I put autobiographical in quotes, because he constantly veers off into jokes and tall tales (Loved the apocraphal story about the man who makes an enemy of Joseph Smith by giving a whistle to one of his many sons).

BTW, the entire book is online for free and is searchable.

“It is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble – the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag – think, and worry and suffer – all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.”

Mark Twain

He loved hoaxes and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. I wasn’t that kind of journalist, though I loved April Fools Day pranks before they made me stop (some newspaper got sued).

But so much of it rang true. Boredom over beats you had to cover, Chamber of Commerce style propaganda you had to pretend to believe. (His insights into the silver speculation game are extremely relevant. Search Roughing It for the term “salting.”)

But most of all, I can identify with the part about being an editor and having to write editorials (or in my case, columns). I only had to do it once a week and even I ran out of ideas. I can’t imagine having to do one every day.

I didn’t get challenged to any duels (I have a feeling that was an exaggeration), but I pissed off the preachers and my publisher more than once. Other times I came off like an idiot. Those were usually the ones where I was on deadline and had to pull something out of my ass.

Brain block happens with this blog as well. I’ve realized all I’m really doing is writing the column I used to write, except this time I don’t have the publisher on my ass saying, “Stop writing weird shit!”

Hopefully with weird shit being on the table, I can pull more material out of my brain and less out of my ass. I still cringe when I remember some of those columns.