Picket Line; Mark Twain

 

Generally speaking, novellas and short stories are not my cup of tea. There have occasionally been exceptions to this. 

"Picket Line" was not one of them. 

It felt unfinished. Some things happened, but unfortunately it wasn't long enough for any real character development. Basically a group of melon pickers in Texas are striking, walking a picket line, demanding fair wages. A man named Chino comes to town looking for someone (I honestly wasn't clear who) and ends up working at the melon picking operation for a few days (not sure why). The cops come and hassle the picket line walkers. Then the kid on break from college, who was working on the farm, decides to leave.

The End.

At least it was short, so it wasn't a huge waste of time, but it was disappointing. 

The opposite of short and disappointing was Ron Chernow's very thorough biography of Mark Twain. 

Twain worked on his autobiography and decreed that it would not be published until 100 years after his death. In 2010, the autobiography was finally published in three massive volumes (which I own but have never read. A deep failing on my part, I freely admit). 

Twain, as most know, grew up in Hannibal, Missouri and was a pilot on a riverboat. He married an heiress named Olivia (Livy) and they had four children: a boy and three girls. Their son died when he was just a baby. Twain was beset by financial hardships (mostly of his own making) his whole life, blowing through his own considerable earnings as well as his wife's inheritance. He had a terrible head for business and was forever signing things without reading them and then getting taken to the cleaners. He also had grand dreams and was convinced the next big idea he had was going to land him on Easy Street (I was honestly surprised he wasn't born in April, he reminded me a lot of my dad). 

As a result of their financial hardships the family traveled a lot through Europe rather than living in their Hartford home. Apparently it was cheaper that way. Twain ended up outliving all but one of his daughters. It was a fascinating story and I enjoyed it, I just wish it hadn't taken me four months to plow through it.