Foo - Writing a satire against Mark Twain :(

I need to write a satire against Mark Twain. It must be 2-4 pages, an essay, story, whatever.
Well I need help making ideas that I can use to do this. My FOcus will be that because he was great, he has taken fame away from other writers. ANd perhaps other writers could be talked about, taught in schools, and our view of literature could be different.

Now why do you "need" to write a satire against Mark Twain. Is it an assignment?

Look up some hack romance novelist on Amazon or sumptin' and write a diatribe coming from that person's perspective railing on and on about how "so called" great writers like Shakespeare, Chaucer, Mark Twain, Virgina Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut have ruined the written world for the world at large.

It seems satirical to me...

Yea this is an assignment. What I really need is backup, my hyperbolus argument seems almost possible, I just need backup

Mark Twain wrote an excellent piece about learning to ride a bicycle.I posted the link once, but here it is again.

http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/bike1.html

But back to your original question. Wow, what can you say? Mark Twain is one of my favorites.

Huck Finn sure broke all the rules of proper English. The characters in that book spoke as if they were country bumpkins. I'm sure this led to the slow decline of proper English in the late 19th century, and it continues to this day (just read some of the posts on this forum):D

Good Luck

Look up some hack romance novelist on Amazon or sumptin' and write a diatribe coming from that person's perspective railing on and on about how "so called" great writers like Shakespeare, Chaucer, Mark Twain, Virgina Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut have ruined the written world for the world at large.

It seems satirical to me...

That is a great Idea, I might do that just for fun.

We need an entire forum for PC2's "help with projects" and "help with homework" threads. :rolleyes:

Ah yes. I remember the good old days when he just had "help with wheel building" threads. Now I don't know what he is talking about half the time.

Ah yes. I remember the good old days when he just had "help with wheel building" threads. Now I don't know what he is talking about half the time.
:p but it worked out in the end. I had a few folks say they thank me for the threads. Wheel building is not too bad anymore thanks to those threads too

I need to write a satire against Mark Twain. It must be 2-4 pages, an essay, story, whatever.
Well I need help making ideas that I can use to do this. My FOcus will be that because he was great, he has taken fame away from other writers. ANd perhaps other writers could be talked about, taught in schools, and our view of literature could be different.

Mark Twain wrote a biting essay on how James Fenimoore Cooper was the worst American writer. Try to do one on MT in the same fashion.

For your idea to work, you'd need to come up with some writers nobody has ever heard of; precisely proving your point that because MT was so great, he took fame and fortune away from other writers. (eg. 3 days after Huck Finn is published, Roger Smallworthy's novel, "Chuck Phineas", a tale of two young men that go rafting each summer only to fall in love with each other despite the fact that Chuck is married, is published)

Or you could try and 'prove' that Mark Twain didn't actually write the works of Mark Twain. It was probably Francis Bacon. Sure he'd been dead for three hundred years, but that's hardly a problem.

What exactly is your assignment? Is against your word or the teachers. Satire need not be an attack and if you are limiting yourself you may be making a mistake. Your idea has a lot of merit, just remember it does not have to go into attack mode. (Hmm, come to think of it you might want to read Puddinhead Wilson. The main character is brilliant, but because his ideas are far over the heads of those in his town they think him a fool. Your idea might work well with Puddinhead as a critic of Twain who is worshiped by the other characters in the book).

Mark Twain wrote a biting essay on how James Fenimoore Cooper was the worst American writer.

Hahaha. True. Twain took a few offhand pot-shots at Cooper in Huck Finn.

Or you could try and 'prove' that Mark Twain didn't actually write the works of Mark Twain. It was probably Francis Bacon. Sure he'd been dead for three hundred years, but that's hardly a problem.


No his works were written by a different Samuel Clemmens, not Bacon.

looks like I have another option, something poking fun at public highschool education.

looks like I have another option, something poking fun at public highschool education.
You could use Keith99's Puddinhead Wilson suggestion with this idea. Make Twain a sophomore trying to fit in at his new high school. It could be like the movie 'Mean Girls', but folksy and such.