As a standard so for example we see a couple walking down the street and its a black and white couple and then another couple that are black in black, somehow we get more excited about the black and white as oh my god thats just so wonderful. Isnt that good . Thats love. Its got the same status. But the problem is that white normative will put more value on interracial to the point of it being human all the way down and not only that but then this motion like a mullato and others have powerful for treats but these human beings who are a result of this relationship and therefore they provide a precious child. Usually the mullato is associated with being highly successful and thats not true. Im teaching a course right now and this bookstore is providing 150 books platos apology dustins Lorraine Hansberry raising of the sun. It is the truth. Free books in that class on friday night. In that prison and its true they are brothers but they have some mellat those in there too. Just like the only mullato in the white house. Thats not true. Mullatos catchpole. They are in poor schools and they have guns and drugs and so forth. To human thing with all the other structures of domination operating. If we can reach the point this is how its revealed in other places. Multiracial democracy as a way of reproducing White Supremacy because even in brazil with all those beautiful black and brown and african people. We are now going to buy my brothers book. Thats what we are going to do. [applause] thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] now off their ben tarnoff on marc twains life in San Francisco in 1860s and his relationship with a the group of writers known as the bohemians. From City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco this is 45 minutes. I think we are ready to start. I would like to to welcome yall to city lights. We are delighted to have with us ben tarnoff a native son of San Francisco returning with a new book, the bohemians marc twain in the San Francisco writers who reinvented American Literature. This is a densely layered highly nuanced portrait of the literary scene of the late 1800s. We follow the lives of marc twain been a cool breath ina colbrith to leave a literary canon. Bends complexity of the relationships to cheney authors and offers a look at postcivil war west coast and provides the perfect medium for the development of bohemia. The bohemians is a rich feast in history. It unwinds many different threads both of the writers and the city that helped host their exploits. Ben is the author of another book for counterfeiters. Ice which is published by Penguin Press and he is writing his appeared in the San Francisco chronicle and he is also worked at lafons quarterly. Its a delight and a pleasure to have them with us. Welcome ben tarnoff. [applause] thank you for that introduction and thank you all for coming out tonight. I should tell you im a little bit of a flu so if i get a little warm or my voice gets a little froggy you will have to forgive me. Marc twain actually when he was here in the 1860s in San Francisco wrote a funny sketch called how to cure a cold and one other recommended cures was to rub mustard all over your chest so if things get to that point i might send someone after mustard. [laughter] this is my book, the bohemians and it tells the story of four young writers in San Francisco in 1860s. They were marc twain bret harte Charles Warren stoddard and ina colbrith. One of the things i really loved about this project is it gave me access to kind of an under known part of twains life. I think when we think of twain they think of the man in the white suit chomping on a cigar with the white hair and the grandfatherly facade. Thats really the twain of the last decade with his best work behind him. Hes in his 60s and 70s. The twain of my stories the twain of the 20s and 30s when he hasnt really learned to conceal his extreme emotions under that grandfatherly facade. Its extremely ambitious. Hes vindictive and angry. He is vengeful and competitive. He is filled with anxiety about money and fear for the future. Hes convinced hes going to end up in the poor house and he is surrounded by these other young writers in San Francisco who really form him and mold him to maturity. San francisco is a great place to be a writer in 1860s and there are a few reasons why. Its very peaceful so the civil war is tearing apart the rest of the country. San francisco there is no fighting it reaches the coast and the draft is never applied west of iowa and kansas so its a great place to set up the war. Its also a rich city. Its the Industrial Financial and commercial center of the far west and that prosperity finds a range of print publications that sustains classic sessional writers including twain. Its also a very urban city. It has more than 100,000 people which makes it by far the biggest city west of st. Louis and that population is very cosmopolitan which is a legacy the gold rush. You have chinese, europeans from all Different Countries south americans mexicans australians you name it. The last reason San Francisco is so conducive to the literary scene is its isolation. Its pretty hard to reach San Francisco from the eastern United States and that gives a kind of buffer to the culture and lets the city incubate its own idiosyncratic cultural spirit that really guides plane and the rest of the bohemians. So i thought i would begin at the beginning and read a little bit of the introduction and introduce you to these four characters. The civil war began with an outburst of patriotic feeling on both sides and the belief that a few battles would result in a swift victory. It ended with the death of 750,000 soldiers and a nation shaken to its core. The wise men of an earlier era found themselves entirely unequal to the crisis. The great political and military leaders of the past eminences like John Crittenden and general Winfield Scott both born in the previous century when into forced retirement while younger more modern minds like Abraham Lincoln and ulysses s. Grant were up to the challenge. The civil war destroyed old challenges and rewarded radical thinking. The cultural upheaval comparable to the one brought a century early by the vietnam war the trauma to meet an older generation suddenly obsolete and demanded novelty innovation and experimentation. The 1860s was bloody bill walder in and if you manage to survive the magnificent time to be a young american. If america belongs in his future when the youngest place in america the far west the pioneers who settled that were overwhelmingly young and untethered from Traditional Society they built a new World Without the benefit of their parents council. If aaron camas often reeled with postadolescent excess they offered opportunities unlike any that might be found in the colleges and accounting houses of these. These new americans were the tanned face children of the vanguard of democracy. When wittman looked west he didnt see a place. He saw an idea rooted in a mystical tradition as old as the country itself. Thomas jefferson had been an astounding profit. He and his disciples believed the americans would march toward the pacific in the continents limitless supply of land would be settled by farmers who embodied the nations egalitarian spirit. Of course the reality was often more complicated. The region contains land they were assisted cultivation and indians who resisted extermination. As the line of settlements move steadily forward past the alleghenies the mississippi and the rockies the jeffersonian dream of a westwood empire of liberty began to look like prophecy. Even Henry David Thoreau when departing for his daily walk in concord felt drawn in a westerly direction. The future that lies that way to me he wrote the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that site. Mark twain was born in 1835 and reach young adulthood at the best possible time just as the country embarked on the most extraordinary period of change in its history. He was a westerner by birth raised on the missouri frontier. The two of them sam clemons as he was known and orion his brother got on the stagecoach and went west. And then in the spring of 1863 twain visits San Francisco for the first time. San francisco is the place to spend money in the west if you have it so he is coming to the big city from the mining boom town and is looking for a good time. What people remember best about him aside from his grandly red brows and rambling gates was a strange way of speaking a drawl that spun syllable slowly slowly like fallen branches on the surface of the stream. Printers transcribe it with and dashes trying to render rhythm so complex that couldve been scored of sheet music. He rasped ventrone lapsed into long silences soared in a slain tenor inherited from the songs of his childhood. He made people laugh while remaining dreadfully serious. He makes the sincere and esoteric the factual and the fictitious and proportions to obscure for even his closest friends to decipher. He was irreverent ambitious vindictive personality as impenetrably fast as the American West and is prone to seismic outburst. He was Emile Clemons before he became mark twain and in the spring of 1863 he made his decision that brought him one step oser to the famed he craves. On may 2, 1863 mark twain boarded the stagecoach town for San Francisco. The trip from Virginia City nevada to the california coast promised more than 200 miles of jolting terrain sleepless nights spent cork through the sierras and alkali at dust so thick it kate the skin. These discomforts didnt deter him who had 27 had interesting memories than most men twice his age. He had piloted steamboats on the mississippi roamed his native missouri with a band of confederate gorillas and has the civil war began in earnest taking over lang route to the territory of nevada or after local indian tribe. Now he fell in love with the first and only metropolis in the far west. After the sagebrush and alkali desert of washoe he later wrote San Francisco was paradise to me. Its grandeur and festivity exhilarated him and he gorges himself with abandon. He drank champagne in the dining room a palatial haunt of high society modeled on the banquet hall of versailles. He toured the pleasure guard on the outskirts of town pretty met a pretty girl named jeannie who snubbed him when he said although and said hello when he snubbed her. He rode to the beach and listen to the roaring surf and put his toes in the pacific. On the far side of the continent he felt the countrys vastness. He hadnt played to stay long but a nonstop of eating drinking sailing and socializing kept him too busy to bear the thought of leaving. In midmay he wrote his mother and sister to say he would remain for another 10 days, two weeks at the most. By early june another letter announced he was still in San Francisco has switched lodgings to a fancier hotel and showed no signs of slowing his demonic pace. Im going to the dickens might be fast he wrote a tone named squarely at his mother. The city offered many after dark amusements. Hi tone saloons and i. V. Dance halls gambling dens and shows and twain rarely relearned returned home before midnight. He was never at a loss for companionship. The. In exchange San Francisco would mold him into literary material and what an fire his evolution from a provincial scribbler into a Great American writer from Samuel Clemens and mark twain. So mark twain continues to visit San Francisco and then he decides to move their permanently in the spring of 1864. So what he does, he comes into contact with the citys leading literary figure and the two of them are going to form a very complicated lovehate relationship that will continue in the coming years beyond San Francisco. So bret hart likely look at. He might be seen in this stylish overcoat with a splash of color and a crimson necktie that set him apart from the rest. Every folded fabric of the young mans outfit would be carefully arranged like a brilliantly plumed bird. If your eyes happened to meet his, he would smile. If you spoke a few words including summit would be agreeable, but there would be no Yarn Spinning or anything to remind one about the macho wildland mark twain. He preferred to be admired and there was much to admire. At 26 years old he had become the literary light of the Pacific Coast and no small feat in the state were even the shabbiest minor aspired to him, including cheering crowds of public gatherings. Hart had a rising reputation and a wife and infant son and his evenings been involved drunken romps come and they centered on more domestic concerns like how to keep baby griswold from disturbing his studying or his wife from drugging him into house chores that he might have a couple quiet hours to write. This softspoken dandy mustve seen like an odd choice for the literary spokesman. He didnt well an actual revolver but he retold the churchmen of the cult of the pioneer. He hated sentimentalists and hypocrites and felt that california had an abundance. Where others saw progress, he saw decline. Few things escape the corrosive touch of his irreverence as his friend was a part of this, but he wasnt just in this case. And sure enough the palm of years in the next edition of the golden era. So here is stoddard. The shop on montgomery street sold mostly religious books and baubles. Inside the clerk was constantly distant, not because he cared much for cleanliness but because the money of the motion made it easy for his mind to wander. As he sank into is daydream the fed the duster in his hand became a palm tree. He had fallen in love with the tropics the years earlier while crossing across or in california and remember the syrupy taste of oranges and lemons the spray when brokers can be among the bright plumage of birds of a crane against the relentless green of the jungle. Most of all, the natives to adorn their nearly naked bodies with necklaces and reeves. One day californias most famous feature. The door with cutting his reverie short. Celebrities have been in the shop before, but never one whom he held in such high esteem. In my youth he was a hero worshiper, and the most heroic. After a probing glance came true a scrap of newspaper from his pocket. He read these lines . He said he did. The minister responded by reading aloud. He added words of encouragement and invited stoddard to visit him. Tickets to the up coming lecture series on poetry and where he would be discussing distinguished newfoundland politics. Then he vanished. I was left speechless with wonder and delight. At first glance they are employed by have reminded king of heart. But wheres lender and delicately build with large expressive lines. Serbs stood down the page, often illegible. He kept most people at a distance but a lot for dear life. We will people love best was his vulnerability. Is your earning for success, dread of failure, pain he felt when criticized in the pleasure one praised. These are the emotional undertow of many writers live. Twink concealed his insecurities with bravado and wait. He hid behind his studious exterior yet airing passions in public, and their loved him for it. This was the true source of what would be called in wenzel charm. There was one part of this personality they could not quite understand. He endured abuse from schoolyard bullies. He pursued Close Relationships with certain boys for whom he felt an especially deep devotion. These chums and bowser really reciprocated his affection, and as a child came to respect their objection and even take a kind of pleasure and. He loved being in love. For someone who found solace in their written world he lived in a word with no words for what he was. Never plan discussed. The last character to introduce it is in nicole brown. By the time she was 21 she has endured a lifetime with the tragedy. She was born in illinois, and your father dies and she is young. Her uncle is the founder of mormon is some. She grows up in an atmosphere of violence persecution. There were terrorizing that point in the midwest. She and her mother and stepfather and the rest of her siblings decide to go west to california and end up settling in los angeles. So they go to your this terrible divorce. Gives birth to a child. All this happens by the time shes 21. The family decides to move to San Francisco to bury her past and start over. She starts to write columns and publish them in the golden era. This brings her into contact with people like stoddard and heart and twain. Is because she is emerging, the bohemians have decided to start their own paper. The golden era has been good so far, but they need something of their own, their own forum, and this marks a kind of new moment in the literary evolution of the west. The building a better paper would paying them closer together. It went from being acquaintances to friends, colleagues to coconspirators in a literary crusade. Another writer and turned them. She had stayed mostly out of sight. She returned home to help promote a washed dishes, scrubland, and in the rest of the domestic work. She had trouble sleeping at night persecuted by memories of her past. She had endured an abusive husband and the death of her infant child remaining wary of what she called on pitying world and wrote better verses about suffering and scorn, inching needed a way out beyond grief and the burdens of her dreary work. So she would find france, fulfillment, and finally a life for moving. She first met him at the home of a mutual friend, a slender, delicate, handsome figure. This was a rush to remember them some 60 years lender. We were a little more of them born in girl. Only 20 but his successors have been swift. He no longer put polands in the mailbox. He was now a fixture of bohemian San Francisco. It helped that he looked the part. The ideal public in appearance. Especially poetic for his frequent mood swings, so inspiring moments of boom stark but security. The bond between her and stoddard took time to develop eventually becoming like a roller ancestor thread in the boxes years and acting population . Confined to the sorrows and solaces. Too mature for her years having lived a lifetime. Neither would never enjoy the comforts of conventional a bill to and of keeping secrets shepherd passed. They remain close their entire lives. The furniture between as has been more to me than the man in a loud. She published her second poem, struck a helpful non. She was steadily emerging from her shall just in time to take part in californias latest literary experiment. In recent weeks the area have been buzzing. Laying our Heads Together and and have determined to start a paper. They speared a single purpose, to wage allout war. They deplored californias depraved intellectual condition, its preponderance to my taste for columns in melodrama. The time had come for a new kind of journalism more discriminating in town. The ad had been a good start, but bohemians had outgrown it. So the story continues. I wish i had more time to keep reading. I thought i was stopped there and open it up to questions. Thank you for listening. [applause] ive really got this book a couple weeks ago. I want to ask you, how did you get involved with mark twain in all of this . I mean, i read mark twain once i was a teenager and read tom sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but never read king arthur, the innocents abroad but essays. I knew that mark twain was involved in many different things. A lot of different so i was curious where your i mean, it is an excellent polk and i deeply appreciate. Well, i always want to write about said francisco. I was. I had a sense, many of us have a vague sense that he spend time here, but were not really sure how much. It turns out as i learned more about how much time he had spent here i realize that was the stores are wanted to write and particularly you mentionedand tom sawyer, i think that is better known to lawyers, one now we think of in our minds eye. As coming to me, was stranger. To see him in this embryonic face where his emotions are a bit more extreme, and the fundamental aspects of the style of started to come and gather. To me that was fascinating. The california context. Thank you. I appreciated their reading. I have a question. It given that San Francisco has long been a bastion of gay rights and literature what has been the perception. Claimed as a precursor to of the life of the castro . I think he has been rediscovered as of four father of the San Francisco. It is tough. As i mentioned, the passes that i read, the word gay is not one now would have been turned. Not even clear how police he kind of verbalizes the sexuality to himself. He has this correspondence or he says of one. , walt whitman is not responding to his letters. In the name of calamus reply to me. Of course his palms written about homosexuality. There are these attempts to use a metaphor and symbols and images to describe own homosexuality. Another favorite phase, and. Now recognize. So there are coated ways to describe the call about homosexuality, the way we would think of it now is not really current. That does not prevent us from being able to claim him as a pioneer certainly. Examining the characters with heavy emphasis on the cultural context of the time the enormous wealth running through the city. Obviously there are close and longs then people have talked about. Were you writing with that in mind . I think it is sneaks into it. I live in new york now. I return on lot and came back a lot to research. I think that that inevitably should shave my sent thinking subconsciously. Unfortunately i dont have any great things to say about those parallels. There is something obviously reminiscent of the gold rush and the current tech revolution, which i think you saw back in the day as well. But once they have bought about is that the prosperity in San Francisco in the 1860s really finances the letters seem. Because it is such a rich city begin have so many newspapers. If you go into the library of congress defined more than 300 different papers. So that really allows a lot of people to make a living on riding which is how this literary scene comes together. So im not sure what the parallel would be today, of the prosperity nobel would sustain another literary scene, and its harder to know. How this might have affected. He was here. He initially when i was thinking about this book was going to be the fifth character. Those not get to the city. It is really toward the end. The overland monthly, a periodical. A major figure. Obviously these days later than many of these people do. Twayne, art, stoddard. He is a wonderful figure. I think if you wanted to find a bridge between 1860s San Francisco literary scene and later decades he is the ideal link between those organs. That would be great. Wonder if he could talk about style. They have a manifesto. Do you feel like they shared a sought out . So selfconscious about there doing. Of the good question. Were the enough people and then eased or more aware or chicken live in describing what they were doing. Not very good at describing what is revolutionary, but someone like william d. Howell, a young editor at the of lentic monthly and really offering and get away for the San Francisco riders to enter lived literary establishment how is it perfect about how these represent a break from the past, what they are drawing on, this rich irony, rambling flow, looking at that and seeing, as he calls, the artist of new American Literature which is necessary to modernize American Literature entering in of this provincial new england origen. He was an intolerable resources. As many artists they are not all is very articulate about their own mark. In the introduction you briefly mentioned the parallel between the wars of 100 years apart and reference to the west indies and geography. I was wondering if you elaborate on that further or if you wanted to mention that for their now . While, the cultural revolution represented by the civil war is really essential to the book. I think you see it in a lot of different ways. All the rules are being real wooden and more fair and politics and business some literature. It is an unconventional wisdom of all kinds against this new modern reality. Would we be able to see where that is happening today or not know for 30 years . I think we will probably not know for 30 years. I think you need the virtue of hindsight in that situation. She is not a Great Authority on what is interesting or revolutionary. I talk about the sketch he wrote in 1865 when he is here in San Francisco and i feel it was a birth moment for his style and later literary renovation. He doesnt see it that way, though. It is really only with decades of hindsight and later works like huckleberry fin and tom swayer that you can track it back and say this is where it began. So in terms of the contemporary scene we wont know. How do you think of the history of what they are writing relates to the history of vigilante in San Francisco . Well, it was a major force in San Francisco history particularly in the 1850s. There were two uprisings in the 1850s that the respectable citizens of San Francisco cleaning up the town by taking justice into their own hands and lynching criminals and they hang two noted criminals in 1856 and control the city for a period of time. By the time these writers are
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