Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010) will teach you a lot about the man in the seams

What would happen if you had to write an autobiography? Would you start at the beginning? You ain't dead yet, so you won't finish. And what do you say? Tell stories about people that might not be dead yet and have a damn awkward Christmas until Uncle Rob get drunk and decides to tell MawMaw exactly what happened in the coat closet in fourth grade? You could see how it could be a problem.

    The Autobiography of Mark Twain is a document only Samuel Clemens could have produced. Along with a bunch of editors who I'm not going to name because, well, they got to hang out with the actual papers and thoughts of Mark Twain. You had your day, Harriet E. Smith. Anyway, the book is told out of order, by Twain as he spoke aloud and just mused on shit. By his own design, he would talk about something that happened in the past and how it related to the present and that would remind him of something else. It's filled in by other news articles and information that sometimes break the narrative, if a narrative exists. He talks pretty free because he demanded it not be published for one hundred years and it kinda worked out that way.

    Here's my full review of the man's idea of his life: he had his ups and downs. Really, that's the best I got. I have two memorable bits of the book itself where he convinces Ulysses S. Grant to publish his memoirs and all the stories about his daughter. The first made me laugh at times and the second had me damn near balling as I dodged deer on my paper route.

    Yeah, I went audio. The damn thing's like 30 hours. I got shit to do.

    Read it if you want to get inside the rambling mind of a truly unique person.