The American

When I think of the greatest Americans in history, I realize a certain affinity and common frame of mind between Mark Twain and myself. By that I mean that if Mark Twain put his mind to the same task, naming the greatest Americans, he would include no politicians or generals in his list. And neither would I.

But I would include Twain. Johnny Cash. Thomas Jefferson (who would make the list even if we entirely ignore his political career and focus on his scholarship and philosophy). Jefferson, Twain, and Cash captured the psyche, the ethos, and the pathos of an Americanism that I can relate to in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, respectively.

Twain reeks of a modest brilliance, of a profound sophistication that could not be co-opted by fads of false patriotism or hero-worship. Consider "The War Prayer":

"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells, help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead. Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain"

Help us to lay wasted to their humble homes with hurricanes of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief"

And so on.

Or consider Twain's account of old friends reminiscing. (Anyone familiar with Bob Dylan's 1963 "Bob Dylan's Dream" will instantly spot the influence):

"We sat down and talked. We steeped our thirsty souls in the reviving wine of the past, the pathetic past, the beautiful past, the dear and lamented past; we uttered the names that had been silent upon the our lips for fifty years, and it was as if they were made of music.

With reverent hands, we unburied our dead, the mates of our youth, and caressed them with our speech; we searched the dusty chambers of our memories"

Twain on the loss of loved ones:

"It is one of the mysteries of our nature that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words.

The power to realize their full import is mercifully wanting. The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss--that is all."

And finally, Twain on those who are too smart for their own good:

"The gods value morals alone; they have paid no compliments to intellect, nor offered it a single reward. If intellect is welcome anywhere in the other world, it is in hell, not heaven."

The man speaks the truth. After all, only an erudite and educated intellect would propose remaking the world in his own image, as American imperialists are so adept at doing. A simpler, moral man might simply stay home and write.