Books Have Gone to his Head or This Move is Driving him Crazy

In addition to all the things OurDad is trying to get done around the house so we can sell it and move OurDad has been trying to prepare the BoyChlid and me for life in Missouri. And it's working. We like Tom Sawyer. OurDad said Mark Twain wrote another book about Tom Sawyer and we'd get to read it some day. Instantly Missouri sounded like a better place.

"Dad, when's the next Tom Sawyer book come out?" I thought Missouri had it's own redneck Harry Potter and JK Rowling!

OurDad said, "I'm sorry sweety, but he stopped writing books about Tom and his friends along time ago."

"Deary Mark Train lived about a hundred years ago. He's not going to be writing anymore books," GreatMom tried to clarify. I didn't think that could be true; Tom wasn't a caveman, but if mom says so. Then OurDad corrected her. "What are you talking about that old Tralfamadorian has lots of books left in him. "

"Tralfa what--"

"They are an alien race of time travelers." Now the BoyChild was interested, and before he realized his mistake he had asked. "What's Tralfa whaters got to do with Mark Twain?" I hit him. Now we were in for some crazy lecture about literature, but this time with extraterrestrials. It went something like this.

Mark Twain is just a fake author name, a nomdeplume, for Samuel Longhorne Clemens which is probably not his real name either. OurDad claims he's the same person who writes under the name Kurt Vonnegut Jr.--the junior part being a nice touch to throw people off-- and Kilgore Trout. Vonnegut, or whoever he is, in his 1969 book Slaughterhouse-Five described his race, the Tralfamadorians. Thus, according to OurDad, exposing just how the same man could write two collections of books with a span of one hundred years separating them. OurDad says the evidence is in the writing and subject matter: both writers have novels that depend heavily on a very similar use of the first person narrative, and both authors rage against technology and man's inhumanity to man. They both rely in one liners and were essayists at heart. And they both were fascinated with time travel, Twain's Connecticut Yankee and Vonnegut's Timequake and Slaughterhouse-Five. What's known of both men's personalities fits the hypothesis too, both were bipolar subject to massive bouts of depression. Probably because they knew humanities rotten future. But most of all look at them!



Finally GreatMom had had enough, "so basically you're saying that Kurt Twain, or is it Mark Vonnegut, is proof of extraterrestrial intelligence."

"Yeah, pretty much. It's not as exciting as Star Wars, but humans can't write like that guy."

At times I think we're headed to Misery not Missouri.