Ken Burns Film about Mark Twain (US Imperialism?)

[alice malice]

Caught this surfing the idiot box last night.


Some of Twain’s more critical writings are obviously upsetting to
Burns. He quotes Twain on the Bible, apparently as an example of his
excesses: “It is perhaps the most damnatory biography that exists in
print anywhere.”

It is also significant that the series makes only fleeting reference
to the social changes that occurred between the time of the
publication of Huckleberry Finn and Clemens’ death in 1910, even
though they were the subject of much of his writing. It was the age of
the consolidation of the “Robber Barons” in the US and the growth of
great industrial cartels in all the advanced capitalist countries. The
stage was being set for the emergence of imperialism (and later world
war), which Clemens strenuously opposed. He served as the vice
president of the Anti-Imperialist League from 1901 until his death; a
fact that also goes unmentioned.

The period following post-Civil War Reconstruction in the US witnessed
a rise in anti-black brutality and lynching, deliberately encouraged
by the powers that be in particular as a means of dividing white and
black poor. Clemens was incensed by this and passionately condemned
any and all concessions to the racist organizations that carried out
these attacks. It is in this context that Twain’s biting works on
religion, such as The Diary of Eve and Letters From the Earth were
written. The hypocrisy of Christian doctrine and practice was
particularly odious and he attacked it mercilessly.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/02/burn-d09.html


http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l