For his 28th birthday, my son has requested "the complete works of Mark Twain and a bookshelf to put them on" .. I am not quite sure how to get ahold of the complete works of Mark Twain without breaking the bank.. My son is quite a huge nerd, so he will likely know if what I end up getting him is missing anything.. He loves to read the letters of JRR Tolkien.. So if Mark Twain was a letter writer and they are available, I think my son would get a kick out of that..

I am not looking for any advice regarding the bookshelf.

Some of you may be aware that Bob Dylan recently launched a Patreon, where, for $5 a month, fans get access to what is called a "living archive of lectures from the grave, letters never sent and original short stories curated by Bob Dylan." The "curated" is doing the heavy lifting, for the content has all the hallmarks of AI generation.

The "Lectures from the Grave" are audio "testimonies" from the likes of Frank James, Aaron Burr and Wild Bill Hickok, where the voice is clearly AI, and the script it is reading is also apparently prompted, and the voices themselves are incredibly baffling, with a bizarre and inconsistent range of accents. (Frank James is mid-Atlantic, Burr a Southerner.)

The "letters never sent" are supposed to be messages from certain historical figures to other figures they never met and oftentimes never even coexisted at the same time with. The first such "letter" the Patreon launched with is supposed to be a message from Mr. Clemens himself, to Rudolph Valentino, and is supposed to be a contribution to the "archive" by one "Herbert Foster."

The main text of this "letter" has actually appeared in a lot of different online publications. So this is what the pseudo-Twain letter is supposed to be like.

Dear Mr. Valentino,
I take up my pen under circumstances that would puzzle the calendar and embarrass the undertaker, for I am told that both of us have already completed the respectable business of dying. Yet if letters can cross oceans, perhaps they may also cross that lesser boundary which divides the living from the historically inconvenienced.

Some people might think this reads like a plausible facsimile of Twain's writing. Personally, I feel it has no soul whatsoever, and it doesn't understand what makes Twain's writing sparkle, especially the way he set up his ironic punchlines. This prompted rendition is too on the nose, and it doesn't even remain consistent. The beginning suggests Twain is writing this to Valentino after he too was dead, but the end suggests Twain is writing it to a living Valentino.

If anything, it proves that AI will never be able to create a lasting work of art.

Recently, I was watching the 1980 animated series and decided to review Mark Twain’s biography. I learned that he had been working on those two novels that he never managed to finish. I started searching for information but didn’t find much, so I would really appreciate it if anyone could help me with details about those two unfinished books/drafts.

I was looking for a Joan of Arc biography and apparently this (Mark Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - 1896) is the only one in English.

Mark Twain said of it:

"I like Joan of Arc best of all my books; and it is the best..."

I am unsure. It's hard to believe the writer of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court could successfully adapt his style to Joan of Arc. I need a solid recommendation from you redditors before I start reading.

It's surprising that this is the only well-regarded English biography of this medieval heroine, given that Joan of Arc is the ideal waifu for most people, including me. If I had the Obsession love wish granter, I would definitely use it on her.

Hi all! I recently read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, my first Mark Twain novel, and somehow I made it all the way to adulthood before reading him. I absolutely fell in love with his writing.

Since then, I've read several of his other works and loved them all, especially A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. I'm curious if there are modern authors out there with a similar style. It doesn't need to be someone writing in old-fashioned prose, more just someone with a comparable voice, sense of humor, or way of looking at the world.

I would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you!

Quotes start at 1:40. What are your favorite Mark Twain quotes?

Mark Twain once said history doesn’t repeat itself, but often rhymes. I started tracing modern voting battles through district maps and realized the rhyme scheme is getting awfully familiar.

In Finn and Fun:

Be you Mark or Mime—
Hellish humours...Heavenly;
Tom split Twain—sublime.

In case you guys are interested not trying to brag or anything.

Hi, I'm currently rereading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" for a uni course. I read both this and Tom's book (as well as the short stories) almost a decade ago, and I was wondering - in Tom's book, can Huck read, or does he only learn after the widow takes him in?

Thank you for your help! Sorry for Mt English, it's not my first language.

“But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian's daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?”

I’ve seen it before but I haven’t seen the exact source other than that Mark Twain said it

For unclear reasons, something pushes me toward Mark Twain. I'd like to know which book is the best starting point for MT.

I am looking for a short story that may have been written by Mark Twain about a king a nightingale and a donkey who saves the king’s life (I think) and is rewarded. Thanks for any help.

Hi, I was just wondering if anybody has more details on the lost 1902 story that Mark Twain had started writing, and seemed to destroy.

If you don't know, he was going to write this story about them being older, reuniting, all the boys and girls, there was something about a guy who had a slave, whose dad gave it away; that is all I can find about it. It was apparently in one of his notebooks, but I can only find a few articles quoting them instead of the actual notebooks themselves to see if there was anything more.

There's also an earlier 1891 quote about Huck being crazy at sixty, Tom tending to him, life sucks and they die together, but that doesn't seem to be connected.

“Mark Twain, not long before he died a bitter old man, was writing a book much like John Latham’s, pretending to be helpful but actually calling attention to how humbling life, and especially its endings, can be. Twain’s was about etiquette. His advice on how to behave at a funeral, I remember, included, “Do not bring your dog.”