Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on September 26, 2017As a follow-up to a post I wrote earlier this year on Mark Twain’s friendship with Frederick Douglass (who is from Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where I live), I wanted to share the following excerpt from Chris...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on September 12, 2018About halfway through my recent two-week fellowship at Quarry Farm I felt a new affinity with something Mark Twain wrote while perched there “on top of the hill near heaven.” “I have the feeling of being a sort...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on June 28, 2017While Mark Twain’s close bond with Congregationalist minister Joseph Twichell is well known among Twainians, the friendship he shared with another man of the cloth, the Rev. Moncure Conway, often receives little more...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on January 25, 2019 “You can call it a barrier, you can call it a wall, you can call it a wangdoodle for all I care.” – Sen. John Kennedy (Louisiana)The above quote from the ongoing (some might say “never-ending”) discussion over...
Originally posted by:Dwayne Eutsey on March 17, 2017On this day 132 years ago the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the first “banning” of Adventures of Huckleberry, by the Concord Public Library. Controversy has followed the novel ever since, with the most recent...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on October 16, 2017A new documentary, Mark Twain’s Journey to Jerusalem: Dreamland, airs tonight on PBS. Narrated by Martin Sheen, the award-winning film features insights from Twain scholars around the world. According to the...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on October 31, 2018 It’s Halloween, the day when, according to legend, the veil between this world and the spirit realm is at its most delicate. A fitting time to remember Mark Twain’s love for a good ghost story. “Witches” from...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on April 20, 2017Mark Twain’s world lecture tour in the mid-1890s, which he recounts in Following the Equator, was generally unpleasant for him. Not only did the humiliating stigma of bankruptcy that prompted the voyage haunt him,...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on October 23, 2019As with other recipients of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Dave Chappelle (who receives the prize this Sunday at the Kennedy Center) has a few basic things in common with the award’s namesake. The most...
Originally posted by: Dwayne Eutsey on February 12th, 2018Although I generally like Chris Rock as a comedian, one of his jokes has always rubbed me the wrong way. Rock told the joke back in 1999 as part of the Kennedy Center’s program honoring Richard Pryor as the...