LIBRARY NOTES
 
Roy Blount Jr. with Max Rudin
Mark Twain's Travels
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 6:00 PM
Ukrainian Institute of America, 2 East 79th Street; $10 in advance/$15 at the door
It was as a humorous travel writer, in The Innocents Abroad and Roughing It, that Mark Twain first became widely known, and at the height of his career he returned to the genre in the works collected here. Like those earlier books, the frequently hilarious A Tramp Abroad (1880) - based on his family's 16-month sojourn in Europe from April 1878 to August 1879 - blends autobiography and fiction, facts and tall tales. Written at a time of financial trouble and personal loss, Following the Equator (1897) is a darker and more politicized account of a lecture tour around the world. Throughout, Twain shows his celebrated style, from dissections of Wagnerian opera and an extended discourse on the language of blue jays to details of life in the outback and criticism of the inequity of India's caste system and colonial gold mining in Africa.
Roy Blount Jr., editor, is the author of 21 books, most recently
Alphabet Juice (2008). He has written introductions to four books by Mark Twain, including the first book-form publication of Twain's story
A Murder, a Mystery and a Marriage (2001). He is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me.
Max Rudin is the publisher of The Library of America, a nonprofit publisher whose mission is to foster greater appreciation and pride in America's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, authoritative editions of America's best and most significant writing. Mr. Rudin writes on American history, literature, music, and popular culture for American Heritage and Raritan magazines and gives frequent talks on American writing. He serves on the Board of Directors of The Great Books Foundation and The New York Festival of Song.
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