all along that Napoleon was gone–a town that took up that much mental space for him on a river that took up that much mental space for him.
But the thing I find incredible is that, while Life on the Mississippi is supposed to be an autobiography of sorts, he’s doing novel-type shit with the book.
I mean, all along the way he has repeatedly mentioned Napoleon, repeatedly mentioned how people easily reroute the river in ways that dick other people over, and repeatedly developed these themes of loss and change. So, no, he doesn’t have to spell out what happened to Napoleon (though it’s possible his initial readers would have been more familiar with it than I was), but he tells you, over and over, before he tells you that the town is gone.
It’s a remarkable bit of writing, carried out over the course of almost three hundred pages. I’m curious about what’s going to happen in the back half of the book.
I am just enjoying the shit out of it. Possibly more than I’ve enjoyed a book in a long time.
Filed under: America how can I write a holy litany in your silly moo, Stories About Me
There’s a passage where he talks about never being able to un-know knowledge you’ve gained, talking about how a river pilot can never look at the river and just appreciate its beauty without seeing a snag here and a shallow there, that’s stuck with me more than almost anything else Twain ever wrote. I’ll be interested to see if it grabs you too.
That’s the cool thing about literary stylists. They (can) use that style in everything they write, fiction or non-fiction. Memoirs written by novelists are often shocking good in that way.
O.C. I did see that. But then he goes up to watch the sunrise later, so I think he’s a little full of shit here, too. But I don’t want to say “full of shit” like I’m not delighted in it.
I think he is getting at something very true–how doing something repeatedly takes the magic out of it. But he’s modeling, at the same time, that the pleasures can reemerge.
NM, I have always been a big Mark Twain fan, but I’ll admit, I feel like this is the first book of his where i was so aware of just what a good technician he is. Usually, I’m caught up in the story.