Voices Inside My Head

When people talk about my first novel, FINN (and please allow me, right here and right now, to offer up another “thank you” for that Notable Book designation), they wonder about my decision to avoid dialect in the characters’ speech. My answer is that if I had tried that kind of thing, I’d have gotten it all wrong. Mark Twain possessed clear access to those voices in his memory, and even if I had studied the fine points of how he achieved their various tones and timbres, my imitation would have been just that. An imitation. And a poor one, no doubt.

With the publication of KINGS OF THE EARTH, I find myself getting the opposite question. That is—why, after avoiding dialect in a book where it would have been the obvious choice, have I chosen to go the other way this time?

I think that my answer is probably a lot like Twain’s would have been.
It’s those voices in my head. Or at least the voices in my memory.
Rather than reanimating the world of Twain’s youth, in KINGS OF THE EARTH I’m recreating my own. The place where I came of age. The voices that surrounded me during that time and that sound in my memory still.

I’ll bet that in some ways my motivation in tackling this project was similar to Twain’s, as well. Here I am after all, a man in middle age, looking back on the place where I grew up and the people with whom I lived my early life, listening for the rhythms of their speech and the peculiarities of their language, hoping to overhear something important and get it nailed down.

It’s not all autobiography. Almost none of it is, in fact. At least not in the conventional sense of “this is what I did and this is what I heard and these are the things that I saw as I went along.” What’s autobiographical about KINGS OF THE EARTH is that it means to reflect the way that life is experienced in the midst of a community—as a chorus of varied and sometimes conflicting voices and stories, each with its own intent and its own point of view. So much of what we experience is, after all, overheard. So much of it is put together from partial information. So much of it is unknowable by any other means.

In other words: In spite of the many different voices heard in KINGS OF THE EARTH—women and men, farmers and city folks, con men and criminals and keepers of the peace—the book isn’t just about how they talk. It’s about how they listen. And about how we listen to them.

We just received a heads-up from one of our favorite authors, Jon Clinch, that he will appear on CBS Sunday Morning this coming Sunday about the difficulties faced by historic homes–specifically the Mark Twain House in his case–in these tough economic times. The interview, performed by Erin Moriarty along with Tom Perrotta, Robert Hicks and Stewart O’Nan, was filmed in the living room of the Mark Twain House. Be sure to tune in!

The American Public Media radio program also interviewed Jon about the Twain House intervention and the house’s roots in Jon’s life and work. The show airs on various stations at various times on Monday the 13th (station listing here), and will be available as a podcast/mp3 both at their web site and through iTunes.

I’m guessing that a lot of museums have fallen on hard times due to the current economic situation. The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, Connecticut is one such museum. The building is a national historical landmark and quite remarkable. The writer is one of the great American authors, leaving a legacy that has touched most school children in this country at one time or the other (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Innocents Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, etc.). If you go the ‘public’ catalog for Random House, Inc. you will find 54 titles listed for Mark Twain and 518 related pages.

He also continues to be a great influence upon writers who have taken his characters as their own and developed them in ways that would cause Twain to be greatly entertained. One such book is FINN written by Jon Clinch. FINN is a remarkable first novel, named by ALA as a Notable Book in 2007 and chosen as the winner of the Philadelphia Athenaeum Literacy Award. It was also short-listed for the Sargent First Novel Prize.

Anyone having read FINN will never forget it and will realize the debt Jon Clinch owes to Mark Twain. Feeling this debt himself, or perhaps more aptly put, feeling a great admiration, Jon Clinch has determined to do his part to aid the Mark Twain House & Museum, and so has organized an evening called “The Adventures Started Here – Writers Reading For Twain,” which takes place Tuesday, September 23rd at the Museum.

351 Farmington Ave.
Hartford, CT 06105
6 – 7 p.m. Reception
7 – 9 p.m. Readings
9 – 9:30 p.m. Book Signings
Admission: $40 – Reading and Book Signing
$100 – Reception, reading and book Signing
For reservations call 860-280-3152
For information and complete author lineup: info@marktwainhouse.org or go here.

Authors in addition to Jon Clinch include: Tasha Alexander, Phillip Beard, Andy Carroll, David Gates, Robert Hicks, Phillip Lopate, Amy MacKinnon, Stewart O’Nan, Tom Perrotta, Arthur Phillips. Anyone within a reasonable distance will find themselves highly entertained. And if you’re in Kansas and not planning to vacation in CT at that moment, send a check!

-Marcia