Twain’s style of reporting from 1866 isn't what I was taught at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. There's seems to be a little invention in his journalistic writing, however, the intervening 140 years haven’t helped, either. In that time, the man that was Samuel Clemens morphed into a legend called Mark Twain, and I find legends—like fish stories—tend to grow with age. With Twain, it seems the fish are words. Any clever remark or witticism sticks to Twain. Take, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” There is no record of Twain’s saying or writing this, although he did write something similar about Paris.In Hawaii, Twain is credited with dubbing the Waimea Canyon on Kauai as “The Grand Canyon of the Pacific.” It isn’t nearly as inventive as the San Francisco one, but it sticks. I’ve read it in dozens of travel essays, on websites and in promotional brochures. I’ve heard it from tour guides, flight attendants and even my Hawaii neighbors. The irony is I can’t find a thing he writes about the Waimea Canyon. In fact, he doesn’t write word one about Kauai in any of his dispatches published in the Sacramento Union. Not a single simile about the island’s superlative garden beauty, its verdant valleys, its vertical cliffs of Na Pali Coast, nor its great gash in the ground. Did he ever visit Kauai? If not, how could he have made the comparison? And, if he didn’t, who did?
Now I’m starting to question that monkeypod tree on Big Island. The one he supposedly planted 160 years ago. It’s awfully small, considering, yet there’s a Hawaii Visitors Bureau sign identifying it as the “Mark Twain Monkeypod Tree.” I’ve yet to read any mention of it in his writing, either. Sounds like another Twainism to me.
It’s a bit elastic, this truth thing, especially when it comes to the Legend Twain. I’m particularly interested in learning where I end up with it—truth. The truth in Twain’s journalism. The truth of Twain’s Hawaii. As for Twain, will my feelings of him or his writing change? Will my idea of writing or journalism change? And what about my relationship with Hawaii? How will that change as a result of this journey?
