Mark Twain

MARK TWAIN used to work here. The Territorial Enterprise, where he was city editor and resident prevaricator, was in the lower floor of a building where they now sell silly T-shirts and Marilyn Monroe posters. There are two Mark Twain museums on the main drag, one where he sat when the other was burned out. It has the very typewriter he wrote with, or a reasonable facsimile.Twain, you may recall, was a humorist before he was a novelist. One of his humorous works included his account of how he got from Missouri to Nevada.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a moderately obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar - another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: AUTODIDACT One of the most notable self-educated persons in American history is Abraham Lincoln, who had the sketchiest of formal educations in his childhood, no more than a few months. Teaching himself English prose from reading the Bible and Shakespeare, and later teaching himself logic through reading law, he became a formidable thinker and speaker.

A favorite saying of Mark Twain's: "When I was young, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not."That line is heard (with other familiar aphorisms) in "Mark Twain and Me," a nice new movie premiering tonight (8 o'clock) on cable's The Disney Channel. (Usually a premium service, the network is offering a free preview weekend on participating cable systems; check your company's listings.)Memory is the appropriate theme for this film, in which Jason Robards adds a pretty good rendering to the archives of acting portrayals of America's most famous writer.

I must take exception to the conclusions David Zurawik draws ("Laughing on the way to the voting booth?" Oct. 24) regarding the use of satire in political discourse and the use of the National Mall as a mass meeting place. First, there is nothing "sacred" about the mall that prevents it from being used as a rallying ground for protest and political dialogue; it has been used countless times for this purpose. The point of the rally has an indeed sobering point to make, that political discourse has crossed the boundaries of extremity and works to make our leaders and commentators more polarized than we the people are or want to be. Second, satire has long been a powerful form of political commentary, offering both enlightenment and release in times of confusion and tension.

Hal Holbrook may be best known for his Tony Award-winning portrayal of Mark Twain, but the actor is no stranger to Shakespeare. He has portrayed both the title role in "King Lear" and Shylock, the money lender, in "The Merchant of Venice" at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre, and he is returning to the latter drama in director Michael Kahn's production of "Merchant," currently in previews at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington.The cast also includes Enid Graham as Shylock's trial opponent, Portia, and Keith Baxter as the merchant of the title.

The great American humorist's spirit and style take center stage this weekend, as the North Carroll High School Thespians perform "An Evening With Mark Twain."Nearly two dozen students will perform in teacher Roberta Rooney's adaptation of material drawn from Twain's classic novel "Huckleberry Finn" as well as "The Apple Tree," "The Diaryof Adam and Eve," "Noah and the Bureaucrat" and other stories."This is different from anything we have ever done, since we usually do two-act plays," said Rooney, who has taught drama at the school for 10 years.

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- The Mark Twain Memorial Bridge over the Mississippi River here is closed. Coast Guard boats patrol two swamped neighborhoods, and high water threatens an electric power station and 110,000 acres of nearby farmland. The river is 12 feet over flood level here, the highest it has been in 20 years.But the sun was out and, anyway, people here take their Fourth of July celebration very seriously. They call it National Tom Sawyer Days, the 38th annual festival in honor of Mark Twain, who grew up here in the mid-1800s and borrowed some of its people and places for his books.

The Art of Healing: Union Memorial Hospital - 150 Years of Caring For Patients By Patrick Smithwick. UMH, 380 pages, $25. During a century and a half, Union Memorial Hospital has changed its name (originally, Union Protestant Infirmary) and location, moving in 1923 from west to north Baltimore. This means it is older than most of our hospitals - and more settled, having neither lit out for the suburbs nor set up branches. Patrick Smithwick interviewed (or edited the written recollections of)

If anyone does American biography better than Ken Burns, I can't wait to see that work. But for now, I don't think it gets much better than Mark Twain, Burns' biography of author Samuel Clemens that starts tonight on PBS. Not all of it is so terrific, to be sure. There are stretches during this two-night, four-hour film that drag, especially in Part One. But there are other stretches, especially in Part Two, that absolutely sing with such a strong sense of storytelling and surfeit of insight into Twain and the American character that we can't help but be dazzled.

Judging from their reaction, it seems that Tom Sawyer still enchants new generations of young fans. At least a fifth of the audience at Sunday's performance of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Chesapeake Arts Center's Studio Theatre were children. They frowned with concern as Tom witnessed a murder in the graveyard, snickered when his tattletale half-brother, Sid, got a reprimand from Aunt Polly and laughed openly when at his own funeral Tom pestered Sid by repeatedly touching his ankle from under a sofa.

Mark Twain was an American wit like no other, willing and more than able in writing or in person to skewer the pompous and self-important, be they lying politicians, ham-fisted editors or petty tyrants on the local school board. But one subject did tend to command his respect. "When I am king," mused a character in his 1881 novel "The Prince and the Pauper," the people "shall not [only] have bread and shelter, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is worth little where the mind is starved."

Mark Twain's sadness and worries about money are all right there - hidden under the cross-dressing plot that puts a cigar-chomping gent in hoop skirts and hair bows, beneath the satirical swipes at the French, the art world and Limburger cheese. Is He Dead?, a recently discovered 1898 comedy by the great humorist and adapted by David Ives, has all the sparkle and brilliance of a shooting star. But it leaves behind a trail of dust, stones and space debris. In the farce, currently receiving a solid production at Olney Theatre Center, Twain cheekily placed a beloved, recent painter, Jean Francois Millet, in stage center.

Eric Roth won an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for Forrest Gump. It would be cosmically appropriate as well as overwhelmingly deserved if he won another one a lucky 13 years later for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This movie turns everything on its head, including time, cliched notions of luck and destiny, and conventional notions of the art of adaptation. (Starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, it opens nationwide on Christmas Day.) Benjamin Button takes little from the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story beyond its hook and its title.

Henry Johnson is a partner of Johnson/Berman, an interior design firm responsible for many high-profile projects, including the State House in Annapolis and the Maryland Club in Baltimore. Johnson has always had a keen interest in architectural history, which has informed much of his award-winning work for more than two decades. He says he believes that good design is not an accident, but the result of a thoughtful and purposeful approach to problem-solving with exact and specific goals.

Andres Alonso and his family left Cuba when he was 12. He arrived in Union City, N.J., speaking no English but found mentors in the public schools who saw his potential and encouraged him to apply to Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, then earned a law degree from Harvard University. "With me, there were people who saw beyond a language problem, people who saw beyond the poverty," he said. Alonso, who is 50, was deputy chancellor of the New York City public school system before taking charge of the Baltimore system this year.

Tomlinson not squeezed out Remember all that talk in September about how San Diego Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson was the latest star ball-carrier to get used up like a tube of toothpaste that has been squeezed empty? After the first three games of the season, Tomlinson had a total of rushing 130 yards for an anemic 2.3-yard average and one measly touchdown. Well, as Mark Twain might have observed, reports of Mr. Tomlinson's demise were greatly exaggerated. In the past 10 games, LT has been a fantasy league superstar (and kept the Chargers alive in the playoff hunt)

Want to pore over a letter written by A.A. Milne? Or, instead of a letter from the creator of Winnie the Pooh, would you prefer a note from Queen Elizabeth I? How about riffling through an Elizabethan vicar's diary? Or perusing a manuscript handwritten by Mark Twain? You are invited to do so, as part of an exhibition of 100 plays, poems, books, letters, warrants, deeds and receipts spanning 700 years and on display through June 8 at Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library. Titled "The Pen's Excellencie": Treasures from the Manuscript Collection, the exhibit breathes life into historical figures.

Mark Twain's sadness and worries about money are all right there - hidden under the cross-dressing plot that puts a cigar-chomping gent in hoop skirts and hair bows, beneath the satirical swipes at the French, the art world and Limburger cheese. Is He Dead?, a recently discovered 1898 comedy by the great humorist and adapted by David Ives, has all the sparkle and brilliance of a shooting star. But it leaves behind a trail of dust, stones and space debris. In the farce, currently receiving a solid production at Olney Theatre Center, Twain cheekily placed a beloved, recent painter, Jean Francois Millet, in stage center.

Channeling Mark Twain By Carol Muske-Dukes Random House / 288 pages / $24.95 What good is art? Does it make any real difference in people's lives? For the conflicted heroine of Carol Muske-Dukes' rueful yet affirmative new novel, these questions come attached to uncomfortable specifics. Holly Mattox teaches a poetry workshop at the Women's House of Detention on New York's Rikers Island. What use is this rarefied art to prostitutes, drug addicts and murderers? How can poetry possibly matter in the face of their suffering and their crimes?

NEW YORK -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels including Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island. His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago. Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction.