Please Read This

Mr. Twain didn't look all that bad, considering that he's been dead since 1910.

Mark Twain made an appearance (or, perhaps, a reappearance, of sorts) last Saturday night in Carbondale.

Twain came to life thanks to the absolutely joyful staging of actor Hal Holbrook.

Holbrook presented "Mark Twain Tonight!" (complete with an exclamation mark and I despise exclamation marks; they make words and phrases pompous and overblown. They turn simple and beautiful grammar into the Paris Hiltons of language. Humbug, I say. Humbug!!!)

The performance was in Shryock Auditorium on the Southern Illinois University Carbondale campus.

We came to be in a warm and relatively cozy Shryock Auditorium on a cold and blustery February night thanks to the kindness of strangers (if you'll allow me to mix the works of famous dead writers).

Well, not really strangers, but I think they might be Cubs fans. Anyway, these folks were kind enough to offer us a couple of wonderful tickets to an event which we certainly would not have been able to see otherwise. For this generous gift, we both say thank you.

In watching Saturday night's performance, one as simpleminded as your writer had to be very careful to rememember that Hal Holbrook was on the stage, and not Mark Twain. Through a bit of magic, though, Holbrook seemed to become Twain, come to life again in 2009, nearly a century after his death.

What's even more amazing is that Mr. Holbrook could speak as Twain (and from Twain's many literary creations) for nearly two hours. I have trouble remembering the grocery list, even if I write it down. But, I suppose, that's why our best actors get paid well. Very well, indeed.

I did sort of expect Mr. Twain to be just a little bit more punctual. Show time was billed as 7:30 p.m., but he didn't make it onto the stage until about 7:45. Then again, I really wasn't in any big hurry to go back out in the cold, dark, windy wintry night. And by the time the performance was done, I didn't really care what time it was anyway.

From the moment Mr. Twain, um, Mr. Holbrook stepped on the stage, he seemed to have the complete attention of his audience (including me, even though I was scribbling notes in the semidarkness). For the rest of this column, we will refer to Mr. Twain, since, for all intents and purposes, that's who was on the stage.

One of Twain's first observations was about cats, creatures which seem to be loved or hated, with no in-between, by the human race. I used to be of the latter persuasion,  but now I am of the former outlook.

"I like cats," Twain commented. "They're quieter than children."

"If you could cross a cat with a man, you'd improve the man. . .and deteriorate the cat," he quickly followed. Well, not so much quickly. Let's say smoothly, which is how the entire performance unfolded.

Up until about 9:50, when he said it was "time to go," much to our disappoint, Mr. Twain shared a wide range of observations which, while made over a century ago, seem so very relevant in 2009.

For obvious reasons, I particularly enjoyed his reflections on life in the newspaper business. Twain, as you may know, was a newspaper reporter at one point in his career.

He remembered looking  for a job one time, but he was rather particular about the kind of work he wanted. He didn't want to work in the traditional sense of the word, so he found "honest employment" as a newspaper reporter. Truthfully, if you think about it, writing stories and taking pictures isn't really work, in the strictest sense of the word.

One of his pastimes as a reporter involved keeping an eye on "the inmates in Washington, D.C." He shared a story about a Congressman who gained passage of a bill to pay for a dam – someplace where there was no river. Ever creative, the Congressman had a bill passed to create a river to save the dam. Now you don't suppose such silliness could happen today. Could it?

Twain further suggested that there was "not enough brain power in Washington to bait a fish hook." And, my favorite: "Washington is a stud farm for every jackass in the country."

Humor me, and I'll share a few more:

"When people reform in one direction, they often go overboard in another direction."

"Insanity is inherited. We get it from our children."

"You can never prove anything to a lunatic."

"I wonder if God invented man because he was disappointed by the monkey."

"Sometimes it seems a shame to me that Noah and his party did not miss the boat."

A couple of times during the performance, The Other Half and I wondered to each other what Mr. Twain might have had to say about the current state of Illinois politics, and a certain former loopy governor in particular. One has to think that Mr. Twain would have had some truly fascinating comments.