Get your own Free Home PagePosted by Lidia and Tad (lemantad@polbox.com) on February 23, 1998 at 04:14:02:
There isn't a consensus of opinion on the subject of a collaboration
between an
outstanding resident of Flushing
(http://www.queens.nyc.ny.us/places/fftrail.html), the illustrator
of "A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court", and Samuel Langhorne Clemens,
the
writer of "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court". Eugene P.
Kannenberg,
Jr. quotes M. Thomas Inge noting that Mark Twain worked quite closely
with some
illustrators for his own novels, for instance, with Daniel Carter Beard
for "A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
(http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~epk93002/fff.html). "Uncle Dan" himself said
the next
day after his eighty-second birthday: "Mark Twain was the nicest man
I ever
worked with. You couldn't imagine a more congenial fellow. He never
made any
suggestions about the drawings - just left the whole thing up to me.
I read the
books and did the drawings as I envisioned them. Mr. Clemens always
worked on
that principle. He used to say, 'If a man comes to me and asks me to
do a story
or an article, I generally get about it without delay. But if he comes
to me and
tells me what to write---!' "
( http://www.tarleton.edu/activities/pages/facultypages/schmidt/19320622.html).
How then we ought to understand the sentences of Muramatsu Masumi in
a context
of his article "Observations About Language"(Helping Break the Ice:
Humor Across
Borders): "The first edition of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in
King
Arthur's Court (1889) was beautifully illustrated by Daniel Carter
Beard.
Praising his work, Mark Twain said the illustrations were "better than
the
book-which is a good deal for me to say, I reckon." This is quoted
from the
back cover blurb of the classic in a recent University of California
Press
edition, The Mark Twain Library." (http://www.simul.com/muraartNo1.html)?
Any
doubt else about the importance of the context of our messages and
our
innuendoes?
Get your own Free Home Page