Halley’s Comet returns in 1910; Mark Twain dies.

Halley’s Comet re-appears in 1986—perhaps to interfere with the course of American humor again.

For all we know, the next great American humorist was born with its return and is now 23 years old. Since Mark Twain didn’t achieve national fame until he was 34, we’ll have to wait for 2020 to see if a comet-influenced successor has arrived.

Until the next Twain shows up, Americans must content themselves with the 24 volumes of the original’s complete works and the scores of books that contain his letters, speeches, and notes. That should be plenty, but it’s not. Even after 99 years, America’s enthusiasm for Twain doesn’t appear to be fading.

Scholars at The Mark Twain Papers, housed at the University of California at Berkeley, have been hunting through his works, which include 600 unpublished manuscripts. But after years of searching, it doesn’t appear that they’ll discover another Innocents Abroad or Huckleberry Finn.

Still, there’s always the hope a new Twain will emerge from America’s young writers.  Again and again, publishers have hailed some new humorist as “the next Mark Twain,” though the reputations of many of these contenders barely outlived them. Who, today, reads George Ade, Irvin Cobb, Kin Hubbard, John Kendrick Bangs, and Ellis Parker Butler?

Will Rogers looked like a promising successor in the 1920s, but he was more of a successful columnist than a “literary humorist.” Then there was H. L. Mencken, James Thurber, Robert Benchley, S. J. Perlman, Dorothy Parker, Art Buchwald, Erma Bombeck, and on, and on—all expected to be the next Mark Twains.

The line of contenders stretches clear out of one century and into another. More recently, critics have nominated humorists like Calvin Trillin, Veronica Geng, Dave Berry, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, and of course, Garrison Keillor. But Keillor, like the others, doesn’t want to be another humorist’s successor, as flattering as that might be. No humorist wants to walk in another’s shadow any more than they want to be the second person to tell a funny story.

We need to love the humorists we’ve got because we’re not likely to see another Mark Twain. Any successor would have to be truly funny to several generations—and this rules out most contenders. The successor would have to attempt great things and risk failure to make humor do what it had never done before, to raise laughs and raise awareness. Finally, the successor would have to convey Twain’s sense of fresh enjoyment—the way he makes reader feel the joy he experienced when he was writing.

So what is the connection between Mark Twain and the Post?

Twain’s biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, said The Saturday Evening Post played a vital role in the humorist’s early career. Back then, Sam Clemens was a teenage boy, years away from adopting his pen name. Working for his brother’s newspaper, Paine says, when he inserted a poem without his brother’s permission:

“It was addressed ‘To Mary in Hannibal,’ but the title was too long to be set in one column, so he left out all the letters in Hannibal, except the first and the last, and supplied their place with a dash, with a startling result. Such were the early flickerings of a smoldering genius. Orion returned, remonstrated, and apologized. He reduced Sam to the ranks. In later years he saw his mistake.

“‘I could have distanced all competitors even then,’ he said, ‘if I had recognized Sam’s ability and let him go ahead, merely keeping him from offending worthy persons.’

“Sam was subdued, but not done for. He never would be, now. He had got his first taste of print, and he liked it. He promptly wrote two anecdotes which he thought humorous and sent them to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post. They were accepted—without payment, of course, in those days; and when the papers containing them appeared he felt suddenly lifted to a lofty plane of literature. This was in 1851.

“‘Seeing them in print was a joy which rather exceeded anything in that line I have ever experienced since,’ he said, nearly sixty years later.”

We must thank Mr. Twain for the compliment, but it never happened. When he dictated his memoirs to Paine in 1907, the Post was the nation’s most successful magazine, and Twain liked to think it had printed his fledgling work long, long ago.

Alas, the Post didn’t have that honor. By way of reparation, we now offer the piece we should have run in 1851. It tells of a fire that started next door to the newspaper office and the gallantry of the printer’s “devil” (apprentice). You may find the voice of the 16-year-old Sam sounds surprisingly similar to the adult Twain.

The Gallant Fireman

At the fire, on Thursday morning, we were apprehensive of our own safety, (being only one door from the building on fire) and commenced arranging our material in order to remove them in case of necessity. Our gallant devil, seeing us somewhat excited, concluded he would perform a noble deed, and immediately gathered the broom, an old mallet, the wash-pan and a dirty towel, and in a fit of patriotic excitement, rushed out of the office and deposited his precious burden some ten squares off, out of danger. Being of a snailish disposition, even in his quickest moments, the fire had been extinguished during his absence. He returned in the course of an hour, nearly out of breath, and thinking he had immortalized himself, threw his giant frame in a tragic attitude, and exclaimed, with an eloquent expression: “If that thar fire hadn’t bin put out thar’d a’ bin the greatest confirmation of the age!”

(from Early Tales and Sketches: 1851-1864 by Mark Twain, University of California Press, 1979.)

Waiting for the Next Twain The Saturday Evening Post

In Have a Little Faith, the bestselling author chronicles one man’s journey, but everyone’s story.

In his first book of nonfiction work since Tuesdays with Morrie, author Mitch Albom confronts a central question: What if faith wasn’t what separated us, but what brought us together?

The story begins with a simple request from Albom’s childhood rabbi, Albert Lewis: “Would you deliver my eulogy?”

Although the request strikes the writer as odd, Albom accepts, on one condition: he is allowed to get to know the rabbi—not simply as a cleric but as a man.

And so an eight-year exploration of God, religion, and faith unfolds.

Along the way, Albom also becomes involved with a church that tends to the homeless under the care of a charismatic pastor named Henry Covington. Preaching in a decaying church with a huge hole in its roof, through which rain and snow pour in during services, Henry is an amazing example of how faith can touch and transform lives.

For Albom, Have a Little Faith is story about believing in something and the two very different men who taught him how.

“It took a long time to write,” Albom writes. “It took me on one journey, then another, to churches and synagogues, to the suburbs and the city, to the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that divides faith around the world.”

Albom’s candid and heartwarming story brings two completely different men from two completely different worlds to life in an inspiring fashion, while sharing his honest, personal journey along the way.

To learn more, the Post spoke with author Mitch Albom in Detroit.

Post: Today, millions of Americans are struggling with economic and spiritual challenges, so Have a Little Faith is hitting bookstores at a very appropriate time. What message do you hope people take away after reading your newest book?

Albom: In my heart of hearts, one message is that faith should not divide people—the us versus them that separate people and nations around the world. Today we pounce on differences between others and ourselves, often with the sentiment “they’re different, so you can’t trust them.” Isn’t it time the pendulum swung in the opposite direction? The best thing that can come out of bad news is the chance to reflect, “Is there a life lesson I could learn from this?”

Post: In the book, you discuss how you drifted away from your religious roots, writing, “It wasn’t revolt, it wasn’t some tragic loss of faith, it was if I was being honest, apathy.” Why do people lose sight of the bigger picture?

Albom: We have it too good. It’s no an accident that people who were historically challenged the most tended to be closest to their faith. Life can become too easy. It certainly was for me. I achieved success early in my career. My feeling about religion and spirituality was I’ll go my way and you go yours. I wasn’t telling other people not to have faith. At that point, I simply thought they needed it more than I did, because everything was going so well. Aren’t we all like that? For the most part, Americans have it good. What people traditionally sought from faith, we find—or think we find—in success, status, and amusement. For a while, you get away with it, but then tragedy or illness hits. In my case, somebody was introduced into my life that led me to gain new perspective, and you realize that you might have been shortsighted before.

Post: How did chronicling the lives of these two extremely diverse yet powerful men change your life?

Albom: I am very moved when I see people fervent about their faith. I learned that not just from watching how much faith made a difference to Albert Lewis in his final days, but also from getting to know Pastor Henry Covington. When I first met Henry, I didn’t trust him to be honest. From that naïve impression to what I feel for him now is radically different. I’ve seen what he has gone through and how he inspires other people. I’m quite moved by what he does.

Post: Is religious tolerance part of what you’re trying to promote?

Albom: It is. Rabbi Albert Lewis devoted his life to the Jewish faith. But I liked what he said: “God didn’t make one tree, he made all kinds of trees.” In other words, within Creation, all faiths are beautiful—all different and all the same. That’s a much healthier, tolerant attitude than trying to prove yours is right and everybody else’s is wrong. The plain, simple, maddening fact about religion is that no one is really going to know who is right or wrong until we’re no longer here. Why fight about it while we’re alive? Why spend the time on earth differentiating ourselves from others by saying “I don’t like you because of this or that?” Why not be tolerant?

Post: Saying Sorry on the importance of forgiveness was a very poignant chapter in Have a Little Faith. Was this a particularly moving moment for you?

Albom: In Tuesdays with Morrie, he told me about a guy with whom he had a silly argument that was Morrie’s fault. He found out that the guy had died from cancer. He burst into tears, saying “I never got the chance to tell him I was sorry. Why did I let that nothing argument separate us all these years? It’s so small now; it means nothing to me now.” I sat there helpless, and that’s when he said, “Forgive everybody of everything.”
I’ve never forgotten that.

When Rabbi Lewis told me that “you’re supposed to forgive everyone one day before you die,” I asked, “What’s the day you die?” He said, “Exactly.” I experienced that with Morrie. I left one Tuesday, and when I came back, Morrie was gone. I did the same thing with Albert Lewis: I left for long periods of time in between visits—weeks—and at age 90, it’s pretty clear, every time you left, you rolled the dice. So it was important for me to say I’m sorry. By that time, the end of the journey was near, and it was OK to be close with him. When he told me we would see each other again, that was one of the most moving moments with him. When someone says something very emotional to me, I tend to make a joke because I’m probably not really ready to handle it. When I asked, “Do you think we’re really going to see each other again?” He said, “Don’t you?” I said, “Come on, I’m not going to the same level you are.” He said, “Why would you say that?” Then I was caught. I said, “Because you’re a man of God.” He looked away, kind of tearing up and said everybody is a man of God. All those moments were near the end of his life.

Post: In Tuesdays with Morrie and again in Have a Little Faith, you profile two incredible mentors. Do you consider yourself fortunate?

Albom: I was lucky. I always knew that Morrie was special as was Albert Lewis. If you asked people to name a couple of older people they look up to, most could come up with a couple names. Ever since I was a kid, I have enjoyed older people’s stories. All my books are based on older people. The Five People You Meet in Heaven was based on an old uncle of mine who died in his 83rd year. He was a war veteran. When he told his war stories, all the kids split. I was always the last kid left sitting there. I knew how the story was going to end, because I had heard it a hundred times. I always enjoyed the company of older people; I always felt safe and like they knew something that I didn’t. So it’s probably not unusual for me to look to older people for my stories just as some children’s book writers look to children. I hope there are a few more in my life.

If more information about Mitch Albom and his various philanthropies, visit his Web site at mitchalbom.com.

One-on-One with Author Mitch Albom The Saturday Evening Post