Austen×Twain

full transcript

1. 00:00
   Verashare moment

   Welcome back to Reborn Radio. Up next on LATE SHOW: Jane Austen and Mark Twain, on On someone who became famous for the wrong reason.
2. 00:08
   Jane Austenshare moment

   Mr. Clemens, I confess I have been thinking on the subject of notoriety versus fame. There is a particular species of celebrity—if we may dignify it with that name—which attaches itself to those who have done nothing whatsoever to merit it, save perhaps make themselves ridiculous in some spectacular fashion.
3. 00:26
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Well, Miss Austen, I've known a hundred such people, and most of them were elected to Congress. Fame's a funny article—you can get it for climbing a mountain or for falling off one, and the public doesn't much care which.
4. 00:39
   Jane Austenshare moment

   Quite so. Though I suspect the public prefers the falling.
5. 00:43
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Considerably prefers it. A man who does something useful is half forgotten by Tuesday. But let him make a fool of himself in a hotel lobby, and he'll be famous till the resurrection.
6. 00:55
   Jane Austenshare moment

   I am reminded of certain young ladies of my acquaintance who achieved a kind of notoriety through spectacularly ill-judged elopements. Not with men of fortune, mind you—that might have been forgiven. With men of neither fortune nor character. The scandal was comprehensive.
7. 01:12
   Mark Twainshare moment

   Running off with a scoundrel does get a woman's name in the papers. Though in my experience, the scoundrel usually writes his memoirs first and gets the better end of the fame.
8. 01:21
   Jane Austenshare moment

   Indeed. And the curious thing is how the foolish action begins to define the person entirely. One becomes, in the public mind, nothing more than the elopement, or the scandal, or whatever mortifying incident has captured general attention.
9. 01:36
   Mark Twainshare moment

   You've put your finger on it. I knew a riverboat pilot once—perfectly competent fellow—who got famous for running the Amaranth into a sandbar during a race. Killed the boat and nearly killed himself. For the rest of his life, that's all anybody wanted to talk about. His twenty years of safe piloting? Forgotten. His one disaster? Immortal.
10. 02:01
    Jane Austenshare moment

    How very like human nature. We are far more interested in the neighbor who burns down his house than the one who keeps his in good repair for forty years.
11. 02:10
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's because good repair doesn't make a story. Virtue's dull, Miss Austen. I've tried to write virtuous characters and they just lay there on the page like dead fish. But give me a hypocrite or a fool, and I can make him dance.
12. 02:24
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I would not say virtue is dull, Mr. Clemens. But it is certainly quieter. And our modern age seems to have developed an intolerance for quiet of any kind.
13. 02:36
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Your modern age? Ma'am, you should see mine. We've got yellow journalism now that could teach your scandal sheets a thing or two. A man can't sneeze in New York without it being reported in San Francisco as an assassination attempt.
14. 02:50
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I defer to your experience of American newspapers, which I am told are remarkable. Though I wonder whether the problem is not the reporting so much as the appetite. People wish to read of disasters and absurdities. The papers merely oblige them.
15. 03:05
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Oh, the appetite's always been there. What's changed is the efficiency of feeding it. Used to be, a fool was only famous in his own county. Now we can make him famous from coast to coast before he's even finished being foolish.
16. 03:19
    Jane Austenshare moment

    A sobering thought. Though I confess there is something almost reassuring in the consistency of human folly across generations. The particulars change; the underlying weakness remains.
17. 03:32
    Mark Twainshare moment

    You've got a cold eye, Miss Austen. I admire that in a writer. Most people prefer to think well of humanity. I've always found it more profitable to assume the worst and be pleasantly surprised on the rare occasions I'm wrong.
18. 03:46
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I do not assume the worst, Mr. Clemens. I simply observe what is. There is a difference between cynicism and clarity.
19. 03:54
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Fair enough. Though from where I sit, clarity looks a lot like cynicism in a nicer dress.
20. 04:00
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Then you are not looking closely enough at the dress. But to return to our subject—what becomes of these people who achieve fame through folly? Do they recover from it, or does it follow them to the grave?
21. 04:12
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Follows them to the grave and gets carved on the headstone. I've seen it happen. A man spends fifty years building a reputation, then makes one spectacular mistake, and that mistake becomes his epitaph. All the good work forgotten. All the solid achievement erased. The public's got a memory like a steel trap for humiliation and a memory like a sieve for everything else.
22. 04:38
    Jane Austenshare moment

    It is almost enough to make one pity them. Almost.
23. 04:41
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Almost, yes. Except that half of them go on to make a career out of their original stupidity. They write books about it, give lectures, dine out on the story for decades. I knew a fellow who got lost in the Nevada desert for three days and turned it into a speaking tour that lasted ten years.
24. 05:00
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Extraordinary. So the foolishness becomes, in some perverse fashion, a kind of currency?
25. 05:06
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The most reliable currency there is. A man with an embarrassing story can always get a free drink. A man with a noble accomplishment has to buy his own.
26. 05:16
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I begin to understand why you write satire, Mr. Clemens. Reality seems to require very little embellishment.
27. 05:24
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's the secret of the trade. Just write down what people actually do and say, and everybody thinks you're making it up because it's too ridiculous to be true.
28. 05:33
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Precisely my own method. Though I find it useful to arrange the absurdities into plots, if only to make them bearable.
29. 05:41
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Plots help. Give people a beginning, middle, and end, and they'll forgive you for showing them how foolish they are. Just present the foolishness straight, and they'll get offended.
30. 05:50
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Because they recognize themselves, but prefer not to admit it. One of my heroines was quite foolish for the better part of a novel, and I received a number of letters from young ladies assuring me they knew the very person I must have been describing. None of them considered that they might be describing themselves.
31. 06:10
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Nobody ever does. I once wrote about a lying, thieving, hypocritical king, and half the crowned heads of Europe wanted to know which one I meant. Never occurred to them I meant all of them.
32. 06:21
    Jane Austenshare moment

    The great advantage of fiction is that one may be comprehensive in one's criticism. A single character may embody the faults of dozens.
33. 06:29
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Saves time, too. Why write a dozen fools when one will do?
34. 06:33
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Efficiency. Though I notice you have written a considerable number of fools yourself, Mr. Clemens.
35. 06:39
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Well, I'm thorough. And America produces fools faster than I can write them down. It's a target-rich environment.
36. 06:48
    Jane Austenshare moment

    I suspect England could give America considerable competition in that regard. We simply produce a quieter variety of fool. Less prone to boasting, but equally prone to error.
37. 07:00
    Mark Twainshare moment

    A quieter fool's still a fool. Though I'll grant you, the English do it with better grammar.
38. 07:05
    Jane Austenshare moment

    That, I think, is our only remaining advantage. But to our original question—is there any remedy for becoming famous for the wrong reason? Can such a reputation ever be corrected?
39. 07:17
    Mark Twainshare moment

    In theory, yes. In practice, no. You'd have to do something twice as spectacular in the other direction, and even then people would remember both things and call you complicated. Better to never be famous at all than to be famous for something stupid.
40. 07:33
    Jane Austenshare moment

    And yet you and I both sought fame, Mr. Clemens. We wrote for publication, for audiences, for posterity. We cannot claim we did not wish to be known.
41. 07:43
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Oh, I wanted fame all right. Still do. But I wanted it for something I did on purpose, not for something that happened to me by accident. There's a difference between being famous for writing a good book and being famous for falling down a well.
42. 07:59
    Jane Austenshare moment

    A significant difference. Though I wonder if the public always appreciates it.
43. 08:04
    Mark Twainshare moment

    The public doesn't appreciate anything, Miss Austen. The public just wants to be entertained, and it doesn't much care how. Give them a tragedy or a farce, and they'll applaud either one as long as it's loud enough.
44. 08:18
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Then perhaps the lesson is not to depend upon the public for one's sense of worth. To know the difference oneself between achievement and accident, even if no one else does.
45. 08:28
    Mark Twainshare moment

    That's mighty philosophical for a woman who got famous writing novels. You think your readers knew the difference?
46. 08:35
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Some did. Some merely thought I wrote tolerable romance. I cannot control what readers bring to the page, Mr. Clemens. I can only control what I put there.
47. 08:45
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Well, that's the whole game right there, isn't it? You do your best work, you put it out there, and then the world decides whether you're famous for the right reason or the wrong one. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they don't. And sometimes they make you famous for something you didn't even write.
48. 09:03
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Have you been made famous for something you did not write?
49. 09:06
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Constantly. Half the quotes attributed to me, I never said. The other half I said, but I stole them from somebody else first. Fame's unreliable that way.
50. 09:18
    Jane Austenshare moment

    How very unsettling. Though I suppose it is a particular variety of the same problem—being known for something other than what one intended.
51. 09:27
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Exactly. Whether it's something foolish you did or something clever you didn't say, it all comes down to the public making up its own story and ignoring yours.
52. 09:37
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Which brings us full circle to the uncomfortable truth that reputation is largely beyond our control. We may aspire to be known for our best qualities, but we cannot compel it.
53. 09:47
    Mark Twainshare moment

    No, ma'am. We can't. All we can do is keep doing the work and hope posterity's got better judgment than the present age. Though I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
54. 09:57
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Nor would I. But then, I have never been much given to gambling, Mr. Clemens.
55. 10:02
    Mark Twainshare moment

    I have, Miss Austen. Lost considerable sums at it, too. But I suppose that's another conversation entirely.
56. 10:10
    Jane Austenshare moment

    Indeed it is. And I suspect you became famous for that as well.
57. 10:14
    Mark Twainshare moment

    Among other things. Though at least I did it on purpose.