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Mark Twain

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22

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2023-07-19

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2023-07-19

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1. “The unlikely marriage of the hard knock humorus from Backwoods, Missouri and the heiress from upstate New York works surprisingly well. Twain showed the previously sheltered Livy the World. She in turn civilized him. For the next thirty four years, in good times and bad, the couple presented a unified front, a model marriage blessed with three spirited daughters and innumerable cats. The contented author produced a remarkable stream of novels, short stories, essays, and travel pieces that today stands as one of the great bodies of work in English literature. The first book he completed after his marriage was roughing it, a sunny and expansive account of his cross country stagecoach trip with his brother a decade earlier, and his adventures in the raw and wild west.”

   2023-07-19 · Founders · #312 Mark Twain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Twain also found a girl, or rather he found the girl's brother. And then he found the girl. Her name was Olivia Louise Langdon, and she was to be the love of his life. Had he not gone on that voyage, his career most likely would have mirrored that of his recently deceased drinking companion Ward, a one man show lived out in smoky lecture halls, seedy hotel rooms, and late night bars. Instead, much to the wonderment of his western friends, Mark Twain set out rehabilitating himself in the single minded interest of winning the girl. Twain told his friend that she was the most perfect gem of women kind that I ever saw in my life, and I will stand by that remark until I die against all odds he would prove as good as his word”

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3. “The greatest journalistic scoop he has of all time. That leads him to his lecture career, which further enhances his public profile, which leads him to this 23-week trip in Europe, which is in turn going to lead to the source material for his first great publishing success in book form, which then in turn changes his life forever. Once again, Twain's restless nature served him well. The subsequent twenty three weeks he spent touring the old world gave him both the inspiration and the raw material for the book.”

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4. “So before you and I end this conversation, let's go, let's look back at what is taking place, right? Finds, thinks he's going to be a cocaine dealer, travels down, stumbles upon the best job he thought he'd have forever, the Mississippi River Steamboat pilot. Then something completely out of his control, the Civil War comes, causes him to flee, go out west, and he has all these series of adventures, turns from Samuel Clemens into Mark Twain, meets a bunch of people along the way that give him fantastic advice and change the trajectory of his life. Experiences unbelievably highs, and then at the very bottom where he wants to, he has a gun to his head, finds the best opportunity of his life, writes what he thinks is just a silly story. That story goes viral. That story creates all these other fans and people that love Twain and want to help him. He turns that into a trip to Hawaii, meets another one of his fans who happens to be very influential, who leads him to...”

   2023-07-19 · Founders · #312 Mark Twain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “They laugh. He'll like look in the direction if they mix eye contact that means to laugh. Once one or two people laugh, usually in an audience, other people kind of pick it up as well. And so he seated the audience. The second thing that was hilarious, right, is now he's on tour is that Twain would finish his show and then he'd go out with the audience and get absolutely hammered. He'd go out and get drunk after the show was over with people in the audience. And so as he keeps traveling around doing more shows, more newspapers pick it up, more magazines start talking about it. He starts getting a lot of attention for his shows. It becomes very, very successful. Like I said, something he does for the rest of his life. But then, of course, as the growth of popularity of anything, he starts getting a lot of critics. Twain's response to criticism is hilarious. He says everybody has a right to his opinion, even if he is an ass. They have the consolation of abusing me. And I have the consolation of slapping my pocket and hearing the money jiggle.”

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6. “Right away, so it says he began seriously discussing a new venture, a public lecture on Hawaii that would capitalize on his current status and his current status meaning an American that just spent four months on the Sandwich Islands and had stumbled into this unbelievable worldwide scoop of the greatest feat of endurance for any shipwrecked victims at that time in history. And you see right from the get-go that Twain is a phenomenal marketer. So he does two smart things here. One, to seed the ground to get people to show up. He spends $150 to publish an ad in the newspapers advertising the show that he's doing. And it says the ad itself was a classic example of Twainian wit. I'm going to try to read this to you and hopefully it makes sense. If not, you might have to see it. But what he does is you have all these headlines. Most of the ad is just a normal text, right? But then you have like five or six headlines all in caps locks. And it immediately draws your attention, but it's funny what he does.”

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7. “It says with only 10 days rations, the castaways were soon reduced to eating their boots, shoelaces, pieces of wood, strips of canvas, cotton shirts, and silk handkerchiefs. The survivors were less than a day away from drawing straws to kill and eat the loser of the lottery. And in a matter of think a day or two, Twain writes up this story, sends it off, and it spreads like wildfire all over the world. Why is that important? Because again, opportunity unlocks the next opportunity. What he realizes is like, oh, wait, now I actually have something where I'm somewhat of an authority on. I can start doing stage shows. He's going to take this story and then add humorous bits about it. And he's like, now I have a plot. Like I'm going to use, I'm going to run Ward's playbook. I'm going to be a public lecturer. Starts out. Thought it may be just one city. It went so it goes so well that he winds up touring and he does this for the rest of his life. And the smart thing he does is he capitalizes on all the media.”

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8. “Shortly after they meet and become friends, right? There's this incredible survival story that's going to, this thing doesn't just go viral over the United States like Tween's Frog story. This goes viral over the entire year or over the entire earth rather. And Twain is the one that gets the scoop and he gets the scoop because the ambassador”

   2023-07-19 · Founders · #312 Mark Twain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “What I mean how one opportunity unlocks another opportunity, how opportunity tends to beget more opportunity. He winds up getting an opportunity, and this is something he couldn't have planned, it's outside of his control, but he winds up meeting this American diplomat that's in Hawaii at the time. His name is Birlingham. And Burlingham just wants to meet Twain because Burlingham and Burlingham's son is a fan of Burling of Twain's writing. In fact, they had memorized Twin's frog story and could repeat it like on command. And so Twain winds up becoming friends and spending time with Burlingham while he's in Hawaii. And then, again, this is another that you have an older person, well-connected person, trying to take an interest in Mark Twain. I think he calls him a genius. And he gives advice that's going to sound very similar to the advice that Ward gave Twain all the way back in Virginia City. And this is advice that Twain's going to use for the rest of his life. Again, and it's this idea. It's like whatever you do.”

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10. “Islands back then. And Twain has been wanting to go for a while, but he's like, okay, well, how can I get there? And so Hawaii is going to change everything because his greatest scoop, he gets his greatest scoop in Hawaii, which actually leads him to his public electure career, which then leads into Europe, which then leads him to his wife that he's like the love of his life. But we're not there yet. So what he does is he approaches these newspaper owners. I think in Sacramento, and he's like, listen, if you'll pay for the trip to Hawaii, I'll spend, I think he decides he's going to spend a month out there. I will write a series of like letters for the newspaper, you know, 25 or 30 of these letters. He thinks he's going to go for a month and he loved Hawaii so much. He winds up spending four months there. And much later as an older man, he's writing about this just beautiful memory in his life. And he says there's the peacefulest, restfulest, sunniest, balmiest, dreamiest heaven of refuge for our worn out and wary spirit, the surface of the earth can offer. And so this.”

    2023-07-19 · Founders · #312 Mark Twain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Living to just survive didn't even take it that seriously. And yet it is one in which all the countries praising me for. And it is the first opportunity that opens up every single opportunity after. Listen to this grudgingly and gradually. Twain accepted his fate. He thought he had a call to literature of a low order. That's what they called it at the time. He'd be writing funny literature, literature of a low order, humorous. It is nothing to be proud of, he said, but it is my strongest suit. From now on, he pledged he would turn my attention to seriously writing to excite the laughter of God's creatures. It is a poor, pitiful business, he wrote. It is a few weeks before Twain's thirtieth birthday. So because that went viral, everybody knows who Mark Twain is now. He gets all these opportunities he gets to choose from. At the time, Hawaii was not a state. It was actually, it wasn't even called Hawaii. It was called the Sandwich.”

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12. “Strange fashion I would have never written about him. If you ever hear Cormack McCarthy talk about the way he writes, he says it just comes out of him. It's very similar to what Mark Train's saying. It's just like, I try, tried, fought against it, didn't come. I'm laying there about to give up. And then it just comes out of me and I sit down and I write it out. The importance of this story cannot be understated. It is his first viral hit. It is going to sweep across all the newspapers and all the magazines all throughout the country, which is going to lead him to his next big break when he's in Hawaii, which I'll get there in a second. What's fascinating about this is the viral nature of this story caught him by surprise. He didn't even think it was that good. The only one not amused by the story, it seemed, was the author himself to think that after writing many articles, a man might be excused for thinking that were tolerably good. So saying, I thought I wrote a bunch of good stuff in the past. Those New York people should single out a villainous backward sketch to compliment me on. So he's like, this was just something that I was trying to make to write just to make a little.”

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13. “Jumping frog of Calvarist County or something like that. I need to talk first about this level of procrastination, the fact that he struggled greatly with what is going to turn out to be his first rival hit, and then how it connects to everything else and literally creates Mark Twain. Twain couldn't seem to get the jumping frog story written. He finished two drafts and then he began the third. It just wouldn't come, he said. Then one dismal afternoon, as I lay on my hotel bed, determined to inform Ward that I had nothing appropriate for his collection, a small voice began to make itself heard inside of him. A small voice began to make itself heard. Try me, try me, oh please, try me, please do. It was the poor little jumping frog, the one that old Ben Coon had described he's talking about the guy he overheard the story in the bar. I immediately got up and wrote out the tale. If it hadn't been for the little fellow's appropriation in the...”

    2023-07-19 · Founders · #312 Mark Twain · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “And this is what I mean that opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss. He goes from suicide, being almost completely broke down to his last dime, our last penny, to having the opportunity that creates Mark Twain. And it comes from relationships. Everything in the world runs on relationships. So remember Ward, right? Ward, the guy that he met back in Virginia City, the guy that gave him the path forward, offers to publish in like a literary magazine, so maybe like, I guess it would be like kind of the equivalent if you publish a piece in like the New Yorker today or something like that. And so Twain is a freelance writer, I guess is the way to think about it in those terms. He is going to write his first big hit. This is so important. It goes back to what I started the conversation with, where Steve Jobs is completely right. You cannot connect the dots looking forward. You have to, you can only connect them looking backwards. If you're looking back at Twain's life, this is a major, major dot. This is going to be his first viral hit. It's going to be called the cell.”

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15. “And this is where we get to the biggest holy moment of the book Twain Klung literally to his last dime, afraid that complete pennilessness might suggest suicide. He noted suddenly in an otherwise serious discussion of marriage that I am resolved on that or suicide, meaning he wants to get married or he'll kill himself. He fretted If I do not get out of debt in three months, it is pistols or poison for one. This is unbelievable. Several years after he remembered one despairing night when I put the pistol to my head but wasn't man enough to pull the trigger. He put down the pistol and picked up the pen. As he would throughout his life in good times and bad, Mark Twain wrote.”

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16. “Are the ways of providence. He said it was an act of God that destroyed the newspaper building. So he was either willing to quit or get fired over principle, but that did not mean that it was easy. This is one of the darkest periods of his entire life. Twain suddenly found himself struggling. For two months, my sole occupation was avoiding people. During that time, I did not earn a penny. I became very adept at what he calls slinking, slinking away from people, hiding.”

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17. “And a newspaper reporter. And the reason I bring that to your attention is because there is still nothing in the life of Mark Twain that could lead you to predict that he's going to go down in history as one of the greatest American writers ever. So he goes to San Francisco. The problem is he's in a better city, but he's still, he's now working on a newspaper again and he hates it. And what he hates most about this, and this is really a good way to think about Twain, is like he's always seeking novelty and running away from monotony. Well, being like just a standard beat reporter in San Francisco, He realizes, oh my God, I'm living the same day every day, which is literal hell for Mark Twain. 40 years later, Twain still shuddered at the soul killing routine. Each day's evidence was substantially a duplicate of the day before. The daily performance was killingly monotonous.”

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18. “Says get the facts first, then you can distort them as much as you like. And so if you go and study a lot of twins fiction, it's rooted in actual factual events that then he then distorts and exaggerates, right? Says Twain would never be a particularly hard worker. He later boasted that he made a 50% profit on his work for the enterprise because he was being paid $6 a day and only doing three dollars a day worth of work. And so one of the founders of the newspaper is also going to give Twain a good piece of advice that Twain's going to apply to his fiction writing about a decade later. And so he's saying, listen, when you're writing for this newspaper, we don't say things like it is reported or it is rumored or we understand. Instead, we get the facts and then we speak out and say it is so-and-so. And this is the reason. Otherwise, people will not pick confidence in your news. Unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest.”

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19. “Swearing that he would never look upon his mom's face or get married until I am a rich man. He was forced to take stock of his present situation. I had gained a livelihood in various vocations, he said, but I had not dazzled anybody with my successes. And so by this point he had tried on, you know, ten different occupations. He is a failure. There's nothing in his life. There's a multiple times in this book where you're like, if you paused Mark Twain's life, like you're watching this, right? You paused. There's nothing in his life so far that would lead you to believe that he's going to be one of the greatest and most beloved writers in American history, right? So at this point, what is he doing? He's like, what the hell do I do? I don't know what to do next. I'm a failure at everything I try. And yet we go back to that maxim. Opportunity is a strange beast. It frequently appears after a loss. The answer came entirely out of the blue. The business manager for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise, this is a newspaper, wrote to Sam in late.”

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20. “Streets of Salt Lake City. Twain judged that the man who marries one of them has done an act of charity, which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind. And the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open handed generosity so sublime that the nation should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence. And so it is factual that Mark Twain met Brigham Young, his account is largely believed to be fictional. So finally, after I think it's like a week or 18 days, something like that, they wind up getting to where they're going. They're setting up shop and helping the governor of the newly formed Nevada territory. So they're going to set up this place called Carson City. The day they get there, there's a gunfight and a windstorm. And so that's just a normal day in the Nevada Capitol. Carson City, interesting enough, was actually named for the Explorer Christopher Kick Carson. I read a book called Blood.”

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21. “I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating. And so this is when his journey west and his transformation into, and Mark Twain begins, because his brother actually gets a job working for the government of the newly created Nevada territory. And so Twain goes with him to get away from the Civil War. If you've ever seen the show Deadwood, the towns where Twain's going to spend the next few years of his life look a lot like that. And so the big problem here is the way that they have to get West is by traveling by stagecoach. Now, this is insane. I have like this love affair with the American West. I read a bunch of history books on it. I kind of fantasize about it because I've lived on the East Coast my whole life. I feel almost like I was born in the wrong place. I think I have like the Western sense of like adventure. But anyways, there is, you're traveling, just imagine, you're in your 20s. I think he's like 25 when this is happening, right? You're in your 20s. It's 1860s America and you're traveling west by”

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22. “Quicksands, floating islands, sunken rocks, sunken trees, sunken boats, loose debris, and the ever-present dangers of collisions with other boats, shipboard fires, and boiler explosions. This is how Mark Twain described this. I loved, I thought I wrote down this just incredible thought. He learned gradually he learned how to be a pilot. This is now Mark Twain writing later in his life, right? Beautiful writing here. The face of the water in time became a wonderful book. a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice after two years of apprenticeship after two years of learning the river, he becomes a fully licensed steamboat pilot looking back. He said that was the greatest achievement, the single proudest moment of his life.”

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