* Out In The Be-Bop Night- Fragments On Working Class Culture- Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-Hayes-Bickford Breakout 1962

Click on the headline to link to a photograph of a Hayes-Bickford on Huntington Avenue in Boston (no Cambridge one available)to add a little flavor to this entry.

Markin comment:

The scene below stands (or falls) as a moment in support of that eternal search mentioned in the headline.

Scene Two: Got The Urge For Going In Search Of The Blue- Pink Great American West Night- Breakout 1962

Here I am again sitting, 3 o’clock in the morning sitting, bleary-eyed, slightly distracted after mulling over the back and forth of the twelve hundredth run-in (nice way to put it, right?) with Ma that has driven me out into this chilly October 1962 early morning. And where do I find myself sitting at this time of morning? Tired, but excitedly expectant, on an uncomfortable, unpadded bench seat on this rolling old clickity-clack monster of a Red Line subway car as it now waggles its way out past Kendall Station on its way to Central Square and then to the end of the line, Harvard Square. My hangout, my muse home, my night home, at least my weekend night home, my place to make sense of the world in a world that doesn’t make much sense, at least not enough much sense. Sanctuary, Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford sanctuary, misbegotten teenage boy sanctuary, recognized by international law, recognized by canon law, or not.

That beef with Ma, that really unnumbered beef, forget about the 1200 I said before, that was just a guess, has driven me to take an “all-nighter” trip away from the travails of the old home town across Boston to the never-closed Hayes-Bickford cafeteria that beckons just as you get up the stairs from the Harvard subway tunnel. Damn, let me just get this off my chest and then I can tell the rest of the story. Ma said X, I pleaded for Y (hell this homestead civil war lent itself righteously to a nice algebraic formulation. You can use it too, no charge). Unbeknownst to me Y did not exist in Ma’s universe. Ever. Sound familiar? Sure, but I had to get it off my chest.


After putting on my uniform, my Harvard Square “cool” uniform: over-sized flannel brownish plaid shirt, belt-less black cuff-less chino pants, black Chuck Taylor logo-ed Converse sneakers, a now ratty old windbreaker won in a Fourth of July distance race a few years back when I really was nothing but a wet-behind-the ears kid to ward off the chill, and, and the absolutely required midnight sunglasses to hide those bleary eyes from a peeking world I was ready to go. To face the unlighted night, and fight against the dawn’s rising for another day. Oh ya, I forgot, I had to sneak out of the house stealthily, run like some crazed broken field football player down the back of the property, and, after catching my breathe, walk a couple of miles over bridge and nasty, hostile (hostile if anyone was out, and anyone was sniping for a misbegotten teenage boy, for any purpose good or evil) Dorchester streets to get to the Fields Corner subway stop. The local Eastern Mass. bus had stopped its always erratic service hours ago, and, any way, I usually would rather walk, in any case, than wait, wait my youth away for those buses to amble along our way with their byzantine schedules.

Right now though I am thinking, as those subway car wheels rattle beneath my feet, who knows, really, how or why it starts, that wanderlust start, that strange feeling in the pit of your stomach that you have to move on, or out, or up or you will explode, except you also know, or you damn well come to know that it eats away at a man, or a woman for matter, in different ways. Maybe way back, way back in the cradle it was that first sense that there was more to the world that the four corners of that baby world existence and that if you could just, could just get over that little, little side board there might be something better, much better over the horizon. But, frankly that just seems like too much of a literary stretch even for me, moody teenage boy that I am, to swallow so let’s just say that it started once I knew that the ocean was a way to get away, if you needed to get away. But see I didn’t figure than one out for myself even, old Kenny from the old neighborhood in third grade is the one who got me hip to that, and then Johnny James and his brother filled in the rest of the blanks and so then I was sea-worthy, dream sea-worthy anyway.

But, honestly, that sea dream stuff can only be music for the future because right now I am stuck, although I do not always feel stuck about it, trying to figure my way out of high school world, or at least figure out the raging things that I want to do after high school that fill up my daydream time (study hall time, if you really want to know). Of course, as well, that part about the ocean just mentioned, well there was a literal part to the proposition since ocean-at-my-back (sometimes right at my back) New England homestead meant unless I wanted to take an ill-advised turn at piracy or high-seas hijacking or some such thing east that meant I had to head west. Right now west though is Harvard Square, its doings and not doings, it trumpet call to words, and sounds, and actions in the October Friday night all-night storm brewing.

The train now rounds the squeaky-sounding bend out of Central Square and stops at the station. So now I leave my pensive seat and stand waiting, waiting for the driver to release the pressure to let the sliding train door open, getting ready to jump off the old subway, two-step-at-a-time my way up the two flights of stairs and head for mecca to see if things jump for me tonight. The doors open at last. Up the two-stepped stairs I go, get to the surface and confront the old double-glassed Hayes door entrance and survey the vast table-filled room that at this hour has a few night owl stranglers spotted throughout the place.

You know the old Hayes-Bickford, or one of them if you live in Boston, or New York City, or a few other places on the East Coast, don’t you? Put your tray on the metal slider (hey, I don’t know what you call that slider thing, okay) and cruise down the line from item to item behind the glass-enclosed bins of, mostly, steamy food, if you are looking for fast service, for a quick between doing things, pressing things, meal. Steamed and breaded everything from breakfast to lunch to dinner anytime topped off by dishwater quality coffee (refills on demand, if you feel lucky). But this is not the place to bring your date, certainly not your first date, except maybe for a quick cup of that coffee before going to some event, or home. What this is, really, is a place where you can hang out, and hang out with comfort, because nobody, nobody at all, is going to ask you to leave, at least if you act half-way human. And that is what this place is really about, the humans in all their human conditions doing human things, alien to you or not, that you see floating by you, as you take a seat at one of the one-size-fits all wooden tables with those red vinyl seat covered chairs replete with paper place settings, a few off-hand eating utensils and the usual obligatory array of condiments to help get down the food and drink offered here.

Let me describe who is here at this hour on an early Saturday morning in October 1962. I will not vouch for other times, or other days, but I know Friday and Saturday nights a little so I can say something about them. Of course there is the last drink at the last open barroom crowd, said bar already well-closed in bluelaw Massachusetts, trying to get sober enough by eating a little food to traverse the road home. Good luck. Needless to say eating food in an all-night cafeteria, any all-night cafeteria, means only one thing-the person is so caught up in a booze frenzy that he (mainly) or she (very occasionally) is desperate for anything to hang the name food on to. Frankly, except for the obligatory hard-dollar coffee-steamed to its essence, then through some mystical alchemic process re-beaned, and served in heavy ceramic mugs that keep in the warmth to keep the eyes open the food here is strictly for the, well, the desperate, drunk or sober.

I might mention a little more about the food as I go along but it is strictly to add color to this little story. Maybe, maybe it will add color to the story but this is mainly about the “literary” life at the old Hayes and the quest for the blue-pink night not the cuisine so don’t hold me to it. Here is the kicker though; there are a few, mercifully few this night, old winos, habitual drunks, and street vagabonds (I am being polite here) who are nuzzling their food, for real. This is the way that you can tell the "last drink" boys, the hail fellows well met, who are just out on the town and who probably go to one of the ten zillion colleges in the area and are drawn like moths (and like wayward high schools kids, including this writer) to the magic name, Harvard Square. They just pick at their food. Those other guys (again, mainly, guys) those habituals and professional waywards work at it like it is their last chance for salvation.

Harvard Square, bright lights, dead of nights, see the sights. That vision is nothing but a commercial, a commercial magnet for every young (and old) hustler within fifty miles of the place to come and display their “acumen”. Their hustle. Three card Monte, quick-change artistry, bait and hook, a little jack-rolling, fake dope-plying, lifting an off-hand wallet, the whole gamut of hustler con lore. On any given Harvard Square weekend night there have got to be more young, naïve, starry-eyed kids hanging out trying to be cool, but really, like me, just learning the ropes of life than you could shake a stick at to set a hustler’s heart, if he (mainly) or she (sometimes) had a heart.

I’ll tell you about a quick con that got me easy in a second but right now let me tell you that at this hour I can see a few con artists just now resting up after a hard night’s work around a couple of tables, comparing notes (or, more likely, trying to con each other, there is no honor among thieves in this little night world. Go to it boys). As to the con that got me, hey it was simple, a guy, an older guy, a twenty-five year old or something like that guy, came up to me while I was talking to a friend and said did I (we) want to get some booze. Sober, sixteen years old, and thrill-seeking I said sure (drinking booze is the coin of the realm for thrills these days, among high school kids that I know, maybe the older set, those college guys, are, I hear, experimenting with drugs but if so it is very on the QT).

He said name your poison, I did, and then he “suggested” a little something for himself. Sure, whatever is right. I gave him the money and he returned a few minutes later with a small bag with the top of a liquor bottle hanging out. He split. We went off to a private area around Harvard Yard (Phillips Brook House, I think) and got ready to have our first serious taste of booze, and maybe get rum brave enough to pick up some girls. Naturally, the bottle is a booze bottle alright but it had been opened (how long before is anyone’s guess) and filled with water. Sucker, right. Now the only reason that I am mentioning this story right now is that the guy who pulled this con is sitting, sitting like the King of Siam, just a few tables away from where I am sitting. The lesson learned for the road, for the future road that beckons: don’t accept packages from strangers without inspecting them and watch out for cons, right? No, hell no. The lesson is this: sure don’t fall for wise guy tricks but the big thing is to shake it off, forget about it if you see the con artist again. You are way to cool to let him (or occasionally her) think that they have conned you. Out loud, anyway.

But wait, I am not here at almost four o’clock in the Hayes-Bickford morning, the Harvard Square Hayes-Bickford morning, to talk about the decor, the food if that is what it is, about the clientele, humble, slick, or otherwise. I am here looking for “talent”, literary talent that is. See, I have been here enough, and have heard enough about the ”beats” (or rather pseudo-beats, or “late phase” beats at this time) and the “folkies” (music people breaking out of the Pop 40 music scene and going back to the roots of America music, way back) to know that a bunch of them, about six in all, right this minute are sitting in a far corner with a light drum tapping the beat listening to a guy in black pants(always de rigueur black), sneakers and a flannel shirt just like me reciting his latest poem. That possibility is what drove me here this night, and other nights as well. See the Hayes is known as the place where someone like Norman Mailer has his buttered toast after one of his “last drink” bouts. Or that Bob Dylan sat at that table, that table right over there, writing something on a napkin. Or some parallel poet to the one now wrapping up his seventy-seven verse imitation Allen Ginsberg's Howl master work went out to San Francisco and blew the lid off the town, the City Lights town, the literary town.

But I better, now that the six-ish dawn light is hovering, trying to break through the night wars, get my droopy body down those subway stairs pretty soon and back across town before anyone at home notices that I am missing. Still I will take the hard-bitten coffee, re-beaned and all, I will take the sleepy eyes that are starting to weigh down my face, I will even take the con artists and feisty drunks just so that I can be here when somebody’s search for the blue-pink great American West night, farther west than Harvard Square night, gets launched.

Artist's Corner- The English Artist Richard Hamilton- A Guest Book Review

Click on the headline to link to an appreciation of the work of English artist, Richard Hamilton, by Julian Bell.

*Writer's Corner-Less than zero: Bret Easton Ellis’s sequel misses- A Guest Book Review

Click on the headline to link to a Sunday Boston Globe, dated July 4, 2010, guest book review of Bret Eason Ellis' latest novel.


Markin comment:

The reason that I am posting this guest review is that the reviewer's (Jay Atkinson) first paragraph hits the nail right on the head about the dearth of sympathetic (or even likable) characters that populate most contemporary literature:

"Sometime in the 1970s, when money and power became mixed up in the counterculture, it all went horribly wrong, in literature and in life. The primary books that celebrate this intriguing aspect of Americana, works by writers like Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, and Jim Carroll — even Whitman and Thoreau — often featured charismatic quasi-hoboes as their protagonists, enlightened seekers in pursuit of “joy, kicks, darkness, music,’’ in Kerouac’s famous expression. These penniless hipsters were not looking for freedom from authority so much as freedom from oppression; for the most part, they were willing to live, and let live."

Does anyone else have that same sense? Or sense of the decline of "hobo" sensibility.
Neal Cassady from Kerouac Denver, "The Brown Buffalo", Oscar Acosta, from Thompson California, Duane from McMurtry Texas, McMurphy from Kesey Oregon, Hell, even Faulkner crazies from Mississippi and Tennessee Williams misfit from all over the South. I could go on. Where have they gone in techno-America? At least they could have left an e-mail address. Right?

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- From The Pen Of George Bernard Shaw

Click on the title to link to an "HistoMat" blog entry concerning George Bernard Shaw's views on communism.

Markin comment:

I will, and gladly, go see any play that George Bernard Shaw wrote, but I am still waiting, impatiently, for he and his Fabian associates', the Webbs, Cole, Brailsford, Wells, etc., vision of the slow, very slow and methodical road to socialism (never) to occur. Hurry along now, better yet, let's talk Bolshevik to take our communist birthright sooner.

*From "The American Insurgency" Blog- Widom (Oops!) For The Ages

Click on the headline to link to an "American Insurgency" blog entry on the travails of Teabagger 'education'.

Markin comment:

I agree with "American Insurgency" on that troublesome problem of fighting with the quirks of the "spell check". Oh, yes, and on the Teabagger problem as well. Nice job.

*Poet's Corner- The Work Of French Poet Arthur Rimbaud

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the 19th century French Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud.


Markin comment:

One cannot have paid serious attention to American storyteller/songwriter/poet Bob Dylan's early work, especially "Desolation Row" and "Like Tom Thumbs Blues" without have coming into contact with, and note the influnce of, the two 19th century French poets honored today, Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud. And the selections below certainly make the case for that statement.


Ophelia

I

On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.

For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.

The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.

II

O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.

It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;

It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!

Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!

III

- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.

Arthur Rimbaud

Dance Of The Hanged Men

On the black gallows, one-armed friend,
The paladins are dancing, dancing
The lean, the devil's paladins
The skeletons of Saladins.

Sir Beelzebub pulls by the scruff
His little black puppets who grin at the sky,
And with a backhander in the head like a kick,
Makes them dance, dance, to an old Carol-tune!

And the puppets, shaken about, entwine their thin arms:
Their breasts pierced with light, like black organ-pipes
Which once gentle ladies pressed to their own,
Jostle together protractedly in hideous love-making.

Hurray! the gay dancers, you whose bellies are gone!
You can cut capers on such a long stage!
Hop! never mind whether it's fighting or dancing!
- Beelzebub, maddened, saws on his fiddles!

Oh the hard heels, no one's pumps are wearing out!
And nearly all have taken of their shirts of skin;
The rest is not embarrassing and can be seen without shame.
On each skull the snow places a white hat:

The crow acts as a plume for these cracked brains,
A scrap of flesh clings to each lean chin:
You would say, to see them turning in their dark combats,
They were stiff knights clashing pasteboard armours.

Hurrah! the wind whistles at the skeletons' grand ball!
The black gallows moans like an organ of iron !
The wolves howl back from the violet forests:
And on the horizon the sky is hell-red...

Ho there, shake up those funereal braggarts,
Craftily telling with their great broken fingers
The beads of their loves on their pale vertebrae:
Hey the departed, this is no monastery here!

Oh! but see how from the middle of this Dance of Death
Springs into the red sky a great skeleton, mad,
Carried away by his own impetus, like a rearing horse:
And, feeling the rope tight again round his neck,

Clenches his knuckles on his thighbone with a crack
Uttering cries like mocking laughter,
And then like a mountebank into his booth,
Skips back into the dance to the music of the bones!

On the black gallows, one-armed friend,
The paladins are dancing, dancing
The lean, the devil's paladins
The skeletons of Saladins.

My Bohemian Life

I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of!

My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky rustled softly.

And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine;

And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart!

*Poet's Corner- The Work Of Early Soviet Poet Sergei Essenin

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's copy of his tribute article on the death of the early Soviet poet Sergei Essenin, "To The memory Of Sergei Essenin". Essenin is also mentioned in Trotsky's well-known critique of early Soviet literary figures, "Literature and Revolution".

Sergei Essenin: a few poems

(1923)


looking at you makes me sad
so painful
what pity
i guess only the copper leaves are left for us in September
other lips have taken your warmth
and little cold rain is drizzling from your soul
well, it doesn't scare me
i've found a different joy
and there is nothing left but the yellow rot and dumpness
i haven't exactly preserved myself either
for quiet life and smiles..
walked too few roads
made too many mistakes..
funny life, funny mismatch
has always been.. and will be
and the garden looks like a cemetery
covered with the white bones of treetranks
we'll die like the flowers
and dissapear like the guests of the garden
since there are no flowers in the winter
why be sad about them?

(1917)

The red wings of the sunset are dying
Quietly, the fence is snoozing in the fog
Don't be so melancholy, my tiny white cabin
That again you and I are alone.

Surrounded by blue
The moon is cleaning her horns
On the straw of the roof
I did not go after her, didn't follow
And didn't walk her to the end of the field.

I know, years will quiet my worry
This pain, just like years, will pass
And her innocent mouth and soul
She will save for another.

The one who begs for joy is weak
Only the proud live strongly
But another will crumple her and throw her away
Like an old, rotten horse-collar.

It's not out of misery that I wait for my fortune
One day there will be a nasty snowstorm
And she will come to this land
And she'll come inside to warm her child.

She'll take off her warm coat and shawls
Will sit cozily by my fire
And will say quietly and affectionately
That the child looks like me.

hooligan (1919)

Rain is cleaning with wet brooms
Willows' poop in the meadows
Wind, you can spit armfuls of leaves -
I am a hooligan, just like you

I love it when the blue thickets,
Like bulls with heavy step,
Stomachs wheezing with leaves,
Soil the knees of the tree trunks

Here it is, my red flock!
Who could sing to you better than I?
I can see the twilight licking human footprints...

My Russia, wooden Russia!
I am the only one to sing to you
I have fed with berries and mint
The sadness of my beast's poems

Let the night bring the moon's pitcher
Draw up the milk of the birch grove!
Looks like the church near by
Wants to strangle someone with the hands of it's crosses!

Something sinister walks the hills,
Drips thief's spite into our garden
But I myself am a bandit and a cad
And by blood - a horse thief

Who ever saw how boil in the night
Legions of the bird-cherry trees?
I was born to the night in the blue roads
To stalk the dark with my knives

Oh, The yellow bush of my head has withered
I got sucked into the poetry prison
Sentenced to turn the grindstones of the verse
In penal servitude of feelings

But don't fret, crazy wind,
Keep spitting leaves in the meadows
The label "poet" won't erase me,
Even in my songs, I am, like you, a hooligan.

(1921)

Not sorry, not calling, not crying,
All will pass like smoke of white apple trees
Seized with the gold of autumn,
I will no longer be young

Now you won't beat so,
My heart, touched with cold
And the land of the birch-tree cotton
Won't seduce me into running barefoot

My vagabond spirit, there are yet fewer times
When you move the fire of my song
Oh my lost freshness,
Strorm of eyes and spring flood of feelings!

Now I am with my wishes stingier
Did I dream you up, my life?
As if in the early, booming spiring
I have galloped through on a pink stallion

All, all in this life is mortal
Quietly flows copper of leaves from the mapple
So be you forever blessed
That which came to flower and die.

(1924-1925)

To be a poet - is the same
As when by truth of life
You scar your own tender flesh,
And with the blood of feelings
Caress the souls of others.

To be a poet - to sing freedom,
As you know it best
The song of nightgale doesn't hurt him -
His song is always the same.

Canary mimiking someone's voice -
Pitiful and silly bauble
World needs real songs - so sing like only you can
Even if you sond like a frog.

Mohammed has overdone it in Quran
When he forbade strong drink
That is why the poet will not stop
Drinking wine before he goes to the torture

And when a poet goes to his lover,
And finds her lying with another
He, kept by life-sustaining liquid,
Won't send a knife into her heart.

But, burning up with jealous recklessness,
Will whistle on the way back home
"So what, so I will die a vagabond,
On this earth such fate is also known."

(1925)
Life - a lie with charming sadness
That is where lies her strength
And with her rought hand,
She writes the word of fate.

Always, when I close my eyes,
I say, "Touch your heart and see,
Life - a lie, but even She sometimes
Adorns a lie with joys.

Turn your face to greying sky,
Telling fortune by the moon,
Calm, mortal, and do not ask
The truth you do not need."

It's good in the bird-cherry tree storm
To think that life is fated way.
Let my easy lovers lie to me,
Let my easy friends betray me.

Let them caress me with a tender word,
Let the wicked tongue be sharper than a razor, -
I've long been living ready for anything,
Mercilessly used to everything.

These heights chill my soul,
There is no warmth in the fire of the stars.
Those whom I loved, have renounced me,
For whom I've lived - forgotten me.

But still, unwanted and exiled,
I look with smile at the sunrise,
And on this earth, so close and dear,
I thank this life for everything.

***Writer’s Corner- The Avatar Of American Letter, Mark Twain

Click On Title To Link To PBS's Web Page For Ken Burns' "Mark Twain" documentary.

DVD Review

Mark Twain, a film documentary directed by Ken Burns, PBS, Florentine Productions, 2000

No, this will not be a paean to the `transformative' nature of reading Samuel Clemens' (hereafter Mark Twain) seminal works, "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" in childhood. I spend no long nights reading his works under a blanket, flashlight at the ready, until I fell asleep exhausted. (I did do that form of reading but not for Mr. Twain's work.) I, frankly, could not relate to the characters and the dialogue that seemed rather stilted (although I would not have known enough to call it that then). I do admit to having built a raft to try to `escape', along with my brothers, from some unfair sentence imposed my parents for some childhood transgression. But that can hardly be lain at Mr. Twain's door.


Nor will this review be a homage to Twain's treasure chest of humor and witty sayings that are sprinkled through out this documentary, and that have become part of the common language (and were, in the old days, very quotable newspaper filler). This film only reinforced the notion, other than the famous ditty about his response to the premature announcement of his death and his comment about San Francisco in August, that I did not find his humor funny. That said, after viewing this fine almost four hour Ken Burns PBS documentary I will admit to an on-going curiosity about this, arguably, first great modern American writer. Hey, I said Mark Twain didn't "speak" to me. I know that he is a great writer, and I think I sensed that notion even as a kid.

Ken Burns is probably the latter day master of the educational film documentary, most famously, and justly so, from the time of his ten-part PBS "Civil War" epic that I can still take in with my mind's eye. To a lesser degree, but with the same close attention to detail, a fine eye for selecting just the right photograph to make his point and appropriate musical scores in the background (including many variations of Stephan Foster songs that give a feel to the "gilded age" in which Twain lived and to which he added his own imprint).

Here Burns goes through the obligatory life of the author, starting from the rough and tumble days in Missouri and on the Mississippi River, on through to the fits and starts of finding a niche for himself (and a job) in the American literary market to success, fleeting as that was at times, and the fame, fortune, and in the end misfortune that went with that final acknowledgement that he was the premier literary man and storyteller of his times. The heart of this exploration of Twain's life, and what made it intriguing for a skeptical non-literary man like me was the way in which Twain was portrayed as a representative man of his age. That included both in his appetites for success, financial and otherwise, and to be, and be seen, as a successful product of the rough and tumble democratic American social system of the time. No small part of that persona is attributed to his wife and family that seemed, through thick and thin, hard times and good, to be his anchor. Not every successful writer has had that stable foundation but Twain literally thrived on it.

This film spend some time on Twain's literary production, his methods of work, his witticisms and his successful career as a public storyteller. I need not detail that information here. I would only say this-those who argue that Twain was first great American writer certainly have the best of the argument. In retrospect I can see where my own favorite from the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne, really was not writing for the great democratic masses beginning their long search for some cultural expression to which they could relate. Twain, for literary and financial reasons, was trying to reach that audience.

Finally, and here is where Mark Twain gets high marks from this reviewer, as the documentary pointedly highlights on many ocassions. Twain positioned himself as a truth-telling about the inequities of the world, the absurdities of racism and its cultural expressions and about the foolhardiness of the upcoming rise of the American empire that he was, in the end, helpless to stop. That he did so while feting kings and queens, the rich and famous and liking such activities points out the contradictions of his life as a man. A contradiction that more than one American would-be radical had faced unsuccessfully. But here is a home truth. We can always use an extra truth-teller or two, a rather rare commodity in any age. We can sort out Twain's contradictions from there. Twain devotee, or not, this documentary is worth four hours of your time.