Nicolas Lirio (00:00.44) Yeah, yeah. Nicolas Lirio (00:07.532) Alright, I'll have ya. Mark, how do you want to be addressed? Mark Schneider (00:11.308) Doctor? No, just just Mark is totally fine. No, I don't even have a couch to go. Nicolas Lirio (00:17.879) Dude, good for you. Me either. That's awesome. Kent Boucher (00:24.418) Sure. Mic check, mic check. Mark Schneider (00:25.634) Check, check, one, two, Mark Schneider, development and marketing manager. Nicolas Lirio (00:30.028) I both of you guys now. I'm going to talk just second. Perfect. We're all rolling cameras. We'll do one last. Cause it sucks. Mark Schneider (00:40.75) Yeah, up and down that road. Nicolas Lirio (00:49.74) Okay, whenever you are. yeah, it's my secret stash. whenever you're ready, the intro for you will be your name, your title, and this is the Prairie Farm podcast. So mine would be, hi, this is Nicholas Lirio, CEO of Hoxie Native Seeds, and this is the Prairie Farm podcast. Great. So whenever you're ready, and if you would look at the camera, give a beat, say it, give a beat, still looking at the camera, and then we can. Kent Boucher (00:51.458) pockets flying away. Nicolas Lirio (01:19.916) start or cut or whatever. Sure. And you can do it 100 times if you need to. Mark Schneider (01:25.004) This is Mark Schneider with the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum. I'm sorry, we start that over already. I'll start that right off. Did you say to say my title or just the place? All right. I'm Mark Schneider, the development and marketing manager of the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in Hannibal, Missouri. And this is the Prairie Farm Podcast. Nicolas Lirio (01:35.096) No, no, title. Nicolas Lirio (01:46.466) Brilliant. Brilliant. Alrighty. And they're not farts. It's just the chair. Just the chair. Mark Schneider (01:53.038) Alright. Nicolas Lirio (01:58.296) Yeah, there we We had like thoughtful questions for an intro, yeah, we'll talk about fart. Kent Boucher (02:03.47) That would not be uncommon. Mark Schneider (02:06.19) Mark Twain would probably be happy about that. He was a big, he was a humorist above all else. Mark Twain was a humorist. And if you look at his writings, although they do carry, you know, they do carry issues and a voice and a certain tone with them, but above all, he loved to be funny. He loved making people laugh. Probably loved making himself laugh more than anybody else, but. Nicolas Lirio (02:08.29) Big parka Mark Schneider (02:34.978) He was a humorist. That's why there's the Mark Twain Prize for American humor still presented today. so his lectures, when he traveled the world, he would go and do lectures. And those lectures were essentially stand-up comedy specials before there was such a thing. He would go to Europe. He would travel all over Asia, Africa. And he would do these things. He would literally go into these halls and talk for hours on end. I mean you would walk away with more quotes than you could possibly stand. So a lot of people know him for the him as the author but he truly was an international celebrity that traveled the world and made people laugh. Nicolas Lirio (03:18.382) Was there any predecessor of quote-unquote comedian before him? Mark Schneider (03:23.218) I mean, obviously there was comedy. there was obviously theater and things of those natures. was, there was literature and all of that kind of stuff. and I'm sure that there were great, I mean, Mark Twain himself was fans of other speech givers and things like that. but, as far as the reach that he had, the connection that he had with people all over the world, he was a very rare talent indeed. And it's still recognized. hundreds of years later, you know, currently. his voice still rings true and says things that even address issues we see in today's climate. he's, and again, I think that's because it was mainly around humor. He wanted to find the funny in all things. And so he often made fun of politics and religion and pretty much anything that you could. do. He probably has a quote about it and you know he just he loved to point out the humor in life and that's really what his focus was. Nicolas Lirio (04:30.562) You know, there's like, there's this self-awareness and comedians today and they kind of talk about needing attention and stuff like that. Did he have like an attention issue? Mark Schneider (04:40.11) He definitely did. He was born into a family in a time where kids, 50 % of the children didn't live past the age of nine. So back in the early 1800s, mid 1800s, you're talking about a mortality rate where parents expected to lose half the children they had. He had older sisters, he had a younger brother. He saw siblings pass away before they became adults and he was a sickly child. He actually asked his mother in an interview after he was a grown man and had started to gain fame, were you worried that I would die? And her answer was, I was worried that you would live. And so he obviously came from a funny background, a family that had to find humor in life. They were an extremely poor family. They did not have money. They did not have a lot. And so he was very much at that cusp of lower middle class back in that time. They did not have the means to really be of a certain social class or standing. And so they found humor where they could. His dad was a very staunch and serious man. He was the justice of the peace in this area while they were here. But his mom was a social hostess that loved to have tea parties and have people over no matter if they had furniture or not. And so, you know, he came from that background and saw that humor helped his family get through tough times. And obviously being a somewhere in the middle child of a large family with very little to offer. He wanted that attention and when he saw himself getting attention, especially that he could gain fame and fortune from that attention, then yeah, mean he was meticulous about his public image and how people saw him and he wanted that attention very, very badly. So that was definitely something that... Nicolas Lirio (06:54.798) Pretty open about that. Mark Schneider (06:56.078) I think if you read his autobiography, I think you'll get the hint. It's three volumes long. put a stipulation on it that could not be released until a hundred years after his death. So, yeah, he thirsted for the attention. said you. Yeah. Yeah. mean, he now. yeah. Nicolas Lirio (07:16.366) You'll remember me. Nicolas Lirio (07:20.376) Did they follow that? Mark Schneider (07:22.39) Yeah, yeah, and some of that he said, you know, I don't want any retail. I'm going to say things. I don't want retaliation against family members and stuff. But he didn't even have he doesn't have a direct living or living descendant now. So no, I mean, there's family of the Clemens and things. But as far as his direct family, all of his family's gone, he didn't have any surviving grandkids or anything like that. So he definitely wanted that attention. He thrived on it and yeah, that came honestly and earnestly to him. Nicolas Lirio (07:55.63) Was he, was he, I mean, you've studied this guy a bunch. Would you classify him as a good person? Mark Schneider (08:03.116) He was a good person. He made his mistakes just like anybody else in life, but he was a good person. He was a devoted family man. He loved his family. Even as a child, he was very devoted to his family. He had a younger brother, Henry, who he convinced to join him on the river, on a riverboat. He was a riverboat pilot, and he convinced Henry to join a crew. His brother died on a riverboat explosion. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, was supposed to be on that riverboat with him and had gotten in an argument with the captain of the boat beforehand. And so he switched to a different boat. So he took that very, very personally. He felt very guilty about that. Later in life, his son Langdon died after they went out for an evening stroll. and he died of pneumonia and Mark Twain convinced himself that it was his fault that he didn't bundle the baby up enough and that it was too cold for them to be out anyway and so he took that very very personally because he was a very devoted family man. He had a daughter die later in life of illness and he was in Europe when he got word that she was dying most of the family was in Europe. She stayed behind because she was in the early stages of not doing well. He got word that she was, time was short. He got on a boat to come back to America and found out halfway back that she had passed. So he wasn't in Europe with his family. He wasn't in America with his daughter. He took that very, very harshly. And again, humor was his escape for these things. The way that he felt about these things, you know, for him humor was that escape. And that's why he... wrote the way he did and spoke the way he did and his ideas were the way they were is because he was a very good person and when bad things happened he took that very harshly and so his best way to deal with those things was to laugh and to make other people laugh. Nicolas Lirio (10:12.638) Interesting. You know, they say that comedians are particularly sensitive. and to be a good comedian, you have to be really sensitive to how people feel. People think about things and probably really intelligent, which also makes it a lot worse because you are very, you're more sensitive to when people boo you off stage or, know, but it does seem like, Samuel Clemens was a very sensitive. Mark Schneider (10:38.86) He was a very sensitive human and he even in his adult life, for instance, a lot of people might hang the racist tag on Mark Twain's writings because of use of slang and things of that nature. He did use those words in his book for reasons, for effect and for purpose and for you to understand. the situation that he grew up in, the state that he grew up in, the community that he grew up in, the church that he grew up in, all of those things. He wants you to understand that that was his background for then what he became. Huck Finn is a story of, I don't like to use the word redemption, but it was a young white boy trying to fight over everything that he was taught in life to help a man of a different color. And so, He really, that was a self-reflection. He later in life would do things like he helped a young Yale law student pay for three years of board at Yale Law, a young man by the name of Warner T. McGuinn. He was a black law student. He became a lawyer in Baltimore. He fought Baltimore, the city of Baltimore, on segregated housing, public housing. He successfully won that case. He also shared an office with a young Thurgood Marshall who would go on to be a US Supreme Court justice. him and Warner T. McGuinn, they kept their friendship throughout Mark Twain's life. He told the Dean of Students at Yale at the time that this dean came to him and said, this young man could use help. He's staying with the, I think he was staying with the groundskeeper. at Yale. That was where he was sleeping and working jobs just to pay and was struggling. And the Dean of Students at Yale said, you know, he could use help. And Mark Twain said, if it was a white student, I wouldn't do it. But we owe this to the black community. We owe it to this man because we've beaten down these people to the point that they have no hope left. And so we owe it to them to do this. And so he very much took that on. Mark Schneider (13:00.142) And he did that for a few people. So yeah, he was a very good man with a good heart. Kent Boucher (13:06.154) That's a great thing to bring up because an interesting fact is that we're in Missouri right now. I mean, could look probably out one of these windows and see Illinois. And Illinois was very much a non-slave state, as a free state. And Missouri, well, a little bit, is one of the worst places to be during the Civil War. Mark Schneider (13:31.149) or no. Nicolas Lirio (13:31.672) You'll compromise. Kent Boucher (13:32.556) I had heard that, you know, in Kansas as well, you bleeding Kansas and, and, but I didn't really appreciate it until I read, or listened to rather, TJ styles book on Jesse James, the last rebel and however bad you thought Missouri was, you, you literally had neighbors that were Mark Schneider (13:55.18) It was worse. Yeah. Kent Boucher (14:00.8) violently divided over the issue of slavery to the point where they would kill each other. They'd turn you into whichever military, you know, detachment that was on their side and you'd be harassed by them. In fact, that's really what is believed to have radicalized the James family. So, you know, both Frank and Jesse James is their treatment by the, it's actually the union. Army they they kind of a pseudo hanging of their stepdad and and It it pushed them down the row of running with Quantrill and bloody Bill Anderson and and just all cold-blooded murder that was associated with that and Here you have Samuel Clemens Mark Twain growing up in that environment and From what he wrote especially in Huck Finn It seems, and the evidence of him supporting, what was his name? Warner T. McWinn. It seems that he probably already had sensitivity towards, I don't think the slavery thing is necessarily the right answer to this. But you were saying earlier his family owned a Mark Schneider (15:05.644) Warner T. McQuinn. Mark Schneider (15:23.34) Yes, his Missouri was settled by people from Virginia, Tennessee, southern states. They came to Missouri for cheap land and settled Missouri and they brought with them the practice of slavery and antebellum, which is why when you look up and down Main Street and Hannibal, it looks like you're looking up and down a southern downtown like New Orleans or something like that. So they brought that all of that culture with them. And so the Clemens His dad came from a family that owned slaves and owned land in the South. His mother, same thing. They came from prominent families that owned people and obviously enslaved them. So when they came to Missouri, did. Samuel Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, which is about an hour from Hannibal and Monroe County, Missouri. They came to Hannibal for land and John Clemens wanted to run a business. He wanted to be a businessman of standing. So they did own slaves. I will say that slavery in Missouri, especially Northeast Missouri, where we're at now, was a little bit of a different institution. Because of its location, obviously next to all these northern states and things of that nature, it wasn't so much working fields and things of that doing major physical labor because one, the people here didn't have the money for it and they weren't producing like they were in the south with southern cash crops like cotton and things like that. So that's not where money was. So most people that owned slaves, it was more of a domestic situation. They took care of the home, they cooked, they cleaned, they lived in much poorer state than the family and things like that. So Not that it was any better or any worse. It was just a different situation. Mark Twain's home, Samuel Clemens, the Clemens home here in Hannibal was literally two blocks away from the river. So Samuel Clemens saw ships up and down the Mississippi River in the 1800s bringing all kinds of entertainment, goods, everything up and down the river. The Mississippi River was a very important thoroughfare for goods. Mark Schneider (17:48.748) that included people that included enslaved colored people. Two blocks from his home, he could see people in shackles waiting to get on the ship to go south. He would later say it's the saddest faces he ever saw in his life. This is as a boy. His dad was the justice of the peace area and rarely did he see justice done towards people of color. He saw a murder in the streets and saw nothing done about it. So he Kent Boucher (18:04.93) Yeah. Kent Boucher (18:11.864) Yeah. Kent Boucher (18:16.302) Hmm. Mark Schneider (18:19.424) was very sensitive to those things. But you have to understand church was telling him slavery was moral. School was telling him slavery was right. All of these places that he was going, slavery was part of his culture. Right. But he would see minstrels, black minstrels come off these boats who were not enslaved people. They were performers going up river to perform somewhere North. Kent Boucher (18:34.316) true brain Mark Schneider (18:47.826) And he obviously saw enslaved people go across to Illinois. Newspapers of the time, if you go back and read, they would call them slave stampeds, where multiple slaves from different families, different ownership, would all get together. And when I say all, I mean like 11 people would get together and get over to Illinois, over to Quincy, through Menden, up to Chicago, and disperse. Kent Boucher (19:17.11) And that was their way of escaping. Mark Schneider (19:18.206) That was their way of escaping to freedom. you could literally, I mean, I could spit to Illinois right now if I wanted to. It's not that far. We can see it. There's an island in between. So it was a tempting proposal for anyone. very much so. Quincy's full of spots like the Dr. Yiel's house and things that are all underground railroad locations. Kent Boucher (19:33.294) The Underground Railroad? Oh yeah. Kent Boucher (19:43.31) You know. Mark Schneider (19:45.678) Not that I'm personally aware of, I'm sure there was. This area, when you look at it, this area was particularly kind of the middle and really became quite a hub, a commercial hub of goods and things because it does have a central location on the Mississippi River. The river's wide here, there's bays, there's islands, there are places where you can dock a ship, there's all these kind of things. It's also the middle of the country. So once you get to the middle of the river, you can disperse out from there people coming across East to West would get to the river dump their goods because they couldn't get him across the river and go and so this place Has a lot of history in it because this was a meeting place for people going west It was a meeting place for people going north. It was a meeting place for people going south. So it really was this culmination of A very small town. mean, you're talking well, they called it a city of 2000, maybe 2500 at the time. But yet quite an array of life coming in and out of the place. So he I mean, literally, if you stood at his front door, you can see the river. There was a pork processing plant up the road. So most mornings would be met with pork coming down the road. It was a dirt road at the time if you were lucky enough to have it only be dirt. so, you know, he saw there was no zoning. was he saw life. He saw everything happen right outside of his door, right on the Mississippi River. That's why he wanted to be a riverboat pilot. He saw a riverboat pilot as the only truly free man in America. Arrow. He was. Nicolas Lirio (21:31.95) he was like Jack Sparrow. He thought it was just freedom. also like that you said there was no zoning and he saw life like the opposite of having a life is municipal zoning. I have experienced that. I think that's why I his like growing up and and becoming who he was. There's actually a book about it. Something a lighter something I forget, but it It's our whole argument is talking about him out West and basically it stops when he's like 30 or 35 when he starts becoming a writer. Was writing always a part of it because he wasn't it wasn't like a famous writer till you know three to four decades into his life. Mark Schneider (22:19.438) Writing was always a part of it. His first job was at the age of 13. His father died. He needed to get to work to help the family. He was a printer's apprentice. So he set print for the printers. He would print papers. His brother, Orion, would come to own newspapers and he would write for Orion, often unpaid as a young teenager or late teens, early 20s. he wrote all the time and he would even write, like I said, he was a humorist. So he would write articles that never happened. He would say, expected to happen this afternoon, a boat will crash on the Mississippi river. Three people will perish, but they would always have a funny, you know, the reverend so-and-so will take up collections. He would always have a twinge to the article. Always writing under a pen name never under Samuel Clemens, but he would always write. He would write for his brother and not get paid. He would later go up to Keokuk and write Keokuk, Iowa. He would obviously, like you said, there's plenty of places in Iowa that have a Twain connection because he wrote for newspapers up there. Matter of fact, I don't know if it's exactly what you're the book roughing it was him and his brother's trip out West. His brother was appointed appointed the governor elect of Nevada. So he said, come with me. And essentially what roughing it was, the book was a collection of articles that he wrote, I believe for Harper's magazine. He wrote a lot of articles for Harper's magazine about traveling. He loved travel, travel to him. There was no sure way to tell if you liked someone or hated them than by traveling with them. He also said that travel removed all prejudice and bigotry from men. Nicolas Lirio (23:58.06) Love. Mark Schneider (24:12.078) to learn a new culture and to talk to people. So he he's a huge when it comes to travel. When we have visitors from other countries come here, we had 53 other countries come last year represented when they come here. They all know who Mark Twain is. They love the book Innocence Abroad. That's all about travel. That's about his Quaker. Kent Boucher (24:15.352) There is a lot of truth. Mark Schneider (24:39.298) crews that he went and went to Europe and Asia and Africa and all over the place. And that became Innocence Abroad. So those were also articles that he had written for a magazine. And so he was always writing. He was a journalist first. He told the story of the world through his eyes and through his words. That was his start. Nicolas Lirio (24:57.934) Was he, I mean, obviously you do it longer, you get better, but was he always good or was it rough? Mark Schneider (25:05.068) He was, he was an extremely smart person. mean, from the get and he had to be, again, to find attention from a large family, to stick out in a town like Hannibal, to have friends, to do all these things, to be a riverboat captain, to get out there and to get on the river and not be questioned about where the boat should go. Where's the best place to be? Where should that was unquestioned? his name is the pen name he picked up is Mark Twain, which is a nautical term on the river. the lead man out would have the stick or whatever. The mark would be six feet a fathom. So Mark Twain would be two fathoms deep, 12 feet safe passage. So the man on the front of the boat would yell quarter Twain, half Twain, Mark Twain, meaning it's safe passage. So that's his pen name is Mark. Nicolas Lirio (25:55.982) Why why if he wanted attention so bad? Why did he start right away with a pen name and stick with that pen name to the point? That most people don't know his name Mark Schneider (26:04.608) again, public image. It was all about public image for him. It was about how he presented himself. When the white suit came into play, that was all about being seen. That was all about being recognized from, from instant that you saw him, you knew who he was. And so that was all about public image. mean, was extremely polished public image. And that came from his mother, his mother, even as them as being poor, even when they couldn't afford to live in the boyhood home anymore and moved to Grant's drug store here in Hannibal, they lived upstairs with the Grants. Dr. Grant was the physician and doctor in town. And even when they lived up there, she would still host people for tea. She would still have social clubs. She would still do these things because she came from a family of standing, of social standing. And so that's how she saw herself, regardless of their economic status. And so Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, he wanted to get that. When he built that home in Hartford, Connecticut, it was so that he could bring people there and host them and show them what he became and what he was. I mean, that was all about public image for him. Kent Boucher (27:10.426) Yeah, yeah. So before we move on from the Civil War era, where was he while that was going on? he... Mark Schneider (27:18.758) He was on the river when it started. And then the Civil War and his brother Henry's death on the river shut it down. Traffic on the river became much, much less. He took the death of his brother very personally. And so he stepped away from that life and started writing. And so then I believe he went north from there, if I'm not mistaken. Kent Boucher (27:39.628) Did he comment on the Civil War much in his writing after that, or did he kind of ignore it? Mark Schneider (27:44.706) He definitely spoke about war. I think he definitely commented about it. I think he was very cautious. I he still had family living in the, I mean, you know, he, again, image things of that nature. I think if he couldn't find the humor in it, he probably didn't touch it. And so I'm sure that a lot of that to him, he addressed it in other ways, maybe not head on. but it certainly affected his life. Again, Tom Sawyer was written right around, I think, 11 years. The timeframe would have been 11 years before the Civil War. I think it was released nine or 10 years after the Civil War. So, I mean, that was all obviously a huge part of his life and a huge part of his writings from there forward. Looking at Huckleberry Finn, that's all about, again, a young, white boy trying to figure out that dilemma in his mind. And so I think he addressed it. I don't think he probably came out and said things directly. He didn't he didn't like politics at all. He didn't like any politician. I think he only supported one politician ever in his life. And he didn't like institutions. He didn't like religion. I he would make fun of everything. And so I think to an extent, probably irreverent. Right. Yeah. Kent Boucher (29:14.318) So along those lines, a thing that's always kind of intrigued me about Samuel Clemens is he was, like you said, he had that irreverency in his writing. He really told things like they were. But this is happening during the Victorian era where things are very proper, very elegantly worded. mean, he was a contemporary of Charles Dickens. And it had to be almost this. loud mouth megaphone voice poking through every other writer at the time, their style. I love watching anything done by the Cohen brothers that's set in that Victorian era because I think always they go hard on the old Victorian white woman and the elegant ignorance of the opinions and the rigidness and all that. And Sam Mark Schneider (30:05.39) sure. Kent Boucher (30:14.592) Samuel Clemens' writing is just such a pie in the face of that. Mark Schneider (30:21.614) He coined the term gilded age. He was the first to say it. mean that was his phrase, his term. And so he definitely saw I guess you could say it was a two-way mirror because he could see through it, but at the same time on the other side, he wanted to be a part of it. I mean, he built that beautiful Victorian mansion for a reason. He definitely wanted to have that standing in that society while also making fun of it. Kent Boucher (30:57.25) Yeah. Do you think that's why he became, I mean his writing became so popular because it was something so new and so different from... Mark Schneider (31:06.094) Everything else I think deep down it's still popular because it is humor It very rarely took a Hard stance one way or the other it would simply his writings would simply make point to things and let you Figure that out for yourself. We're often asked at times. How do you you know exhibits and things? How do you dance around this topic? How do you we don't have to mark Twain said it? Mark Twain said it, Mark Twain wrote it, our mission is Mark Twain. It's very easy to let the man speak for himself. And so if you go back and you read the books and you look at his speeches and you read the quotes, you're going to see a man that, again, just wanted to find the funny, wanted to find the humor, but also wanted to be a part of it. And I think that that's probably a pretty common theme for a lot of people. Nicolas Lirio (32:00.288) as someone who represents him, do you ever just think, Mark, why did, why did you, why did you say that? Like, I keep having to defend you on this stupid thing. Mark Schneider (32:11.086) I don't have to defend him at all. He can defend himself. He's much more Mark Twain than I am. And trust me, there's the Mark Twain journals. You look at what Berkeley's doing. mean, they're still studying Twain. Nicolas Lirio (32:31.086) I mean the amount that he produced just in terms of quantity letter on quality Mark Schneider (32:35.808) Letters, speeches, books, lectures. mean, it's endless. And you can go back and you can try to pick through and decipher. And I think that that was a little bit of his point too. I'm going to say something, I'm going to put it in your face and you're going to deal with it how you're going to deal with it. Interesting. Nicolas Lirio (32:54.338) only person I can think of in the last 200 years that is similar in terms of prolificness of how much quantity of high quality output there was. I'm thinking like Lewis, like CS Lewis. I wouldn't put Tolkien up there because he seemed to have less out there than Lewis did. Kent Boucher (33:11.419) A lot of small works to go with it. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (33:13.838) And I mean Lewis just he spoke and spoke and spoke and spoke on top of that I don't know anybody else that you would think of that just like the body of work is obscene Mark Schneider (33:22.604) I mean, Hemingway wrote a lot and probably a lot that you've never seen or heard, but Hemingway was a huge Twain fan. Hemingway, think, I don't know if he coined the father of American literature, but he was a huge Twain fan. And, you know, for Twain, I think some of that comes from the fact that he did start and grow up as a journalist. He had deadlines. He had to write every day. He had to have something. And so for him, not writing was not breathing. It was not working. Nicolas Lirio (33:54.314) Interesting. the, the, so I wrote a book once I've said that on this podcast before. It's terrible. No one will ever read it in terms of, won't let anybody read it, but I had to sit down. Kent Boucher (34:09.134) He tried to do like a Dr. Seuss knockoff. Nicolas Lirio (34:13.506) Took me two years. It was 16 pages. No, no, no. I mean, it was maybe 140 pages, but it took me six months. Nicolas Lirio (34:27.022) Well, no, it took me six months. The first draft two hours, three times a week. And I got done and I said, I might do this again one day, but I had a deep respect for people like Brandon Sanderson, the fantasy writer who the amount of work that guy sits down five times a week for six hours in order to knowing how long it takes just to type, you know, let alone rethink or rework or, and, and so Kent Boucher (34:54.887) But your livelihood didn't depend on it. Nicolas Lirio (34:57.12) No, but I mean he must have loved it to decade after decade sit down at the table and write my hand over and over again and I would love I would pay my net worth to have a collection of the papers he crumpled, you know Mark Schneider (35:10.99) So I will say things that I will compare to Mark Twain. If you look at someone like Bill Watterson, the artist of Calvin and Hobbes, someone that does like a period, something like that where they're having to be creative 365 days, content for 365 days a year. Nicolas Lirio (35:31.638) I don't expect you to watch anime. You watch any anime? Mark Schneider (35:34.183) I watch a little bit of anime with the kids and stuff. We all like a little bit of anime. Nicolas Lirio (35:39.118) I want my wife and I've been following the show one piece. It's on it's on episode like 1300. Yeah. Right. And Oda who's the author. You just can't, if you can't respect this, you're like hardly a human. If you can't respect this every week, he puts out a, an episode, not of the TV, but of his written version of it every week. The craft. I mean, anyone, anyone in Mark Twain, do you think his Kent Boucher (35:47.266) goodness. Mark Schneider (36:00.11) written Mark Schneider (36:03.715) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (36:08.479) stuff like towards the end of his life is his best stuff. Mark Schneider (36:11.726) I think, well, my favorite is a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. That's one of my favorite books of all time. for me, it's my favorite of his. It's one of the very first examples of science fiction writing. It's a man that goes back in time from that time period to medieval times. Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, and his friends would play. Pirates and Robin Hood and Knights and Shining Armor. That's what they would run off on the hill and play and so he loved things like that and so Knights and Shining Armor, he just absolutely loved it. So that's a great book and it's a true children's book. It's a really nice adventure. It's got baseball in it. So it's a great book and Nicolas Lirio (36:58.924) Is it same age frame written for like, like Huck Finn is like middle school. Mark Schneider (37:03.726) I mean obviously Huck Finn, I will say Huck Finn touches on subjects that it used to be schools would read them, schools it was on a mandated reading list, sometimes it was banned, it's been up and down all over the place. Huck Finn is, I would say, for the more mature. Whereas Tom Sawyer, like if you were to say if Huck Finn is Lord of the Rings, then Tom Sawyer is the Hobbit. yeah. Tom Sawyer is more about the childhood adventures that he had in St. Petersburg slash what is Hannibal painting the fence, sneaking off on the hill, going to the, going to the island, those kinds of things, getting stuck in a cave, finding treasure, all those kinds of things were childhood adventures. Whereas Huck Finn, even though it is a child on an adventure, it addresses much, much more. mature topics. you, sorry. No, I was going to say, so he wrote like roughing it, innocence abroad, but he also wrote the calendar of putting in Wilson, the celebrated jumping frog of Calvis County. Those were all originally, those are children. Those are supposed to be funny children's books for the time. And so he did write again, like you said, with, gusto. wrote, he wrote everything. and he, I mean he never stopped. One of his favorite things to do was to lay in bed and write. And even as a old man, I he would lay in bed and write. So he, he definitely, was just, yeah, it's a much more productive than what I have. Kent Boucher (38:47.598) Lay in bed and scroll. There you go Nicolas Lirio (38:52.376) Mark Twain Mark Schneider (38:55.242) But yeah, so for me, you know, he speaks for himself on so many ways that I don't have to defend him. I don't have to explain. I don't have to do any. sit in a very unique position to be able to just enjoy, preserve and distribute, hopefully. Nicolas Lirio (39:13.922) Well, and it's easier to defend genuinely good people. Everyone's flawed. So, you know, it is, but, I really like your approach. Mark Twain is who he is. I'm not defending one way or another. You're just trying to paint an accurate picture. That's I'm curious if you could require every American to read one of his body of works. Mark Schneider (39:34.574) What would you require? Huck Finn. Okay. Huck Finn's his masterpiece. Huck Finn's the one that you're going to have the most discussion about. Huck Finn's the one that's going to make you look inward at yourself. Huck Finn is that, is his definitive work. Now, if you're telling, if you're asking me what should I be reading to my kids? Yeah, go get Tom Sawyer. Go get Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Prince and the Popper. Mark Twain wrote Prince and the Popper. So those are the books that you should be reading to your kids to get them interested And then yeah when it's time for them to start looking at I mean that's up to you as a parent I guess to decide or if you trust the schools or whatever, but My kids actually have an anime copy of Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn both they have a manga copy of both so yeah, well I grew up Nicolas Lirio (40:28.519) Did you read it in school, Huckford? Mark Schneider (40:32.27) 30 minutes from here. yeah, we read it. Every school field trip we took was over to Hannibal to go to the Mark Twain Caves, to ride on the riverboat, to visit the Boyhood Home and Museum. So yeah, we definitely read it around here. I'm pretty sure the Hannibal schools read it. We have a third grade class coming from my hometown here in a week. so we have a lot of schools that still come. have colleges that come, they bring vans and buses. We have people that come on cruise ships down the Mississippi river adults. mean, we get that. That's the best part is we get such a wide range of people. Xiao Ling Fei from China came to visit last summer. he's the grandson of Lu Jun, who was the, they call him the father of modern Chinese literature. they, they stopped short of. Comparing him and Mark Twain, but he also came from a small village in China He wrote in the common vernacular the dialect of the time. He was the voice for the people So there's a lot of comparisons there. And so his grandson came and visited us and brought us a plaque Nicolas Lirio (41:41.736) by the government of China as well. Mark Schneider (41:44.332) I believe if I'm not mistaken, Zhao Ling said that 200 million Chinese seventh grade students that age of student are required to read Tom Sawyer. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. We got a call from South Korea. We have the Tom and Becky program here where we select 10 students, eighth grade students to represent Hannibal as Tom and Becky. We have five Toms. five Beckys. have an official couple that is the official Tom and Becky. They are ambassadors to Hannibal. They travel all over the place. As a matter of fact, I'm going with them to Calaveras County in California this summer for the fair where they have the jumping competition. They've been to Hartford, Connecticut. We actually got connected by South Korea wanted to bring Tom and Becky over because they'd like to start their own Tom and Becky program. There's apparently a cartoon over there with a theme song that everybody knows. We have copies here. It's been published in over 70 languages. I mean, I've got copies in Portuguese, Mandarin. I mean, you name it, I've got it. And so we get visitors from all over and they all know who Tom Sawyer is. They all know who Huckleberry Finn is. and they'll even sing you the song that they got from their country. Kent Boucher (43:10.818) That is amazing. What? Nicolas Lirio (43:12.142) This was actually supposed to be our very first question and Kent, please interrupt me if you... Mark Schneider (43:17.538) You've got Kent Boucher (43:18.829) Don't go there yet. That's too disjointed. One of the things that I've found to be so interesting is we've really talked a lot about the white collar life of Mark Twain and just a phenomenon that I have been guilty of in my life and I see so many men who are in a white collar profession. is they reference back to their blue collar experience all the time. It's like there's some sort of credibility that comes from that, whether it's a pastor talking about, yeah, I worked on my car over the weekend or whatever. It's like, don't you just sit around books all week? There's something about that and it seems that that same aspect that's a part of human nature, at least of the American man, that that was a I mean, he chose Mark Twain for his pet name. That's a very white collar, I mean, a very blue collar term. And it seems that he really looked back at that time as a riverboat captain with great fondness. And perhaps maybe would have kept doing it had those huge interruptions of the Civil War, the loss of his brother that you talked about. Do you think that would have happened and maybe we would have never had Mark Twain, the writer? Mark Schneider (44:49.364) I He often talked about the fact that growing up here in Hannibal, what everybody wanted to either be a pirate or a minstrel or a riverboat captain. And the riverboat captain was the one that all the boys wanted to be. It was always like that. He said that he, the riverboat captain was the only untethered man. in America that he ranked above royalty because he was unquestionable in his decision making. He loved river life. Again, he grew up two blocks from the Mississippi River. So he loved the river life. their adventures were on the river. They'd get on a raft. mean, nowadays I'm not going to let my 13 year old go run down to the river by himself and go ha I mean, just not happening. Right back then it was common. I mean, they would be gone for days. That's the whole story about the fake funeral or. Yeah. So they would just be, you know, they were, they were unhinged and they would be wherever they wanted to be. so very much for them, it was very much, had to prove just like, think it's probably for a lot of people that you had the guff to do the work. you know, you could write all day long, but if I don't believe in your experience, then why would I, why would it echo with me? If you're not being genuine in that, then it means nothing. And so for him to say, yes, as a matter of fact, you know, as a boy, I did all these things. And as a young man, I started working at the age of 13 to help support my family. That was very important to him. And he, like I said, he was a family man. So making sure that his family was supported, even if it was through white collar work, was very important to him. Now his dad was a very bad businessman. His family was broke. His brother was a very bad businessman. Mark Twain was a very bad businessman. Mark Twain went bankrupt twice in his life. He backed the wrong technology for typewriter, lost out to the Leno type. And he had some other ventures that didn't go the way they should. To build the home in Hartford, Connecticut, he actually used his wife's inheritance money and actually even wrote Mark Schneider (47:08.0) an apology to her for doing so. That's why he spent a lot of time in Europe. It was much cheaper to live in Europe. They could live for much less. And he could make a lot of money in the lecture halls doing his lectures, which again were those were essentially an hour to two hour long stand up specials is what he was doing before they had such a thing called stand up. he would do these lectures where he would go into these halls and there's pictures of him sprawled out on a chair and people fanning him because he's been so passionately speaking for so long that he's exhausted. So he would make a lot of money selling a lot of tickets, traveling all over Europe and doing these things. He got his Oxford robe, his Oxford gown for his honorary degree from Oxford. That was a huge deal to him. We actually have that gown here in this building. so Yes, it was for him showing that he could do the work was just as important as anything else. He became a riverboat captain because he got on a boat as a passenger and went to the captain and said, I'll pay you $200 to teach me how to be a riverboat pilot. And that's what he did. And started working on the boat and Apprenticed and became a river but got a licensed riverboat pilot. So yes, it was very much about the work and Showing that he could do it Kent Boucher (48:33.676) Yeah, that's that's I've always that's always struck me that I think it probably probably came when I learned about no, it's not actually Mark Twain at Samuel Clemens. Mark Twain is a river captain term. And it's like, man, he really identified with that. That's so we've we've been talking around this, but I want to hit it head on here. And really the probably the crux as far as our audience is concerned, Mark Twain helped shape the Midwest. I mean, you just described how people come from around the world to be in the Midwest because Mark Twain was here. Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (49:12.96) It's interesting because he grew up during the shaping of the Midwest. That is kind of the forming of it. Kent Boucher (49:16.782) Yeah, he was famous in his own time and he, like you're saying, Nicholas, he was a part of it, shaping. had he just remained a riverboat captain. How do you think the Midwest would be different without the writings and mind of Mark? Mark Schneider (49:34.328) Ahem. Mark Schneider (49:40.846) So they call us around here forgotten Tonya You know, we're the flyover so I think that to some extent I think that yes, we would be as a Culture we would be even less off the thing that I think Mark Twain shows and why I think the Midwest will continue to be a place of surprising culture to most people is is that this truly is the place where all of these people that settled in America met. When you're talking about the coast, like the East Coast, you can go into a neighborhood and go, this is the Irish neighborhood. This is the German neighborhood. This is the, when you start to get into the Midwest is where you think, okay, these people were moving West. They're not, concerned anymore about where they're landing and where they're sticking with their people, they've got to survive out here. And so a lot of times, you know, people, even with their preconceived prejudice and things would end up that would change because your neighbor, you might have to rely on them one day and it doesn't matter who they are. and so the Midwest, even though I think a lot of people would think white bread, bland, Kent Boucher (50:39.086) That's a great point. Kent Boucher (50:52.887) Right. Mark Schneider (51:01.932) you know, like I said, Forgotten Tonia, the Midwest really is quite an interesting melting pot. And for Mark Twain to have seen that from a town of 2000 people is an amazing story onto itself. Now, would have Mark Twain have been probably the best, well-written and funniest riverboat pilot you ever heard of? Sure. But would you have heard of him internationally? Probably not. Look at comedians nowadays. And when you're talking about people like Rudd, Jason Sudeikis. names are escaping me right off the bat. a lot of them come from the Midwest. Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor. mean, yeah, I mean, all of them. I mean, you run down Nikki Glaser, who's hot right now from St. Louis. All these things, they come from the Midwest. There's a reason they're funny. There's a reason that they can do it. It's just it is the culture of this area. He personified it. He glamorized it for the world. And when people come here, that's what they want to see. They want to see downtown Americana. They want to be pulled back to that time. And it really connects with everybody. mean, that's think about your childhood. What are you thinking about the small little community you grew up in, the streetlights being on, you running down the street with your best friends, sneaking around, doing something you probably weren't supposed to be doing. So that connects with everybody. And that's what brings them back to the Midwest. Had he not written about that, would we still have that nostalgia? Sure. It just wouldn't be as widespread as it is. I wouldn't be welcoming a Polish Franciscan monk to the door. so, you know, we pull in people from all over because they know that this is a place where people survive. This is a place where people made it work no matter who was around them. And, Mark Schneider (52:59.436) I think for a lot of people they can identify with what he grew up in, what he grew away from, grew into. All of those things are a personal experience that people can relate to. Kent Boucher (53:11.526) Yeah, man, that was so well said and really laid out well. Mark Schneider (53:16.344) Thank you. I appreciate that. Nicolas Lirio (53:18.134) So, so he writes Huck, Huck Finn, he writes Tom Sawyer and we talked about him. We talked about, Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens, what formed him and to be able to write something. So, I mean, besides the just natural talent intelligence, what formed him, but what, if he was throwing out seed, what made America at the time? What made it soil in such a way that it received him so readily that he grew into the monstrous in a good way, large personality and fame. And as you were saying before this, like kind of the first us celebrity worldwide celebrity. What, what was it about America that made his writings and books so, It was like inflammatory. was like, even if, even if his light was a good light, it like the brush that it hit was so dry that it just went up in flames. Mark Schneider (54:15.97) Yeah, he, you know, I think the reason that his plantings caught on of his ideas and his books and his writings and his speeches is because it either resonated with you in a good way or it resonated you with in a way that chafed you. And if it chafed you, you wanted to say something about it. And he thrived on that. Nicolas Lirio (54:40.206) negative comments on Facebook. It still makes the post go more viral. Mark Schneider (54:43.086) I mean, he was one of the first people to say, there's no way I could pay for promotion like that. The libraries on the East Coast would ban his books and he would go, thank you. You just sold me thousands of books. Nicolas Lirio (54:48.974) That's true. Nicolas Lirio (54:59.552) Yeah. Kent Boucher (55:00.718) Don't look at that over there Mark Schneider (55:04.002) Yeah. He very, I mean, he very much knew how to play the system so that those things would catch on. He knew, I mean, Tom Sawyer was originally released June 9th, 1846. Am I doing my math right? Whatever. 150 years ago, June 9th. It was originally released in Europe and Canada because he knew that if he released it in America, that it would get copied and be trademark. copyright laws were much much different. So he originally released in England and Canada. It didn't get released here until months later. And so he was very smart about the system. He knew how to plant those seeds. He knew how to get people to talk about him. He knew how to get people to talk about the works that he had done. Now, like I said, it either struck a chord with you in a positive light, and you could agree with him. or it chafed you in such a manner that you were going to talk about it. He made sure that he addressed those. If somebody banned his book, he'd talk about it. He wouldn't shy away from it. He'd talk about it. He'd give you some kind of quote that you would walk away going, there you go. So he, he spoke about experiences that most people have, whether it's, you know, I gotta go do this chore. I don't want to go do it. Or there's that cute girl next door that I want to go talk to for the first time. Or I want to live a life of adventure. I mean, these are all things that we've all experienced in our own right. And so, you know, he was able to combine relative stories, relatable stories to really good writing, really relatable writing. Again with Huckleberry Finn, you're talking about a book that's narrated by Huckleberry Finn in the common vernacular of the time. Which is why you use slang words in it, because people use slang words especially in Missouri. Nicolas Lirio (57:05.775) So was it like a slow avalanche that rolled out of control or is it inflammatory right away? Mark Schneider (57:10.136) way. So he had success with a lot of his early articles and things like that and some of his early books. Tom Sawyer obviously is where he really took off. And then seven years later, almost eight years later, Huckleberry Finn came out, which is excuse me, Huckleberry Finn is considered his masterpiece. Nicolas Lirio (57:31.672) But when it hit the printing press, did it fly off the shelves right away? Mark Schneider (57:35.256) for sure. Okay. People loved it. it was, he was a commercially a success, instantly with those books. seven years after Tom Sawyer came out is when he released Huckleberry Finn. so even then as a sequel, people still were looking forward to it. He actually wrote multiple sequels, Tom Sawyer abroad, Tom Sawyer detective. so yes, he commercially was a very, much a success. Again, he wasn't very good with that money. But he was a success. Nicolas Lirio (58:06.402) I on a podcast, I heard that when he became a boat captain, they would, they got paid quite a bit and he just spent it all on like food and luxury. He like blew through. Mark Schneider (58:13.928) Yeah. He loves cigars. He loved whiskey. You know, he just he loved life. He loved to experience life. He loved to experience things. I'm sure for him cigars and whiskey was a social thing. He loved talking to people growing up on his family's farm. had a family that had a farm that they would go to and spend summers at and they would actually as kids end up going to the slave quarters and listening to Uncle Daniel Quarles talk and tell stories about life. He spent a lot of time sitting around a lot of campfires with a lot of different people just listening to personal experiences and stories. And that's where he got a lot of his stuff from. Kent Boucher (59:04.558) inspiration from that. Yeah, what's interesting to me is, and one of my questions I had, I can, you know, I'm kind of rewarding it now, I suppose, but we would be in a different place with cultural commentary if it wasn't for Samuel Clemens, because his style was so different. But yet, even though was more, it was less prim and proper, it was less elegant, it was more plain speak. It seemed to have elevated the culture in the long run, especially as it comes to the issues of slavery and how we view people of color. And it seemed to be part of that healing for our country. it's interesting how that happened because we have seen other points in our history where cultural commentary shifts. know, I think of the big one being back in the 2016 election cycle when Donald Trump was in that Republican debate for the Republican primaries, right? And he just dressed down Jeb Bush, who's, you know, of all the guys on the stage, I think there was like nine of them or something, Jeb Bush represented the old guard. know, his dad was president, his brother was president. And Donald Trump was up there and he didn't follow any of those rules. And it stands out. And now as we look at political commentary now, personally, I think it hasn't helped us. That shift in language, I think, has brought out lot of ugliness in our country. both sides. The way that politicians address each other. I mean, it doesn't matter what level, not just president. I mean, it's much harsher. The gloves have come off. That shift like we see in Clemens writing, coming down from this high and mighty, high-mindedness way of talking to this, you know, riverboat captain way of talking. Somehow that was able to bring healing. And yet this other shift that we've seen over the last... Kent Boucher (01:01:34.848) over 10 years now, that hasn't been the result. It doesn't seem that we're anywhere closer to each other than we were 10 years ago. Mark Schneider (01:01:44.31) Yeah, I would say, you know, in my own personal opinion, and I'll walk out on the plank for this one, but in my own personal opinion, Kent Boucher (01:01:53.482) you say the name Donald Trump you're walking out on the plane. Mark Schneider (01:01:56.31) But I would say, you you used to say, you know, speak softly, carry a big stick. Well, now it's speak really loudly and say you have a stick. And I think that in Mark Twain's time and especially for Mark Twain, the challenge was to speak loudly, be heard in a time before radio, TV, social media. mean, pen to paper. press to paper, mean, distribution, all these things. In that kind of a time, for him it was more speak loudly and carry a big stick, both. You better have the substance to back up what you're saying. If you don't, you're gonna be in trouble. And in a time where people read your words in length, and not just listen to what you had to say or read the headline and the tagline and moved on with their life, in a time where reading was entertainment information, all the ways that you communicated, he found the best way to make sure people remembered. And he was very well, I mean, he crafted that. I he knew how to do it. Kent Boucher (01:03:10.67) It's lot easier to be choosy with your words when you're writing them down. Mark Schneider (01:03:16.394) And his wife would his wife Olivia who he loved very very much would be the first person to read it and would edit it before it to anybody else That doesn't happen with your social media post, right? know, which is why you sit there and you go. her for for and then later you go Why do I even care? Why did I post that? Yeah Well, it's because you had this thought and instead of filtering it through someone and them going Kent Boucher (01:03:42.166) You sure about that? Nicolas Lirio (01:03:43.138) Yeah, you Mark Schneider (01:03:43.98) just wrote it out and send it out to a thousand people. Nicolas Lirio (01:03:46.99) Yeah, I feel like this shouldn't actually happen. Kent Boucher (01:03:51.489) We need to quote you on that. Speak loudly and pretend you have a stick. Mark Schneider (01:03:56.599) Speak loudly and say you Nicolas Lirio (01:04:00.91) Ken, actually liked Kent's thought on social media and you've just been too busy basically since dad passed away to even do social media. But his thought is like, there's not enough people writing good things, positive things on social media. I work really hard at having like some humor on social media once a week or so, just something like people can laugh at, or I like to ask questions of my friend group, like of the people I'm actually friends with on Facebook to, and just engage in like good conversation in the comments to like help work that muscle. But I'm curious. We talk about keyboard warriors. That's a term for people who are fighting social justice, you know, whatever they're fighting for in the comments on Facebook. Right. And, um, and people just slander in each other. And then you go to the top of the media levels and the top, you know, officials and our, country just slander and other people did. But, and I mean that I think way more today, but that PR one against the other has been happening to some degree for thousands of years. Did Mark ever engage in like rivalry where he'd be like the New York post is fake news. You know, did he ever do any of that? Mark Schneider (01:05:13.216) No, think he would probably just say something funny about whatever and move along. Nicolas Lirio (01:05:18.74) He was just so much funnier and dominant with his words. Mark Schneider (01:05:21.194) Yeah, I think that if he wanted to go, I think if he wanted to get in a beef with anybody, if he wanted to have a battle with anybody, I'm sure he could, could win that battle. And I'm sure he probably had that thought in his mind. I mean, he certainly had his own ego to deal with. Like I said, he released his biography a hundred years after his death. Three volumes long. Yeah. Yeah. His autobiography and it's just a stream of consciousness. It's there's no rhyme or reason to it. but people will read it. People love it. I haven't read all of it. I read the edited version of it and it was fine. it's, he, to me, I I think a lot of people in social media and I'm certainly guilty of this myself. You have a reaction to something. Nicolas Lirio (01:06:02.008) been there. Mark Schneider (01:06:17.462) And instead of again, having that sounding board of somebody that's there with you or somebody that is trusted or somebody that you would say it to first, you know, normally you would just say it to your buddy at the next get together or what are you talking about? And then he'd go, what? Yeah. That there's no filter anymore. There is no filter. Everybody has a box that they can stand up on. Everybody can say what they want to say. Everybody's got a microphone. You've got a camera in your pocket. And so to me, anybody can tell the story of the world through their lens and through their voice. They have that platform now. Back then, that was not the case. It was a selective process of who could tell that story and who could show the picture of the world. Mark Twain just happened to be really, really good at it. And so he did have those filters. He had his wife, had people read his stuff because he knew that if he was to just do an unabridged three volume writing of something, it would never catch on. So he was again, so meticulous about image and what was put out there and how he was seen and understood and things of that nature. Now he would definitely like for you to make up your own mind. But no matter what your thought was, he would say, that's exactly what I wanted you to think. Kent Boucher (01:07:42.118) Yeah. Nicolas Lirio (01:07:42.51) It almost seems like he had, he wanted, he wanted to be a heavy influence on people, but he's, and in like, had an ego part that was like, maybe the world would just be better if I could change all of them. But he had a deeper core value of like, but people should be kind and, and, think for themselves. Mark Schneider (01:07:45.534) add Mark Schneider (01:08:06.05) He, you know, I think he looked at morals and mores and all these different things as... Mark Schneider (01:08:15.66) not just guidance, but maybe something that was a little flexible, that you could find things in those lessons that you could use and things that you could forget. And I think he was selective about that knowledge for himself. He definitely was not ignorant to the fact that he had a past from where he came from and who he was. But as a man and as he took shape and his family and all those things, I think what you really saw was somebody that himself was editing himself, filtering himself, really trying to make sure that the thing that was out there was the best version of him. And you can call that self-reflection, you can call that mental. He had his issues, he was not a perfect person. People have said things about him, know, even after his death that, you know, there's rumors and things of, you know, he used to have these after his wife's death, he had girls that he wrote to that he would call his angel fish. They were of the younger teen age. There was never anything inappropriate found. There was never any correspondence that suggested any kind of anything. He just wrote letters. to younger girls that he knew. He loved strong women characters and Polly. Kent Boucher (01:09:50.38) There was just enough there for their rumors. Mark Schneider (01:09:52.854) So there's people and people will go, well, Mark Twain was this and he was not a perfect person. had his flaws. However. He spoke in a way that it was okay to have those flaws. He recognized them. He knew them. He'd make fun of him himself. if you're not willing to do that, then I don't think you can make fun of anybody else or have the right to do so. So I think he was able to look inward and this is again, in my opinion, look inward and see the good things in his life, the bad things in his life, what he could aspire to. what he would rather leave in the past. And so, there was a lot of that for him, but again, when you look at it as a whole, he was a good person and he did good things overall. So, you know, where do you, where do you draw that line at? So Nicolas Lirio (01:10:50.262) Yeah, especially historical. You know, you talk about all sorts of heroic people and you're like, well, and by the way, they also, know, that list of like they also did gets pretty gnarly sometimes. Right. And to some degree it's culture, but some of it's just like, that's weird. Yeah. It's like a weird thing that that person did. We really appreciate you hanging out with us. Kent Boucher (01:11:14.412) Yeah, well... Mark Schneider (01:11:18.644) I've ruined you. yeah. I'm ready. Kent Boucher (01:11:19.596) Yeah, one last question. Nicolas Lirio (01:11:20.788) He's gonna bring it home Kent Boucher (01:11:23.104) We like to ask these when we do, when we interview historians on a certain character. If you could ask Samuel Clemens one thing. are you asking? Nicolas Lirio (01:11:34.85) You had to have thought about this. Mark Schneider (01:11:36.192) Yeah, and it's usually something very silly. I like comedy. I like humor. And so I would probably ask him what he finds the funniest. What is the funniest thing to you? know, is it a well-written essay that has a lot of quick jazz? I mean, what is it? What is funny to you? You obviously struck humor with everyone else. What makes you laugh? What's funny to you? Because again, for me, I love comedy. I think that that's to me one of the purest forms of entertainment is making somebody laugh. And he was able to do it worldwide when he didn't really have the platform to be able to do so. His platform was a great big ship. And so he, I would really like to know what he truly found humor in. Was he just making fun of things or did he hope that it would change things or did he just want to make himself laugh? I don't know, but I really would like to know what he found funny because that's really his legacy. That's what he was good at. And even to this day, that's what people that really know of him and know of his writings think of him is he is a humorist. So. just like if I was to talk to Jack Black. I'm sure that being Steve in the Minecraft movie probably wasn't the most entertaining thing for him. What makes you laugh? What's the thing when you're by yourself that you just can't stop laughing and your side hurts? So that's probably what I would ask him. There would be a lot of other questions, but I would think that it would be pretentious to ask most of them. So I would probably stick with, what do you think is funny? Kent Boucher (01:13:05.099) Kent Boucher (01:13:30.412) I like that answer. I have a suspicion that I'd have something to do with the dialogue of the King and the Duke in Huckleberry Finn where they're calling each other different insulting titles like Bilgewater. I remember there was a student that, I used to be a teacher, and at the high school there they would have a list, I think they were banned books, think, because that was a banned book at one time. They had to choose a Nicolas Lirio (01:13:41.794) Yeah. Kent Boucher (01:13:59.138) book and then find a teacher in the building that would read the book with them. And I remember when I got to that part, was I was wrong. That dialogue between those guys. Mark Schneider (01:14:06.158) Yeah, oh yeah. He I recently reread Tom Sawyer 2026 will observe the 150th anniversary of the publication of Tom Sawyer and so I recently reread it. You really have to include the inflection when you read it. Otherwise it's doesn't make sense. And it's because of the language of the book, the language of the time. But if you read it, he describes, he came out to the fence to whitewash the fence and it was a fence nine feet high with slats that went horizontally. And it was 36 feet long. That's not, I mean, there was a boy's exaggeration. That was, that was him. telling this story so that you could literally be the little kid standing there looking up at that fence going, this is gonna take me all day. So he was an artist when it came to words and for me to be able, if he was to say, I really think toilet humor is hilarious. I would just think that that would be the best thing to know about him. Kent Boucher (01:14:56.906) Yeah, yeah. Kent Boucher (01:15:13.357) Yeah Nicolas Lirio (01:15:14.306) Mr. He knew John crapper intimately. Mark Schneider (01:15:17.646) Yeah, yeah, the outhouse is where I do my best work, it would be, it would be very funny to hear him say, you know, is that a quote of his? That's a quote of mine. Nicolas Lirio (01:15:30.862) That's good man, that's good. Man well wait before Someone wants to learn a lot more about Mark Twain. what are they doing? Where they going? Mark Schneider (01:15:43.374) Obviously, I'd love for you to come to our website, Mark Twain Museum dot org. We have lots on there, including the history, his history, our history of all of our properties. We own eight properties, including the boyhood home that have all been restored, renovated. The boyhood home was bought. It was built in 1844. It was bought in 1911 and renovated, renovated, making it one of the oldest. renovations in United States history. Wow. And it's been preserved that way ever since. and so I encourage you to come here to Hannibal. Again, we're celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Tom Sawyer this summer. we have, if you like small town Americana, if you want to walk down main street and shop and eat and look into art galleries and Nicolas Lirio (01:16:27.586) town is a really great Mark Schneider (01:16:37.998) Experience the cave that he talks about and get on the boat and do all these fun things. This is The town to do it. This is where we've mixed that mix of fiction and reality of you can literally see Cardiff Hill where the where the boys ran up to play you can see Jackson Island in the middle of the Mississippi River These are the places he wrote and talked about and so if you want to learn about him, this is probably the place to do it Obviously, there are so many resources when it comes to Mark Twain If you're looking for quotes alone, Mark Twain quotes dot com is the most accurate. He's often misquoted. Mark Twain, Mark Twain quotes dot com. Nicolas Lirio (01:17:19.32) Goodreads is not is that good good. Goodreads doesn't have like a quote page. Mark Schneider (01:17:25.46) I would, I would steer where I would steer away from, especially larger commercial sites. Interesting. There are a lot of misquotes that are attributed to Twain. and some of the more popular, like, know, politicians should be changed as often as diapers. And for the same reason, many people think that that's a Mark Twain quote. is not, something about the bow lines of a ship. Mark Twain wasn't a sailor. He was a riverboat pilot. So no, but there are a lot of misquotes out there about Twain. but if you really want to look more twink quotes.com and you can literally go down a through Z and find categories of quotes. Other than that, I would say start reading the books. You want to understand the man, read what he wrote, read Tom Sawyer, read Huckleberry Finn, read innocence abroad. he wrote about, Joan of Arc, later in his life, one of his final works was a book. all about Joan of Arc. loved strong female characters. Absolutely loved writing about strong female characters. so Joan of Arc, he was a huge fan of Joan of Arc and wrote a very excellent book about her life. so he just, if you really want to learn about him, read his works. Other than that, I mean, get online, look him up. I would warn anyone to always check your references and your sources and where these things are coming from. But, you know, Berkeley is doing amazing things. The Mark Twain journals. I mean, this is not something that is hard to find. Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer just released his biography on Mark Twain in 2025. He was here. He released it in May. He came here in June and spoke about the book. Percival Everett wrote a book called James, which is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn through Jim's eyes. It won book of the year in 2024 for a lot of categories and a lot of people. he won the Pulitzer prize for it in 2025. It's an excellent book. It is actually, I believe if I'm not mistaken has been picked up for option for development by Amblin entertainment, which is Steven Spielberg's production company. So hopefully that becomes a movie. and Mark Schneider (01:19:48.198) has some pretty big names tied to it. That would be fantastic. But yeah, I mean, read the books, do your research, look up some of the more current things about him and, really dive in because there's a lot there, that you could learn about him and learn about the times and his life and things that happened and what shaped him into being who he was. Nicolas Lirio (01:20:12.91) Cool. Well, he was definitely a brilliant mind that shaped culture. and, that's what, I mean, at least the second half of that Kent and I are, working for it. And in terms of conservation, what happens here on the land and you guys get it, the conservation, she's like Mark Twain shifting culture happens. One mind out. Mark Schneider (01:20:33.07) And if I may, I'm going to shamelessly promote in June, June 8th through the 12th, we're doing free admission to the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the adventures of Tom Sawyer. So if you're around the area, even if you're outside of the area, know that that admission has been removed that week, that that removes one more thing that you have to pay for. So now's the time to come. and experience the place where these stories come from and really. What's that? What's that? June 8th through the 12th this summer. We'll have events going on all summer long. We're going to have a speaker series called Today's Tom Sawyer, where we're going to bring people in that's sponsored by the Missouri Humanities. And that's we're going to bring people in to talk about the humanity issues that were covered in these books and why they're still relevant today and why we're still talking about them. We're going to have. drone show, we're going to have a new exhibit outside, so there's just going to be lots going on. So please check out MarkTwayMuseum.org for more information and all the events.