Twain-a-mania captivates campus on centennial of author’s death

Having been born two weeks after Halley’s Comet streaked through the sky in 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens — aka Mark Twain — swore he’d go out on the wings of the dirty ice ball. Against all odds, his April 21, 1910, death followed the comet’s return by one day. 

           

But the former riverboat pilot, journalist, novelist and wag is about return to this mortal coil — at least in spirit. Twain will visit a place that he never knew in life as UCLA mounts a two-month-long celebration of the centennial of his death.

 

Running through the end of April, campus festivities will include an exhibit, theatrical performance, scholarly conference and a marathon reading of Twain’s works. All events will be free and open to the public.

 

“It’s like Clemens’ friend Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, ‘You’d think the patron saint of America was Saint Anniversary,’” quipped Thomas Wortham, a professor emeritus of English and an authority on Twain and his circle. 

 

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the author and humorist has been described by no less than William Faulkner as "the father of American literature.” 

 

“Mark Twain’s a great writer — almost everybody agrees with that,” said Daniel Lowenstein, a professor emeritus of law and founding director of UCLA’s Center for the Liberal Arts and Free Institutions (CLAFI), sponsor of the Twain conference. “But compared to other great writers, he’s great fun to read. Everybody can enjoy Mark Twain on the first exposure.”

 

Still, the string of events is unusual for UCLA, which currently is not home to a certified Twain specialist. When it comes to the 19th century humorist, the campus has languished for the past 60 years in the shadow of older sister UC-Berkeley, home to Twain’s complete papers.

 

“The Mark Twain Papers at Berkeley is by far the most important Mark Twain archive in the world,” Wortham said. “It is matchless.”

 

However, UCLA is not without honors when it comes to the archives, said Robert H. Hirst, the general editor and official curator of Berkeley’s Mark Twain Project and Papers. In the late 1940s, Dixon Wecter, then a professor of English at UCLA and the literary executor of Twain’s estate, convinced the author’s sole heir, daughter Clara, to leave his papers to the UC system instead of Yale University, where Clemens received his first honorary degree. When Wecter moved to Berkeley in 1949 to accept a chair in history, the papers followed him and stayed there in perpetuity.

 

Nevertheless, the author whose work is forever associated with 19th century life along the Mississippi and in Hawaii, Utah and, of course, Calaveras County, never made it south of San Jose, Hirst said. Until now.

 

Twain-a-mania descended earlier this month on Powell Library with the opening of an exhibit of toys, souvenirs and other collectibles inspired by “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which Ernest Hemingway described as the book from which “all modern American literature” came.

           

Collected by Wortham since the 1980s, the pieces illustrate the role merchandising has played in shaping popular perception of the novel that chronicles the adventures of an abused boy and a runaway slave as they try to escape to safety on a raft drifting down the Mississippi River.

 

 “I don't know of any other book that has been so modified — so mutilated — by popular representation,” Wortham said.

           

The exhibit, titled "Ain't It a Shame What's Been Done to Mark Twain: The Selling of Huck Finn," features more than 70 pieces from Wortham’s collection of more than 1,000-plus pieces, thought to be one of the largest of its kind. The exhibit runs through Friday, April 30, in the Powell Library Rotunda.

 

There’s Huck as a Madame Alexander Doll and a Cabbage Patch Kid as well as pine-scented Huck Finn soap. One oddity in Wortham’s collection is a pornographic film inspired by the 1885 classic. Tellingly, Jim, the runaway slave, is rarely depicted among the tchotchkes even though Wortham believes the book is about the failure of the Civil War and Reconstruction to bring equality and civil rights to African Americans.

 

“There is no single book I admire more — and I've read many books — than ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’” Wortham said.  “I read it first when I was 8 years old and have read it numerous times since. Unfortunately the book I read — and continue to read — has very little in common with the way the book is represented in popular culture. We have lost touch with a very tragic and difficult book that deals with many problems that we still haven't grappled with sufficiently in American culture.”

  

If the exhibit examines how Twain’s legacy has been remembered — or misremembered — in popular culture, another event, “From the Page to the Stage,” celebrates Twain’s actual texts and their enduring relevance, said Lowenstein, organizer of the conference.

 

“Our interest is primarily what we can learn from the writer and what he had to offer back then and now,” Lowenstein said.

 

The March 11 event brings together leading scholars who have written about Twain, including Paul Cantor, the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia, and Harry Jaffa, a professor emeritus of government at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School. Scholarly presentations from 3:15 to 6:30 p.m. in room A170 of Bunche Hall will address such themes in Twain’s writings as free speech, the Civil War and the specter of a class system in the United States. “What unites these talks is that, one way or another, they’re talking about Twain’s political ideas,” Lowenstein said.

 

The day concludes with an 8 p.m. staged reading by the critically acclaimed North Hollywood-based Interact Theatre Company. "Mark Twain & Friends: A River Journey" brings to life 22 of Twain’s best-known characters. The dramatic reading will be held in Room 1457 of the law school.

           

Festivities build to a climax April 20 when Wortham will deliver a 4 p.m. talk in the Powell Rotunda about the commercialization of Huckleberry Finn, widely viewed as Twain’s greatest masterpiece.

 

Sigma Tau Delta, an honorary society for English majors, will hold a marathon reading that will begin on 9 a.m.  April 21 at the Powell Library Rotunda. Students, English department faculty and supporters, passersby and members of the public will take turns in reading aloud from a selection of short stories by Twain.

 

Participants will be able to sign up in advance by e-mailing the honorary society at sigmatau@ucla.edu or simply by going to the reading on the day of the event. 

 

“Some people just think of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer,” said Jaqui Hoang, event organizer and Sigma Tau Delta publicity director. “But Mark Twain has a reputation as master short story writer, and his short stories really capture the essence of his era from the life along Mississippi to unusual customs and scenery in California and Hawaii.”

 

To see a video featuring Wortham and his collection, go here or click below.