The book is The Diary of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain.
I don't know how many times I have read excerpts from "The Diary of Adam" or "The Diary of Eve"--many, many times--and I have been wanting to read the entire thing for a long time. So why not now?
So I found it at the library just a day or two ago and checked it out. And let me say--it isn't a proper "book"--it's really just a bunch of short stories put together in a book, but oh, is it delightful!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I'm glad you chose this one -- I read it years ago at my mother's encouragement and it is really funny (and sometimes touching). Just a couple of weeks ago I was visiting my folks when their home teachers came to visit, and my mother somehow found occasion to bear her testimony to them of The Diary of Adam and Eve. I look forward to reading it again. It will be a nice comic foil to the male-female relationships in the other book I"m reading right now: Anna Karenina. Yowzers!
Yup, I still love this one. A little orphan, nearly forgotten in Mark Twain's catalog of wild frontier wit. My copy came in the mail the same day that I was in an especially depressing part of Anna Karenina, and I devoured the Diaries before bedtime, like the very Elixir of Hope. It was just the remedy for fickle adulterous lovers, icy inconsiderate husbands, flames of remorse, neglected children. Twain pressed a giant REBOOT button on the Battle of the Sexes and took me back to the beginning. Even then there was confusion and disappointment, apparently, but it was bundled up in a fuzzy blanket of innocence and curiosity, whether about their mysterious pre-assigned mate or fire or fishies. There is misunderstanding, but not guile. Things are what they are, and their names are obvious to Eve -- she is just calling them what they beg to be called. They are equally enthralled by the return of the moon each night and the discovery of a four-leaf clover. It is delightful, as Wynne says. One bit that made me guffaw loud enough to wake the neighbors: "She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it, is afraid she can't raise it, thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get along the best it can with what it is provided. We cannot overturn the whole scheme to accomodate the buzzard." Hee hee.
And also very moving, watching them move from curiosity, to wonder, to coexistence, to love, to the sorrow of separation. It was just a couple of years ago that I saw a documentary on Twain's life and learned how fiercely devoted he was to his wife Livy and how devastated he was when Livy and two of his daughters died in rapid succession and his last daughter had a nervous breakdown. Apparently he modeled Adam and Eve on the personalities of him and his wife during the time that she was struggling with her health.
Anyway, thanks to Wynne for giving me a chance to rediscover this little charmer. Nobody has an excuse for not reading this one if the slow-readin' Marie can finish it in an hour!
(If you can find it, I recommend the Fair Oaks Press edition -- Mark Twain published Adam and Eve stuff in bits and pieces for different publications over the years, and this edition brings them all together. Apparently there's also an award-winning book on tape version of this edition with the voices of Mandy Patinkin and Walter Cronkite.)
I like this book. It's such a nice thing to read. My favorite bit--oh, wait, there were too many favorite bits for there to be just one--fine. One bit that I enjoyed was this: (From "That Day in Eden"--an extract from Satan's diary) Satan has just told Eve that she is beautiful, and she discovers that he is right, and then tells him that Adam is just as beautiful, and proceeds to "show him off" and he "took it all as just a matter of course, and was innocently happy in it, and said, 'When I have flowers on my head, it is better still.'"
Still cracks me up.
And I love how they took such a long time to get used to one another. Adam kept trying to run away from Eve, and she, though she loved him, thought him a bit stupid and incapable. And I like how respect came...slowly, but came.
I suppose there are deeper things to write about--relationships, Twain's views on things like the "Moral Sense," feminine and masculine perspectives, but mostly, I'm taken with the humor. It's very difficult to write humor, and to be able to write humor that can hold up and still be so fresh after 100 years or so...that's phenomenal.
HMMM How did I miss this one? I took a course on the literature of Mark Twain in college and thought I was familiar with everything he wrote. Looks like I have a hole to fill. Thanks for the tip.
And Marie - I'm with you - there are some frightfully depressing parts in Anna Karenina. I'm still mulling over that tale in my head trying to decide how I feel about it.
Post a Comment