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From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true and the beautiful are taught, nurtured and honored. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.
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His humor is satirical and satire is often used to point out real flaws in society. And so he wasn't simply humorous just for the sake of a joke. I mean, sometimes, of course he was, but he often had, there was that edge to the satire that was socially concerned and socially critical. So that's an important thing that we regularly see in his, his fiction as well.
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This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the Hillsdale College Podcast network. That was Dr. Benedict Whelan, Associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. We'll talk with him later on today to get a biographical sketch of Mark Twain. First we're joined by Dana Perino. She is Fox News host of the Five, one of the co hosts there, as well as co anchor of America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer. And Dana Perino, also former White House press secretary and author. Her brand new book is I Wish Someone Had Told Me the Best Advice for Building a Great Career and a Meaningful Life. Dana, thank you so much for joining us.
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C
Thank you. I am thrilled to be here and I really have enjoyed listening to you in lots of different places, including one of my favorite podcasts, the Three Martini Lunch, which I never have had. But I enjoy the podcast very much and your insight and analysis. And I think it's always very helpful, especially for me to listen to somebody who's at a great institution like Hillsdale and somebody who is not in a D.C. or New York or LA bubble.
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Yes, it is not anything close to that here in Hillsdale. We are 90 minutes away from anything. So we your book is very persuasive in giving people great advice about career and life. You are joined in the book, though, by a number of contributors. I want to give you the opportunity to introduce what we call your co hosts for I Wish someone Had Told Me.
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C
Yeah. So this book really came out of an effort I did for FoxNews.com a couple of years ago. I started doing a short little feature called Short Questions with Dana Perino. And it was one of those kind of scrollable, snackable content type of things where I would just ask colleagues around here, hey, where's your favorite restaurant? What's your vacation plan for the summer? What's your favorite app that you use on your phone all the time? What's the last song you listen to on Spotify? And it was a pretty popular feature. Even the CEO loved it. So we kept it going. But I got a little bit bored of just asking those types of questions. And so I worked with so many interesting, fabulous people who have different career backgrounds. And so I started asking, what's the best advice you ever got? Or what was your lucky break? And I was getting such good information that I thought when I decided to do a refreshed mentoring and book for life and career advice post Covid, I realized there's a supply and demand problem for this kind of content. I find that there's so much interest and desire for constant mentoring and guidance, and there's not enough supply. And I certainly don't have all the answers, even though my husband would laugh when he heard me say that. So I wanted to utilize supply of the great content that I was getting in that feature I did for dot com. So I went back to over 40 of my friends and colleagues here at Fox News, but also people I've known through my life, like my college roommate, who I adore, Andrea Aragon, people like Selena Zito, who is a fabulous reporter out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And Dierks Bentley, a country music singer, Mike Rowe, and also somebody that most people on Fox may have never heard of, my friends Michelle Chase and Maura, who are very fabulous and just successful people that I love being around and learning from. So I put it all together in one place. And what I love is also the title came from my mom. When my mom read Everything Will Be okay, which was a book targeted specifically for young women for life and career advice, my mom called me and said, I wish someone had told me all of this. This new book is not specifically for young women. It's for everybody. And that's also one of the reasons I wanted to broaden out and interview people like Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Waters, Harold Ford Jr. Bill Hemmer, the colleagues that if you watch Fox, you know very well, but you might not know some of their best advice.
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A
You say in the introduction and you stress the joy that you get from mentoring young people. And I have the joy of also helping young students here at Hillsdale College. What is the benefit to you? Why do you enjoy it so much?
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That's a great question, Scott. I'm not exactly sure why. I mean, maybe it's because as you get older, you realize that you have more to give to others or that you should have thanked the mentors that you had growing up. One of the things I realized in this book is that I should have thanked more of my mentors along the way. As I started going up through college and graduate school and then working, yes, those mentors, not only did I thank, but I've stayed in touch with. But I wanted to go back and thank my first grade teacher. She's the one who really got me writing and reading. And I came across a little cloth book that we were supposed to write in the first grade. And the question, it had questions for prompts. And the question was, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I wrote an author. And I wanted to thank her because I thought she should know that it came true. And a lot of it is because of that initial foundation. And unfortunately, she passed away in 2008, so I hadn't. I didn't get the chance to thank her. And sometimes you mentor people and don't even realize it. I'm sure you, because of Hillsdale and maybe me here, I could basically have office hours every day that would be filled with young people wanting to know all sorts of things, like, should I go for this promotion? What if I want to move from production into being on camera? What do I do? If my job is changing so rapidly because of technology, where should I go? Should I take the leap and go to graduate school? But also, Scott, the other thing that I find, I'd be curious if you find this too. At the end of almost every mentoring meeting, when somebody comes in to ask about career advice, I am asked something personal, like, how did you meet Peter? How can I find somebody to spend my life with? They're looking also for meaning outside of career. And so I don't know why. It gives me joy to be able to help them, but to see a little bit of worry taken away from their shoulders after they leave my office, that does make me feel really good.
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One lesson I think is such a great one to learn is be curious. For lifelong learning, for lifelong success, be curious. And I love our students at Hillsdale because they are curious and they ask questions. Questions. If someone perhaps is not naturally curious, can you become more curious?
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C
Oh, I absolutely think you can. And I think that the tools today are incredible. Scott, when you and I were growing up, you wanted to look something up. You pulled the encyclopedia down.
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Right?
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Right. And now you could listen to podcasts all day long or the how. The do it yourself videos on YouTube are pretty amazing. You can learn constantly. It's almost too much. You gotta figure out how to turn off all of the content. I'm a big reader I love it. But I'm also a podcast enthusiast. I listen a lot while I'm walking, while I'm doing the laundry. My husband will laugh when I say when I'm cleaning the kitchen, though it does happen on occasion. But I'm always learning. So I have. One of the tips I have in the book is ABL always be learning. And that could be from just even asking somebody that I meet in the green room. So what was your lucky break? Or what do you think about the market? How do you feel about tariffs? And just being curious and listening is so great. And that advice comes up over and over again from people like Bill Hemmer in the book Mike Rowe, and Mike Rowe in particular really talks about how curiosity is something that can really set you apart. If you are going for a job or you're going for a promotion, then somebody who is curious is always more likely to get the job or the promotion than people who aren't.
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Dana Perino is with us. Her new book, I wish someone had Told Me, in I think the first chapter, John Roberts tells us, don't let anyone tell you you can't achieve what you are passionate about. Greg Gutfeld in the same chapter, tells us, do not follow your dreams. That's terrible advice. Okay. They're kind of mixed messages, right? Because we want people to follow dreams and do what they love. And at the same time, there might come a point where as much as I love being a professional basketball player, that's not going to happen or whatever profession is out there. How do you navigate that?
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C
Well, one of the things that I always believe when people are like, I don't know what to do, should I take this job or should I take. Take that job when they're like getting out of college, like, just first of all, just start working, okay? Start working. Start getting a paycheck. Dreams can change. I write about in the first chapter or so that when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a gymnast. And Cathy Rigby was an Olympic gymnast. And also I should thank this teacher, Mrs. Brown, and the librarian and the PE teacher at elementary, Ellis elementary in Denver, Colorado. They knew that I liked to read and that I was a gymnast. And they took me to the library and I got Kathy Rigby's office. And in mentoring circles, there's a saying that you have to see her to be her. And that might also be true for men as well. I don't know exactly. That's a gender specific thing. But I've always heard that for girls in particular. And so it got to be pretty clear when I was 13 that I was never going to be an Olympic gymnast. It was not the profession for me. But you know what I did? I joined the speech team in eighth grade and I went all through college, high school and college, and including a full ride scholarship to college at the University of Southern Colorado on the speech team, which made all the difference for me in my career. Now I can still watch the Olympics and say, wow, I would love to have been able to do that on the balance beam, but that just wasn't in the cards for me. Finding a skill that did help me achieve something else that I wanted to do, which was communication and journalism. Being on the speech team was a big part of that.
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We will return and talk more with Dana in just a moment. In the meantime, I ask you to head to radiohour Hillsdale Edu. That's the website for this show, the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. While you're there, you can click on the Affiliates tab, find a local radio station playing the show in your area. But most importantly, if you can take 10 seconds, go there, radiohour hillsdale edu, and click the subscribe button, it will ask for your email address. You'll get an email every week when there's a new show available, telling you all about our guests and topics on that week's program. It's a great way to keep in touch with us here at Hillsdale College and with this show, the Radio Free Hillsdale hour. Go to RadioHour, click the subscribe button in the upper right hand part of the screen, enter your email address, and you'll get those notices from us. We thank you in advance. Continuing now with Dana Perino from Fox News Channel. Her new book, I Wish Someone Had Told Me the Best Advice for Building a Great career and a Meaningful life. Dana, you recommend at some point asking yourself, what is the key differentiator that will make you the indispensable choice for this position, whatever the job might be? And I say to students, I say the same thing, which is, what's your secret sauce? Right? What makes you different from everyone else who might apply for this position? So, Dana, what's your special sauce?
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Gosh. Well, one, I think I'm pretty humble, so it's hard for me to answer questions like that sometimes. I'm like, I don't know. But I would say this. Thinking back to my days as White House press secretary, I am very, very, very good at managing up. And I think that's an undervalued skill that people don't necessarily learn. Like you can go to management classes and learn how to manage people. And that's important, obviously. That's really important. Learning how to manage up and anticipating your boss's needs and getting ahead of problems for them, making their life easier, setting them up for success. I am really good at that and I take a lot of pride in it. One of the things President Bush will say is that he was never surprised by a question at a press conference. If I had done the briefing. And then that meant he had confidence in me. And I'll never forget, towards the end of the administration, he asked me a question about something. He goes, he asked a question. I said, it's this, whatever answer it was. And he looked at me quizzically like I might have been wrong. And I just looked at him and he said, okay, yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. But I think that establishing that kind of trust and anticipating the needs of the person you are working for cannot be underestimated because if you make their life easier, then they're going to be more successful and they're going to remember you and recommend you for the next job.
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The book is designed for any and every generation to, to get something out of it. But in terms of careers, people now have different expectations. As you and I grew up, we thought maybe about one career for our whole life, if possible. And now I think students and those entering the workforce sort of look and say, well, maybe I'll do this for a few years and that for a few years. And they anticipate that they might be job hopping more often than you or I might have when entering the workforce. Is there different advice necessary for someone who's, who's not going to be locked in to perhaps one specific career, one specific job for a good portion of their life?
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C
I do see that a lot. A lot of young people are in a hurry. Which gets me to the bigger part of the advice that I would maybe I'll tell you at the end of this section. There are many people I work with now who had major career changes. So, for example, Martha MacCallum, she was, first of all, she wanted to be a Broadway actress. That didn't work out. She went to work in finance and then became, because she's very good, communicator. She ended up also then working at CNBC and then at Fox News. That's a career change. But all of the skills that you have in your life build upon each other. John Roberts mentioned, he talks about that in this book too. That Even working in a lumber yard when he was in high school has benefited him because of the skills that he learned there. Lydia, who is another example, she was a lawyer who now is a reporter and a correspondent for us. A fabulous one on Fox News. Box Business. Now then you could look at somebody like Bill Hemmer who knew from the moment he started working that this is what he wanted to do. And he's actually started in sports, but then and then grew an incredible career. So, yes, there are so many different ways to change careers. But I would say this. I've been at Fox News now since 2009. I, Gutfeld, and I kind of pinch ourselves. The Five, which is now the number one show in all of cable. Yeah, we've been doing it for almost 14 years this July. And if there is upward mobility, and I think Fox Corporation does a great job of saying, okay, we have this person here who's a part of our company. They think they want to do something else. Can we help them go and do that? Like say you are in ad sales but you want to go into marketing or you're in marketing and you think you want to go into operations. Like all of those things can happen within a corporation. So I try to remind people that it's not bad to stay for a turnaround. Another young person, well, she's younger than me. I don't know if she call herself a young person, but she's 10 years younger than me. Her name is Lauren Fritz. She was a person that I met here at fox news in 2009. She was kind of assigned to me. She was working for Hannity at the time. She became one of my very dearest friends. And she was working for a company that you might have heard about called WeWork. And they were at the top of their game and everyone loved weworked. And it all came crashing down and it was just like a shadow of itself. And she got a promotion and a raise to stay, and then another and another. But she had the temptation to leave because everything was going so wrong. And she liked the new CEO that they brought in. And I said, look, there's nothing wrong with staying for a turnaround. And it benefited her greatly. And she's got some terrific advice in this book, too.
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Dana, I get questioned especially for students who want to go into the media in some way or even politics in some way. You have experience with both the ability to balance your life or the ability, how do you do everything that has to get done in a day? How do you stay so busy? And I Tell them you've got to be intentional with your time. Always you have to plan. And in chapter I think it's chapter five, you talk about keeping all the plates spinning and dedicating time on a calendar, even for your free time. But if you're not intentional with your time, you'll never be able to manage your time. That's what I tell them.
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Yeah. So I think that that's true. First of all, one of the things I would point back to is if you want to go into media or politics right now, think about what the late Charles Krauthammer told all of us, that we should study history. I don't necessarily think you need a mass communications free like I got because I had to do a lot more of the deeper reading and intellectual reading after college and graduate school because it didn't prepare me for the deeper thinking. So if I think about the late Tony Snow, he was a wonderful press secretary. He didn't study journalism, but he was a fantastic journalist and a great writer. He was a philosophy major and a math minor.
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Yes.
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So like a super logical thinker. And so there's that in terms of if you want to do this, there are certain things that you can study you don't have to study necessarily Journalism school. When it comes to time, I wanted for so long to be a person who could be more laissez faire about my schedule. But one, it's just not in my nature. And human beings actually do like a routine. I think children especially benefit from that. But for me, I have a very long work day. I do a morning show and I do the five. So I have several hours in the middle of the day where I could basically sit in this office. I could work all of those hours. It literally never stops. People come into this room, email, text messages. There's so much to read, there's so much to do. But what I have done in the last few years is say I am going to be out of this office between 12 and 3:30. Doesn't mean I don't check my emails or listen to podcasts while I'm out and about, including three martini lunch, usually on my way back from something that I'm doing that is important to me as well, which is movement, some sort of exercise. I also am at a place in my life where I can pay to make sure I'm going to my pilates class and I prepay and if I Cancel Inside of 48 hours, I still have to pay. And that's a good motivator to Keep your appointments. I have to be super intentional about my time. I also learned something from our CEO here at Fox News. All of us are blessed with great opportunities and friends, especially if you are here in a city like New York. There's something to do every night. You could be triple booked. She taught me that she has been disciplined to only accept one weeknight engagement per week. And other than that, she's home with her family. And I've really tried to stick to that since COVID It doesn't always work, but it's a really good rule of thumb and keeps me more grounded.
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Dana Perino, the new book I Wish Someone had Told Me if I could ask one more question. Brian Kilmeade, late in the book, says networking is key and it's something again that I talk to a lot of students and a lot of young people who are entering the industry. How do you make networking feel like it's not simply a transactional event? Like, I need to know you because you might help me later and I might help you later. And this is only so we can help each other down the road. Is there a way to make networking feel more natural?
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C
I think it's especially post Covid. Right. We talk about this in the book a little bit, that you really have to be intentional, as you said, about making sure that you're going out and meeting people. There's a problem out in the country, Scott, that young people, they are not going out after work. They're on their phones alone way too much. And I am concerned about all of that. So if you are also concerned listening to this, make a promise to yourself that you will go to one or two networking events a month. Sometimes they can be organized. I know in New York they have a lot of different types of meetup type things. Those are important. I think one of the best ways to make these feel like they're not so stifled and like, oh, wow, how can you help me get a job? That's really common in Washington, D.C. and my husband really didn't like to go to D.C. related events because as soon as they found out he didn't work in politics and was in medical devices, they just like their eyes glazed over and they moved on. That's not true in New York. But to be curious about other people and to have a few things in your back pocket, I see Harold Ford Jr. Do this all the time. He might say, oh, hey, where'd you go to college? And they'll say, michigan. I went to Michigan. Oh my gosh. Do you know so and so did you go to this school? And he can have a conversation with just about anybody. Also, if you have traveled and if you haven't traveled, you should because almost always you can say, oh my gosh, I had, I got a chance to go to Anchorage one time. I loved it. That's a great place. How was it to grow up there and asking people more about their time outside of work before you start talking about. So what you do for work is a great way to find a connection, but also sometimes you can find like mutual connections. So let's say you go to a networking event and you know that one other person there, you might say, what brought you here? Oh, you know him? Oh, me too. How do you know him? And then you make start making those connections. And then as your career grows, you find that then it helps you help others. And I can say, oh, wait, I know somebody who's looking for a PR person at the law firm. Let me think about you. Let me get your resume over to them. And making connections like that is super satisfying.
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Dana Perino, you know her from FOX News Channel on the five at America's Newsroom. She's the author of the new book out now. It's fantastic. I wish someone had told me the best advice for building a great career and a meaningful life. Dana, thank you so much for joining us here on the Radio Free HillsDigital Hour.
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C
Scott, thank you so much.
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Up next, Dr. Ben Whalen from Hillsdale's English department returns to the show. This time we take a look at the life and writings of Mark Twain. I'm Scott Bertram. This is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. On the new episode of the Larry Arn Show, Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arn sits down with Patrick Pastor, professor and author Kevin DeYoung for a one on one conversation. They saw that you might say reason and revelation coming together in the American founding and that they didn't have to be it and that there was this groundwork. And it's interesting you talk about in the Hillsdale founding documents because Witherspoon gives a famous sermon in May 1776, leading to the independence. And he says that very thing, civil liberty and religious liberty have always stood or fallen together. Listen to this exclusive interview with Kevin DeYoung right now only available on the Larry Arn Show. Find it on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at podcast hillsdale.edu also at Apple Podcasts Spotify and YouTube and subscribe to receive new episodes delivered right to your device. That's Podcast Hillsdale Edu.
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Great books, great people, great ideas. Learning about these things is critical to being a well educated human being. And we can help with the Hillsdale Dialogues. Each week, Hillsdale College President Larry Arne joins radio veteran Hugh Hewitt to discuss topics of enduring relevance. And from time to time, they also talk about current events, but always with an eye toward more fundamental truths. And they want you to tune in to a conversation like no other. The Hillsdale Dialogues are posted every Monday on the Hillsdale College Podcast Network at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. That's Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. Or listen via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you find find your audio.
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A
Welcome back to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. I'm Scott Bertram. Be sure to check out the Hillsdale College Podcast Network. Our shows can be found anywhere you get your audio, but also at Podcast Hillsdale. Edu. There you'll find older episodes of this program plus all the great Hillsdale College audio we have to offer. Podcast Hillsdale Edu we're joined by Dr. Ben Whalen. He is associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Whalen, thanks for joining us.
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B
Thanks for having me.
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A
Realized a while ago we've been doing this show now for, wow, it's almost seven years and we haven't had a single conversation on the program about Mark Twain.
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B
Yeah, it's time to fix that pretty important guy.
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A
And we're going to fix that. Spend some time today talking a little about the biographical sketch of Mark Twain, which is very interesting in and of itself. And we'll spend subsequent conversations on the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Maybe we do more later, but that's where we start. So let's talk Mark Twain, brought up in Hannibal, Missouri, smack dab in the middle of the country. How did his upbringing help to influence his later writing?
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B
Yeah, in all sorts of important ways. First of all, Hannibal, Missouri, sits on the Mississippi River. And I think when people think of Mark Twain, of course, you think of steamboats and the river. And so that was terribly important just as a boy. He spent his time exploring the edges of the river, the islands on the river, the caves that the river would make. He spent a lot of time boating on the river. Another feature of Hannibal, though, at the time is that it was slaveholding. Territor Twain was born in 1835, so this was prior to the Civil War. And so slavery was a real part of the world that little, little Mark Twain grew up in. And so he addresses that, of course, in some of his fiction as well. He Also drew on all sorts of aspects of his boyhood in Hannibal in his two. In the two novels, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. So even some of the people that he knew as a child, they get renamed. But, but for instance, Huckleberry Finn really is based on this. This boy, Tom Blankenship, who was a friend of, of of Twain's when he was a child. One other thing I would add, though, which is. Is interesting to me about Mark Twain's biography, which is so varied and, and this long, interesting life, is that if you think of Hannibal, Missouri, he. He wasn't born into, say, one of the more cosmopolitan or refined areas. He's not of crowd by birth. And so he really grew up acquainted with just your common middle America, just the sort of what normal Americans in the middle of the country are like. And that becomes important in his fiction. But it's also interesting in contrast to his later life where he traveled so widely and wrote, I think, six different travel narratives, et cetera. So it's interesting, we get this sort of two sides of Twain. One is the sort of common middle American Twain, and then the other is the cultured Welsh, traveled well, read Twain. And we, we actually find both in his fiction.
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A
I don't think we're breaking any news here. Mark Mark Twain. Not his real name.
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B
Right.
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A
Samuel Clemens. So what inspires him? Why does he want to have a pen name? And then what inspires him to pick out Mark Twain? What does it signify?
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B
Yeah, there are. This is a really interesting question. There are several different stories and legends that come down to us about why he adopted the name Mark Twain. One, one story is that it had to do with a bar tab that Mark's on a piece of chalk on a chalkboard, and he ordering two more drinks called up Mark Twain. My favorite, though, is that it has to. The thought is it has to do with the river. Steamboats going up and down the Mississippi would always be regularly measuring the depth of the river with a weighted line to see how many fathoms deep it was because the river was constantly evolving and changing. And you would get different depths on the river. And so you would, you would sound the depths with this weighted line and you would call out how many marks down the rope it went. And so if it was four marks down, then you'd call Mark four, and that would mean it's perfectly safe water because that's fairly deep. Mark three, it's getting a little shallower. Mark Twain would be the name if it was just two marks down, two fathoms deep, but that's actually only about 12ft deep also, which is, means that, and I love thinking about Twain adopting this as his nom de plumes. It means that the waters are passable, you can sail on them, but they're just getting dangerous. It's dangerously shallow. And so there's a sort of suggestion of this is navigable but dangerous water here.
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A
Talking with Dr. Ben Whelan about Mark Twain, his life, what goes into his writing? He was a riverboat pilot.
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C
That's right.
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A
You allude to. How does that help to shape his perspectives and his writing. And then later on, as you mentioned, he traveled. He was born, but, but traveled all over the place. How did that also influence his writing and his worldview?
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B
Yeah, his father died when he was about in fifth grade when he was 11 years old. And that made him drop out of school. And he first started supporting himself by working as a printer in different for presses. But then what he really always wanted to do and as a child was so inspired by, was these steamboat pilots. And he was even more interested in the pilots rather than the captains because it was the pilot of the steamboat ship who had to know the river intimately. And as I mentioned, the river was constantly evolving. It would wash things down, its very course would change. So these, these riverboat pirate pilots were actually it, it took years of apprenticeship to actually become a pilot because you had to study and know the, the movements and shape of the river so well you memorizing, you know, a thousand miles of, of, of changing riverside and riverbed. And so Twain did that and he became a riverboat pilot and he was very good at it. He actually continued doing that. It was, you were very well paid until the Civil War broke out, which interrupted of course, travel, travel on the Mississippi and, and Twain headed west to the territory and then eventually started riding there. So it's only with the Civil War breaking out that breaks Twain from his life as a riverboat pilot and starts him on his career of writing. So he drew on that knowledge of the Mississippi over and over and over again. He was proud of having been competent to pilot on the, on the Mississippi later on in his travels. It's, it's amazing how much he traveled. He circumnavigated the globe several times on speaking tours. He traveled to the Holy Land. That was a, one of his more famous travel narratives, Innocence Abroad. And it has his typical charm and vivacity. But it's, but it's this genre of writing that recounts one's adventures as, as one travels and so he, he used that extensively as well. There's some much lesser works by Mark Twain later like Tom Sawyer Abroad where we. And it's not, I don't particularly recommend them but he does draw on his travels just as he drew on the life on the Mississippi in, in his writings. Twain's biography was terribly influential on, on his writing. He generally drew on his own experiences.
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A
Twain also often is using dialect, regional vernacular in his works. Is that something that is unique to his writings around this time?
- [33:51]
B
That he is extremely good at that? It's not entirely unique. We have what we would call in that period local color writers, writers who like Bret Hart and Twain, Hamlin Garland, who try to capture their little local language. But, but Twain was absolutely expert at this and he thought about it quite a bit. And so it's interesting. Linguists have even studied the dialect as Huckleberry Finn and Jim, this runaway slave as they sail down the Mississippi. Of course there are many different forms of dialect and Twain actually accurately represents that change. So it's not just a one, it's not just say a Southern accent, but differences between. The Southern accent was, was, was interesting to Twain. Twain was very thoughtful about language and words and the sounds of language. He, he was very intentional there.
- [34:45]
A
As we look through Mark Twain's writings through his life, are there major significant themes that, that are present and do they reflect the society in, in ways of his time?
- [34:58]
B
Yeah, the. I already mentioned that Hannibal was slave owning territory in Mississippi and that of course is one of one of these central things when we look at Ton Sawyer somewhat, but then especially the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's a novel that really addresses the problem of slavery. And so race and slavery are certainly concerns of Twain's. Twain was famous in his own day and still I think in our day as a humorist. So if you think of, you can get for instance we might think of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Well, that's also largely about slavery but is written in a. With high pathos, with great seriousness and drama and passion. Twain takes it a different angle. Humor is always going to be a part of Twain's angle and so that adds a particular dimension to his thought about his, his serious thought about race and slavery. The. Another of his themes with both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is boyhood. He likes to return to children. Twain even as an old man, in fact he was famous for giving all of this money to different boys and girls clubs and cultivating them. He really saw a Beauty in childhood and in the innocence of children. One other motif that I would mention is that through that sort of innocence and humor in his treatment of children, he worked to serious social criticism. He's known as a sort of. His humor is satirical and satire is often used to point out real flaws in society. And so he wasn't simply humorous just for the sake of a joke. I mean, sometimes, of course he was, but he often had. There was that edge to the satire that was socially concerned and socially critical. And so that's an important thing that we regularly see in his. His fiction as well.
- [36:52]
A
Talking with Dr. Ben Whalen about Mark Twain, a biographical sketch. This time we'll return and talk more about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And at the time of release or while he was alive, certainly. What was the public reaction? What was the critical reception to his major works?
- [37:13]
B
They were generally very well received. Twain became famous fairly early on for his short story about the jumping frog. I encourage all of the listeners to go read it. It'll take you five, 10 minutes. And it's a delightful, hilarious story. And after that point, both in his travel writings and in his fiction, he was quite famous. He had a couple duds here in and there, just as a sort of anecdote about how famous he was. He made a tremendous amount of money, not just off the publishing of his books, but he would go on these humor lecture, reading tours across the United States and across Europe and the world. He did this in India, for instance. I mean, it's interesting to me we think of Twain being here, the Mississippi, the American author. But he would read and lecture in India and he made a tremendous amount of money. In fact, he was very successful. So these things were well received. He lost a tremendous amount of money on some poor investments and then made the money back through his writing and fiction. So I think in today's dollars terms, he made well north of $20 million over his lifetime just for this fiction. So really, really highly popular, well received and very influential.
- [38:20]
A
You told us earlier in the conversation that Tom Sawyer abroad, maybe not. Are there, though, some lesser known works of Twain that are worth exploring? And why perhaps are they worth a read?
- [38:33]
B
Yeah, so the travel writing certainly is interesting and can be fun. But if we're looking at fiction, one of the strangest sort of aspects of Twain's canon is that he wrote this sort of historical novel. He did a lot of research on Joan of Arc and I think published that in 1896. So this is well after Both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The interesting thing about Joan of Arc and his whole narrative there is that he thought that was his best work. He was famous for saying that he thought Joan of Arc was the best thing he'd ever done. Among the curiosities of that work is that there, Twain largely abandons humor, his normal mode, and it's a much more serious historical retelling of Joan of Arc's fighting and then her trial and execution. And this is also interesting because anybody who's read or has a notion of another of Twain's works, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which is a delightful and hilarious novel. But there you see Twain's very critical attitude, especially to the Catholic Church and to priests and the religious hierarchy. Twain was very, very skeptical and critical. And so it's even more strange that Twain would adopt Joan of Arc as this figure to write about. But he did, and he loved his writing there. And I just add, actually, when he wrote this in 1896, Joan of Arc wasn't. Had not been canonized, so she was not regarded by the general Catholic Church as a saint. She was more of an obscure figure. I think we know her better now than a common American in the 1890s would. So this is sort of Twain's pet project that he treats seriously and a somewhat obscure figure that he presents quite, quite fully. So that's. That's one, one work. One other work I'd recommend, because it expands his thought on race, is Pudd' Nhead Wilson, also written in the 1890s. Twain there looks at two boys who are switched at birth, sort of like the Prince and the Pauper, but one has 1 32nd of black blood in him, of slave blood, and so he's supposed to be a slave, but they get switched at birth. And so it's an interesting exploration of race and character and moral virtue.
- [40:48]
A
How would you describe Twain's influence on American literature, American culture? Are there particular writers too, who are. Who are heavily influenced by Twain in the years to come?
- [41:00]
B
Yeah, famously, Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorites. Hemingway said all modern American literature comes from one book by Mr. Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had, he says. And Hemingway was sort of a competitive guy. So to admit this is the best book, book we've had is to belittle his own works to some degree. He had great influence on American letters in the 20th century. I would add, though, if we're thinking more largely about American culture, one of the interesting Things to me is that Twain was actually good friends with Ulysses S. Grant. And after Grant's presidency, in the last year of his life, he was dying from throat cancer and he had suffered a terrible bankruptcy or loss of money through investments Ulysses S. Grant had. And so Twain, to help about the Grant family in the last year of Grant's life, encouraged him to write his memoirs and personally saw them through publication. So, and these were among the. The most successful Memoirs of the 19th century in American literature. So really important figure giving his account as he's dying of what his. His time as a general and then as president of the United States was. Twain was instrumental in bringing those memoirs out. So really, really significant there as well.
- [42:16]
A
Twain seems to be a man who is just as well known for being himself as he is for his works. It's not true of every author. What makes Twain so singular in the fact that people know about him and not just the things he's written?
- [42:35]
B
Yeah, of course, he's famous for the white suit, which he did. He's also famous for cigars. So when he's pictured, he's often sitting there with a cigar. He smoked a tremendous amount. He took three thousands of cigars with him on the ship that went to the. When he visited the Holy Land, he took thousands of scars because he knew he couldn't get good American tobacco over there. He famously quipped at one point about smoking. He said, quitting smoking is easy. I've done it dozens of times. So he is, we think of his, his fiction and the Steamboat Pilot, but he also, I think because he had such a distinctive style and such a quick witness, and because he did go on these lecture circuits and reading humorous circuits, he really does stand out as the man himself, not just the author of these great books. So he, in a certain way, he too is representative of America in a certain way in its virtues and in its failings. And he sort of in some way embodies something of the American myth.
- [43:37]
A
We will talk in future weeks about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and the adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For now, we'll look at Mark Twain, his life, his background. Dr. Ben Whalen, Associate professor of English here at Hillsdale College. Dr. Whalen, thanks so much for joining us here on the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [43:57]
B
Thanks, Scott.
- [43:58]
A
That will wrap up this edition of the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour. Our thanks to Dana Perino. Her new book, I Wish Someone had told me, and Dr. Ben Whale from Hillsdale's English department. Remember, you can hear new episodes every week on this station. You also can find extended versions of some of our interviews or listen anytime to the podcast. Find it at Podcast Hillsdale, Edu, or wherever you get your audio. Until next week, I'm Scott Bertram, and this has been the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour.
- [44:34]
B
Sam.