"I have since come to appreciate his writing as some of the most important coming out of the Texas borderlands, New York (where he has been living for many years), and the American literary tradition generally. In a word, Troncoso is an heir to Mark Twain— albeit with a very different style and subject matter than our man in white from Missouri."
Coincidentally, last week I was traveling in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York and visited Elmira, New York to pay my respects to Mark Twain. I visited the Chemung County Historical Society, with a portable writing desk Twain used, and I also stopped at Twain's gravesite, where he is buried next to his wife Livy and their children. Why did Twain choose Elmira to live even though he grew up in Hannibal, Missouri? The dynamic progressive environment of New York in the late nineteenth century, the beauty and serenity of the Finger Lakes region, especially for writing, and Livy, the love of his life. All great reasons. Even when you are writing about where you came from, and what it meant to you, you need to find a certain peace as a writer in your daily life. The precious days of actual living can work together, or can work against, the creativity of storytelling and honing a literary craft always pushing for the edge.
