A Random Surfacing of Twain

A day ago, Saturday, we were at a rain-drenched auction here in the west of Wisconsin where we bought a little of this, a little of that. Near the end, when our small Saturn wagon was about full, I bought a large, cubical box of books, mostly children's.

This afternoon when looking through them I found one of those charming collections of sayings and quotations that Peter Pauper press used to do so well. This particular one appeared beneath the Hallmark imprint.

A Treasury of Mark Twain ... not a collection of stories; just short observations and asides.

In opening the small book this evening one quotation caught my eye:

"Few slanders can stand the wear of silence."

When I published C.M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary I did find myself attacked by one of Kornbluth's several erstwhile collaborators ... the only surviving one, naturally. This erstwhile collaborator of Kornbluth claimed not to know me, although he and I had kept in contact, on and off, since the middle 1990s.

Anyway ... I have been reading Twain short works for my bedtime reading, recently. So I opened this little gift book with pleasure. When I came across this saying, provenance unlisted, I smiled ... for I was thinking back upon my strategy in the face of public attack.

For when my name was spoken with derision in public, in a famous author's blog ...

I deemed my best option, for the time being, to be silence.

Cheers ...