[This is the blackberry patch in its current state at The Parsonage. Within a few weeks, the berries will ripen and I will hurl myself into their thorn-laden midst in pursuit of their crimson splendor. In other words, I will be picking a lot of blackberries. SB SM]
This year’s Blackberry Book is Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
This is one of the most prestigious, coveted awards in the literary world. It is the book I will listen to while harvesting this year’s blackberry crop. Past selections have included Ulysses, Moby Dick, and a definitive biography of Marilyn Monroe. This year the selection committee- that would be me- have selected Ron Chernow’s biography of Mark Twain. Chernow’s past work includes the biography of Alexander Hamilton that inspired the hiphop Broadway production.
As a warm-up for the feature presentation I have just finished the audio of Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, an episodic collection of reminiscences, yarns, tall tales, and historical accounts of the glory days of steam travel. I listened partly as preparation for Chernow’s bio, but also because I was genuinely captivated by Twain’s descriptions of the colorful, but short-lived, period when paddle-wheelers and their captains were the astronauts of their era. When the author returns to the river after a two decade hiatus in the mid-1850s, the steamship are already playing second fiddle to the railways transporting goods and people across the land.
I was influenced in my choice of this year’s Blackberry Book by a review of Mark Twain that was posted on Facebook by college classmate and fellow Silverback David, one of several SB Davids who call the Arid Zone home. He recently published this review on social media:
“Finished! After a two week hiatus for our East Coast trip, I finished all 1,033 pages of “Mark Twain” this afternoon.
“Ron Chernow proved again that he is a fabulous writer — absolutely fluid, compulsively readable prose. That’s no surprise to anyone who has read his biographies of Washington, Hamilton, Grant and Rockefeller.
“But this one is oddly shaped. By page 330 Twain is 49 and has published pretty much all of his major works — Jumping Frog, Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Gilded Age, Tom Sawyer, A Tramp Abroad, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, and Huckleberry Finn. And we aren’t even a third of the way through!
“The 700 pages that remain chronicle a beloved public figure — the first Great American Celebrity — whose private life is a succession of disasters: financial fiascos, giddy enthusiasms followed quickly by disillusionment and vicious retaliation, and family tragedies. Granted, those years are the best-documented. It doesn’t follow that they are the most interesting. Ultimately I had a forest-vs-trees problem: for me, the chronicle of Twain’s misery tended to overshadow the humanity and creative genius.”
I have only one question for Silverback Dave … “How many quarts of blackberries did you end up with?” My efforts will result in assorted, jams, cobblers, and galettes, but most of the crop will end up in the primary fermenter as it begins its journey towards this year’s vintage of Muze, blackberry wine. (That’s me, trying to look French, on the label.)
I will weigh in with my own thoughts on the book once the blackberries are in the primary fermenter and making their journey from juice to this year’s vintage.
Here’s the current state of the patch:
And here I am, poised and ready for everything Ron and Mark have in store for me. (And looking as prickly as the patch).