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Show Monday, January 22, 1996 THE DAILY HERALD, Provo, Utah Page C5 reveass a differ By MICHELLE LOCKE Associated Press Writer BERKELEY, Calif. It was 1870 and the fledgling author four days a married man was boasting of his wedded state in a letter to a friend. "I am 34 & she is 24; I am young & very handsome (I make the statement with the fullest fidence, for I got it from her,)" he wrote. "She is the very most perfect gem of womankind that ever I saw in my life & I will stand by that remark till I die." The writer was that famously irascible American man of letters, Mark Twain. The subject of his raptures was n the love of his life his wife. Letters written around the time of Twain's marriage reveal new dimensions to the sometimes shadowy figure of his lifelong partner. "The old image of her was of ... little-know- your typical fainting Victorian woman with kind of continuing hysterical illnesses, and that was combined with the sense of her as someone who repressed her husband," said Michael B. Frank, with Victor Fischer of a new volume of Twain letters. "In fact, we now know that none of that is accurate. She was co-edit- or really quite a robust, active woman with a lively mind and they had a great and strong marriage in which he regarded her as his intellectual partner as much as anything else." "She really wasn't this proponent of Victorian gentility," agreed Laura Skandera-frombleauthor of "Mark Twain in the Company of Women," which examined the influence of the women surrounding Twain. In fact, "Mark Twain's Letters: Vol. 4," published by the University of California Press, portrays a y, vibrant between partnership Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, and his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens. "I am glad & proud that my little wife takes such an interest in my scribblings," Twain wrote to Olivia in January 1870, a month before they were actually married. Six days after the wedding, he dashed off a note to an acquaintance: "Am just married, & don't take an interest in anything out of doors," with "any" emphasized. To Olivia's parents, he wrote tongue-in-chee- k of tamer pursuits. & every now "I read poetry & then I come to a passage that brings the tears to my eyes, & I look up to her for loving sympathy, & she inquires whether they sell sirloin steaks by the pound or by the yard." Olivia was a bit more formal in her letters home, referring to her new husband as "Mr. Clemens." But she, too, alludes to married happiness, telling her parents four days after the wedding: "The time of not eating and not sleeping has we eat gone by for both of us and sleep now ..." Passion among Victorians shouldn't be a surprise, said Frank, noting that "every generation thinks it invented sex." "What surprised me is the candor about it," he said. The book, which covers 1870-7is the latest installment from the University of California at Berkeley's Mark Twain Project, at work on a vast collection of Twain papers willed to the university in . 1, 1962. In addition to the portrait of home life, there are glimpses of the author. In January 1870, he writes: "My book is waltzing me out of debt so fast that I shan't owe any man a cent by this time next year." He goes on to say, "I mean to write another book during the summer. This one has proven such a surprising success that I feel encour- aged." The book was "The Innocents Abroad." The next work turned out to be "Roughing It." "The great thing about looking buck into this period is we know who he's going to be, but he doesn't," said Jeffrey Steinbrink, professor of English at Franklin and hot-selli- Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa. "For anybody who would care to sit down and read Mark Twain's mail over his shoulder this is t - it," said Steinbrink, author of "Getting to Be Mark Twain." "They're just wonderful pieces of writing ... he could have an off day, but he didn't have many." Twain's tart wit enlivens even routine notes. In a complaint to a company that was late in sending Twain books he'd requested, he writes: "Will you be so kind as to kill the person who is to blame, & appoint a more reliable officer in the murdered man's place? We do not like to intrude, but really it is utterly impossible to get along without books." In another, he pans Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe," with the caustic observation, "All the characters are well sustained, especially that of the Atlantic Ocean. "Despite their happy honeymoon, there were tragic passages for the Twains in the years 1870-7Olivia's father died and, soon after, a friend visiting them came down with typhoid and died in their home. Olivia later almost miscarried and eventually gave birth to a frail son who died at 20 months. Three months after giving birth, she nearly died herself of typhoid. "I cannot go into particulars the subject is too dreadful," Twain says in one letter written while Olivia was ill. But many of the letters celebrate happier moments, such as a missive purporting to be from the 1. new baby to his grandmother, complaining, "I am not entirely satisfied with my complexion. I am as red as a lobster." Some of the funniest letters were written in tandem by the AP Photo' newlyweds. In one, Twain boasts that he has got his wife trained so that "she tones down and (almost, crossed out) stops talking ... at the word of command." "I deny it, I am woman's rights," Olivia retorts in an insert. undated photograph of Olivia Langdon Clemens lies on a copy of the new book, "Mark Twain's Letters: Vol. 4" (University of California Press 1995) at the University of California in Berkeley, Calif., in December 1995. Letters published in the book writ-- ; ten around the time of Twain's marriage reveal new; dimensions to the sometimes shadowy figure of! Olivia, who was his lifelong companion. An Another letter ends with a series of mock-battlin- g postscripts. "Go to bed. Woman! S." "I am not sleepy. L." "This it is to be married." Woe is me! this "Yes indeed it is to be married. L." "Go S." Salman Rushdie's latest book tells the tale of a man named Moor By CARUN ROMANO Newspapers Knight-Ridd- . Like a certain diminutive tin drummer imagined by Gunter Grass, Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, -'- iiarrator of Salman Rushdie's extravagantly concocted new novel, must be believed to be seen lis well as heard and understood. ' "Six foot six in a country where Jlie average male rarely grows jibove five foot five," born to his after her tlashing 4 12 of months, only pregnancy afflicted with a deformed artist-moth- er "tree-stum- p" right hand and an accelerated-aging disease that makes him look and feel twice his age, this heir to one of India's great fortunes not to mention requires advice the start. from indulgence And the advice he gets appears to have originated rather close to home. At age 5 (though looking 10), young Moraes is taken by his mother, the spectacular beauty and acclaimed painter Aurora Zogoiby, for an audience with the boy guru Lord Khusro Khusrovani Bhag-wa- n aboard a luxury yacht anchored in Bombay harbor. The magic child looks at Moraes with "grave, sad, intelligent eyes," and speaks. "Embrace your fate," he said. "Rejoice in what gives you grief. That which you would flee, turn and run towards it with all your heart. Only by becoming your misfortune will you transcend it." "Lord Khusro," Moraes recalls much later, chronicling the tortale of his y tured, that I lesson a me family, "taught liave often, in my life, been obliged to learn again ..." " the embracing By lost "I he declares, inescapable," my fear of it. I'll tell you a secret about fear: It's an absolutist. With fear, it's all or nothing. Either, like any, bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes in a puff of smoke. "And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendeiing of that tawdry despot's fall, has more or less nothing to do with 'courage.' It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life. I stopped being afraid because, if my time on earth was limited, I didn't have seconds to until sp.ire for funk. ... 'I must live Ayatollah Khomeini with its supposed blasphemy against Islam. But if that's so, Rushdie's absorption of the message easily overshadows his use of it. Moraes' reflection comes on Page 163 of so accomplished an effort in tragic-magrealism, so colossal a feat of flashy novelistic wizardry, that a critic can barely wrest the confession away from Moraes before the character pulls it back into the colorful complications of his own life. Rushdie's literary courage his willingness to confront the powerful and foolish, his mastery of that peculiar polyglottal form of Indian English known as Angrezi still flourishes. If Iran sought to crush his spirit and talent with its edict, it utterly failed. In "The Moor's Last Sigh," the author's most kaleidoscopic and brilliant novel since his classic "Midnight's Children" (1980), Rushdie the storyteller achieves the He banishes Rushdie the victim to some corner of the foreign pages, behind the glow of his undimmed art. ic Like "Midnight's Children," "The Moor's Last Sigh" is an epic contemplation of hybrid, volatile Mother India, "who loved and betrayed and ate and destroyed and again loved her children." Here we experience it through the family "Moor," history of the "the only male heir to the of the da y of dynasty Cochin. Actually, Moraes explains, the family tale dates back to 1492, when the narrator's putative ancestor, Sultan Boabdil, abandoned the Alhambra in Spain, ending centuries of Muslim rule in Iberia. The "Moor" traces his lineage to Moorish Jews produced by Boab-dilassignation with a Jewish Gama-Zogoib- 's overground and underground activities from his I.M. Cashondeliviri Tower. Mother Aurora is the country's most famous painter and sharpest ed tongue, a woman who considers "weak man" a tautological phrase. His three older sisters Ina, Minhave become, nie and Mynah respectively, a nymphomaniac country singer, a nun, and a radical lawyer who seeks to protect India's "invisi- woman exiled in the same year. bles." Then there's Uma, who says she loves the Moor, but clearly can't be trusted. And the vulgar popular painter Vasco Miranda, an acolyte of Aurora and endless dispenser of pop wisdom. His definition of democracy is "one man, one bribe." Miranda firmly believes that "corruption" is the only social force that can defeat fanaticism. He offers an "Indian variation" on f, peg-legg- a stuffed dog on wheels named for Nehru, a ace detective and a beauty queen named Nadia Wadia share space with watery suicides, dying curses, rapes, murders, immolation, smuggling, sexual abuse, child prostitution, nude modeling, terrorist bombing, arms trading, assassination, miscegenation, disinheritance, and love at first sight. so-L-." S.'-- ' When was the last: time you: IS - 4 Caressed tier neck? t, pirate-assistan- ld Puta rose between your teeth, ; Twice The Service "Carl & Doitis" Thcrnhill Coldwtll Banker Wert Realty 489-48- Watched videos without the Zolleij Sumphon irauna CMtlU koncevt 1996 (ids-- ; Jan. 24, Wednesday and Jan. 25, Thursday, 7:30 P.M., Provo Tabernacle PROGRAM ORDER Camille Morceau de Concert for Horn and Orchestra F. Ryan Johnson, Horn (SmdrntofKathyCoIton) Camille Third Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Molto moderato e maestoso Michael Abegg, Violin Michael Johnson Abegg (Siudcm of Ruik SMaIM Christopher Holmes, Voice Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Allegro (StudemofCyniliiiRichjuds) Mindy Fackrell, Violin Orchestra for Viola and Folk of Tunes Rhapsody Dianna Rhodes, viola (SiuJcm of David DJton) Conductor and Musical Director Saint-Saen- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Allfpo maestoso Kaiotini Unga Latu, Piano (Student of Piano Concerto in E Christopher Holmes Allcpo dexiso ilia Hone, Mindy Feckrelt Piano Rhapsody in Blue Daniel Gledhill, Piano ln (Smdcm of Irene , 1 111 Tiber Serly Dianna Rhodes General Admission Students & Seniors .......... $4 Parking Available at NuSkin Parking Tarracs FZFl Py) I Wo te up Kaiotini Unga Latu jri 'IPSi to : breakfast in bed?; -- rry) Try a Bed - Moriti Moszkowski . silk pajamas, Samuel Barber Felix Mendelssohn Capriccio Brillante Camilyn Bacon, Piano in s Intermission-Conc- erto for Piano and Orchestra No. 21 Slept Dr. Clyn D. Barrus s Cioacchino Rossini "La Calunnia" from the Barber of Seville Ryan Saint-Saen- (SiudtniofJickAjhion) & Breakfast Weekeh Getaway, only $64. i ($uduofifMPy) George Gershwin (Student of Irene Pery die."' Ventriloquism aside, it sounds like a pep talk from the nairator-in-ihiestill keeping a few steps ahead of the "faiwa," or death sentence, imposed on him by Iraa iifier his earlier novel, "The Satanic Verses" (1988), offended the Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: "Everything is for relative. Not only light bends, but everything," The dynamism of the story emerges from Rushdie's seemingly limitless ability to pile details, gambits and historical follies upon one another without losing either plot coherence or overarching themes. Drag queens, Indian Lenin a impersonators, r Utah . I i That family tree, he surmises, also involves Vasco da Gama, Nehru, and the Jews of Cochin, who came to India in A.D. 72. Tracking family details back to the marriage of Francisco da Gama and Epifania Menezes, Moraes spins a tale of family feuds and vendettas that suggest the tense, brawling divisions of Indian society. By the time multi-centur- I the story arrives at the present, our Moor is trying to make sense of his immediate family. Abraham, his nonreligious Jewish father, is one of the country's business magnates, running, both "I don't think "Well, take the last word. Welcome to Utah Valley Symphony Tune Une 345-TUN- E (8853 Camilyn Bacon Cecelia Hone Daniel Gledhill Please, No Babies or Children Under 6 J i provo in PARKHOTCL ill1 |
