#312 Mark Twain

23:43There's this fantastic line from one of my favorite books, which is written by Will and Ariel Durant. It's called The Lessons of History. I think about it all the time. It says, in every age, men have been dishonest and governments have been corrupt. Twain's version of that is, the government of my country snubs honest simplicity, but fondles artistic villainy. And I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in public service. So Twain is going to have a series of jobs. He wants to get rich because he's like, I'm going to get rich. I'm going to get rich in gold.

24:15I'm going to rich in silver. He wants to speculate in lumber. He's just trying to make a fast buck. I mean, this is just human nature, right? Most people just want to make a lot of money and they want to do the least amount of work possible. And so when he hears of opportunities, he's always willing to quit a job and then travel for opportunity. So then he's at this point in the story, he's traveling to this new boomtown, but he has this terrible idea, right? Twain expected to find masses of silver lying above the ground and glittering in the sun on the mountain summits. But when he gets there, he realizes that successful silver mining involved months of digging, drilling, boring, and blasting.

24:48The purest veins were usually the deepest. That is a great line that applies to so many other things. The purest veins were usually the deepest. There's no way in hell that Twain is going to do that kind of work. So he quits in disgust. Okay. So when I got to this section, there's this excellent book that I covered a long time ago. I should reread it. It's called the big rich. It is about the second oil boom in Texas history. It is episode 149. The book is amazing, but there's a line in the book that I've never forgotten. I think it's a metaphor for, for life, not just for oil. And it says the trouble with this business is that everybody expects to find oil on the surface.

25:21If it was up near the top, it wouldn't be any trick to it. You've got to drill deep for oil. That is a very similar thought behind the line in this book. This is the purest veins were usually the deepest. And so one problem with human nature is that we all get caught up in what everybody else is doing. And that's why there's these bubbles and bursts over and over again. And so the same thing's happening here. They're like, nobody wants to actually dig and do the actual mining. What we want to do is we want to trade paper. We want to buy shares in largely non -existent mines. And so the buying and shares of buying and selling this paper, the shares in these mines, the entire camp, the entire region that Twain is in is doing, engaging the same practice.

26:00And so Twain's like, oh, that's genius. I can make a ton of money. I don't have to do any work. He says, the trick is not to mine the silver ourselves by the sweat of our own brows and the labor of our hands, but to sell the ledges, the paper to the dull slaves of toil and let them do the mining. And here's the problem with that. Twain is taking the money he saved up through his own labor and then speculating. What do you think is going to happen? This is very similar to investing in startups, right? Twain owned several shares and a bunch of mines. It did not take him long to realize that most, if not all, were utterly worthless.

26:31There's multiple times. Wait till I, I'm going to blow your mind with something in a little bit. But there's multiple times in this book where he is deeply, deeply depressed. I think this is the first step to becoming Mark Twain. This idea of like, this cannot be my life is a very powerful motivator. Says Twain was tired of being a minor, swearing that he would never look upon his mom's face or get married until I'm rich, until I'm 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.

27:07And so by this point, he had tried on, you know, 10 different occupations. He is a failure. There's nothing in his life. There's multiple times in this book where you're like, if you paused Mark Twain's life, like you're watching this, right? You pause it. 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.

27:37It 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 July to offer him a $25 a week staff writer position on the newspaper. For several weeks, simply as a lark, Twain had been sending humorous letters to the newspaper. And he was doing that not because he thought he was going to get a job. And so what happens is he's sending all these funny little letters. They like it when an opening arises on the paper staff, the guy managing, the business manager for that, immediately thinks of Twain and offers him that job.

28:10This is the first step to him becoming Mark Twain. And again, he shows he's willing to travel to pursue economic activity. Now, this is a very humble first job. He's lucky in the sense that it's a very high quality newspaper. He's working for two young founders, and he's going to find another friend and mentor of sorts. There's like two or three, maybe four times in the book where he meets these really important people and they give him advice. And Twain, what did Michael Jordan say? Successful people listen. Those that don't listen don't last long, right? Twain listens. And in many cases, he hears advice from three or four people that he uses for the rest of his life.

28:42For multiple decades, a single idea can change everything. He was merely at the newspaper, take his place as the paper's new local. That's the term of the job. Essentially, it's just like a copy editor, general assignment reporter. You just have to fill in any last minute holes in the newspaper because the newspaper has to come out every day. And so it says by sheer good luck, Twain had landed at a spot at the best newspaper between St. Louis and San Francisco. Under the energetic leadership of the new owners, you have the 23 -year -old editor and then the 21 -year -old printing foreman. Now, that's pretty crazy because Twain is older than his bosses.

29:17These young founders are also gifted at finding other talented people. And that's important because what's going to be Twain's closest friend at work is this guy that goes by the pen name Dan DeQuill. The first bit of advice that he gives Twain. Twain is going to carry for the rest of his career. And it was wise and succinct. And this is what he 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 Twain's 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.

29:51He 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 $3 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.

30:26Unassailable certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most valuable reputation. That is the advice to Twain. The way I would think about this is people are attracted to confidence and they're repelled from nuance. And it is at this newspaper. This is why I said this is like his first step to becoming Mark Twain, because it was this job in Virginia City that he first used the pen name Mark Twain. And even from day one on the job, he does something that's really smart. this is also another idea. Remember, I can't stress the importance of the advice that Mark Twain learns throughout his life, right?

30:59The fact that these mentors, these contemporaries, these peers were constantly trying to help him. There's a lesson that he learned on the Mississippi River that he used all of his life. So go back to his riverboat mentor, Bixby. Bixby's point was that a pilot had to trust his instincts. And for the rest of his career, Mark Twain would trust his, all the while inhabiting the perilous border between safety and danger, laughter and tears, East and West. So this idea of trust your instincts is something he used his entire life. And as you'll see, it's why we know the name Mark Twain to this day. So I want to now combine two ideas, this idea where other people, his peers, his mentors, his contemporaries were very important to him.

31:37They helped him think about and shape his own career. And then this idea that came from the last episode, the James Cameron episode. In that episode, James Cameron has this idea where like he would let ideas simmer for decades. And I think he used the example of like the Plains Indian Indians, how they would use every single aspect of the buffalo down to like its marrow. He didn't let anything that he learned go to waste. We're going to see that here, the combination of those two ideas here with Mark Twain. He's going to learn about the art to public speaking, but he has no use of it yet. Something has to happen in his life to give him use, which we'll get to.

32:10But he's going to wind up meeting this guy named, he calls himself Artemis Ward. They the time in history, everybody knows Artemis Ward. Very few people know Mark Twain. Now, you know who does know Mark Twain? Artemis Ward. So it's interesting. Although close to the same age as Twain, Ward had far outstripped the younger man on the national stage. He had been a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He had been editor of Vanity Fair magazine in New York. He had already published his first book. Ward was a favorite author of Abraham Lincoln, who once interrupted a cabinet meeting at the White House to read aloud from one of Ward's humorous stories.

32:49So they're going to trade turns, right? Each man at different points in history, Ward and Twain, are going to become the most popular humorist in America through writing and speaking. It's essentially Mark Twain before Mark Twain. And so he sees in Ward a new path that he's going to use and then perfect in the future. Ward is in town in Virginia City to have a show, like these spoken word shows. He had a crowd -pleasing schtick, which he took on the road to great profit. It involved outlandish puns, head scratching non sequiturs, long, pointless stories, all delivered with a characteristic deadpan voice and innocent expression.

33:27And so Ward had been reading Mark Twain's post in the Virginia City newspaper. And so he gets to town and the first person he wants to meet, he's like, oh, I want to meet this guy. They call him the Washoe Giant. That was his nickname at the time. So I want to meet Mark Twain. They wind up, he comes to town for the speaking engagement. They wind up just hitting it off. They're like the same person. They wind up getting drunk and hanging out for a bunch. And so Ward invites him to the show. And that was so important because this is like, this is where he realized like, oh, I can do this too. The whole point of the performance as Twain immediately realized was not so much what was being said as how it was being said.

34:02It was a master's level seminar on the art of comic delivery. And Twain absorbed it all with the focused intensity of a precocious child. And so I got to stop there because that's another example. everybody learns from somebody. Ward gives him advice and that he uses, he gets this advice multiple times and he uses for the rest of his life. And the way I would put it is like, you don't sell out to the baser elements of your profession. Whatever you're doing, do it on the highest plane possible. Ward offered to bring Twain along on his tour of Europe and encouraged his newfound protege to write for more sophisticated Eastern publications.

34:38He's telling him. He's like, listen, man, you are way too talented for what you're doing. You're better than this. And if you're going to do the same profession, you might as well do it at the highest plane possible. And he's like, I will help you in any way. He said he promised to dash off convincing notes to his friends in New York on Twain's behalf. So this odyssey that Mark Twain's on in the West lasts for five and a half, six years. Three of those years, he's in Nevada, either in Carson City or Virginia City. Eventually, I guess the point I need to make here is that it takes a while for him to actually apply this advice.

35:12He does understand that he should be trying to position himself with like more sophisticated Eastern publications. And so one thing he does is he doesn't go back East yet, but he moves out of like the boom tabs, boom towns of Nevada and actually goes to San Francisco, which at the time has a lot more culture than is currently present in like the Nevada territory. I do need to make the point though, that this again is a inflection point in his life. He's changing lives again. That is the main theme that, hey, you can constantly reinvent yourself. He's still searching for his life's work. He's got a bunch of few ideas.

35:42He's got good people around him, but he still hasn't put it all together. I do want to make the point that so far he's been just in Nevada alone. He'd been a politician, a silver miner, a stock trader, a mill worker, and a newspaper reporter. And the reason I bring that to your attention is because there is still nothing, 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. Problem is he's in a better city, but he's still he's now working on a newspaper again and he hates it.

36:10And what he hates most about this, and this is really a good way to think about Twain, is like he's he's always seeking novelty and running away from monotony. Well, being like a just a standard beat reporter in San Francisco, he realizes, oh, my God, I'm living the same day every day, which is literal, literal hell for Mark Twain. Forty 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. And this detesting of his job, this hating of his day -to -day life, goes back to this can't be my life is a very powerful motivator.

36:47This deep hatred is going to lead to, one, the most surprising thing in the book, and two, finding the path forward into actually embracing Mark Twain as his identity. So first, he has to have a fight. He's going to wind up getting either fired or quit from this job, and then he has a hilarious way to talk about this many years into the future. But it starts with the fact that his editor refuses to print Twain's story. Twain is all freedom. So he does not like to have constraints on him. Accustomed to having everything he wrote printed without question, Twain stewed. They wind up having a meeting.

37:16They have a fight. Not at all clear if he either quit or got fired. But what was clear was that he was out of a job. Forty years later, it still hurt. And when news photos of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 showed the newspaper's building reduced to skeletal ruins. Twain exclaimed, how wonderful 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.

37:51For 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 from people and bills. He can't pay any of his bills. He said, I slunk away from approaching faces that look familiar. I robbed my generous landlady. I felt meaner and lowlier and more despicable than worms. And this is where we get to the biggest holy shit moment of the book. Twain clung 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.

38:33He 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. 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 or his last penny, to having the opportunity that creates Mark Twain.

39:14And 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 a literary magazine. I guess it would be the equivalent of if you publish a piece in The New Yorker today or something like that. 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.

39:47You 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 Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calvary 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 viral 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.

40:17Then 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 Kuhn 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 fellows appropriation in this strange fashion I would have never written about him. If you ever hear Cormac McCarthy talk about the way he writes, he says it just comes out of him.

40:57It's very similar to what Mark Train is saying. It's just like, I tried, 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.

41:25The 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 we're tolerably good. So saying, hey, I thought I wrote a bunch of good stuff in the past. Those New York people should single out a villainous backwards 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 living, to just survive. Didn't even take it that seriously. And yet it is one in which all the country is praising me for. And it is the first opportunity that opens up every single opportunity after.

41:57Listen 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. You're 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. The year is 1865. It is a few weeks before Twain's 30th birthday. So because that went viral, everybody knows who Mark Twain is now. He gets opportunities he gets to choose from.

42:36At the time, Hawaii was not a state. It was actually wasn't even called Hawaii. It was called the Sandwich Islands back then. And Twain has been wanting to go for a while. But he's like, OK, 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 lecture career, which then leads into Europe, which then leads into his his wife that he's like the love of his life. But we're not there yet. So what he does is he approaches this these newspaper owners, I think in Sacramento. And he's like, listen, if you'll pay for the trip to Hawaii, I'll spend.

43:07I think he decides he's going to spend a month out there. I will write a series of letters for the newspaper, 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, it was the peacefulest, restfulest, sunniest, balmiest, dreamiest heaven of refuge for a worn out and weary spirit the surface of the earth can offer. And so this is what I mean, how one opportunity unlocks another opportunity, how opportunity tends to beget more opportunity.

43:41He winds up getting an opportunity. This is something he couldn't have planned. It's outside of his control. But he winds up meeting this American diplomat that is that's in Hawaii, Hawaii at the time. His name is Burlingham. 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 Twain'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.

44:17I 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. Whatever you're doing, do it on the highest plane possible. Do not give into the baser elements of your occupation. And so it says, A paternalistic ambassador of Burlingame gave the author a well -meaning piece of advice. Direct quote from Burlingame here. You have great ability. I believe you have genius. What you need now is a refinement of association.

44:51Seek companionship among men of superior intellect and character. refine yourself and your work never affiliate with inferiors always climb it was an admonishment twain would take to heart and follow virtually to the letter for the next 44 years shortly after they meet and become friends right there's this incredible survival story that's gonna that's gonna this thing doesn't just go viral over the united states like twain'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, right?

45:30The American ambassador arranges for Twain to be the first person to interview these people that survived this incredible shipwreck. There was a shipwreck boat, like a lifeboat that lands on the Southern coast of Hawaii led by this guy named captain Josiah Mitchell. This is like still famous. They had been at sea for 43 harrowing days and they were just in a 15 foot light boat, lifeboat with just 10 days worth of food. At the time, their endurance was the single boat record in the world for people to survive the longest in a small boat. 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.

46:10The survivors were less than a day away from drawing straws to kill and eat the loser of the lottery. And in a matter, I 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.

46:43I'm going to be a public lecturer. Starts out, he 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 attention 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.

47:16And 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 five or six headlines, all in caps locks. And it immediately draws your attention, but it's funny what he does.

47:49So in headlines, it would say, you know, Mark Twain's going to speak. This is what's included. And it says, a splendid orchestra, but under in small print, it goes, is in town, but it has not been engaged. Capital letters, a den of ferocious wild beasts will be on exhibit in the next block. Magnificent fireworks were in contemplation for this occasion, but the idea has been abandoned. A grand torchlight procession may be expected. In fact, the public are privileged to expect whatever they please. So it's like trying to grab your attention, like, hey, you want to see a den of wild beasts? You want to see fireworks?

48:21Well, we don't have that, but we do have Mark Twain. And then he has this tagline from the very first ad that he uses a bunch. Doors open at seven o 'clock. The trouble will begin at eight. And so if you think about what's really happening here, the people that show up at the show, it's very similar to what you and I are doing right now. The note I left myself on all this is like, this is just podcasting before podcasts. And it says, the middle decades of the 19th century saw an explosion of traveling lecturers in the United States, an autodidactic effort that catered to the hunger, to those that are hunger for knowledge and a self -educating populace.

48:55It is, what's taking place is no different than what you and I are doing right now. And when I got to the section, Jeff Bezos pops to mind. One of my, Jeff has, you know, a million amazing quotes, but one of my favorite things he said, I'm going to read this to you about, you should be building your business around things that don't change. One human being talking to another is as old as language. That is never going to change. And this is what Jeff says. I very frequently get the question, what's going to change in the next 10 years? And that's a very interesting question. It's a very common one.

49:22But I almost never get the question, what's not going to change in the next 10 years? And I submit to you that the second question is actually the more important of the two. Because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices. And I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery. They want vast selection. It is impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, Jeff, I love Amazon. I just wish the prices were a little higher. Or I love Amazon.

49:52I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly. Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our new customers 10 years from now. This is the sponge line. It's amazing. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it. And so another thing that he does, he's so nervous. He has complete like stage fright. He's completely terrified of what he's about to do is he seeds the audience. So he'll go and like, he has a bunch of friends.

50:25I think he's got like, I don't know, like maybe eight or 10 different friends sitting all over the theater. And he even knows where they are. So if he wants to deliver, like, make sure that the punchline hits or they laugh, he'll like look in their direction. If he makes eye contact, the 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.

51:00And so as he keeps traveling around doing more shows, more newspapers pick it up, more magazines start talking about it. He started getting a lot of attention for his shows. It becomes very, very successful. Like I said, it's 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.

51:30So 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 boat, 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.

52:14That 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 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.

52:52The subsequent 23 weeks he spent touring the old world gave him both the inspiration and the raw material for the book The Innocents Abroad, his first great publishing success and the biggest selling book in the United States in the last 17 years. 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.

53:38Instead, 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 womankind 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. The unlikely marriage of the hard -knock humorist from Backwoods, Missouri, and the heiress from upstate New York worked surprisingly well. Twain showed the previously sheltered Livy the world. she in turn civilized him. For the next 34 years, in good times and bad, the couple presented a unified front, a model marriage blessed with three -spirited daughters and innumerable cats.

54:30The 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. What an incredible ending to the story and an illustration in one of Mark Twain's long -held beliefs that you can live multiple lives, that you can constantly, no matter what, you can constantly reinvent yourself.

55:13I highly recommend buying the book. As I said earlier, I have both the hardcover version and the Kindle version. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 312 books down, 1 ,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.