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Mark Twain: Difference between revisions
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** [[Shaming the Mob]]: Subverted.
** [[War Is Glorious]]: The townspeople think it is. The angel shows them [[War Is Hell|otherwise]], but they {{spoiler|denounce him as a lunatic.}}
* ''[[Jap Herron]]'' (A book that Emily Grant Hutchings claimed to have written that was dictated by Mark Twain via the ouija board; published 1917)
* ''Letters from the Earth'' (Written 1909, published 1939)
** [[Humans Are Bastards]]: [[Creator Breakdown|Written after the deaths of Clemens' wife and favorite daughter]], this is where he crosses the line from a cynic to a [[Nietzsche Wannabe|misanthrope]].
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{{tropelist|Tropes related to Clemens himself}}
* [[Bluenose Bowdlerizer]]: After Clemens' death, his eldest surviving daughter Clara and his literary executor, Albert Bigelow Paine, were quick to suppress Clemens' anti-religious and anti-imperialist writings.
** A recent edition of ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' has removed every instance of the word "nigger" from the book and replaced it with the word "slave," as well as altering "Injun" to "Indian." This has been done in order to allay fears of parents and schools hesitant to assign the book due to racial issues.
* [[Carpet of Virility]]: Look in the [http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4253713501_f1fe5c7275.jpg picture].
* [[Daydream Believer]]: Clemens had a somewhat shaky grasp on what was real and what wasn't. This makes it frustrating to attempt a biographical sketch of his early years, as events like his brother Henry's death were edited and re-edited in his subconscious time and again, until the actual event (as documented in Sam's letters to his siblings and mother in the late 1850s) differed greatly from what he remembered towards the end of his life (as documented in his autobiography).
** "In our dreams-I know it!-we do make the journeys we seem to make: we do see the things we seem to see; the people, the horses, the cats, the dogs, the birds, the whales, are real, not chimeras; they are living spirits, not shadows; and they are immortal and indestructible."
* [[Dead Little Sister|Dead Little Brother]]: His younger brother Henry, who died in a boiler explosion on the steamboat Clemens piloted, but had just been fired due to getting into a fistfight with another crew member.
** [[Dreaming of Things to Come]]: To make things worse, Sam had dreamed of his brother's death and funeral just a month or so before, down to the makeup of the bouquet of flowers on his casket and the fact that Henry was buried in one of Sam's suits.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: So very, very much.
* [[Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe]]
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** “If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
** "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
* [[I Have Many Names]]: During his early career, Clemens wrote essays using other [[Pen Name|pen names]] such as Sergeant Fathom, Rambler, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass, W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blabb, [[Aeris and Bob|and Josh]].
* [[Impoverished Patrician]]: Clemens' father Marshall was a wealthy Virginia gentleman who squandered his inheritance on bad land investments and wound up as a store clerk in Hannibal, Missouri. Sam inherited his father's lack of business sense, wasting the majority of his writing fortune on things like a new type of printing press that was rendered obsolete months after its invention.
* [[Intergenerational Friendship]]: Clemens and his [http://www.twainquotes.com/angelfish/angelfish.html angelfish], surrogate granddaughters he 'adopted' as he neared the end of his life in 1907-08.
* [[Man in White]]: Took to wearing white suits after the death of his wife.
** 14 white suits, two for each day of the week.
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: Clemens himself after his wife Livy died.
** "Isn't human nature the most consummate sham and lie that was ever invented? Isn't man a creature to be ashamed of in pretty much all is aspects? Is he really fit for anything but to be stood up on the street corner as a convenience for dogs? Man, know thyself and then thou wilt despise thyself, to a dead moral certainty." - Clemens in a letter to William Dean Howells
* [[Nikola Tesla]]: One of Clemens' close friends.
* [[Odd Friendship]]: Clemens' friendship with [[Corrupt Corporate Executive|robber baron Henry Huttleston Rogers.]]
** While living in San Francisco Clemens got to know Emperor Norton I. The King character from [[Huckleberry Finn]] is based on Norton. When he heard Norton had died, Clemens regretted never getting a chance of writing an honest biography of the Emperor.
* [[Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated]]: [[Trope Namer]] ([[Beam Me Up, Scotty|sort of]]). The actual quote is "The report of my death is an exaggeration."
* [[The Roast]]: Clemens was the inadvertent creator of the celebrity roast, after an attempt to tell a self-deprecating story at a banquet [[Insult Backfire|backfired horribly.]] He was later called on to do the same thing for [[Ulysses S. Grant]].
* [[Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism]]: Always very cynical. [[It Got Worse]] after he outlived his wife and all but one of his children.
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* Webcomic [[Girly]] had a television show that the characters would watch now and again, in which Victorian authors would kill each other with '''GUNS!!!''' Twain appeared in one episode as the villain (the author remarked "I like to think of Twain as the kind of guy who wouldn't mind me making him evil for NO REASON").
* Oh, and [[Lucky Luke]] has met him, of course.
* Appears in Harry Turtledove's [[Alternate History]] novel ''How Few Remain'' as Samuel Clemens, a newspaper editor in California.
* He appeared in a Johnny Bravo episode, begging people not to abuse The Prince and the Pauper for comedy.
* He is ''[[No Celebrities Were Harmed|the inspiration for]]'' Colonel Sassacre in ''[[Homestuck]]''.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Historical Domain Character]]
[[Category:Authors of Quote]]
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