“Maybe he is the Mark Twain of the late twentieth century. Time will sort the bastard out and I leave it to others more qualified than me to assess and appraise his monumental literary legacy.”

—  Ralph Steadman , book The Joke's Over

Introduction, p. 3
The Joke's Over (2006)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Maybe he is the Mark Twain of the late twentieth century. Time will sort the bastard out and I leave it to others more …" by Ralph Steadman?
Ralph Steadman photo
Ralph Steadman 22
British cartoonist 1936

Related quotes

“Mark Twain is far more at odds with the values of his society than Stendhal, Baudelaire or Flaubert, and yet he is far more a part of it.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn (p. 206)
Classics Revisited (1968)
Context: Huckleberry Finn sets the tone and pattern for hundreds of American novels after it. No other civilization in history has been so totally rejected by its literary artists. Mark Twain is far more at odds with the values of his society than Stendhal, Baudelaire or Flaubert, and yet he is far more a part of it. In many ways he was the typical educated — self-educated, usually — American male of his day. He was also enormously successful, one of the most popular American writers who has ever lived. Significantly, his hack work was less popular than Huckleberry, and even his blackest, bitterest books sold very well — and still do. Perhaps the typical American male is secretly far less the optimist than he would have the world believe; but the lies he rejects and myths he believes are still those whose contradictions tortured Mark Twain.

Epifanio de los Santos photo

“He was, in the early twentieth century, the country's most eminent biographer and literary scholar.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Resil B. Mojares in Brains of the Nation: Pedro Paterno, T. H. Pado de Tavera, Isabelo de los Reyes. 2006. p. 477.
BALIW

Robert M. Price photo

“One thing's for sure: if Mark Twain could have read A Course in Miracles, he never would have called the Book of Mormon "chloroform in print". Utterly without redeeming value (take that any way you want), the only conceivable importance of A Course in Miracles is a testimony to the pathetic state of spiritual hunger and confusion on the part of late twentieth-century American "seekers."”

Robert M. Price (1954) American theologian

Top Secret (2008)

Nicholas Serota photo

“For the late twentieth-century museum director there is no more certain prospect for audience acclaim and sponsor success than those Impressionist and Post-impressionist artists who were so reviled a century earlier”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Henry Adams photo

“The thirteenth century knew more about religion and decoration than the twentieth century will ever learn.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Griff Rhys Jones photo

“Mel and I genuinely get on. It's like another marriage. He is very straightforward and never loses his rag. I run around in a frenzy most of the time. London cabbies will say to me, 'Your mate Mel's a miserable bastard', but he's far more grounded than me.”

Griff Rhys Jones (1953) British actor and comedian

Michael Odell, "This much I know: Griff Rhys Jones", The Guardian, November 5 2006.
Talking about Mel Smith

“If, fourteen years ago, he had entertained secret hopes of leaving a discernible, enduring mark on the legacy of humankind, he was now fully disabused of them.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Fire with Fire (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 153)

Tom Robbins photo

“If by the quarter of the twentieth century godliness wasn’t next to something more interesting than cleanliness, it might be time to reevaluate our notions of godliness.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

“The relation of the performance of music to sound is complex and ambiguous: this is what makes possible Mark Twain's joke that Wagner is better than he sounds.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Context: Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.

Related topics