East Hill
Elmira, New York

By Matt Seybold

Now it’s just a small, oddly-shaped clearing in a dense wood. At the top of the large pile of limestones we generously call a “staircase,” a space opens up in the trees. It feels like a good place for a pagan ritual. And every four years, on the final night of the International Conference on The State of Mark Twain Studies, that’s kind of what happens. A gaggle of scholars, creative writers, actors, filmmakers, and other Twainiacs gather in the moonlit clearing to smoke the cheapest possible cigars, their inexpensiveness a point of pride, as it had been for Sam Clemens himself. Winners of Pulitzers, National Book Awards, Emmys, Oscars, Tonys, and every imaginable academic fellowship scrape dry flakes of tobacco off their tongues and pretend to know the words to “Oft in the Stilly Night.”

From 1874 to 1953, in this space stood an octagonal study, designed to resemble a steamboat pilothouse, in which Mark Twain drafted the majority of the works for which he is now remembered. After too many midcentury literary tourists made pilgrimage, trapsing across the property where Twain’s in-laws still resided, the study was relocated to the campus of Elmira College, where his wife, Olivia Langdon Clemens, was an alumna and his niece, Ida Langdon, was a professor. Elmira College would eventually become custodian of Quarry Farm as well, and the home of the Center for Mark Twain Studies, where I work.

While I once cringed at the solemnity with which my fellow scholars sung “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” after four days of academic panels and roundtables, I’ll admit in the intervening years I have occasionally secluded myself in that clearing for a few idle minutes of, I don’t know, reverence.

When Twain was here, most every Summer from 1869 to 1890, and periodically thereafter, there were no woods. The study was, as he put it, “perched in complete isolation on the top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills.” One can still approximate this view from the veranda of the main house at Quarry Farm, a hundred yards southeast and downhill from where the study stood. On a clear day, the blue hills are visible well across the Pennsylvania border, seven miles south.

It was this view, across the Chemung River Valley, this panorama of church steeples, lumber barges, railways bridges, and smokestacks, of commercial development buttressed by wilderness on all sides, which inspired Twain’s imaginative return to antebellum Missouri. First the early chapters of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and then the greater parts of Life on the Mississippi (1883) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) were drafted here, along with dozens of other novels, memoirs, plays, essays, stories, speeches, and at least one pornographic farce solely for private circulation. Twain estimated that he wrote ten chapters in the study at Quarry Farm for every one he wrote elsewhere.

Visitors joke, often enough for it to become something of a cliché amongst our staff, that Twain’s productivity must have been fueled by boredom. His other regular haunts during the Gilded Age – Hartford, New York City, London, Vienna, Berlin – are so cosmopolitan and Elmira so provincial by comparison. It must have been easy for him to avoid distraction up there on East Hill. I have myself sometimes described him as looking down on Elmira like the Grinch over Whoville. But there is no evidence that Sam Clemens disdained or eluded the social scene of Elmira. To the contrary, some of his most cherished friendships were developed here, with Thomas K. Beecher, Charley Langdon, John T. Lewis, and John B. Stanchfield. And he did not vegetate at Quarry Farm, waiting for them to come to him, either.

One of Twain’s most healthful habits was his near-daily constitutionals. He was a “pedestrianist,” as he put it. Often accompanied by friends, often chain-smoking, he would walk shocking distances over tough terrain. During the seasons he spent here, downtown Elmira was connected to Quarry farm only by what one visiting reporter described as “a winding road, which is steep, very steep, and at times is really a dangerous driveway.” Twain was well aware of the danger, having witnessed the occasion in 1877 when a runaway carriage containing his sister-in-law and niece nearly careened into a deep ravine, saved only by the heroic efforts of Lewis.

The “dangerous driveway” no longer exists. It has been replaced by a pair of paved two-lane surface roads, still very steep, and treacherous when icy. This commute should be considered as essential to Twain’s writing process as the porch where he read each day’s work aloud to the assembled family and maybe even as the study itself.

Throughout his forties and fifties, Twain tripped his way down (and back up again) to visit the barber shop of Henry Washington, the self-emancipated man whose mother is the narrator of Twain’s “A True Story, Repeated Word For Word As I Heard It”; to play pool with Beecher in the makeshift billiard parlor the radical theologian had created in the southwest corner of the Park Church; to gossip with other men of his guild at the newspaper offices of the Elmira Advertiser, Gazette, and Telegram;and to wet his whistle at Klapproth’s Tavern.

Far from being a recluse during the three or four months he spent in Elmira every year, Twain was someone you were likely to bump into during a summer stroll, a fixture of the downtown scene. When Twain died, legions of well-wishers gathered for a public viewing in New York City of the celebrity who Robertus Love, in his obituary, deemed “the most famous man on earth.” But Twain’s eulogy, written by the first woman ordained in this state, Beecher’s protégé, Annis Ford Eastman, was read at the Park Church in Elmira, and he was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery, next to his wife, son, and the two daughters who preceded him.

Frank Gannett, the newspaper magnate who was then the publisher of the Elmira Star-Gazette, noted in his obituary that though Twain’s celebrity and works belonged to the whole world, his “personal attributes, idiosyncrasies and peculiarities of disposition, temperament and moral attitude” felt like they were peculiar to Elmira. Nearly every Elmiran could recount secondhand stories, if not personal memories, of the famous author’s local exploits, and could testify to his “labors in the path of universal education,” his “insistence on an exchange of absolutely honest and honorable relations in every business and social enterprise,” and his “domestic life full of examples of faithfulness and devotion.”

That steep, winding, hazardous road between Quarry Farm and downtown Elmira connected the pastoral idyll — which was undoubtedly good for Twain’s productivity — to a diverse cast of quirky characters and social dynamics, which were also, I contend, generative for his art. Part of what I have elsewhere called the “Quarry Farm Style” is its dialectic of romance and realism. The novels written under these conditions move from King Arthur’s Court to scathing critiques of feudal and industrial society, from vivid naturalist descriptions of the Mississippi River to violent scenes of crisis and collapse along the banks, from prevailing American myths to reportage which debunks them, from the lifestyles of deluded princes to those of grasping paupers (equally deluded).

By the time he first came to Elmira, 33-year-old Mark Twain well knew what it was like to climb. How hard. How irrational. How unlikely. And I expect every time he contemplated those two miles back up East Hill, he was reminded again. The bootstrappers, the strivers, the grinders, the scrapers, the self-title entrepreneurs: all the lunks in the streets blindly hustling some mirage of success in a society structured to ensure their defeat; aren’t they ridiculous?

Well, so am I.

Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as Resident Scholar at the Center for Mark Twain Studies. He is executive producer and host of The American Vandal Podcast and founding editor of MarkTwainStudies.org. He is co-editor (with Michelle Chihara) of The Routledge Companion to Literature & Economics (2018) and (with Gordon Hutner) of a 2019 special issue of American Literary History on “Economics & Literary Studies in The New Gilded Age.” His work has appeared in dozens of publications.

Photo of Samuel Clemens looking out from the study window, Quarry Farm, East Hill, Elmira, New York, 1903. By T.E. Marr, courtesy of the Mark Twain Archive at Elmira College.

The post Mark Twain – Elmira, New York appeared first on The New Territory Magazine.

Don’t waste your hate,
Rather gather and create.
Be of service. Be a sensible person.
Use your words and don’t be nervous.
You can do this, you’ve got purpose.
Find your medicine and use it.

I’ve been suggesting music in The New Territory for a year, and I like to think I haven’t steered you wrong yet. So, this time, I’m making a departure from my usual review writing. Trust me as we head off in this new direction together. I’m not writing about musicians in your hometown, or a wunderkind you might find strumming a banjolele in your local deli. I’m not even going to tell you about a band from the Midwest. Instead, I’m going to tell you about a seven-piece, world-traveling band from Oregon that’s going to become important to the Midwest this year. And because I feel like I already know you, I think you’re going to like them.

The band behind “Manifesto” is Nahko and Medicine for the People, and they’re about to become your favorite band. Their music is going to remind you of how you’re supposed to feel inside. And tomorrow, you’re going to feel a little better.

Those first words I heard from Nahko’s “Manifesto” have been important to me, and I think, right now, you could probably use them too. They’re words that have sunk in with my five-year-old son, and when I hear him singing them, I feel proud and hopeful for the future. These days, we don’t often get to feel this way.

And in music, we’re bombarded with mechanical tracks, or lyrics wherein musicians brag about their status as money-makers and lovers, or we’re trying to relate to the woes of singers dissatisfied with life, love, and themselves. And that’s fine—it is important to remember we aren’t alone in these bits of the human experience. But there’s more in this life that’s good. This year, I want all of you to feel good, and to radiate to everyone you meet that such goodness is possible.

Here’s music that delivers the social consciousness of Ben Harper or Michael Franti but with the most positive self-reflection towards the topics. Frontman Nahko Bear is upfront with himself about his shortcomings, but he sings as much about forgiving himself as he does about forgiving others. He inspires his listeners — and himself — to be aggressive about moving forward. With his lyrics, he asks if we’re doing enough to be the best possible contribution to the earth and to the rest of the human race. Then, Nahko and the band put their energy behind legitimate causes and actually create some change. They’re using what fame they’ve already garnered to raise awareness and support for organizations they believe in — groups that support Native American rights, mindful environmental stewardship, and music education.

And while the messages of the music are important, the songs themselves aren’t overwrought — they’re downright fun. Nahko Bear drives many of his rhythms with his acoustic guitar, similar to G. Love, Jack Johnson, or Dave Matthews. The rest of the band, Medicine for the People, moves us with bass lines and horn jams funky enough to make booties shake. Beats alternate between smooth and rowdy, making you bounce along to percussion heavily influenced by tribal music. And even as we dance joyfully, Chase Makai’s 12-string acoustic and Tim Snider’s violin soothe our souls.

Nahko considers himself a world citizen, and the influence of his travels stands out in his music. His style visits upon the complexities of his heritage. Musically and lyrically, there is this clear homage to his roots that reach into a bloodline that’s part Apache, part Puerto Rican, and part Filipino. The influences of Hawaii, where he’s lived and has a farm, run deep. His lyrics move through beautiful juxtapositions; between quick delivery and slow melody, or between soft reflection and aggressive vows of self-development or forgiveness. His tongue moves fast, and he drops brilliant, rapid-fire rhyme schemes between measures of smooth, slow melodies.

In mere seconds, Nahko delivers the lines of “Make a Change” with an incendiary cadence. In that time I prioritize and point myself toward making changes of my own.

The clock is tickin’, I can hear it through the
static

Now I’m not being dramatic, enemies don’t
sleep
In fact some aren’t human and that’s hard
to believe
‘Cause I’m such a visual person, my third
eye don’t lie
He’s a wise guy inside, even fooled himself
twice
Thinking maybe I’m not ready to be leading
the way
I mean, fuck, I’m only human, bound to
make some mistakes
An earthquake took place within my life-
time of fear
I hear this too shall pass, the beginning is
near.

It’s sunny music. You may have to prepare your mind for joy and positivity before delving into it because generally, we’re busy and we’re isolated from each other and from everything real. We just aren’t used to feeling good anymore. In the digital age, we need something more tactile. We’ve cultivated too much stress through the screens of our TVs, computers, and smart phones.

Like many in the midwest, you probably celebrate a personal tie to the land you’re on. It’s okay that in the middle of the day, when you’re in your office, all you want to do is kick off your shoes and walk in real dirt and feel warm sunshine on your skin, or you want to be out with your friends, laughing and loving. And that’s how I know Nahko and Medicine for the People is going to resonate with you deeply in much the same way.

It’s more than just feel-good music for the sake of feel-good music. It feels good because it is the sound of coming together with the earth, with history, and with the people around you.

When Nahko and Medicine for the People come around on tour, go see them. They’re going to hit you with “Dark of Night,” and you’re going to grab onto the hips of your significant other and sway to its rhythm at dusk on a lush lawn at some beautiful outdoor venue on an exquisite Midwestern night. And you’re going to remember this review, and you’re going to say, “Jorge was right.”

The post Find Your Medicine and Use It appeared first on The New Territory Magazine.