fromOpen Culture
23 hours agoMark Twain Wrote the First Book Ever Written With a Typewriter
My Pen­guin Clas­sics copy of Mark Twain's Life on the Mis­sis­pi­pi sits alone atop an over­full shelf. There is a book­mark on page 204, exact­ly halfway through, torn from an in-flight duty-free catalog-whiskey and fan­cy pens. It tells me "hey, you for­got to fin­ish this, you [var­i­ous obscen­i­ties]." And I shrug. What can I say? I went to grad school, where I learned to read ten books at once and nev­er fin­ish one. Good thing Mark Twain didn't write that way, or we might not have Life on the Mis­sis­pi.
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