The honor was all mine
Last night, I was honored. I’ve never been honored before, so this was a first. It was also almost certainly a last. The occasion was the tenth, and final, edition of “The Pudd’nhead Prize,” which I created to honor Mark Twain and the library he established in my former hometown of Redding, CT. Twain spent his final years in Redding and helped establish the library that bears his name, donating 3,000 of his own book collection to the effort. He also established the library’s charter which decreed that the library would not accept government money. Why? Because, at the time, American governments were banning his books. Same as it ever was.
Because of his strictures on funding, the library has to raise approximately half of its operating income every year. My idea was to create a literary and comedy festival to honor Twain and to raise money for the library, which is the heart of our tiny town. In fact, I have a joke in my act that goes, “There are two things you can do in my little town in Connecticut. You can either go to the library. Or, if you get tired of that, you can get Lyme disease.”
To make my idea a reality, I approached the most incredible “library ladies” to speak to them about it. Pen and Jen were, and are, the workhouses behind the event, and it was they who should have been honored last night instead of me. But I am very famous and they are not.
Over the years, Pudd’nhead became a weekend-long celebration of laughs and words. We began with the “Pudd’nhead Prize,” and then expanded to include a children’s book parade, a night of stand-up, and recordings of the NPR show, “Selected Shorts.” We tried to make the events affordable to all kinds of people – the children’s event was free, for example.
Our first honoree was the incredible writer/artist Roz Chast, and we held the event at In Situ, the private home and gardens of a local resident. It’s hard to explain In Situ without seeing it, but it’s basically twenty acres of incredible landscaping and sculpture set against a gorgeous New England landscape. We didn’t make much, or any money, that first year but we learned a lot, and by the second year, in which we honored Ben Stiller, we figured a lot of stuff (when I say “we,” I mean Pam and Jen – I didn’t figure out anything), and we started making good money for the library.
In the years that followed, we feted Jim Gaffigan, Seth Myers, Laura Linney (remote because of covid), Samantha Bee, Paul Rudd, Jon Hamm, and Amy Schumer, who had to bail at the last minute due to an emergency hysterectomy, and so Chris Meloni filled in at the last minute. And, last night, absurdly, me.
I told them I really didn’t want to be the guest of honor because it seemed self-serving and embarrassing, but Jen and Pam really turned the screws on me, and so last night, I accepted my giant, engraved silver spoon – the highly coveted Pudd’nhead Prize.
It was a lovely night in which I got drunker than I’ve ever been. Which isn’t saying much because I don’t drink very much and only rarely get drunk. Last night, though, I was hammered. Each Pudd’nhead traditionally ended with me interviewing our guest of honor and taking questions from the crowd. Last night, Chris graciously returned to host and I think I may have called Trump supporters in the audience “fucking psychotic,” which may not have done much to endear myself to them, but that’s what happens when you give a teetotaler like myself a couple glasses of straight vodka. And, anyway, I said it as a joke and most people laughed.
It's a strange thing to be honored at all, particularly for somebody like me who has done exactly nothing worthy of honors. That’s not false humility on my part; I’ve been on a bunch of obscure television shows and movies, write obscure books, and regularly half-fill second-tier comedy clubs across the country. I’m the very definition of “C List,” and so it was kind of embarrassing to have to act like I belonged up on that stage talking to Chris, an actor so successful he actually had fancy stitching on the inside of his shirt cuffs. Wow.
Twain is one of my favorite Americans. First of all, he might be the funniest person this country has ever produced. I don’t just mean in terms of his actual humor, but also the sorts of things at which he poked fun. Hypocrisy, the rich, the pompous. He was a master at popping puffery. He did so without either condescension or self-importance. He wrote simply but never simplistically.
Supporting his library was my way of supporting the community but also of supporting literature and the values Twain held dear: freedom of speech, comity between all peoples, and bushy mustaches. He distrusted power because he saw how those with power often abuse those without. He was the best kind of intellectual, the kind that understands that the intellect alone is worthless without empathy, generosity of spirit, and humor.
Twain suffered. He lost a son, two daughters, and his wife. He invested poorly. He went broke and took to touring to pay off his debts. America has changed a great deal since Samuel Clemens first sailed the Mississippi but so much remains the same. His books remain beloved because we continue to recognize ourselves in Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Becky Thatcher, Aunt Polly, and Jim. He died here in Redding, Connecticut in 1910, just across the road from where I write these words. I love Mark Twain not because he was the best of us but simply because he was one of us. To be associated in any way with the man, even in the most tangential of ways, is all the honor I need. But the giant silver spoon (retail value, $49) is pretty cool, too.
If you have any desire, please consider a small donation to the Mark Twain Public Library. It’s what Twain would have wanted from you scoundrels.
It wasn't just his humor and his skill as a novelist and essayist that makes him endure- it's the fact that he did not allow anyone to dictate what things he could and could not write about, and he ranged widely across genres and forms in his bibliography. That contrariness is a very American trait his humorous heirs would inherit.
Teehee, Pen and Jen! Anyway you are a funny and unproblematic and just generally admirable and enjoyable public intellectual and you support writing, and thinking, and laughing, so I say you absolutely deserve the honor!!