A les paul episode would be great. He was one of the most important inventors. (Invented multi track recording) and was an incredible musician who had his own tv show in the early 50s
This NARRATOR hasn't fooled me a bit; He's in a hurry to get to his next job? How discouraging, the narrator who sounds to be from another country, is depicted in COLOR, while the subject of the video is NOT ? Please stop peaking so rapidly and so unrealistically overdone aristocratically too? Mark would have probably had some very humors things to say ABOUT YOU ? "Mississippi Valley Ladies" and "Riverboat Queen" by Phil Bowen
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great” Mark Twain
He also be insulting the hell out of people on Twitter and Facebook. With such flair. That only ignorant stupid people get offended by not understanding.
@@jedison2441 Mark Twain would fight it. Hell, only nothing short of physically being there to threaten his life would make him stop. As on more than one occasion. Twain had felt towns and cities. All because he insulted the wrong person and they wanted him dead. Yet still he carried on doing what he did. Knocking those who think they are above it all. Down a peg with some witty remarks and in most times truthful statements.
“It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart: the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.” ― Mark Twain
People who ban 'Huckleberry Finn' must never have read it. It was written in the vernacular of its setting, and is as anti-racist as any book ever written. In fact, Huck seriously chooses going to Hell, rather than turning his friend, Jim, over to the authorities. The book is a masterpiece of literature, and should not only be on the shelves of every library, it should be taught in every school.
@Ken Hudson Yes, Twain/Clemens spent a good deal of his boyhood hanging out with black people - especially an old black man who told great stories. He also loved their music. He was witness to nearly every aspect of slavery, living in what was considered a Southern town on the Mississippi. He saw men, women and children being sold. And, after he was living in the East and had a cook, I believe, who was Black, she told about how her husband and all seven children had been sold away from her. He knew the horrors of the system, even if growing up, he had taken it for granted. And I agree - what a writer! I think he might be the single greatest author the US has ever turned out.
I concur. It is one of the greatest anti-racist books ever written. It is difficult for me to fathom the thick-headed attitudes of so many who find so much fault with Twain’s use of the vernacular of the time, to tell a story of such magnitude. Twain was prescient, black lives certainly do matter.
@@guitarmike37308 Again; all I can assume is that people who have an issue with this book have either never actually read it, or have somehow missed the point entirely. Jim, and the brilliance in how Twain develops him as a character, and how deeply and poignantly he expresses Jim's sorrows and peril - along with Huck's moral epiphany regarding Jim - is an outstanding social commentary - presciently, as you say.
It's just like how they give bills stupid names that have nothing to do with the bill lol. Like doing a book report on a book you didn't read. Idk how people aren't embarrassed when they emotionally react to something they haven't read and are so confident in saying it's about things that it's not.
@@megancrager4397 Yes, and I see this on both sides of the aisle, as well. Like 'Right to Work' laws that mean 'no unions', and management's right to do as they please - workers' rights, be damned. That being said; obfuscation and censorship are often tools used by authoritarian governments, whether Left or Right, to exclude open debate, and to censor free speech and thought. That's why all literature should be available for those who seek it. And, controversial subjects should be taught in our schools - open discussion on sensitive topics needn't be a minefield. US public schools were once the envy of the world. Now, we lag behind nearly every developed nation. This hurts us economically, as well as intellectually.
Mark Twain actually had a fascinating relationship with Ulysses S Grant, he was amongst the friends who convinced Grant to write a memoir, having recognized Grant as an excellent writer with a story worth telling. He would also end up promoting Grant’s memoir, since Grant was in a financial hole that ironically Twain would find himself in a few decades later.
I knew of Grant’s fading health and money woes in his last years. And that he had written his memoirs to save his wife from financial ruin. I didn’t know of Grant’s connection to Mark Twain. I read your comment, and did some reading of the subject. It just goes to show how much we smaller the world was back then. Thanks for posting the information, learned something new today.
The readers can handle it fine; the problem is that we have politicians. That is the way folks spoke, not only in his youth, but until after he died. Politicians are, as Ron White says, a special kind of stupid. When I lived in Florida in the 1980s the local school board banned some books. The mayor asked for a county commission meeting, where he asked the school board to stop all book banning because the national TV news shows were calling city hall asking about the book ban, and would you please stop, because you're embarrassing the whole town to the rest of the world.
I know. Seriously....I have a great idea! Let’s just burn any book that offends ANYONE. The real story is the friendship between Huck and Jim. Gee, that’s whatever. All they do is look at the bad word. And the real meaning of the story is completely different.
It's not just today's readers, really - Huckleberry Finn was first banned right after its publication, on the grounds of it being "racist, coarse, trashy, inelegant, irreligious, obsolete, inaccurate, and mindless". This was 1885. 100 years before us, a 1907 article in the Library Journal reported that Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had been banned somewhere every year since its publication.
“The problem isn’t that the world is full of fools. It’s just that lightning isn’t distributed right” one of Twain’s best... And just a suggestion but how about one on John Steinbeck?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, and charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain My father and I have always loved to travel. The biggest quote that my father has preached to me my whole life was this one
"Young Lady, I come from a time, when men achieve power and wealth, by standing on the backs of the poor. Were prpredacious and intollarance are comon place. And Power is an end onto itself, and you are telling me, that is how it isn´t anymore? (Thats right) ....Mh maybe... its worth, giving up Cigars for all, after all?"
I don’t know if it is a genuine Twain quote: “There's no sadder sight than a young pessimist. Except an old optimist.” My favorite line from the Adventures of Mark Twain, a 1985 claymation film.
"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog" Always been my favorite Mark Twain quote - no matter how bad the odds are stacked against you, if you have the determination you can succeed.
i read what twain said when he introduced churchill at the waldorf in 1900, and later twain signed books for churchill, and in one he wrote----- 'To do good is noble; to teach others to do good is nobler, and no trouble.'
Interesting, but viewers should realize that this is a very superficial cover of Twain's life amounting to not much more than being introduced to Mr. Twain at a cocktail party. All the observations of the hypocrisy of politics and religion have been taken out of Twain's life. Twain didn't just "believe America was overstepping its bounds on a global scale", he was an avowed and committed anti-Imperialist against the American hegemony beyond our borders. He didn't just start writing about his anti-Imperialist views after the 1909 death of his daughter as implied in the video. Twain's writings, such as the essays “The War Prayer” and “The United States of Lyncherdom,” were not published after his death because his wife had died and couldn't edit them, they were not allowed to be published during his lifetime because they were seen as seditious and too controversial against the US Government and the extreme wealthy. Twain told the New York Herald on October 15, 1900: “I have read carefully the Treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” He founded the Anti-Imperialst League. He was also among the first humorists to make a living lampooning the fake democracy of America. "Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress." Twain was a radical populist and said, "Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals." He had no truck with people who called themselves patriots: "Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about." "In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." "If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be-a Christian."
Mark Twain: America's first great humorist {although Ben Franklin had some good lines). Now can you do a bio of America'a second great humorist: Will Rodgers?
I agree, it is obvious that will Rogers carry the torch that was first constructed by Mark Twain. Both amazing people who had a huge impact on American history. And perhaps most importantly the way they narrated history with their humor helps us understand that era much better.
I like to think that Samuel Clemens and Robin Williams finally got the chance to spar with their witty humors and share their sorrows, even if for just an instant.
Simon learns the information he's reading from the teleprompter at the same time we do. I don't think he practices or does any of the research himself. Harriet could easily be mistaken for Hamlet in the right font.
He did use words most object to today, but at the time many also rebuked him for his sympathetic minority characters. Even a century dead he can not win.
First of all, people spoke that way back then. Anyone who has read Twain's works knows he was no racist. In particular, the use of the N-word in Huckleberry Finn is done for the ironic contrast as Huck and Jim meet a variety of white hypocrites and con men on their journey down river. Ultimately we see N***** Jim as the best man in the book and a better father to Huck than his own biological father ever was. People who want this book removed from school curricula either have not read it themselves or are unable to grasp its anti-racist message.
One of the elements of Twain's life that wasn't broached here is his interest in mysticism. He hosted a lot of gatherings and seances in the Hartford Twain House.
Mark Twain is my favorite author of all time and also one of my favorite personalities of all times. I sometimes try to mimic his writing style with varying degrees of success. He was such a witty man.
He managed to tell the whole story without mentioning that Clemens published and promoted the memoirs of U.S. Grant, a great success. How could he omit that?
Sooner than later,.........I love it 🤗 I it reminds me with the image of our imams, ........ Whom I wish Simon would specify an episode for,...... 😊 the Shia imams,.....
Wow, looking at the picture of Clemens makes me realize that the guy who played him in Star Trek the next generation when the crew went back to 19th century San Francisco was a very close match.
I'm from the mentioned calaveras county ...our county fair is "the jumping frog jubilee" and we actually have a competition to see whos frog can go furthest in 3 hops.....I had gone every year of my life until damn corona.....
These days some schools won't allow some of his books in their libraries. But when I was a kid our grade school teacher read Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer to us over recess. How things have changed.
It's a shame that we can't accept the language that was in use at the time of writing to judge the merit of a work. All languages are in constant flux, particularly English, with its world wide spread. His liberal views and high regard for people of all races and nationalities make it pretty clear that most of his nomenclatures were not meant to be derogatory. The aviation industry has made English compulsory throughout the world to anyone involved in that industry. How far back do we want to go to "purify" the language? When will NAZI become a banned word? What about the term "chambermaid", surely the feminist movement must object to that. Strike it from the language?
History forgotten WILL repeat itself. Why do you think they are tearing “racist” memorials down, ridding our shelves of slave owning authors and racist books, etc.... The quicker we forget the quicker they can have slaves again. The best part is they’ve manipulated us into censoring our history 👀
Please Simon ya gotta do Richard Wagner the Composer, Georg Duke of Saxe-Meiningin(the first director), Antonin Artaud Great Theatre Philosopher, Konstantin Stanislavski the man credited for the modern form of acting the method, Anton Chekhov playwright, Michael Chekhov, Edouard Manet painter, Edgar Degas painter, Gustav Klimt painter, Babe Ruth the first superstar and baseball player, Lou Gehrig the iron man died of ALS one of the best baseball players ever, Ted Williams best hitter ever, Joe DiMaggio 56 game hit streak one of the best baseball players ever married to Marilyn Monroe, Ty Cobb over 4100 hits one of the best hitter ever GREW up reformation south the Georgia peach, Pete Rose all-time hits leader banned from baseball, Barry Bonds HR king greatest HR hitter ever STEROIDS, Satchel Paige one of the best early African American ballplayer's, August Wilson 3 Pulitzers African American playwright, Eugene O'Neill 3 Pulitzers playwright, Lawrence Olivier one of the great film actors the Olivier award, Uta Hagen theatre and film acting method originating many of the most famous parts written in the mid 20th century and before!!!
I wish you had mentioned his part in editing and writing US Grant's autobiography. It's one of the best autobiographies ever written, and his and Grant's friendship is a great story.
His wife Olivia looks like Eva Green's character in Penny Dreadful! 😂 Please do videos on the following people: 1. Dennis Rader 2. Jack London 3. Upton Sinclair 4. Jack Ketchum 5. Jane Austen 6. Anton LaVey 7. Annalise Michel
Is it true that before Twain wasted his money on the Paige printing press.with it's 9,000 moving parts he was asked if he'd like to invest in his Bridgeport, Conn. neighbors new invention? But Twain didn't see any future for the TELEPHONE as the neighbor was Alexander Graham Bell. A great artist won't necessarily be a great financial guru.
I was born and raised in Hannibal, still live here. Hannibal Missouri is “Mark Twains hometown”. In the book of Tom Sawyer, the town Tom is in is about Hannibal. Pretty cool to see a video about somebody that I know so much about. Thanks Simon for the amazing videos on this channel and business blaze and every channel!
We read Tom Sawyer in junior high and huckleberry Finn in highschool. How my teachers talked about Mark Twain’s use of the n word in the book was kind of a making fun of it. Showing how stupid racism is, and how stupid is it to treat others differently strictly by their skin color
Ed Flinn in a nutshell for our fellow readers here. It’s insincere person. Not most flattering description and I doubt that is in the vocabulary of most, unless you’re an avid reader of literature. But I agree🪓🪓
I was DYING laughing when in A Tramp Abroad when the fat guy (of whom Mark Twain was his second) in the dueling club (who didn't know how to duel...namely that you can get severely hurt or die in duels) fell on Mark Twain because he was so scared he was shot (he wasn't), broke Twain's arm and Twain received France's version of something analogous to an American Congressional Medal of Honor for being the first guy to ever be injured in a French duel. 😂😂😂
This channel is pretty zealous with the adverts hey... Also, it's interesting that you said the civil was "turning brother against brother" since Mark Twain was a Freemason /G\
There is a quote attributed to and disavowed by Mark Twain; "The coldest winter I ever saw was a summer in San Francisco." When asked, he quipped, "that's the greatest line I never said."
There was more, then, to his strange sorority than an elderly man’s yearning for grandchildren, more even than nostalgia for his daughters’ childhoods. “As for me,” Twain wrote at the age of seventy-three, “I collect pets: young girls-girls from ten to sixteen years old; girls who are pretty and sweet and naive and innocent-dear young creatures to whom life is a perfect joy and to whom it has brought no wounds, no bitterness, and few tears.”
I had heard of Twain's being friends of inventors, but I did not know that Tesla was one of them. He really was a brilliant man. Enjoyed the program today. Vaughn
Also interesting is that Mark Twain was not a believer in Palmistry until he met the world-famous palmist Cheiro and was amazed by his insights. He then became a firm believer in Palmistry. Also, his palm print is available in Cheiro's book Language of the Hand.
He lived in Muscatine Iowa in the summer of 1855 I believe, and he even wrote for the Muscatine Journal. From what I remember that wasnt mentioned in the video. And if it was could someone timestamp it for me?
MARK TWAIN was a great American author and humorist of the 19th century. But he was preceded in the 18th century by Benjamin Franklin; specifically in his "POOR RICHARD'S ALMANACK". Its a collection of wit, humor, aphorisms, trivia, advice, satire and proverbs with a distinctly "American flavor". For example: "Fish and visitors stink in 3 days". "3 people may keep a secret- if 2 of them are dead" "Beware the young Doctor and the old Barber" These quotes could just have easily come from Mark Twain's pen,several decades later.
Sir, your video is brilliant it provides a huge amount of knowledge about Mark Twain who is an outstanding American writer known around the world. Andre BERENYI
The Miracle Worker wasn't Helen Keller, but her teacher, Anne Sullivan. Please hire some fact checkers, instead of putting out misinformation. Thank you.
You didn't mention that he spent time writing in Elmira, NY (Huck Finn and Connecticut Yankee) and that he and Olivia were buried in that city's cemetery.
Do not let this distract you from the fact that Mark Twain was played by Vanilla Ice in a 2016 Netflix Original Western movie directed by and starring Adam Sandler
I'm just starting Innocents Abroad after finishing Life on the Mississippi and Roughing It. The funniest thing I've read was his description of the missionaries in Hawaii trying to get the natives to wear clothing. Have you read that? Anyway, now I'm really looking forward to Innocents Abroad!
I'd love a Biographic on George Carlin, one of the greatest comedian and philosopher of the 20th century. "The owners of this country know the truth: It's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." - George C.
That’s what we should do, censor historical works not because they were inaccurate but because they teach lessons about intolerance that we need to know now. Can’t imagine anyone gaining any valuable insight on racial relations from Huck Finn...
"The difference between the average European Jew and the average European Gentile is about the same as the difference between an Archbishop and a tadpole."
No mention about his relationship with Ulysses Grant and Twain helping him publish his memoirs? Also no mention of his novel "The Gilded Age" that satirized and critiqued that era following the Civil War.
Saw Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain several times. Performances were so well researched and acted that you thought you were transported to the past century and heard Twain lecture. A man for all times.
