I've sometimes thought that the end of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--an ending often problematical for readers and scholars (such a letdown in ways from what has gone before)--is the result of Twain's setting aside the manuscript for some years, then returning to it and not being able to find that voice again--rather, that edge to that voice.
He had, in a way, written himself into a corner and could not find an agreeable way out. As some of you surely know, he wrote some other books about Huck and Tom--pretty much terrible books*--after Huck Finn, so I think I subscribe to the theory that Twain just, well, lost it (too much time in the corner?).
So ... I am not Mark Twain nor was meant to be. But I've kind of written myself into a corner, too--oh, nothing like Huck Finn, mind you, but in starting up this blog, I find I am usually (i.e., almost always) incapable of not writing a post each day.
I don't usually have trouble finding something to talk/write about (Old Guys do not have that problem!), but it's just the time involved--and the guilt if I do not do it (curse my Puritan ancestors, my Puritan upbringin').
Take today ... I really wanted to devote most of the morning to working on the revision of Frankenstein Sunday, the mess I serialized here over the past few years. I am making progress. But I just could not get to it until I'd posted something on DawnReader for the day.
So here it is.
Writers in corners. Wondering how they got there. How to escape. Gracefully.
*Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer Among the Indians (unfinished--but available), Tom Sawyer's Conspiracy (unfinished), Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894), Tom Sawyer, Detective (1896)
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