the lafayette library and learning center. >> robert came to uc berkeley in 1963. he was a student. four years later, people sang his promise offered in the job. he's been there ever since. in 1949 the granddaughter of mark twain gave material used in the archives. in 1980 robert became the general editor of these archives, and in 2005 they began the process of putting together the volume, the first volume. i know many of you have already seen it. there will be three volumes, and there's a tremendous amount of excitement associated at uc press and with all of us who lo the role that mark -- who love

the role that mark twain has played in american literature and culture to know that a half a million copies of that autobiography have already been sold. it's on "the new york times" bestseller list where it's been for 14, 15, 19 weeks, a long time. and i'm really delighted that we have robert here to tell us even more. robert hirst. [applause] >> i have to turn myself on here, no pun. thank you, susan, for that introduction. it always reminds me of the way mark twain said he was introduced out here in california 140 years ago. he was on one of his first lecture tours in california.

never published a book. of course, nobody knew him. he was up in red dog, and no one even knew how to introduce him. but finally, the crowd persuaded a slouching and awkward big miner to get up on the stage and do the honors. he stood thinking a moment, mark twain says, and he said, i don't know anything about this fellow. [laughter] rather, i only know two things. one is, he hasn't been in the penitentiary. [laughter] and the other is, i don't know why. [laughter] mark twain said he liked that because it was a compliment that didn't raise expectations too high. [laughter] payne, mark twain's official biographer, put that into the autobiography that he didn't know mark twain himself had cut

that out. so let me balance it with a few sentences that are in the autobiography. this is the end of an account of how mark twain escaped a duel that he had actually instigated in virginia city. he had sent the challenges and he, of course, didn't know anything about how to shoot a pistol. this is how that story ends. i've never had anything to do with duels since. i thoroughly disapprove of duels. i consider them unwise, and i know they are dangerous. also sinful. if a man should challenge me now, i would go to that man and take him kind hi by the hand and -- kindly by the hand and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet, retired spot and kill him. [laughter] now, i should have done this at the start. mark twain was a very

disciplined public speaker, and i am not. and i think as a general rule you ask an editor to talk, the real problem is to get him to stop. but i bring this along with me. i call this anti-filibuster device. i will -- well, let me cite mark twain's own advice. he was preparing to go on a lecture tour with james reilly, and he was afraid reilly would take too long in his half of the program and, therefore, cut into mark twain's time and make the audience impatient and wish they would all go home. so he invents, in his notebook, this little introduction. he says, i will talk until i am tired, and then mr. reilly will talk until you are tired. [laughter] we're going to try to avoid talking until you are tired, and i promise that when this thing goes off, it'll be very hard to

persuade me to say anything else. so what's so special about this autobiography? mark twain tried for more than 30 years off and on to find a way to write his autobiography. that's a long time even for him because he would quite easily spend four, five, six, seven, eight years on his major books. what's remarkable about him in this matter is that he knew very early on how he wanted that autobiography to be constructed. you'll see in the background here, basically, pieces of manuscript that belong to the autobiography text. here are a few more. i'm just going to leave them there so you can contemplate them. this is what annie fields said -- reported in 1876 when mark twain was 40. she had a conversation with him in which he said that he had --

she said that he proceeded to talk about his autobiography which he intends to write as pulley and sincerely as possible to leave behind him. positive you miss. his wife laughingly said, she should look it over and leave out objection bl passages. no, he said, very earnestly, almost sternly, you are not to edit it. it is to appear as it is written with the whole tale told as true hi as i can take it. i shall publish as i go along in the atlantic and elsewhere, but i shall not limit myself as to space and at whatever age i am writing about, even if i am an infant and an idea comes to me about myself when i am 40, i shall put it in. it still amazes me when i reread that paragraph to see just how clearly mark twain knew what he wanted to do at least 40 years -- 30 years before he actually started doing it.

there are, in the papers, roughly two dozen false starts and isolated chapters written by him between 1870 and 1904, a period of 35 years. and we see him in those drafts and chapters struggling to give up, that is to fully relinquish, a chronological organization. something that you and i would pretty much assume was the organization principle for an autobiography. mark twain was struggling to leave that behind him. in any case, these beginnings, these drafts that we have each seemed to him inadequate. he abandoned them and stopped writing more chapters but did not throw them away. very typical. but in 1904 shortly before his wife's death in florence, mark twain at last settled on dictation as a way to compose his text. but not dictation of a

cradle-to-grave narrative. it was to have this special character, what he called the right way to do an autobiography. which is to start it at no particular time of your life, wander at your free will all over your life, talk only about the thing which interests you for the moment, drop it the moment it interest threatens to pale and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded it into your mind meantime. two years laettner 1906, that is exactly what he began doing. dictating to an accomplished typer and stenographer for two, three, sometimes four hours in the morning several times a week she would type up her notes almost immediately and give them to clemens who actually delayed reading them for several months wanting to wait and see if this

was going to work out. this process of dixation continued through 19 -- dictation continued through 1906 and 1907, then with less intensity in 1908 and 1909, and it concluded on 24, december, 1909 when his youngest daughter, jean, died in the bathtub, and he sat down and wrote a memorial to her which he identified as the end of the biography. in less than four months, he was himself dead having contributed to this autobiography some 650,000 words compiled in the utterly confident defiance of the usual limits on such a text just as he had imagined in 1876. there he is on the porch in new hampshire. that's where a lot of the dictation occurred. and there he is in bed which is, also, where a lot of the

dictation occurred. mark twain was a very relaxed person in many ways. susan mentioned the fact that this publication has a, has an unusual history, at least for those of us who are involved in the scholarly edition of mark twain which has been going on since 1967. i didn't bother to rescan last week's new york times list, but, in fact, it's -- this sunday will be the 20th week on the list. i think it's down around 17. last week it was down around number 14. and, as susan said, there are 500,000 copies -- not necessarily sold, but printed -- out there. to give you an idea of what that's compared with in our experience, let's say when we hold your volume of letters, we'll print 2,000 copies and expect to sell them over ten years. so this is a new game for us. an absolutely new game.

in any case, all of the biographies are at berkeley, and they have been there, really, since mark twain put them in the papers in 1910, the year he died. so in what sense is it necessary to find mark twain's autobiography? one can't find something that hasn't been lost. i'll try to make that clear as i go along. what are the mark twain papers, why to they exist, and why are they in berkeley? i'm going to try to answer those questions. before i do that, i have to do a little bit more on the recent publication. this book has already been awarded these prizes by the american publishers' association. i think it's interesting that we've never won this prize

before. i think maybe the award was given for the number of copies sold. i can't be sure. mark twain said in 1908 that he was going to start a new hobby, he was going to collect compliments -- [laughter] the way other people collect horses and autographs and so forth and so on. this is one of the compliments he collected, i thought you ought to see it. he cuts it out of the newspaper. that's a pen that you can see there. he's just pinned it to a piece of paper. all of the happened writing on there is mark twain's. mr. edison's compliment. the compliment is: an american loves his family if he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects mark twain. and mark twain says, i think the world of that compliment. [laughter] yes, he does. yes, he does.

here's ott compliment that -- another compliment that he cite inside the same 1908 speech i'm referring to. i've given you a transcription side by side so in case his handwriting isn't clear, you can follow it. little montana girl's compliment. mark twain said he had someone from illinois sent this to him. she was gazing thoughtfully at a photograph of mark twain on a neighbor's mantlepiece. presently, she said reverently, we've got a jesus like that at home, only ours has more trimmings. [laughter] what did she mean by more trimmings? [laughter] for those of you who have forgotten what jesus looked like, i pulled a copy out of one of the family bibles. mark twain said the difference in trimmings was halos. his, he said, had not arrived yet. [laughter] all of this is just a way of saying that mark twain had, in

his own lifetime, an enormous silent audience. what he called a submerged audience. an audience that didn't go to bookstores, that wasn't like you and me, literate and intelligent and going to lectures and so forth. but simply bought his books on a loyal basis and read them. submerged fame, he called it. he and robert louis stevenson discussed this in 1888 when they're sitting out in the sun in new york city. that story's told in the autobiography. and he and stevenson agree that this kind of fame, the kind of fame that comes from people you have never met and be are unlikely to meet, was of all the kinds of fame, the best, the very best. i think something like that kind of fame is operating when people buy mark twain's heavy first volume of the autobiography.

i think that audience is coming into view in a way that really we've never seen it, not in my lifetime in any case. now, we didn't expect this, as you know. the original estimate on our part was, perhaps, 10,000 copies. that would be five times what we normally sell. or print, for that matter. the press is now on public record as saying that they, they thought maybe 100,000 copies would be hit, and i remember that in discussing, for instance, what the photograph should be on the front of the jacket one of the people from the press saying they wanted something particularly eye catching, something that would just leap off the remainder table at you. [laughter] we thought that was rather discouraging. [laughter] and so we thought it would be

good to document, you know, it's not a remainder table at costco. those are brand new copies. that's something we've never seen before. now, we did do -- [laughter] certain things to sell this book that we wouldn't ordinary do. [laughter] ordinarily do. we sold to various magazines, harper's and, as you see, playboy, first serial rights. these are, basically, small chunks of the autobiography. all they needed to be was short, unpublished and funny. that was easy. so playboy got one, and, of course, i should say from this slide, also, that not everybody approves of the autobiography. perhaps the more famous, the most famous disapproval comes from garrison keillor, and i promised in the advertisement for this talk to at least

address what keillor had to say. actually, i've reproduced here what tina dupuis has to say about keillor. that's a little easier to follow. she quotes him: here is a powerful argument for writers burning their papers. little further down, think twice about donating your papers to an institution of higher learning, famous writer. some day they may be used against you. i think it's clear that he doesn't like the autobiography. it's also clear that he doesn't, hasn't read it very carefully. he's encountering a scholarly edition without really acknowledging that. but i think the one thing i wanted to say publicly is that it's good advice shot the give your papers -- not to give your papers to an institution like this. otherwise you might end up with a bestseller of 500,000 copies

being sold 100 years after your death. or not. keillor simply has no patience with what he regards as academic overkill, and they simply misread the first half of the book and are almost unaware that less than one-third of the actual autobiography is in this sol volume. that's so because the volume has to begin with the preliminary experiments, the things rejected between 1870 and 1904. so really you get in this volume only three months of the dictation that is mark twain started in january, 1906. they will go on for another three years. so it's a little harsh, it seems to me, to judge mark twain's autobiography on that sample. and i do think that "the new york times," which published an editorial about this -- aye i've

never seen them review a book in the editorial page before this. i think they were right. mark twain is terrific company, plain and simple. he knew everyone, went everywhere, seemed to be interested in everything and capable of making the reader, in 2010, laugh on nearly every page. and this is not, strictly speaking, an autobiography. the system he has found is perfect. twain talks about what he's interested in until he's no longer interested in it, and then he talks about something else wandering at free will all over your life. this is a book for dipping, not plunging. read, as twain might put it, until interest pales, and then jump. it feels like a form of time travel. one moment you're on horseback on the hawaiian islands with a cigar in your mouth, and the next moment you're meeting the

see news maid. we can hardly wait for volume two. and if you want more positive comment on those negative reviews, look at the review in the new york review of books, 24, february. they -- that is, he -- comments on both of them and comes down on the side of what he calls the old gray lady, "the new york times" editorial. mark twain himself would not have been fazed by these kinds of criticisms. he says in the autobiography, i believe that the trait of critic in literature, music and the drama is the most degraded of all trades and that it has no real value, certainly no large value. however, let it go. it is the will of good that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden meantime. he was fairly steady in that view of critics. when he was asked by his older brother to read one of his

compositions, he refused saying that the great public's the only opinion worth having. that's just another way of referring to his submerged audience. allow me to leave those critics behind and talk more about the papers. you can sew from this slide -- see from this slide, this section of the letter that mac twain got -- mark twain got into the habit of writing things that he was quite confident he couldn't publish in his lifetime. he didn't dare publish. and putting them in what he calls here his large box of positive you mouse stuff where he says he has stacks of literary remains. so in the mark twain papers are roughly 700 manuscripts, some of them finished, some of them unfinished, many of them brief, most of them brief, in fact. many of them quite interesting,

some of them quite good. not unpublished because they were bad, but for other circumstances. and that is, actually, the core of the mark twain papers. but it isn't something i can easily talk about or explain here, so i'm going to find another tack because in addition to all of those literary manuscripts, there's all kinds of stuff. and if this is a little overwhelming, it's meant to be. [laughter] 10,000 letters, 715 literary manuscripts, working notes for huck finn. this is a bookplate that he makes in 1848, the earliest known document. a sample of his hair. [laughter] 50 notebooks. checks, bills, clippings, proofs, photographs and be on and on and on. those are all things that are not literary manuscripts,

really, or that are not the main core of the papers, but they are, in my view, a one way of understanding how we grasp mark twain in view of the fact that he left all this behind. it's very unusual for a writer to be willing to leave all of his unpublished manuscripts, his drafts, his notes, not to mention his checks, notes about how much beer he drank and so forth. it's very unusual for an author, in fact, in my opinion unique in the 19th century america to leave all that evidence behind. mark twain said he could imagine being dead. most people he said think of being dead as looking down from somewhere or up from somewhere and seeing you, for instance, reading the autobiography. but he said, no, that's not how i imagine it. i tried living two billion years before i was born, and i'm pretty sure i'll like it when i

die. so he is quite willing for you to see this. he might be a little uneasy here and there, but he's quite willing for the world to see this. and i think there's a parallel between that kind of bravery, if you will, and the publication of the autobiography. just going to go into a few details if i've got time of things that are in this. so you get a sense of what the papers hold. this is the earliest known image of mark twain taken when he was probably graduating as a printer, becoming a -- not a printer's double, but an apprentice printer. you can see that he's holding a printer's stick with the word -- with the letter sam in it identifying him. this is that bookplate i was talking about. it's an exercise that a typesetter would do to learn how to set up advertisements for the newspaper. the interesting thing about this, partly, is that it's,

literally, the earliest thing that we think he put his hand to. it was in the papers since the beginning, 1910, but not discovered until 1984. that's an aspect of the papers which, i think, is quite remarkable. we're still finding things that we didn't know we had. this was a late photograph. mark twain is returning from bear bermuda, he's going to die within a few weeks. there's another photograph, this has been described as a practical joke. it's not a practical joke. mark twain had commissioned his protege, carl ger hart, to do a bust of him. and that bust was eventually photographed and put in the front of huckleberry finn. and any sculptor will tell you if you want to get the neck right, you have to see the shoulders. so mark twain goes to an art photographer. that means they photograph

nudes. and can has this picture of himself taken so that the sculptor can make that bust. now, i dare say mark twain thought it was kind of funny, too, so he kept it. and it's probably the only -- absolutely unique -- paragraph of him anywhere. this is an example of what we have, it's about 150 books. [laughter] i put it in because it requires no explanation. here's another one, he's talking about someone who went out on the quaker city with him. he's describing this photograph. here's the real old familiar self-complacency of 40 years ago. it's the way god looks when he's had a successful season. [laughter] now, this is an example of a notebook, basically, one of the very early notebooks. this one comes from a notebook he kept when he was learning to be a pilot. this blue heading means from the new orleans delta to the head of islands 62 and 63, and these

are, basically, his notes of what that a passage of the river, what kinds of problems it encountered and how he should navigate it in the future. we haven't yet published this. here's another river notebook. i just isolated this little phrase for you: had quarter twain or mark twain in ozark got too high. he's really just recording the depth of the water, and he means they're two and a quarter fathoms or two fathoms. here's that hair i was with mentioning. why does he bother about his hair? this is a well-tested example. connection problem. click to open intel wireless troubleshooter for help. i don't think so. all the help i can get. any case, well attested because

isabelle lyon is attending a cutting when mark twain -- 1905, she describes it in great detail, and she includes this swatch of his hair. what good is that? well, here's another thing that was found in that bible. i don't know if you can see hair down here. this is the same clipping, just flipped over. the clipping has been folded at the bottom to hold on to the hair. this is a poem. it's not a poem written by mark twain or written in hand ball, it's a poem actually taken from a magazine. but this says up here, "for margaret." and it was our supposition, actually, that this was jains clemens' way of memorializing her 9-year-old daughter who died when she was 9, something fairly common in those days. but that's just a guess until you can do something with the ed you have. so if -- evidence you have. if you look at the my to con

drink y'all dna in this one, if they have the same, then they have the same mother. so we know a little bit more about how mark twain's sister was mourned. this is just two pages from the -- [inaudible] mark twain is imagining himself over in germany, and he's missing american food. and so he starts off this list. this is only two pages of a four-page list. and i think, you know, he goes on and publishes this in the last chapter of "trap abroad. requests but the wonderful thing about a manuscript like this is you can see him coming back to it and changing it and underlying thing he's forgotten and changing the whole content of it in a way that shows that this is really of great interest to him. we also have lots of letters. this is what i call the most important letter mark twain ever

wrote. it's written from san francisco in 1865. he's down and out, so to speak. he's without a job or, actually, just recently taken a job. he's out of money, probably drinking too much. and he writes to his older brother and sister-in-law and says that he only has two powerful ambitions in life. one was to become a pilot, and the other was to become a minister of the gospel. i accomplished the one, he says, and failed in the other because i could not supply myself with the necessary stock in trade, ie religion. i've given it up forever, i never had a call in that direction anyhow, and my aspirations were the very ecstasy of presumption. ..

a rock will statement for someone who had not yet published a book. mark twain did not lack confidence. another letter from the connecticut yankees killing to the president wanted him to read the street. yesterday the proofreader was improving my punctuation for me, and at telegraph orders to have him shot without giving him time to pray. [laughter] now in order to give you a sample of what are roughly fathom thousand letters are part

of a take a small category of which he is answering for not answering letters. this is one in reply to someone who is asking him to report and asylum, an orphanage. i beg to wish the best success and a long career of usefulness, but words are empty. d. there would show the earnest spirit, therefore i am willing to be one of 1,000 citizens who shall contribute one or more of their children to this enterprise. he goes on and gives it a double signature, not always that way. not cheap. he knows what they will do with it. they will sell it, and they will get their $200 contribution. now, he did not always answer such letters. when he did not he often wrote what he would have said, at least in brief, on the envelope. this is a good example of

sharpness matched up with his very tender heart. the idiot seem to be uncommonly pick this year. they want caught knows what's. an autograph letter. to think, excuse. did not persuade him. from some board who wants to distort the death penalty with an eye he was on the future. from an unknown 88 in ireland, the worst piece of sheet of all. from a boston ask, and two days later, from that same boston asked. [laughter] from some unknown person who probably has the brains and modesty in about equal proportions. i could go on almost infinitely with examples like this. they are all through the papers. now, this is a letter that is part of another aspect of his

replying to requests from autographs eventually figuring out a way to answer the request, grant the request, but have fun in the process. this is an answer to a lecher who is actually an employee of the dayton, ohio asylum for the insane. probably i guard, but could be an administrator and wrote his letter using asylum stationery. he is tipped off to where it is to learn from. this is what he tells the story. suddenly i will read you an autograph letter for your collection. what is more, please do not help the offices that i said such a thing. i believe that you are wickedly and unjustly confined there. that is, if they are real -- proportions are quite rational, and i am satisfied that if you were put under mild and judicious treatment he would get over it. then, of course, nice signature.

if the whole theory behind this is that when he gets this letter and read it he may change his mind and not showing it to his friends. there are dozens of such letters, one i did not put into this lines. listen carefully. i am all long time answering your letter. you must remember that it is an equally long time since i received it. so that makes us even with no one to blame on either side. [laughter] i think you would like to know i've read you as a 52nd audience. here is another. it to the english writer, he was so impatient for replied that he includes the piece of paper and stamped with his original later. mark twain answers, paper and stamp received.

please send the envelope. before i go on and actually get to the autobiography, he loved cancellations. here is a cancellation. on like you and i he would probably never quayle at sending a letter through the mail that had such a cat a question in it. you and i might be embarrassed, but he would not. he also knew that cancellation could be read. here is our attempt to read it. that is just the kind of figure. it took us about six months to pass it around the office giving people a shot at it. you can see, we are still having trouble with this second line. we cannot really do that confidently because the way you read such a bang is by picking out the descenders and

ascenders. those are confident, in this case, and i. but they help you narrow down what is likely to be under the loop. in this case for this whole stretch you have only one center. no doubt on the eyes, no nothing. it took us a long while. we finally did get it. indeed, i am under -- he stops and starts over. indeed, a suspicion comes over me. suspicion comes over me. i owe you either 25 or $50. it was it this way. now, how do we know that he knew they can be bred? this is a piece from a letter that he writes to his fiancee, olivia langdon, trying to persuade him to become by crested. very wary and notices that in one letter he has torn out of whole section of the page.

it had she -- she asks him what it was. he says, the confession i destroyed was that i refused to lecture for $600. now, because we are now at this point i cannot tell it again. you would say i was a lovesick eighties it down here. between ourselves, i am. i could not be so reckless as to write the above if you had any curiosity in your composition. if you were curious enough to pry under the cancellation and figure out what i said that i would dare write this. you can tell that it was written precisely to incite her to uncover it. he knows that she will do that and then this year in brackets, meaning another speaker, that is when she has discovered what he has just said and done. how do we know that that

actually worked? well, because he invents of weight to invent those cancellations. he goes in and crosses the elves and adds a sanders and the senders. in general he mislead you so badly that unless you know it is going on you simply cannot read the cancellation. we know that is what is going on. that is way they pressure. you find you have written what you did not mean to write. he basically dear sir to try to read. pretty sure she couldn't. it took us awhile. i'm giving you examples to show you what kind of the editors worked for the project for 40 years. this is something that not everybody understands or knows. very likely -- lucky to understand it, and it is something that, i think, citizen good stead came to work on the autobiography. actually, i am going to get right now with 20 minutes to go.

as i see it, there are two kinds of stories in this. the story of mark twain actually trying and trying and trying and succeeding in doing it of a biography and another story wrestled with the documents he left behind and figured out that no one had known that mark twain actually finished his autobiography, knew exactly what he wanted in it and exactly what he did not want in it. so that is this sense of which i have in mind when i talk about finding the autobiography. 5,000 pages in the papers, but unless you know how to understand those pages you will not find his autobiography. you will find, in effect, what others have found and mistaken for the autobiography. why did mark twain want it suppressed or not published in its entirety for 100 years?

i don't think this was a very complicated question. he wants the freedom to compose it as he wants to without fear of hurting anybody's feelings and not just people who are alive when he is writing, but their descendant. one hundred years is a nice, round figure. this shows you the allocation 500 years. this passage is about to be typed up, 2,406. that just shows you it is a longtime. it is not shared you heal naturally expect that much time to go by. it also tells you of the low bit about what his internal, what he expected to happen, if, in fact, these things for published. the things which i am about to say will be commonplace and baron of offense. they could complete paid on douses of strangers. i have no desire to hurt and

could it be ostracized and cut off from all human. the ostracism is the big bang. i and humane, and nothing could persuade me to do any bad deed or a good one that would bring that punishment upon me. not a motive that is widely recognized. yet another motive, selling the book. this is about to go to the north american review in which mark twain published a very small selection of the autobiography the edited down so that there was nothing offensive in it. well, this shows you he is addressing the editor and saying, let's proceed every installment with that note which says the autobiography will not be issued in book form during my lifetime. that is literally what happened. you basically have 25 separate reminders that this autobiography is not here in the

north american review, and you cannot get it until he dies. people ask me why it was not published before. the answer it has been partly published before, and badly published. this is the official biographer and the publisher of the autobiography in 1924, his successor who publishes his selection of the autobiography in 1940. this is a man named charles snyder who got access to the autobiography after yet come to berkeley. three pictures to show you the effect of editing mark twain. to be fair i have included this, too.

that shows you the effect since 1967. that shows you who the real guilty parties are. i am just the kind of supervisor and don't do any editing. il be kind of dark gator in the corner office who criticizes what they do. i do want to talk of a bit about what those additions are not so reflective. pain felt absolutely free to write on the original documents. you can see all of these pencil markings are by pain. in fact, actually hand them to the printer. he numbers than as part of the printers copy. when the printer is done, what does he do it? he put them on a spindle. that is what this little hole is all about. i mention this not to beat up on

pain, but because it leads to the fact that there are things that should have been in the autobiography that are on, that are most. you can see that he decided he does not like what is being said here. this is a discussion on a man named newton who was called in when a olivia langdon was paralyzed. it did no good at all. they were finally persuaded to hire this guy. newt made some passes. he put it behind her and said now we will sit on a child. he does not like that. he opened the window and delivers the short fervent

prayer. when he repeats this business about his hands over the head, he just crosses it out. that is the way it has been published. he could not tell. here are a couple more pages that illustrated the way the of the treated these things. he is on record as saying that he disapproves of the punctuation and took out hundreds and hundreds of commons and dashes when he published it. he only publishes a very small selection. he is perfectly free to write instructions. in this case he has crosstalk commons. that is here and here. one of the things is to figure out which are the authors and

which are the editors. how do we know that those comments are the editors? you can see that they have all disappeared. here we have mark twain rating. it is one of the great achievements, but they figured out how to distinguish between all the markings on this document. here is just a simple example that has five different handlings. all of the pencil markings, all by pain. this is him numbering that printers copy. someone we don't know.

not for in sea. it means not for as has matured. he corrects things the stenographer got wrong. in effect nonexistent and infeasible. if it is non existent, of course it is invisible. figure out exactly what he wants and what the others, in order to leave out the desires of the other partners. another challenge that is hard to explain, but i think were contemplating is that in many of these daily dictations there are when, two, three, four,

sometimes slightly less, sometimes three, sometimes to typed copies of the same. these were retyping is. this is the front page of may 21st. roughly the same throughout. as you can see, this is page 76. 883. this is for. the next one is 1115. that is the big mystery. why are those differences so prominent? what does it imply? does it imply that he is moving this package around and therefore it it's different pagination when he wants it in different places? i don't think so. eventually -- we could say at least it was not this.

that is not what has happened. this was something like what happened. eventually figured out by identifying the physical characteristics of different typescripts. one central typescript, t s1, that was made from the original stenographer of notes. at some point they have it read typed. yet again t.s. for. the problem is this is page one, this is page 150, page 408. it is clear that these numbers imply there is something missing.

this is not from the los angeles freeway, an early attempt at diagram. the relationship. i can't understand it myself. this is actually their relationship that we figured out that is permanent and occupies all folders. here is the original, cs2, four. and the reed is really an extract, very small things. that is page number four. now, this is -- how do we figured this out? wrote out a series of pages that he clearly intended to begin the autobiography. in this case you can see he numbers the page one. an early attempt, too. a preface to shoot -- at a something that he has done in

the past. a failure, an example of the old, inflexible, and difficult method. here you can see what i went through to get to this final solution. here is a page number three. here is the old the typewritten pages. it would be great if he knew what they were. they don't exist. they have been lost. original manuscript and a couple of tight skirts made of it. you can see here the next page is not for, but for five because it follows 44 pages. comes in and calls it nine. don't ask me why. this was a tap precede some of the examples of dictation he had done in 1904. it goes like that. this is the text he is referring

to. he wants to begin it with. a wonderful, wonderful text despite the fact that he says it is not so good. this is his description in june of 1906 when the pages are being written. the lions description of his breeding on the porch. the very first autograph biography beginning written many years ago. forty-four pages. beautiful. deeply moved. in other words, we know this is a moving and wonderful passage. then it follows, as i said, he says here, okay, this is the end of that. they're going to follow. the first time in history. an indication, make a long story

short, or shorter than it should be, that is what explains these bombs up here. these were put in place after type t s1 was made, but before two and four. there is yet again. now, i have a roughly seven minutes. of the bit incoherent, and i'm going to do it anyhow. that is clever cleveland. a couple of wonderful passages about grover cleveland that i owe it to mark twain to read because that is a better idea of the autobiography that i can on my own. he did not know cleveland when they were co residents in buffalo. this is a account of how they first met. during that time we were in

buffalo in '70 and '71, cleveland was sheriff, but i never happened to make his acquaintance or see him. in fact, i suppose i was not even aware of his existence. he has become the greatest man in the state. i was not living in the state at the time. [laughter] six seconds. i was on the highway. rubbing the public with readings from our works. during the course of time he went to albany to levy tribute. i went to the majestic capitol building. we were shown into the governor's private office and i saw him for the first time.

we three stood chatting. i was born lazy and comforted myself by turning the corner of the table into a seat. presently the governor said, i was up fellow citizen of yours in buffalo a good many months ago. during those months he burst suddenly into a mighty frame out of a previous long, continued, and no doubt deserved proper obscurity. i was nobody, and you would not notice me or have anything to do with me. now that i have become somebody you have changed your style and came here to shake hands and the social. how do you explain that? no, it is very simple. in buffalo you were nothing but a sheriff. i was in society. i could not afford to associate with sheriff's. your governor now and on your way to the presidency, a great defense, and it makes it worthwhile.

there appears to be about $16. the 16 line up and stood in front of the governor with an back of respectful expectancy. no one spoke for a moment, and the governor said, you are dismissed from a gentleman. your services are not required. mr. clemens is sitting on the bells. [laughter] perhaps you can see him down here, you can cross out what i am about to read you. he does not like the it was a minutes of it. he said we could pull it out. the way he publishes it. he actually says there is a cluster of 16 bellbottoms, proportions of that were just right to enable me to cover the whole of that mass. that is how i came to hand it

out. you are going to get to see what he actually broke for the first time. one more passage, and i will try to squeeze this in. that is frances cleveland. she got married in the white house. 1884. the first person to be married in the white house. the, as you can see, beautiful and young and a great asset to the cleveland administration because he was willing to go out and be his jackie kennedy to the world. one more thing, does anyone know what our picks are? what do you do? yes. no shoes, or at least galoshes. you are having not too much pavement. especially during the wintertime. in case you need to know that. i was born heedless, and i was

constantly and quite unconsciously commiting breaches of minor proprieties ought to but didn't. she was very sensitive. always watch me to protect me from transgressions i have been speaking out. when i was leaving. i have written a small warning put it in the best dressed. you will naturally put your fingers in your vest pocket. according to your custom and you will find the note. read it carefully and do as it tells you. i cannot be with you.

i delegate my duties to this note. if i should give you a warning by word of mouth now it would pass from your head and be forgotten in a few minutes. president cleveland's first term. i had never seen his wife peon the pitiful, could hearted, sympathetic, fascinating. sure enough as i was finished i found that little note which i long forgotten. a brave note, serious note, but made me laugh. the humorous joke would have failed. i do not laugh easily. should i finish? let me reach the white house. i was reaching -- shaking hands. i interrupted him. if your excellency will excuse me i will come back in a moment. i have an important matter to attend to.

i turned to the young, beautiful, fascinating and gave her my card on the back of which i have written he didn't. i asked her to sign her name. never mind. we cannot discuss that now. this is urgent. please sign and then who is said and what is it? i said time is flying. once you take me out of my distress and sign your name? it is all right. i give you my word. she hesitatingly and mechanically took the pen and said, i will sign it, take the risk. you must tell me all about it right after word so that you can be arrested before you get out of the house in case there should be a big criminal about this. she signed and i handed her the

note which was very brief, simple, and to the point. it said, don't wear your arctic. we send the card to the mayo. thank you very much. [applause] >> gather there questions.

>> the inquisition. okay. >> i don't know when this microphone is going to go on. it is working for you. i made the mistake of taking off my lovelier. it's over in my back. hang on one second. >> turn it on. want me to hold it? >> to microphones.

>> okay. i did not end to -- i did not realize mark twain was interested in establishing and the narrative. i would like to ask, you know, the editors made millions of decisions. how did they find themselves fighting that pathway of establishing a new narrative. >> you have a standard way of treating them. anything that the others have that are different are either mistakes or changes.

so you would adopt those and put them into the beginning text and eventually have a text that is exactly what he wanted in least as so far as those documents can tell you. there are aspects so large and so on finished that's i was not ready for the press, or printer. here, it entered the celebration of my 75th birthday. that is a page, but 28 pages like this. there is no way physically to put it in. the most that we can do is answer the link on the electronics side. i should have said that all of this is available free of charge. you don't have to buy it. that has advantages over the print. as far as actually shaping what he does, we are not trying to

shape it, we are trying to follow with the other thing show. with the early pages showed us was all of those things, he is treating them as if they are all part of the autobiography and fragmentary. he did not want them included, even though pain he should have known better did include them. that is really the first time that we knew that he had excluded that, newhall it was to begin, what was to follow. then he was off and running. all he has to do is follow the chronology. did that answer your question? >> all of these are good questions. one other question that the audience asked is how did the prior authors, pain and the

other get a hold of his autobiography prior to being donated to uc-berkeley. how did they get past his wish of 100 years after his death. >> the last thing first. you would think that mark twain had written this embargo into his will. he did not. he does not imagine that anyone alive will hear what he's going to say. he will not be able to control. mark twain appointed pain. he assigned him the right to do the autobiography. rules over prayer until he dies. such a exclusion list that he

gets ticked off because he is trying to write a book about mark twain and cannot get access to the papers. he dies and the squeaky wheel is appointed his successor. they have direct access to the papers that are still outside. we are talking about 1937 and 1940. how did they get him to do what they wanted them to do not on popular for them to do what they think will sell. that is what he was doing. then that will interfere with the sales.

>> what percentage of the autobiography is the original dictation which he started in 1906? >> what percentage? it is almost the entire percent. almost 100 percent of the finished autobiography. there are manuscript pieces that he takes and inserts. for instance, the story about the dual effort. he just inserts it as part of the dictation. i don't know if that answers the question, but the autobiography that he wanted published is almost entirely. >> is there any proof that he said the coldest winter i ever spent was the summer in san francisco. >> so far as i no there is no proof. what we know is that he quotes an 18th-century after saying that about paris.

now, one can see why that might have gotten him changed and turned into a san francisco. every year cities like vancouver and seattle, vancouver, seattle. offering to rent it. the fact is i cannot prove the negative, but we looked for this and looked for it and never found any of it that he said it. >> did mark twain ever lived in san francisco? >> oh, yes. he had to leave virginia city because of that pool. dueling was outlawed and he would have been imprisoned. he comes to san francisco and takes a job on the san francisco morning call as a reporter. 1864, may have 1864. he resigns just about the same

time that george barnes is going to fire him. he then stays in san francisco really without serious employment. writing things for california. not very much money. living off the income more value. but toward the end of 65 he runs out of those and has to get a job. he writes his old spot on the virginia city territory enterprise. let me write a daily letter from san francisco to the enterprise. joe says, sure. do it. he writes a 2,000 word letter six days a week for about five months. some of the best letters he ever wrote, and we have maybe 20 percent of them. we look for them every day. usually you go to your attic. most of the things that survive are not enterprise clippings or issues, but contemporary

newspapers printed at the time because he was a very good copy. that is how those texts were produced. >> the person who asked the san francisco question wants to know if you know the neighborhood he lived in and if he ever met robert louis stevenson. >> you can peek -- piece out the neighborhood. it changed. to me it does not look like the neighborhood, but he mentions being on montgomery street, and so you can figure out roughly where he was. did he ever meet robert louis stevenson? yes, indeed. very fond of stevenson. did not know him for long. basically it is he and mark twain you come up with this idea of the submerged audience. he talks about they're discussing this in washington square in new york. stevenson is out there.

he has to stay warm. he liked him, did not have of long correspondence with him, unfortunately. >> can you talk of a bit more about submerged audience? it is an interesting concept. >> you can read it for yourself. don't rely on my summary. the section, the very beginning of the final form. basically he proposes, he talks about this person who has published all kinds of practical books, how they do this, piano playing, very practical books which he discovered that sell in enormous quantities. he discovered this from a book seller. he had never heard of this kind. the editors figured out this is not davis, but a guy named dick. all kinds of practical books that sold in the millions.

the idea is that this is someone who was unknown to the normal world, if you will, the popular world that you and i live in, but known to those readers, submerged, below the surface. he regards them as his real audience. all i was trying to point out is, he was right. buying his book. well, definitely. >> what was the extent of his formal education? >> left school at the age of 12 when his father died. he was trained in the country, and school. you can guess from the age of 12 what he was in, but it was not the formal. he is one of the true great on the backs of the world. he has no training. he did not even have whaling

ship, he let alone harvard or yale. but if you study and find out that he has read and read and read principally nonfiction, all kinds of stuff. disappears after while. his appetite for new literary text. >> two more quick questions. why was uc-berkeley -- why was uc-berkeley chosen? i did not explain this very well. mark twain wrote his will in such a way that his descendants, only one daughter, could not make over the papers or sell the papers or even give the papers

to anybody except through their own will. this is designed to protect them from men. it did not work. she married a second husband who basically rector of of about $5 billion, but it kept the papers together. the legal situation was not right. when they were out here i rushed over that. he resigns. takes him out to huntington. a big, call to talk tall, courtly texan. he decides he wants to leave huntington to go to berkeley.

he writes her and says are really think you should change it will. this is where they were intended to go. they go to berkeley. you can see what he was worried about, that there would die and they would be scooted out, and his biography based solely on those papers would come to a halt. she writes back and says to my will send you one next week. that is why. don't get me wrong. the papers are not to regions property. there are a number of efforts on the part to get them back. virtually the people in charge were wise enough to resist all of those. something of a snake, but a gambler. we know, for instance, that he offered letters in the family. love letters. between olivia over many years.

no, that was too much. this is 1952. however, he comes back in three weeks. you can have them for $10,000. i need the money by sunday. they go get this $10,000. he did that with other things held by clara, sold out to the world. >> peter, frazier reminds me that there is a lunch club, a mark twain lunch club that has been meeting for quite some time twice a year. i know they are one of the individuals and sets of individuals that have funded the mark twain project and the whole endeavor. can you talk a bit more about the funding? >> yes. the funding is always a problem,

as you might imagine. not funded directly by the university. it funded a release sent his inception by grants from the national endowment for the humanities. they have been absolutely loyal. we must be the longest running project. we will shift entirely. since 1980 they have been 5050. it is our job to go out and find people willing to give that kind of money on that basis of what we do and what we hope they will do. very successful recently, but not a challenge that winds up and goes away. >> thank you for joining us.

>> for more information on mark twain in his autobiography visit the mark twain project. >> in about an hour we will cover several thousand years of world history and touched every part of the planet. are you ready to roll? this is a journey that, as we touch all of these places it did actually start from two family stories. if we could look at the world map. visiting with my family. asked about the story of one of my aunts, a mysterious and of

mine, non-jewish woman married into our family. what is the story? it turned out her grandfather had been a surge in russia. to any of you remember what that is? hold on. you in the back row. >> i think it was the slave. >> very much like a slave. a person or a woman who could be bought and sold. so, my pants grandfather was a surf, but he had invented a process for working with beet sugar that was so useful he became so rich that he brought -- bought his freedom. when we learned about that we suddenly learned about the connection to marry his family. >> i had always known about my family connection to sugar

because my great grandparents traveled from india across to diana which is in south america, but considered part of the caribbean. they came to work on sugar plantations. so that is part of what fascinated us. someone in his family all the way in russia and someone in my family and looking to get a better life over here in india and over to the caribbean a substance that could affect people from such different parts of the world. >> before retrace that now we want to ask you a question. how many of you think you might have sugar somewhere in your family background?

yes. >> yes. >> i'm going to bring it out. i just want to hear from a couple of you. where your family might have been from. >> i'd think my family might have been in the caribbean. >> caribbean. a very good. okay. >> either in the caribbean or europe. >> abcaeight. >> my family was either in the caribbean or europe. >> okay. very good. anybody else? >> actually, i know my family was in the caribbean. >> a little iffy. and you have the caribbean in your background. you definitely have sugar. we believe that many more people have sugar in their background

this subtitle of our book is, a story of magic, site, slavery, freedom, and science. but start out with magic. mock wine might we relate sugar to magic? it originally was a very first, you know, off on the edge, the far edge. we know it was first grown in new guinea. they grew sugar cane. have any have you seen sugar cane before? had any of you ought never tasted sugar cane? all right. we know that -- we do know that it was first grown in new guinea and then it was brought up in india. there were prayers for you

woodburn various offerings to the goddess. one of the offerings that you barn was sugar cane. the original word in the ancient indian language for sugar was that which brings sweetness to the people. but, at a certain point the name for this substance changed. the new name for it was caracara which means gravel. can anybody guess why you might use the word that means gravel for sugar cane? sugar? >> you might because when you put it in your hand it kind of came out like sand. originally they had a keen, what they learned how to make it into

sugar. this was one of the crucial things. sugar granules do not exist in nature. what exists in nature is came. we had to learn how to turn it into those little pieces of sugar. we will get to that. before we get to that the question is how does knowledge of sugar cane spread? how did they learn about this plan growing in new guinea? this substance abuse in religion in india. who might have brought knowledge of sugar? back, over there. great. >> your head of us. we are way back. >> i think it is bad because it

went across the world. china had it. >> yes, but before china there is someone who brings it. on the end. >> i think it was the slaves. >> we are way back. we are in bc. way back. >> australia. >> no. no australian. >> creek? >> yes. alexander the great. if any of you remember the story , alexander the great is covering across from greece. he is conquering across peron. he is conquering. he gets to the edge of india. his troops say, i've won't go any further. alexander is covering, hundred to know. he can never know enough.

go explore india. find out. they come back and talk about the reason that his honey, there are no bees. why would you describe sugar cane as the read that gives sunday, though there are no bees? >> because it sweeps? >> yes. why else? >> ps usually produce thick honey. they did not need these. >> what they knew before people knew about sugar cane, how might they have sweetened their food? what ways might people have used to sweeten their food? >> sap from a maple tree.

>> very good. you may remember that in north america there were no bees. they did not have honey. what they have is maple syrup, agave cactuses. in the rest of the world they had honey. we have sugar used in medical ceremonies. the sugar now spreading. >> one thing we want to mention when you say that they use tiny were first is sugar or sweetness at this time is not the way that we think about it or you're going to have a chocolate bar or a cookie. it is just the taste. it is the spice. it is something that you use in your meal to give it one of the flavors. >> you can watch this and other programs online at