Kipling wrote that Twain, “speaking of truth and the like in literature, said that an autobiography was the one work in which a man, against his own will and in spite of his utmost striving to the contrary, revealed himself in his true light to the world.”
“I believe it is impossible,” said Twain, “for a man to tell the truth about himself or to avoid impressing the reader with the truth about himself. … It is not in human nature to write the truth about itself. None the less the reader gets a general impression from an autobiography whether the man is a fraud or a good man. The reader can’t give his reasons any more than a man can explain why a woman struck him as being lovely when he doesn’t remember her hair, eyes, teeth, or figure. And the impression that the reader gets is a correct one.”
Twain later expressed that he was fond of reading fiction. “What I like to read about are facts and statistics of any kind,” he explained. “If they are only facts about the raising of radishes, they interest me.”
About reading an article on mathematics, Twain said, “I didn’t understand a word of it; but facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are always delightful. That mathematical fellow believed in his facts. So do I. Get your facts first, and … then you can distort ’em as much as you please.”
Kipling became famous a year after the interview, and Twain became a fan of his work. Recalling their encounter, Twain said, “I believed that he knew more than any person I had met before, and I knew that he knew that I knew less than any person he had met before—though he did not say it, and I was not expecting that he would.”
To learn more about Mark Twain, read his profile on findingDulcinea.
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