A conversation with Alan Gribben

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A conversation with Alan Gribben
Mark Twain scholar Alan Gibbens spoke at Hillsdale College. Courtesy | Wiki Commons

Alan Gribben is a Mark Twain Scholar who has devoted more than 50 years to reconstructing Mark Twain’s library. In addition, Gribben rose to fame with his editions of the “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in which he removed and replaced the N-word with the word “slave” instead. (For more on the N-word, see B2.)

Why Mark Twain?

I knew in graduate school I wanted to work on the 19th century because it explains so much about my century when I was born, the 20th century and now the 21st century, the roots, the elements. You wouldn’t recognize them now because they have taken different forms, but it all comes from the 19th century and I was really fascinated by that. I couldn’t decide what writer to write on. I was thinking about a British author or maybe an American author, but then I got this job [as a graduate student editor of the Mark Twain papers].

=Then when I decided to study his reading, which no one wanted to tackle because the books had been dispersed, then I get to study all authors up to that time. The only detriment of my project is my brain lives more in the 19th century. I am travelling by jet but my brain is travelling by horse and carriage and stage coach. I am in the world of Mark Twain so much in my life. I know so much trivia that is of no interest at cocktail parties. It is totally useless, except putting it in this catalog. 

In Volume One, I see you identify what books Twain liked and didn’t like. How did you find out this information?

He had a habit of annotating the margins of his books. It was pretty easy to see what he liked. Back in that day, before there was an email, he wrote letters. I think we have about 15-20 thousand letters that we know of. He probably wrote at least twice that many, that we know of, that have been lost. 

We have his opinion of his books. He would write people about what he was reading and his opinion of it. This was just non-stop — he probably averaged around 10 letters a day. It was what you might call a ‘print culture,’ everything that was known was in print. 

He sensed that his audience, that his market for his books, wouldn’t want him to seem too erudite, too learned, too scholarly, so he was always in interviews for magazines and newspapers, downplaying his readings to make himself sound more original and less threatening to the average reader. 

He wanted to seem like everything came out of his head. He would deny that he read certain books, and I found the exact book with his date on it when he acquired it and his markings on it. He was always minimizing his readings, for public relations reasons. A lot of his readers were not very well-read and might feel intimidated. 

Where is the most unexpected place you have found Mark Twain’s books?

I got a line on some books in Wisconsin. People were saying that Mark Twain’s housekeeper had been allowed to choose 90 books from his library to keep for her 30 years as the family’s housekeeper. So she chose books from his library and then she left them to her nephew when she passed away. He passed away and his widow remarried, and she is now under a different name, so I reached out to her and she said I could come and see the books. 

Back then, gas was cheap, cars were cheap, I had a little VW beetle and I drove up to Wisconsin from Berkeley where I was doing my Ph D. When I got there, I rang the doorbell quite a few times and finally she came and opened the door just a little bit, and she said, ‘Oh, Mr. Gribben, I wish you would’ve called me again before you came, you wrote me several months ago. I have become very ill, I can’t let you in to see the books. In fact, I am moving to Florida to see if that will improve my health.’ 

Back in 1970, we didn’t have many ways of detecting cancer, and she died just a month or two later of undetected cancer. She looked very bad. So I said, ‘I have come all this way.’ She said, ‘I am sorry Mr. Gribben, I have to go back to bed, I am very ill. Please.’ 

One summer I was a cookware salesman, door-to-door, and I am ashamed of having done it now, but I was just trying to get through school. So I had my foot in the door so she couldn’t close it, and I said, ‘Just one more question, Ms. Den, what are these sacks on your porch?’ 

She said, ‘Oh I had my maid clear out a lot of books because I am going to move. There is a charity truck going to pick them up in a few minutes. Please, Mr. Gribben, let me close the door.’ So she closed the door and I turned around to go back to my car and then curiosity got the best of me. I knelt down and opened one of the sacks and I picked a book out of it and it had Mark Twain’s handwriting in it and it was signed S.L. Clemens (Mark Twain’s real name). I open another sack and there was his handwriting. Her maid had accidently put all the books from Mark Twain’s library in these sacks. 

It is a good thing I was an Eagle Boy Scout, because it didn’t even cross my mind that I could support my school by selling these books one at a time. Today one of these books generally sells for around $30,000. It didn’t even cross my mind, I had no right to take them off her porch — they belonged to her. I got in my car and went downtown and there was a phone booth and a book in it. I looked up a name that remotely sounded like her, and I called and no one was home. I finally got the maid at one of the homes and she said, ‘I think her daughter works down at the newspaper office, I think her husband owns the newspaper.’ 

So I called down there and got her and she said she was Ms. Den’s daughter and I said, ‘Can you go to her home as fast as you can? A terrible mistake is about to be made. I have driven about a thousand miles to get here and your mother has put some very valuable things on the front porch. Can you meet me there in just a moment? It is very urgent.’ She agreed, and we got there in time before the truck came and we put them in the car and they later donated them to a little college like Hillsdale, called Elmira College. In fact, if I knew about Hillsdale College back then I probably would’ve had them donated here. We preserved those books. 

What are the odds that I would arrive on that day? What are the odds that she would have put these out that day and that would be the day I came? 

I am probably the only person in the world who could recognize his handwriting.