White House Symposium on the Life and Works of Mark Twain
"To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of
thought
into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can
have ideas - the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be
reduced to one glittering paragraph.."
- Mark Twain
Letter to Emeline Beach, February 10, 1868
The first in the White House American Authors series, this symposium celebrated the life and works of one of our
best-known authors, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, most commonly known by his pen name, Mark Twain. Clemens was a natural
born storyteller who was one of the first writers to recognize that art could be created out of the American
language. Through his carefully chosen words and his sharply honed humor, he dealt head-on with controversial issues
that others were afraid to confront.
The Symposium on Mark Twain was moderated by Eden Ross Lipson, Children's Book Editor for The New York Times, and
featured Ken Burns, who presented excerpts from his documentary on Twain; Jocelyn Chadwick Assistant Professor of
Education at Harvard University; and Shelly Fisher Fishkin, a Twain scholar.
The Symposium concluded with an evening performance of Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight at historic Ford's Theatre.
For additional information about the life and works of Mark Twain. please visit:
Library of Congress, America's Library: Meet Amazing Americans: Mark Twain
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/aa/twain
Mark Twain House, Hartford, Conneticut
http://www.marktwainhouse.org/
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum
http://www.marktwainmuseum.org/
PBS: New Perspectives on the West
http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/clemens.htm
The Mark Twain Papers and Project, Bankcroft Library at the University of California, Berkley
http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/MTP/
Mrs. Bush's Remarks at the Mark Twain Symposium
