Drinking Whiskey with Mark Twain

Sylvia Plath once wrote (in The Bell Jar) something to the effect that she “didn’t want to be the place the arrow shoots off from,” she wanted to be the arrow. Probably, I have that completely wrong and should have checked with the much-to-be-mistrusted Wikipedia pages for some facts. However, in a few rare cases (this as example) facts may be over-rated and not particularly helpful.

I like this quote as I have it imagined. I am not, personally, convinced that I wish to be the arrow or even the point from whence it came. Only this: better to be the arrow or the place from whence it came than to be the place where the arrow finds its mark. I have no desire to be the target. And, while at this, we might be best to ignore that Sylvia Plath suicided by means of sticking her head in an oven and sucking in only carbon monoxide.

Details. How they ugly-up everything, as do the facts certain.

Another pesky detail of note is that I have an electric oven, which might preclude anyone form suiciding in a similar fashion in my house.

As you have most likely surmised, I can misquote with the very best of them. I love to get Mark Twain wrong. Even when you get him correct, he sounds wrong, at a minimum, and cruel at the extreme. Twain also had an aversion for always spelling words correctly.

Well, I am going to imagine that also.

He once said: “I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.”

Twain would give a damn about me. I have a flare for misspelling. I imagine that we—Mark Twain and I—might share a drink of whiskey and yell at children for short-cutting across the lawn. I see us in rocking chairs with bad gray hair and a wicker table between us, cursing about these ridiculous laws that don’t allow you to shoot other people in the ass occasionally.

I have a favorite story about Mark Twain. At the apex of his career, Twain earned something near a dollar for every word he wrote—a considerable sum even today, over one-hundred years later. Hearing about this, someone wrote a letter asking Twain for his “best” word. They enclosed a dollar inside the envelope. A return letter soon appeared with a single word and Mark Twain’s signature. “Thanks,” the letter said.

--Mitchell Hegman