How are these tales of Mark Twain’s Adventures in the West relevant to current times?
Those times and today are remarkably similar in many uncanny ways, and the parallels can give us insight not just into how we got to where we are but how we might resolve American paradoxes that continue to today.
For example, the Know Nothing Party caused riots to disrupt elections. It spread outrageous “conspiracy theories” vilifying immigrants from Germany and Ireland, and Sam Clemens (who later wrote under the name Mark Twain) wanted to expose the lies.
The Know Nothings downplayed the political disruption in Germany and the potato famine in Ireland as the reasons why the immigrants came to America. They insisted that the Irish immigrants were agents of the Pope, sent to America to “rape our women and corrupt the morals of our youth”.
And then there was that disagreement that came to be known as the Civil War. Sam debated state’s rights (and wrongs) with Nevada Territorial Governor Nye and roasted the politicians in good-natured ribbing at an after-hours drinking club as they worked on drafting the Nevada Constitution. In that way, Sam tried to be a peacemaker between the secessionists and the Union loyalists in Nevada. He failed and learned that when you’re in the middle, you are subject to being shot at from both sides.
However, when the “Adventures of Mark Twain in the West – How I Became an Author” takes him to San Francisco as an irreverent twenty-something, chock full of fun and frivolity, it focuses on Twain’s relationships among the twenty-something Bohemian writers of San Francisco during the Civil War as they engaged in the same kind of lifestyle experimentation that occurred in San Francisco one hundred years later during the Summer of Love.
Experience The Adventures of Mark Twain in the West – How I Became an Author. Now available in paperback, Kindle, and Kobo. Audiobook coming soon!
More recently, Mr. Clark became involved with pioneering research on the involvement of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), in activities that, at Mr. Clemens insistence, have not been talked about for one hundred years after his death. Mr. Clark has written a multimedia play on the subject and is now defining ancillary products, including an episodic video series.
- Mark Twain
San Francisco Love Triangle - January 20, 2022 - The Adventure Begins… - January 7, 2022
- How I Came to Learn, & Write about The Story that Mark Twain made sure would not be written for 100 years after his Death Episode 1 - January 1, 2021
