Metaphorically speaking:
One TWAIN is a very famous novel
narrated by a teenage boy.
The other TWAIN is an obscure novella
narrated by the same teenager.
But the latter is named for another teenager.
The first TWAIN features river boating.
The second TWAIN features a hot air balloon.
Both TWAINS have the same distinguished "passengers."
Their names are Huck, Jim, and Tom.
The first TWAIN
is so god-awfully famous,
don't give it another thought.
The second TWAIN
is so god-awfully prophetic,
it is where our remaining thoughts
must be focused.
The balloon flies over the Egyptian Pyramids
and travels through a sandstorm.
Let Huckleberry Finn describe what they saw:
Then the storm thinned, and we see that monstrous wall go a-sailing off across the desert, awful to look at, I tell you.
We dug ourselves out and looked down, and where the caravan was before there wasn't anything but just the sand ocean now, and all still and quiet. All them people and camels was smothered and dead and buried—buried under ten foot of sand, we reckoned, and Tom allowed it might be years before the wind uncovered them, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what become of that caravan.
TOM SAWYER ABROAD was published in 1895
and no one can dispute that its author
was a literary genius.
No one can dispute that questions related to
Two trains traveling at different speeds...
are a major source of math anxiety.
But TWO TWAINS TRAVEL AT DIFFERENT SPEEDS
is NOT an algebra problem.
It is about the literary symbolism
of the windstorm and large quantities
of dead bodies in the Middle East.
A measure of literary genius is how
an author can predict the future.
Ninety three years after Twain published
his hot air balloon novella, an eyewitness
to the Iraq-Iran war wrote this:
On March 16, 1988, those innocent people in northern Iraq
were descendents of the caravan viewed
from the hot air balloon occupied
by Huck, Jim and Tom, in 1895.
Ninety three years after Twain published
his hot air balloon novella, an eyewitness
to the Iraq-Iran war wrote this:
I saw things that I won't forget for as long as I live. It started with a loud strange noise that sounded like bombs exploding, and a man came running into our house, shouting, 'Gas! Gas!' We hurried into our car and closed its windows. I think the car was rolling over the bodies of innocent people.
were descendents of the caravan viewed
from the hot air balloon occupied
by Huck, Jim and Tom, in 1895.
If a question were to be asked about the TWO TWAINS
it could be something like:
What did Mark Twain know about
chemical warfare and when did he know it?
If an answer were to be given to that question
it could be something like:
It was not chemical warfare, per se, that he knew about.
What Mark Twain did know about was how insanely
capable of evil human beings can be, especially
humans considered Leaders of the World.
Footnote
In his own words:
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side
which he never shows anybody.
Following the Equator
Every one is a moon, and has a dark side
which he never shows anybody.
Following the Equator
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TWO TWAINS TRAVEL... is the copyrighted property of LCSoL.
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Not a Twain rec
ReplyDeleteMore like a Twain profundity.
ReplyDeleteAs always, it is glossed with humor.