See full version: Diane Sawyer Basically Disappeared From TV. It s Clear Now Why
Diane Sawyer lost her beloved mother, Jean Sawyer Hayes, in 2014. As reported by the Courier-Journal, Hayes sadly passed away at the ripe old age of 94 years old in her home state of Kentucky. Per her obituary, Diane's mother worked tirelessly for many years as an elementary school teacher and also served as a civic leader. more
Since then, she's remained relatively quiet while foraying into the world of investigative reporting and conducting highly coveted interviews with some of the world's most famous people. Honestly, doesn't sound like too rough of a transition, right?!
And while his wife was a famous journalist — make no mistake, Nichols was famous in his own right, too. Before his passing, Nichols earned many credits in show business including the titles of director and producer for many films and plays including The Odd Couple on Broadway, The Graduate on film, and Angels in America on TV. Pretty impressive! And it appears, Nichols was working right up until the day of his death, in the midst of adapting the play Master Class to an HBO series, starring the one and only award-winning actress, Meryl Streep.
While the loss of a parent is incredibly painful, perhaps the only thing worse would be to lose a spouse merely one month later. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened to long time ABC journalist, Diane Sawyer. Sawyer and her husband, Mike Nichols, cherished 26 long and wonderful years together before he passed away at age 83. Per NPR, Nichols' passing was due to a heart attack.
The ship takes off, of course, with Huck and Jim and Tom all still aboard. They soon discover that it is piloted by a mad professor type who, like Tom, refuses to be outdone. The professor speeds east with them, refusing to stop before he gets to his next scheduled stop in London. Perhaps because he sees a kindred, glory seeking spirit, the Professor teaches Tom to operate the ship, and things are moving along swimmingly until they reach the Atlantic. In a stormy night over the ocean, the Professor has a fit of madness and, thinking the boys want to leave the ship (which of course they can’t do even if they wanted to), threatens to kill them. There’s a dramatic lightning-lit scuffle and the Professor winds up overboard. With rations to spare and nowhere in particular to be, the trio cruises over northern Africa, observing the landscape from the air and occasionally going down and interacting with the animals, the people, the famous architecture, and, of course, the many places named in the Bible. The trip ends once Tom’s corn cob pipe falls apart and he insists Jim drive the ship back to Missouri to bring him another one—Jim returns with the pipe, but also with note from Aunt Polly that insists that the fun is over and the boys had better return home. [links]
Though many of us might recall the more serious aspects of the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from sophomore English, Tom and Huck were some of Twain’s favorite spoof tools, and the four little known late novels about the duo (two complete and two incomplete) are what I want to make sure you know about: Tom Sawyer Abroad, Tom Sawyer Detective, “Huck Finn And Tom Sawyer Among the Indians,” and “Tom Sawyer’s Conspiracy.” First up: our duo board a balloon in Tom Saywer Abroad.
¹”School House Hill,” an incomplete novel that Twain wrote very late in life, is not narrated by Huckleberry Finn; however, this novel is about a polite and generous offspring of Satan coming from Hell to visit Petersburg, and Tom and Huck are merely peripheral characters. It’s one of the works that was adapted into The Mysterious Stranger.
Once the mad professor falls overboard, the parody falls off and the novel becomes a combination of two of Twain’s favorite things: travel writing (as best as Huck can manage it) and comedic dialogue between people with a very limited understanding of how the world works. The trio discuss whether time zones are a segregation issue, why it wouldn’t be practical to sell Saharan sand back home in the States (tariffs, Tom explains), and why a fleas, if human sized, would probably take over the railroads and the American government. If you love the absurd ways Tom, Huck, and Jim all manage to mangle basic logic, the long stretches of the book in which there isn’t much action will appeal to you, because talking is how they kill the time. These irrelevant dialogues are a nice opportunity to hang out, in a way, with the characters, and just allow them to talk; the other three late books (one finished, two incomplete), are action packed, and Tom and Huck don’t have a lot of time to shoot the breeze. Like almost every word Twain wrote, Tom Sawyer Abroad is a lot of fun to read, though the dialogue filled lulls between an adventure parody start and travel writing-esque conclusion do feel a little uneven. As great as it is, it’s easy to see why it didn’t maintain the popularity of its predecessors.
The book is full of small details such as the fact that merchants would hammer down bottles into the perpetually muddy streets to create small glassy steps. Graysmith has a cinematic touch when describing the chaos, danger, and fury of a city fire. He compares falling ash to the flakes of a pepper mill, chronicles "glittering rivers" of gold and silver and the "rainbow lakes of glass, once the windows of happy homes." He takes some of the license Twain did, using his own imagination to add to the vividness of the moment. Like Twain, Graysmith uses Sawyer as a lens through which to view a particular way of life. But Graysmith has another trick up his sleeve, he was once a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle and his own ink drawings add even more personality to this fascinating tale.
Oddly enough it's the sections of the book that deal with Twain that are actually the least interesting. It's hard for the story of a writer's life, even that of an American treasure like good old Samuel Clemens. to measure up to the firefighters' derring-do. A writer's struggles with finding a subject for a novel are not nearly as exciting as a battling a city ablaze. [links]
The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (who Mark Twain met during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist on the loose in mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.
When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer a The first biography of the little-known real-life Tom Sawyer (who Mark Twain met during his brief tenure as a California newspaper reporter), told through a harrowing account of Sawyer's involvement in the hunt for a serial arsonist on the loose in mid-nineteenth century San Francisco.
When 28-year-old San Francisco Daily Morning Call reporter Mark Twain met Tom Sawyer at San Francisco’s steam baths in 1863, he was seeking a subject for his first novel. As Twain steamed, played cards, and drank beer with Sawyer (a Volunteer firefighter, Customs Inspector, and local hero responsible for having saved ninety lives at sea), he had second thoughts about Shirley Tempest, his proposed book about a local girl firefighter, and began to envision a novel of wider scope. Twain learned that a dozen years earlier the eighteen-year-old New York-born Sawyer had been a “Torch Boy,” one of the young men who raced ahead of the volunteer firemen’s hand-drawn engines carrying torches to light the way, always aware that a single spark could reduce the all-wood city of San Francisco to ashes in an instant. In fact, at that time, a mysterious serial arsonist known as “The Lightkeeper” was in the process of burning San Francisco to the ground six times in eighteen months – the most disastrous and costly series of fires ever experienced by any American metropolis.
I loved this book. I learned SO much about San Francisco's early days, and as that is already one of my favorite cities, that was fun and enlightening. I may have also liked the book because I might possibly maybe have a crush on a man who died in 1859. David Broderick was just my kind of guy! I adored how he was a working-man's man, but secretly read books, and that he was so gung-ho about firefighting and a strong abolitionist. So every time he was mentioned in the book, I am sure that added f I loved this book. I learned SO much about San Francisco's early days, and as that is already one of my favorite cities, that was fun and enlightening. I may have also liked the book because I might possibly maybe have a crush on a man who died in 1859. David Broderick was just my kind of guy! I adored how he was a working-man's man, but secretly read books, and that he was so gung-ho about firefighting and a strong abolitionist. So every time he was mentioned in the book, I am sure that added favor in my eyes. [links]
Still, despite the awful listening experience (and the misleading title), I STILL loved this book. So I had to give it 4 stars. I truly wanted this to belong in my "favorite books of all time" group, and there were points when I thought it might be, but it was more just a truly enjoyable story, and I am glad Graysmith researched and shared it. It is definitely a book I will be sharing anecdotes from for years to come. . more
However, aside from my silly crush, the story of San Francisco's fire brigades was legendary, and I'm glad it was told. I didn't even realize how great of a story it was! However, I did have several issues with the book. First, as many others have pointed out, the connection to Tom Sawyer feels like it was gimmicky, a ploy to get people to read this book, while the connection was tenuous at best. I did like the framing of the Twain/Sawyer story that surrounded the true meat of the book, but the book was by and large about San Francisco, NOT about Tom Sawyer. I have seen other reviews which were similarly upset about that point. It may have been what got me to read the book, so kudos to the author for playing that card well, but I was disappointed by how much it wasn't about Sawyer. It didn't NEED to be, though - the SF story was gold in and of itself! I was constantly relating these great anecdotes that I had picked up from the book, and amusing my friends and family endlessly with them. This is truly why I loved the book. more
We went a-fishing again in the early dawn, and then lazied around all day in the deep shade on an island, taking turn about to watch and see that none of the animals come a-snooping around there after erronorts for dinner. We was going to leave the next day, but couldn't, it was too lovely.
"Shucks, there's plenty sand, you needn't worry." [links]
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