Mark Twain Blogs
IN the New Yorker, readers can study Mark Twain’s essay (abstract only).
Hacks are our own worst censors:
Free speech is the privilege of the dead, the monopoly of the dead… For it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life; that out of fear or calculated wisdom, or out of reluctance to wound friends, he had long kept to himself certain views not suspected by his little world, and had carried them unuttered to the grave.
Now there is hardly one of us would dearly like to reveal these secrets of ours; we know we cannot do it in life, then why not do it from the grave, and have the satisfaction of it?
…I feel it every week or two when I want to print something that a fine discretion tells me I mustn’t.
Which is why blogging is such a hit – and the best autobiographies leave nothing out and don’t dwell on the writer, rather focus on the person around him or her…
Posted: 28th, December 2008 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
