Quote of the Day (Mark Twain, on the Lack of Weather in One of His Books)

“No weather will be found in this book. This is an attempt to pull a book through without weather. It being the first attempt of the kind in fictitious literature, it may prove a failure, but it seemed worth the while of some dare-devil person to try it, and the author was in just the mood. Many a reader who wanted to read a tale through was not able to do it because of delays on account of the weather. Nothing breaks up an author's progress like having to stop every few pages to fuss-up the weather. Thus it is plain that persistent intrusions of weather are bad for both reader and author.”—American novelist and humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910), The American Claimant (1892)

This weekend, my area of northern New Jersey is slated to have a spell of nasty weather. For all of Twain’s commendable attempt to avoid literary cliches by not writing about weather in his books, I suspect he would have been almost totally unable to maintain that resolution during these days of climate change!