The word and Mr. Clemens.

• Author: Lederer, Richard
• Position: PARTING THOUGHTS - Samuel Langhome Clemens

THIS YEAR MARKS A CENTURY since the 1910 death of the most American of American writers, Samuel Langhome Clemens, more popularly known as Mark Twain. On the night before that passing, Halley's Comet shone in the skies as it made its closest approach to the Earth. Just a year before, Twain had commented to a friend: "I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it.... The Almighty has said, no doubt, 'Now here go these two unaccountable frauds: they came in together; they must go out together.' Oh! I am looking forward to that."

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In My Mark Twain, published the year after his dear friend's death, William Dean Howells wrote, "Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes--I knew them all--sages, poets, seers, critics, humorists: they were like one another and like other literary men; but Clemens was sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature."

Just as Abraham Lincoln helped forge our identity as a truly united United States, Mark Twain gave a young nation a voice to sing of itself: His stories and essays are suffused with an unalloyed American folk poetry freed from the straitjacket of literary prose. Twain wrote in his notebook, "My works are like water. The works of the great masters are like wine. But everyone drinks water." Has any other writer ever tapped as deeply the easy grace and direct simplicity of American speech?

Twain held strong opinions about a passel of subjects, and he possessed the gift of being able to state these views in memorable ways:

* "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt"

* "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

* "It's easy to give up smoking. I've done it many times."

Twain also had a lot to say about style, literature, and the American language that he, more than any other writer, helped to shape:

* On American English, compared with British English, "The property has gone into the hands of a joint stock company, and we own the bulk of the shares."

* On dialects, "I have traveled more than anyone else, and I have noticed that even the angels speak English with an accent."

* On choosing words, "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter--'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning."

* More on word choice, "A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain. A close...