Previously Unpublished Excerpts From the Autobiography of Mark Twain in Playboy's December Issue

CHICAGO, Nov. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Playboy magazine's December issue (on newsstands and online at www.playboydigital.com Friday, November 12) provides readers with an exclusive first look at the second volume of Mark Twain's autobiography, not scheduled for release until 2012.  In the excerpt, titled "The Palm Readers," Twain responds with his timeless wit to the conclusions of fortune-tellers who were asked to read his handprints without knowing their subject's identity.  The text was prepared from the original manuscript by editors at the Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library of the University of California. .

Twain—the father of American literature most noted for writing Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer—left strict instructions in his will not to release his autobiography for 100 years after his death. Now a century after Twain's death on April 21, 1910, Volume 1 of the three-volume edition, published by the University of California Press, is set to be released on November 15 and has already climbed to #2 on The New York Times Bestseller List.  

Playboy's special sneak-peak at previously unpublished passages from the forthcoming second volume of Twain's autobiography shares the author's take on the dubious art of fortune-telling.  Following is a selection of the palm readers' reports followed by Twain's 1905 reflections:

Palm Reader: According to the science of Palmistry, this is a Philosophic type of hand.

Mark Twain: Philosophic mind. True.

PR: The subject is beyond doubt a great Student, a Thinker and Reformer, broad-minded, with a liberal religious sentiment without reference to creed or form.

MT: Student of morals, and of man's nature—in that sense, yes, I am a student, for that study is interesting and enticing, and requires no painful research, no systematic labor, no midnight-oil effects. But I have never been a student of anything which required of me wearying and distasteful labor. It is for this reason that the relations between me and the multiplication table are strained. The rest of the paragraph is true, in detail and in mass. In the line of high philosophics I was always a thinker, but was never regarded by the world as the thinker until the course of nature retired Mr. Spencer from the competition.

PR: His sense of justice is very keen; harshness to other amounting to personal injury to himself. He is sensitive, impressionable and reticent, hence is not easily understood by his associates.

MT: Again. Generalized, this is true of no one; particularized, it is true of everybody. Harshness to Mr. Henry A. Butters of Long Valley would not grieve my spirit, the spectacle of the King of the Belgians dangling from the gibbet where he belongs would make me graceful. I (along with the whole race) am sensitive (to ridicule and insult); impressionable (where the sex is concerned); reticent (where inconvenient truths are required of me).

PR: Disposition ordinarily is excellent. He is submissive rather than aggressive, yet radical and determined at heart. His manner is gentle, only becoming brusque or nonchalant when stirred to defense.

MT: Again. Generalized thus, this fits the great majority of the human race—including me. It fits the worm, too—to a dot. Read it carefully over, and you will see.

PR: His early life is not marked fortunate; menaced by reverses until near his 16th year. After that period excellent things were in store for him.

MT: No one ever said a truer thing. Up to the age of seven I was at the point of death nearly all the time, yet could never make it. It made the family tired. Particularly my father, who was of a fine and sensitive nature, and it was difficult for him to bear up under disappointments. In the next eight years—I am speaking the truth, I give you my word of honor—I was within one gasp of drowning nine different times, and in addition was thrice brought to the verge of death by doctors and disease; yet it was all of no use, nothing could avail, it was just one reverse after another, and here I am to this day. With every hope long ago blighted. Are these the reverses that stand written in my hand? I know of no others, of that early time.

PR: His judgment can be fully relied upon.

MT: Fatally indefinite. Judgment of what—not stated. Apples? literature? weather? whiskey? theology? hotels? emperors? oysters? horses? As regards emperors and weather my judgment is better than any other person's, but as regards all other things I know it to be bad.  

PR: The Mount of Luna shows him to be exquisitely moulded, honorable and faithful.

MT: "Exquisitely moulded." It is hereditary in the family. Exquisitely moulded and attractive, people often say. Some have thought me the most attractive thing in the universe except that mysterious and wonderful force which draws all matter toward its throne in the sun, the Attraction of Gravitation; others go even further, and think I am that sublime force itself. These commonly speak of me as the Center of Gravity. Over great stretches of the earth's surface I am known by no name but that—the Center of Gravity. It pleases me and makes me happy, but I often feel that it may not be true. God knows. It is not for me to say.

SOURCE Playboy