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<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
A few words about an underappreciated piece of reading technology. Talking about underlining in books.<\/p>\n
Nobody shows you how to do this, and it\u2019s a pity. You find out quick that if you do it wrong, you ruin the book. If you do it right, though, you create a precious heirloom.<\/p>\n
How do you do it right? Use a ruler, for starters. They make little stubby ones for this purpose. Then there\u2019s the question of where exactly the line should go. Should it touch the bottom of the letters on the line, or should you give it a little space there? Depends.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the ink. When I was first underlining, I didn\u2019t understand. You can\u2019t use inks that are gonna show through. Also, you probably don\u2019t want the ink\u2019s color to dominate the page. Bloodred ballpoints are usually too much. The effect can be as bad as that of a highlighter. And you can\u2019t use pens with runny noses that are gonna form solid droplets at their tips. You can\u2019t, unless you like big ol\u2019 gobs and smears of ink at the end of each stroke.<\/p>\n
Heaven knows not every book asks to be underlined. But heaven is founded on the idea that some books really do demand it. Reading any of these nineteenth-century supremo-supremo novelists without marking the best bits is insanity. You\u2019re going to need those sentences later.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not the first person to point out that the onionskin paper used in the Library of America hardcover series is a bummer. You dare not write anything on those pages. Maybe somebody\u2019s figured out a way to do it without making a mess, but I\u2019ve never been able to. I thought I had found a suitable ink, because the show-through seemed minimal at first, but then later I checked back and was not satisfied. It\u2019s how I wrecked my copy of Mark Twain\u2019s Mississippi Writings<\/em>.<\/p>\nFor years, I longed to replace that copy, but I couldn\u2019t bear to part with the only record I had of my selection of choice sentences, which record I really did consult, from time to time. The problem was compounded when I was driven, much against my will, to the conclusion that the right way to read most if not all of Twain\u2019s writings is by studying the volumes in the Oxford Mark Twain series. And why? Because the Oxfords have all the original illustrations, which, in case after case, are A#1 and not to be missed. The LOA has none of these.<\/p>\n
So. When we moved down here to Texas, my library was in crisis. Even after the mother of all purges, we had around two hundred 16 x 16 x 16 boxes of books\u2014i.e., a solid cube the size of a prison cell. One of the items that was purged was my LOA Mississippi Writings<\/em>, but not before I opened my laptop and transcribed everything I had underlined. It wasn\u2019t that much stuff after all.<\/p>\nIn a moment, I\u2019m handing those cherry-picked selections off to you. The page numbers below refer to the vanished LOA edition, so I have no way of checking to see if they\u2019re accurate. Someone in Chicago, I suppose, now owns the very copy I\u2019m talking about, with the original underlinings. To that person I say, Hello and I\u2019m sorry for messing up your copy. I didn\u2019t know what I was doing.<\/p>\n
As for the context for the following sentences, you probably don\u2019t need any. Mark Twain was a riverboat pilot? For like a minute? When he was young? Anyway, that\u2019s what he\u2019s talking about. For the reader who examines this selection and finds it as droll and enjoyable as I do, and is consequently wondering if the book is like this, floor to ceiling, I had better say: it isn\u2019t. There are slow parts. There are even parts where you\u2019re like, Enough already. But on the whole, it\u2019s up there with Connecticut Yankee<\/em> and Innocents Abroad<\/em> and that kind of thing.<\/p>\nSELECTED SENTENCES<\/p>\n
p. 255<\/p>\n
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the power of life and death over all men and could hang anybody that offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing; but the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 263<\/p>\n
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh\u2014this thing of getting up in the middle of the night to go to work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 290<\/p>\n
Whar \u2019n the \u2014\u2014\u2014 you goin\u2019 to! Cain\u2019t you see nothin\u2019, you dash-dashed aig-suckin\u2019, sheep-stealin\u2019, one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 293<\/p>\n
Behind other islands we found wretched little farms, and wretcheder little log-cabins; there were crazy rail fences sticking a foot or two above the water, with one or two jeans-clad, chills-racked, yellow-faced male miserables roosting on the top-rail, elbows on knees, jaws in hands, grinding tobacco and discharging the result at floating chips through crevices left by lost teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 331<\/p>\n
One more moment later a long array of stage-planks was being hauled in, each with its customary latest passenger clinging to the end of it with teeth, nails, and everything else, and the customary latest procrastinator making a wild spring shoreward over his head.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 339<\/p>\n
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old O\u00f6litic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 351<\/p>\n
But I was not afraid of him now; so, instead of going, I tarried, and criticized his grammar; I reformed his ferocious speeches for him, and put them into good English, calling his attention to the advantage of pure English over the bastard dialect of Pennsylvanian collieries whence he was extracted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 361<\/p>\n
After twenty-one years\u2019 absence, I felt a very strong desire to see the river again, and the steamboats, and such of the boys as might be left; so I resolved to go out there. I enlisted a poet for company, and a stenographer to \u201ctake him down,\u201d and started westward about the middle of April.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 364<\/p>\n
Here was a thing that had not changed; a score of years had not affected this water\u2019s mulatto complexion in the least; a score of centuries would succeed no better, perhaps. It comes out of the turbulent, bank-caving Missouri, and every tumblerful of it holds nearly an acre of land in solution. I got this fact from the bishop of the diocese. If you will let your glass stand half an hour, you can separate the land from the water as easy as Genesis; and then you will find them both good: the one good to eat, the other good to drink.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 441<\/p>\n
These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and lawless; whereas \u201cthe truth is, they are feeble, insignificant in size, diffident to a fault, sensitive\u201d\u2014and so on, and so on; you would have supposed he was talking about his family. But if he was soft on the Arkansas mosquitoes, he was hard enough on the mosquitoes of Lake Providence to make up for it …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 460<\/p>\n
Bracketed over what-not\u2014place of special sacredness\u2014an outrage in water-color, done by the young niece that came on a visit long ago, and died. Pity, too; for she might have repented of this in time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 479<\/p>\n
The adoption of cremation would relieve us of a muck of threadbare burial-witticisms; but, on the other hand, it would resurrect a lot of mildewed old cremation-jokes that have had a rest for two thousand years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 481<\/p>\n
But you used to look sad and oldish; you don\u2019t now. Where did you get all this youth and bubbling cheerfulness? Give me the address.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 481<\/p>\n
Go-way! How you talk!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 493<\/p>\n
I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 497\u201398<\/p>\n
\nTwo red-hot steamboats raging along, neck-and-neck, straining every nerve\u2014that is to say, every rivet in the boilers\u2014quaking and shaking and groaning from stem to stern, spouting white steam from the pipes, pouring black smoke from the chimneys, raining down sparks, parting the river into long breaks of hissing foam\u2014this is sport that makes a body\u2019s very liver curl in enjoyment.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
p. 507<\/p>\n
The sail up the breezy and sparkling river was a charming experience, and would have been satisfyingly sentimental and romantic but for the interruptions of the tug\u2019s pet parrot, whose tireless comments upon the scenery and the guests were always this-worldly, and often profane. He had also a superabundance of the discordant, ear-splitting, metallic laugh common to his breed,\u2014a machine-made laugh, a Frankenstein laugh, with the soul left out of it. He applied it to every sentimental remark, and to every pathetic song.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 514<\/p>\n
The off-watch turned out with alacrity, and left the bear in sole possession. He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation. He ranged the whole boat\u2014visited every part of it, with an advance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voiceless vacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last, those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody else was in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
p. 549<\/p>\n
If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him. The Model Boy of my time\u2014we never had but the one\u2014was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
<\/p>\n
Anthony Madrid lives in Victoria, Texas. His second book is\u00a0<\/em>Try Never<\/a>. He is a correspondent for the\u00a0<\/em>Daily.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few words about an underappreciated piece of reading technology. Talking about underlining in books. Nobody shows you how to do this, and it\u2019s a pity. You find out quick that if you do it wrong, you ruin the book. If you do it right, though, you create a precious heirloom. How do you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31215],"tags":[5145,33998,1766,33999,18424],"class_list":["post-125134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-books","tag-life-on-the-mississippi","tag-loa-mississippi","tag-mark-twain","tag-mark-twains-mississippi-writings","tag-underlining"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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