The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories

<i><br />ربما هي القراءة الأولى لـ " مـارك تويـن " .. سمعت عنه الكثير ولكن لا أذكر أني قرأت له من قبل..<br /><br />لم ترق لي القصص كثيراً سوى القصة الأولى وهي " وصية الثلاثين ألف دولار " أما البقية فأغلبها ممل أو سقط في بئر الزمن ولم يكن واضحاً ما يحاول أن يوصله توين للقارئ..<br /></i>

The title story features the imagination of a couple where the savvy wife has been planning how they will save and spend only interest from their inheritance. The ending's a shock, even sad.<br /><br /> “A Dog’s Tale” begins: “My father was a St Bernard, and my mother was a Collie, but I am a Presbyterian’ (30). Hilarious. His dogmom masters language by retaining large words, “whenever she heard a large word she said it over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it”(30). “She always had one word which she kept on hand, and ready, like a life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on— that was the word Synonymous.”<br /><br /> The dogmom learns languages just as Twain does in a medieval villa near Florence, “I cannot speak the language; I am too old to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, too indolent when I am not…” but the ‘help’ are all natives; “They talk Italian to me, I answer in English; I do not understand them, they do not understand me, so everybody is satisfied. In order to be fair, I throw in an Italian word when I have one, and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the morning paper. I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that Italian words do not keep in this climate” [where they originate] (p.172). “I have no dictionary, and do not want one…Many of them have a French or German or English look, and these I enslave for the day’s service. As a rule, not always. If I find a learnable phrase that warbles musically along I do not care to know the meaning of it.<br /> “Yesterday’s word was avanti. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably means Avaunt and quit my sight. To-day I have a whole phrase: soon dispiacentissimo. I do not know what it means, but it seems to fit in everywhere and give satisfaction.”<br /> “During my first week in the dreamy stillnessss of the woodsy and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was well content without it. This lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate it with a feeling verging on actual delight.”(173) “The trouble with an American paper is that it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit. As a rule, it concerns strangers only—people away off yonder, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others.<br /> “I saw at a glance that the Florentine papers would suit me: five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local, adventures of one’s very neighbors. I subscribed.”<br />He reads one, “Il ritorno dei Beati d’Italia, Elargizione del Re al Ospedale Italiano” which he translates the Italian sovereigns return, enlarge by hospital food. This is illustrated by servants bringing dishes to a fat king. Absurd, and hilarious to me, who have visited every year (until 2019) to write two books on Giordano Bruno— one of which I spoke on at Harvard Center for Astrophysics. (Google “Giordano Bruno Harvard Video.”)<br /><br /> Twain does a "Burlesque Biography" of the Twains starting in 11th century Scotland, Aberdeen, and a satire on the newly invented, "A Telephonic Conversation." He gives only one side of the conversation, which is of course discontinuous and thus comic. "Then I heard k-look, k'look--klook, klook, klook-look-look-look! then a horrible gritting of teeth..."(124). "Pause." "Oh! B flat! I thought you said it was the cat!" "Pause." "Since when?" "Pause." "And was her mother there?"(127).<br /><br />Read this in Vol XXVI, the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain. Harper and Brothers: New York, 1906.

<br /> أكثر ما يعجبني في مؤلفات مارك توين قدرته الفائقة على تطويع سخريته اللاذعة لانتقاد الرذائل البشرية و بعض الأخلاق الوضيعة . كتاباته مسلية للغاية و عميقة أيضاً في ذات الوقت ، المشكلة الوحيدة التي واجهتها هنا هو سوء الترجمة في بعض المواضع إذ أدت إلى إضعاف المؤلَّف نوعاً ما . <br />

Probably the best collection Twain published in his lifetime. Includes Dog’s Tale and Adam &amp; Eve.

<br /> <br /> It's a serie of short stories, I particularly enjoyed the one about the $30,000 bequest, which is about a couple that are to receive said bequest and they start imagining what to do with the money. Suddenly you're reading about their vast wealth, but they still haven't got the bequest. I also really liked Adam and Eve's diaries, they are just so much fun.

I'm apparently not much of a fan of Mark Twain. I get bored by his witticisms and ramblings. Not always, but in this collection of stories... well, not my cup of tea.

أحببت وصية الثلاثين ألف دولار ، أجنة أم نار ، إدوارد ميلز وجورج بت ، وهِبات الحياة الخمس ?

A great short story about imaginary millionaires

The final collection published in Twain's lifetime, and spanning almost forty years' worth of his work, this is a disparate, sometimes great, sometimes genuinely dismal jumble of the (near)best and (dirt)worst of his output.<br /><br />Much of it is amusing enough, but feels inconsequential. The two entries on the Italian language ('... Without a Master' and '... With Grammar'), 'A Telephonic Conversation', 'How To Tell A Story' (even with what would, by today's terms, seem eye-wateringly racist*), 'Amended Obituaries', 'The Danger of Lying in Bed' and his sarcastic 'Advice to Little Girls' are interesting pieces that raise a smile or two. 'The Californian's Tale' is good, but sad. 'General Washington's Negro Body-servant' is worth a read, as is 'A Monument to Adam' and 'A Humane Word From Satan'.<br /><br />Some of it simply filler, fit mostly for Twain completists to say they've read it - 'A Helpless Situation', 'The Five Boons of Life', 'The First Writing-machines', 'Wit Inspiration of the Two Year Olds', 'A Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury', 'Post-mortem Poetry' and 'Portrait of King William III' are simply things I read or listened to (I went through this collection via my Kindle and, when dog-walking, Librivox) and forgot almost immediately.<br /><br />Some of it is, quite honestly, unremittingly awful. The Portuguese bit falls very flat. 'A Cure for the Blues' raises the odd smile - being a caustic review, with hefty use of long passages, of a terrible book by one G. Ragsdale McClintock but, when paired with the next story, an interminable, mirthless romantic melodrama by G. Ragsdale McClintock, it becomes almost a literary (and literal) insult. I once read an interview with Bret Easton Ellis where he questioned the sanity of anyone who actually read those deliberately off-putting passages in 'American Psycho' about Patrick Bateman's personal grooming. I'd happily chose a thousand of them over a re-read of the supposed McClintock's book. It takes a lot for me to consider abandoning a book, but Ragsdale's almost spiked this entire collection for me.<br /><br />Still, there are some excellent pieces here. The title story is classic Twain. An embittered old man leaves a distant relative a life-changing sum of money, only to be collected under the strictest of terms. It's a funny, bitterly dark satire of marriage, probity and 'correct behaviour', with a killer ending. As one of those mawkish animal lovers who was fine with the Will Smith screen version of 'I Am Legend' until the dog dies, 'A Dog's Tale' stood out for me, too. It's by turns sentimental, beautiful, manipulative, shocking and sad and once featured in an anti-vivisectionist pamphlet. You've been warned, dog people...<br /><br />'Was it Heaven? Or Hell?' is an intriguing tale about the morality of telling lies to protect people and 'Edwin Mills and Benton: A Tale' is a sharply crafted dig at the hypocrisy of a society that will bend over backwards to help losers and criminals and abandon honest, decent men without a second thought. It's overblown, but effective.<br /><br />'A Burlesque Biography' is great, playful fun, in which Twain rattles off all the supposed historical ineptitude and criminality blighting his family tree. 'An Entertaining Article' is just that. A grim, poker-faced review of Twain's travelogue 'Innocents Abroad' that purports to take every single one of it's jokes seriously, it's hugely fun to read and is a fine example of Twain playing with his readership.<br /><br />'Does the Race of Man Love a Lord?' is fun and insightful and surprisingly relevant in an age of Instagram 'influencers' and politicians elected more for their fame than their ability and with his extracts from Adam And Eve's diaries, Twain ends the collection on a high note with real comedy, and wisdom, falling off the page in his subtle digs at gender politics and religion. Their differing views of the same events are skillfully crafted and work extremely well.<br /><br />* I've gone over this in previous reviews but, just for the sake of clarity - negatively judging anything from the 19th century on the basis on early 21st century morals is simply stupid, crass point-missing.

Собственно про историю "30000 долларов в наследство". Очень незамысловато. Твен уже писал рассказы, где на добропорядочных американцев сваливалось неожиданное богатство, что приводило их к немедленному моральному растлению и потере всякой благопристойности. В данном случае богатство оказывается чисто воображаемым. Уже после объявления о наследстве понятно как будет дальше развиваться история и никакого интереса не представляет. Немного неожиданно, что в конце оказывается, что никакого наследства и не было и герои вскоре самым простым образом помирают. Тут можно было придумать что-нибудь поинтереснее. Например, что спустя пять лет наследство в 30т. они бы получили, но после всех своих воображаемых тягостей, согласились бы совсем не тратить и не пускать его в оборот. А так это какая-то глупая шутка.