On the heels of John’s report about Mark Twain’s autobiography comes the news that the $35 760 page first volume of a massive, somewhat disjointed, work is a bestseller.

So in this Kindelized, iPadded and Nooked age of reading trivialized by celebrity tell-it-alls, self-help elevation and political numbwits (though excerpts from the book demonstrate that things were just as bad in Twain’s era as ours, except ours is perhaps a little worse thanks to the Internet and cable TV), Mark Twain’s physical opus is this season’s Christmas holiday hit, surpassing even that of Keith Richards.

Of course, cynic that I am (a cynicism inspired by youthful exposure to Mark Twain), I wonder how many copies will go unread, mere ornaments on a bookshelf, a hip gift idea, especially if that gift has a certain cache as something hard to get.

Somewhere, Twain is finding this immensely amusing.