By ROBIN CAUDELL
Staff Writer
---- — SARANAC LAKE -- The University of California Press publishes the first of three volumes of the unexpurgated "Autobiography of Mark Twain" in November.
2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the author's death, and it is the right time for the real Twain to be revealed in a time frame suggested by Twain himself.
"He was extensively interviewed right before he died," said Amy Catania, executive director of Historic Saranac Lake. "Originally those interviews were published years and years ago but they were extensively edited. They are releasing the full transcript of those words. People who are real Twain people will get words directly from him that have never been heard."
Hosted by Historic Saranac Lake, John Brown Lives! and Paul Smith's College, "Mark Twain in the Adirondacks" commemorates the celebrated writer's stay here in the summer of 1901. The one-day conference Saturday features Charles Alexander, a Paul Smith's professor; Steven Kellogg, a children's author reading passages from "Huck Finn"; and Margaret Washington, a Cornell University professor presenting "Twain and Huck Finn."
"He stayed at what we refer to as Twain Camp," Catania said. "Then, it was Kane Camp. It is on Lower Saranac Lake. Saranac Lake was growing very quickly as a TB health resort and a summer vacation spot. Back then, it was already on the map for both of those things. Twain was looking for a place to get away that was quiet. Robert Louis Stevenson had already come here, and that was one of the things that put Saranac Lake on the map."
While at camp, Twain penned "The United States of Lyncherdom" in response to lynchings in Pierce, Mo. In Ralph Ginzburg's "100 Years of Lynching," a Chicago Record-Herald article (Aug. 21, 1901) detailed the murder of Gazelle Wild, a white woman. After a 15-hour rampage by whites searching for Wild's alleged Negro assailant, suspect Will Godley was lynched. His grandfather, French Godley, was shot to death. Eugene Carter, alias Barrett, was strung up until he confessed.
According to the news article, "After the lynching of Godley last night, it was thought the excitement would die down, but instead it became more intense, inasmuch as the impression grew that Godley was not the real culprit."
"Twain was very against the horrible stuff that was happening," Catania said. "He wrote this inflammatory essay criticizing the country for allowing this to happen. It was so inflammatory he insisted it wasn't published until after his death."
For the Twain conference, Alexander updated his paper "A Pen Warmed Up in the Adirondacks: Mark Twain's Summer of '01," originally presented at a Mark Twain conference eight years ago in Elmira, N.Y.
"One of the points I want to make is the ironic contrast of this wonderful environment and those dark thoughts ('United States of Lyncherdom')," Alexander said. "He's in the middle of the place he admired and wanted to come back to and thinking these dark thoughts about the future of this country and its penchant for violence. I will draw some parallels with Robert Louis Stevenson, who was here likewise."
Alexander is in search of information about Twain's historic summer at the camp he called "The Lair."
"He mentioned a Dr. Root," Alexander said. "I cannot find who the heck that is. I thought it might have something to do with the Trudeau Laboratory. Twain was said, by one newspaper, to return the following spring looking for a place. One of the local newspapers have him appearing in 1902 looking around. There are a lot of puzzles like that."
One of the conference's goals is to foster dialogue.
"What it has to teach us about our race relations -- how far we've come and how far we have to go," Catania said. "Martha Swan (director of John Brown Lives!) is a teacher. She found in talking with other teachers that 'Huck Finn' is left out of the curriculum as too old fashioned, too hard to read and controversial. It's one of our great American novels, and we shouldn't be avoiding it."
E-mail Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
