Mark Twain Dying

Just finished Volume 4 of Albert Paine's Mark Twain Biography. It covers the last 7-8 years of Twain's Life. Paine became Twain's Boswell. He spent an enormous amount of time with him, going through all of his papers, sitting in as Twain dictated memories for about four years and played endless games of billiards with him night after night. This is a real biography. You get to see small moments. Paine lived down the hill from him, was there when Jean died, went to get him in Bermuda when it wasn't clear he'd make it back alive. Was at his death bed.
Great read, not to mention the Gilder mentions throughout. I have the second volume on its way. It looks like I will be reading this out of sequence as I turn up loose copies. It's out there for your Kindle and there are paperbacks available it looks like. My copy was great because its very old and beat up and the binding is falling apart (published 1912) and has an unfortunate $1.25 written in crayon on the inside page. Who, in their right mind, would want to read this on a Kindle.

My Volume Two showed up today- not the volume two of this biography- pissed me off that they would mislabel the AbeBooks listing. What they sent is the 2nd Volume of the Autobiography.

$7.00 bucks- oh well. I'm mostly pissed because I was looking forward to some ore Paine,