text by Mark Twain
edited by R. Kent Rasmussen
gift to me, hardcover 173
genre: stories, sayings, humor
I don't remember who gave this to me or why, but it's been on my shelf of books for a long time. At times, I enjoyed reading it. Twain is funny, sarcastic, smart, observant . . . or was, rather. At times, it made me sad. As amazing a writer as he was, he's dead now. From the way he writes about religion, God, faith, etc. it doesn't seem that he believed in God or salvation. How sad for him.
The section of the book on "Divine Providence" and especially the story "The Drownings of Lem Hackett and Dutchy" seem to prove his point that it doesn't matter how you live your life - whether you are good or bad, you'll die. So you may as well have fun being bad. Ugh.
Many of the stories were from his autobiography, which I've not read. The excerpts from Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were familiar. There were also many stories from shorter pieces and those were new to me, too. He had a very sardonic wit!
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