Not to be outdone by Mark Twain, E.B. White's old house is for sale as well.

If you're looking to buy a famous writers New England farmhouse, but Mark Twain's humble $1.85 million Connecticut abode doesn't do it for you, drive deeper into the northern reaches of New England and there you can take a gander at E.B. White's $3.7 million property now up for sale in rural, coastal Maine.

Like Twain, E.B. White's former shack is a sprawling farmhouse--although White's has a literary connection beyond the author himself. The property includes the barn that inspired White to write Charlotte's Web.

Located in North Brooklin--or roughly a five hour drive northeast of Boston--the 44 1/2 acre saltwater farm sits beside the Atlantic with 2,000 feet of shore frontage. Included is a boathouse, a pond, meticulous gardens, and the aforementioned barn, which includes the rope swing mentioned in the book.

Never to let an animal-inspired moment pass unnoticed, PETA has reached out to the real estate agent in charge via a press release, asking that "the owners convert the home into an empathy museum for pigs, complete with a vegan café offering veggie sausages, vegan BLTs, and more."

Wait--PETA isn't done yet with ideas. The organization continues:

"E.B. White's portrayal of a pig named Wilbur inspired people all over the world to take a closer look at the animals they consider to be 'food' and go vegan," PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wrote. "A PETA museum in his historic farmhouse would help visitors see that every pig is some pig, an intelligent individual and not a collection of sausages, bacon, and chops."

Okay, well, we know that isn't happening. Forget the vegan angle. PETA must be anticipating literally tens of people to drive five hours from civilization to have a veggie BLT.




photo: Mark Fleming / Yankee Magazine

Mark Twain's old farmhouse is up for sale.

Great news for the two or three people in the world pining to live in rural Connecticut, as Mark Twain's old farmhouse is up for sale for the low-low asking price of $1.85 million.

Lest you think you're getting some shack with some name recognition, the house was gutted in 2013 by its current owners and updated throughout. According to the real estate listing, the property showcases a "[s]tunning new designer kitchen with Cream Marfil marble counters, custom cabinetry" along with "Gaggenau premium appliances."

If you're scratching your head at what "Cream Marfil" is--as I was--it's apparently just the Spanish word for ivory. (Yes, my Spanish needs work.) And if you're wondering what "Gaggenau premium appliances" cost, well, roughly your entire checking account and your personal modesty.

The listing also notes Twain's estate now has "Carlisle hickory signature floors, antiqued ceiling beams, stone bridges, a projection screen, art room, barn, and a "gunite swimming pool."

If you're scratching your head again at what a "gunite swimming pool" is--as I was--it's apparently just a form of concrete. (Yes, my real estate-to-English translation skills need work, too.) And if you're wondering what "Carlisle hickory signature floors" go for, well, roughly two years worth of your retirement savings and all human decency.

The estate was bought by Twain for his daughter Jean back in 1909, in what I assume to be the most lavish way to tell your adult child they're still loved. Jean didn't enjoy the property for long, as she was found dead in a bathtub from a heart attack on Christmas Eve the same year. She was 29-years old.

Shockingly, the real estate listing skips over the info on Jean's death. Mortality doesn't really wow prospective buyers like gunite swimming pools and Marfil countertops apparently.

Once-banned literature used to create imitation Parthenon where books were once burned.

Argentinian artist Marta Minujin used over a 170 different banned book titles to create a full-sized recreation of the Greek Parthenon at the site where Nazi Germany once burned books.

Using over 100,000 copies of those banned books--along with plastic and some steel--Minujin built the art installation in the city of Kassel, where the Nazis burned 2,000 books as part of their "Campaign Against the un-German Spirit" in 1933. At the time, mainly books by Jewish authors and individuals against fascism were lit ablaze.

Marta Minujin is clearly more productive than you or I am.

According to Metro UK, Minujin asked students at the Kassel University to comb over books to find titles that have been banned all-time. The students brought forth works that included the likes of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter collection, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.

This Parthenon stuff is old hat for Minujin, though. She created a similar banned book Parthenon structure in 1983 in her native Argentina after the military dictatorship fell.



photo: EPA/Filip Singer
photo: Boris Roessler/AFP/Getty

Mark Twain's unfinished children's "book" is now finished.

To say Mark Twain has an "unfinished" children's book soon to be published is a bit fast and loose with the facts.

Doubleday Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, plans to release the lighthearted Twain fare on September 26, 2017, after author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead worked to complete the book.

According to Doubleday, the story--The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine--"follows a young boy who eats the flower sprouted by a magical seed and gains the ability to talk to animals. From there, the boy and his new animal friends go off on a wild adventure to rescue a kidnapped prince."

So, it's like Jack and the Beanstalk meets Doctor Doolittle.

In 1879, while the family was visiting Paris, Twain apparently told his daughters a bedtime story following the plot of Prince Oleomargarine. Afterward, Twain wrote 16-pages of notes on a potential full-length book, but left it at that. For over 130-years, the notes remained lost until scholar John Bird discovered them at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011.

Somehow, 16-pages of Twain's notes evolved into a 152-page storybook with illustrations by two other people.

Notes = 152-page book.

A "Twain" book.

Notes.

Based on this metric, I have written tens of thousands of books. It's impressive, if I do say so.

Fashionable Words: Ragamuffin

"I'm a--a--what?"

[Sometimes words die out of fashion. But sometimes those words are good words, words with a certain appeal that can't be denied forever. Those words should be brought back into fashion, used frequently and used often. These are those words.]


Word:

Ragamuffin



Definition:  noun

A ragged, disreputable person; often a child in dirty clothes and an unkempt state.



Origin:

Nothing pleases the British like making poverty sound quaint. Charles Dickens made a career off this model after all. And like most British words, ragamuffin is a child born of many parents.

There's no be-all origin story for ragamuffin. The first known use of it was in the Middle English epic poem Piers Plowman, not to be confused with modern English media personality Piers Morgan. Written in the 1300s about a character named Will who keeps falling asleep and having dreamvisions of spiritual meetings with religious figures, it's as exciting and titillating as you might imagine 14th century sleep to be. Ragamuffin makes its first known appearance in history as Ragamoffyn, a demon's name in the poem.

Morgan, not Plowman.

Wait--does this mean we actually have been calling Tiny Tim and Oliver Twist demons all this time? Yes. Yes, that's what I'm saying. We're all terrible people, you especially. I never claimed to like Dickens.

Most sources don't know what ragamuffin evolves from. The word probably comes from some variety of surname of the time, with "rag" being what you imagine--that thing you refuse to pick up to clean your bathroom. Even the famed English word master Samuel Johnson was uncommitted to the word's birth, actually stating in his famed dictionary, "From rag and I know not what else." In other words, he's got nothing. Thanks, Sam!

I got nothing for you.

"Muffin" probably just comes from a cute English wordplay, which is as cute as the Brits get, but some claim the word evolved from Middle Dutch's muffe, which means mitten, thus the clothing angle reinforced. Muffe would sound confusing these days after all, as we'd picture a fifty-something WASPy woman in jewels who is clearly no ragamuffin.

Shakespeare ends up using the word in 1597 in his play Henry IV (I'll save you the convoluted line), but it doesn't really gain traction in popularity until the 1800s. Writers like Louisa May Alcott, Anna Sewell, and Mark Twain all use it in their novels, and Charles Dickens pretty much creates the titular ideal of a ragamuffin in Oliver Twist. Google Books' Ngram Viewer even shows the spike in usage as the 19th century rolled on:

What does this all mean?

I don't know. Just that Oliver and Tiny Tim are demons.



Most obscure UrbanDictionary.com definition of ragamuffin:

12.  A person who does not like turnips or rutabagas.



Used in a sentence:

Part of me wondered if Oliver was angelic, but something suggested he was demonic, especially considering his filthy appearance as a ragamuffin from the streets.



Why you should use ragamuffin in your everyday life:

It subtly suggests delicious breakfast treats while reminding you you're too dirty, poor, and disheveled to afford delicious breakfast treats.



Word Awesomeness Scale (1-to-5):

Four.

It loses a point for being the name of a random cat breed and obscure Christian movie.

TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post might incite a fear of words.

If, in your lifetime as a reader, you've ever read Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Chinua Achebe, Mark Twain, or others, and didn't feel emotionally harmed in the process, you might have escaped a horrible fate--of feeling.

According to the New York Times, colleges are struggling with requests from students (and others) to affix a 'Trigger Warning' in a syllabus regarding texts which might instigate an adverse reaction or emotional trauma to the reading material--for any reason. Colleges and universities like Oberlin College, the University of Michigan, Rutgers University, and George Washington University have all instituted rules regarding these 'Trigger Warnings,' which has some people concerned that things have gotten out of hand.

Says the Times:


"The most vociferous criticism has focused on trigger warnings for materials that have an established place on syllabuses across the country. Among the suggestions for books that would benefit from trigger warnings are Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” (contains anti-Semitism) and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” (addresses suicide)."

Chinua Achebe realizes he just triggered himself.

As the tide toward being overly-sensitive to literary texts gets excessive, professors--who are usually overtly sensitive to texts' potential to offend--are now fighting back. Oberlin College released a guide which suggested professors mark up a syllabus with 'Trigger Warnings' in case any text might offend a student.

Continues the Times:





“Be aware of racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression,” the [Oberlin] guide said. “Realize that all forms of violence are traumatic, and that your students have lives before and outside your classroom, experiences you may not expect or understand.” For example, it said, while “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe — a novel set in colonial-era Nigeria — is a “triumph of literature that everyone in the world should read,” it could “trigger readers who have experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, suicide and more.”


If you've experienced racism, colonialism, religious persecution, violence, and suicide in your life, not only do you need to reexamine what you did to piss off a variety of religious deities, but you're also going to be a millionaire once you get that memoir published. But I digress.

Pause for a moment to think of Oberlin's logic regarding Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart." Achebe's novel is something "everyone in the world should read," but--hey, not everyone everyone. Just everyone with a pathological inability to feel human emotion.

Since being emotionally cold and distant to literature isn't really how reading works, some are arguing against 'Trigger Warnings,' like Jill Filipovic at London's The Guardian, who writes:


"College isn't exactly the real world either, but it's a space for kinda-sorta adults to wade neck-deep into art, literature, philosophy, and the sciences, to explore new ideas, to expand their knowledge of the cultural canon, to interrogate power and to learn how to make an argument and to read a text. It is, hopefully, a space where the student is challenged and sometimes frustrated and sometimes deeply upset, a place where the student's world expands and pushes them to reach the outer edges – not a place that contracts to meet the student exactly where they are."


Except college is becoming an intellectual vacuum--at least in the humanities departments--where professors fear the wrath of offending students with literary choices, even if those choices lead to enlightening discussion and collective examination of broader topics by the entire class.

Don't believe me? Professor Marc Blecher tells the Times:


“If I were a junior faculty member looking at this while putting my syllabus together, I’d be terrified. [...] Any student who felt triggered by something that happened in class could file a complaint with the various procedures and judicial boards, and create a very tortuous process for anyone.”


"Torture."

And, so, the triggering cycle begins.  A book triggers an unpleasant emotional response in a student...who files a complaint with the university...who sends the faculty member to meetings and judicial boards...who decide the professor was egregious with their literary selection by not realizing the depth of triggering response potential...so the board places the professor on some sort of academic probation...causing the faculty member to be traumatized (because they aren't tenured and are only making $32,000 a year without health benefits, and the rent's due)...so the following semester the teacher can't bring themselves to create a class syllabus with any meaningful text...and are frightened by the sight of stacks of blank syllabi...and, thus, incapacitated and incapable of doing their job, so their employment is terminated.

The circle of life.



photo: mije.org

Famous Writers Shirtless: Mark Twain

Writers are never known as the studliest or sexiest of people, but that doesn't stop them from showing some skin for the camera once in awhile.

So, occasionally we'll post some literary beefcake for your perusal.

Today: Mark Twain

It seems fake, right? Mark Twain shirtless in front of the camera, ripped like he just came from Crossfit, but posed like a diplomat.

But, no, apparently it's real. That Grade-A American man meat with enough chest hair to stuff a pillow is indeed Mark Twain.

This settles it then. Mark Twain would win a bare knuckle fight with just about any writer throughout history.

Famous Writers with Cats: Mark Twain

Writers need inspiration somewhere in life, and for many that inspiration comes from their pet cats.

This is a running series where we post pictures of famous writers with their feline companions--the cute, the cuddly, the creepy. And that's just the writers.

Today:  Mark Twain

Weirdest Werther's Original commercial ever.

Give him some sharks with lasers attached to their heads, and Twain looks like a James Bond villain.




Not for nothing, but all of that furniture looks massively uncomfortable. I'm certain no one ever sat in that wannabe wingback chair and spontaneously took a nap because they were in a cozy cocoon of snuggliness.

Morrissey's 'Autobiography' is a classic.

Morrissey is like a poor man's John Lennon, if John Lennon had a froggier voice and better hair. He was the lead singer of The Smiths, a British band hugely popular in their homeland, but D.O.A. in America outside of indie band aficionados and practitioners of crying in the bathroom.

Morrissey's fan base is intense and obsessive, enough that Morrissey can pull some strings with the production of his autobiography, entitled--appropriately enough--Autobiography. Pull what strings, you say? Like having his book published through Penguin Books' Classics imprint, heretofore only known for releasing books known to humanity for generations. Also known as classics.

Penguin created the division nearly 70-years ago when they first published Homer's The Odyssey. In the decades since, every book by Penguin's Classics imprint has been the stuff you read in high school and college, the stuff that win awards and places on book shelves, the stuff by the likes of Francis Bacon, Jane Austen, John Steinbeck... Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mary Wollstonecraft...Julius Caesar, Ovid, and Charles Darwin.

And now, because he demanded, it's also the stuff of Morrissey.

Soon you can spend Mark Twain.

In 2016, Mark Twain will appear on special commemorative $1 and $5 coins, which will be worth their face value--and can be purchased at a surcharge. The profits made from the surcharge will benefit a variety of Twain-related museums and historical locations.

The coins will look great next to my commemorative Sylvia Plath bell jar collection.

Some Famous Writer Once Lived Here: Hannibal, Missouri

Some Famous Writer Once Lived Here is where we check out cities or towns that--you guessed it--a famous writer once lived. Picture the illegitimate lovechild between the US Census report and a tourist pamphlet from a local chamber of commerce. What's it like there today? Here's where we find out.

Today:  Mark Twain once lived in Hannibal, Missouri.

If you've ever wanted to plan a trip to the middle of nowhere, but find Nebraska is just too out of the way--good news! Hannibal, Missouri, exists.

For being such a small town, Hannibal, Missouri, has a disproportionate number of famous former residents. This includes Margaret Brown ("The Unsinkable Milly Brown" of Titanic fame), Ron Powers (Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist), Cliff Edwards (the voice of Disney's Jiminy Cricket), Carroll Beckwith (Impressionist artist), and William Lear (founder of Lear Jets, and creator of the car radio and old 8-Track cassettes).

But Hannibal's heart and tourist tax dollars are built off the back of one Mark Twain, whose family moved to Hannibal when he was four years old. Twain only spent the better part of fourteen years in Hannibal before heading toward more lucrative pastures, but that doesn't dissuade Hannibal from latching onto Twain's name. After all, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are both mirrors on Hannibal. Because if you can't make a buck off being interpreted in a racist 19th-century climate, when can you?


The basics of Hannibal, Missouri:

Location:
With the Mississippi River to the east, Hannibal is roughly 100 miles northwest of St. Louis, 200 miles east of Kansas City, and 300 miles south of Chicago--with all the heart-pounding excitement of wheat crops in between.

Hannibal claims to be 'America's Hometown.' Which is news to America.

2010 Census:
Population: 17,916 people live in Hannibal, an increase of 159 stragglers since the 2000 Census.

Racial Makeup: 88.8% white, 7.1% African American, 0.2% Native American, 0.6% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.5% "other races", and 2.7% respondents declaring themselves as multiple races.

Listen up, single gentlemen: For every 100 female citizens, there are 86.7 males. For every 100 females aged 18 or older, there are 81.8 males. It's like the Missouri version of Swingers, except with less Vince Vaughn.

Financially, money is a little tight in Hannibal. The average median income for a household is $29,892, and $37,264 for a family. The median income for a male is $30,677, and for a female $20,828, showing that the glass ceiling is alive in well in rural Missouri. About 14% of the total population and around 18% of people 18 and younger are under the poverty line--which finally explains why Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn always lacked shoes.


What to see, what to do in Hannibal:

You better love yourself some Mark Twain.

There's the...
Mark Twain Memorial Lighthouse
Mark Twain Cave
Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum
Mark Twain Riverboat
Sawyer's Creek Fun Park
Huckleberry Park
Huckleberry Disc Golf Course
Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn Statue
Mark Twain Statue
Mark Twain Memorial Bridge
...and Tom and Becky appearances, where local children are chosen to portray the characters from Twain's book at local events and in downtown Hannibal on weekends from March to October.

There's a total lack of Bill Lear museums or 8-track cassette player sculpture parks.


Where to eat in Hannibal:
The obligatory Mark Twain-named restaurant exists. Check out the Mark Twain Family Restaurant for the Mark Twain Fried Chicken, homemade root beer, and a Starbucks coffee bar. (I know, I know. I didn't see the Starbucks coming either.)

Drakes Steak & Ale offers casual family dining at fairly affordable prices. Also, it's possibly the only place in America where a Sam Adams and Corona are listed as "specialty beers."

LaBinnah Bistro is somewhat more upscale, and wins bonus points for having the option of translating their website into German, Spanish, or French.


Is there any homage to Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal, Missouri?

No.


Mark Twain's thoughts on his hometown:

"Hannibal has had a hard time of it ever since I can recollect, and I was 'raised' there. First, it had me for a citizen, but I was too young then to really hurt the place."

Banned Books Week: Massachusetts library finally undoes ban of Mark Twain book.

Charlton (MA) Public Library finally reversed their 1906 ban on Mark Twain's book "Eve's Diary"--a book from the perspective of the biblical Eve. The library originally banned it--105 years ago--because it shows the biblical Eve nude. Thank God, too, because Eve was not pleasant to look at nude. Just ask Adam.

If you ever want to increase sales on a book, pick the least known work by a famous author (Eve's whatnow?) and claim it has ruthless nudity. Then sit back and listen as the author laughs.

If you're smart, you realize your mistake before 105 years have passed.






In case you're wondering--yes, that's one of the controversial images from the book. SHIELD YOUR EYES!!! Good lord, she's showing a calf muscle!

To say it...or not to say it?

NewSouth Books is a book publisher located in Montgomery, AL. They're self-described publishers of "regional books of national interest." This would include Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, which they're publishing as a twin-set edition.

They're also making some edits to those books. Yes--we're back at square one with Mark Twain and bad words. Yup, those words.

One is a derogatory word aimed at African Americans. The other is a word used toward Native Americans. What's curious is that this news story by Yahoo on NewSouth's decision chooses to use the Native American slur word--but only alludes to the African American word. Considering it's a news story, Yahoo should just offend all or offend none. (I choose the "offend none" option here, if only because I don't know where FSU's parameters are on this. I don't need that kind of headache.)

NewSouth claims it's a "bold move compassionately advocated by Twain scholar Dr. Alan Gribben," which they are embracing. Depending on your point of view, Twain was either a 19th century Moses or a creator of minstrel shows.

On the other hand, this could all be a marketing ploy to get people to talk about a book that's been published 27 million times already (rough estimate) and generate sales. In which case, I won't be a part of it. I won't let them...aww, wait a minute...