A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain is a literary predecessor of Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series.
Anderson mentioned Emperor Norton in his Operation Chaos. See combox here.
In a Sandman story by Neil Gaiman, Norton appoints Twain as official story-teller of the United States. Either this happened or Gaiman imagined it as a plausible and appropriate event.
Anderson and Gaiman have several parallels as documented elsewhere on this blog.
Thus, one madman and three authors have several creative connections.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I rather hope "Emperor Norton" DID appoint Mark Twain to be "official story teller" of the US. Given his taste for satire and irony, I think Twain would have enjoyed it!
Sean
Of course, it's debatable whether Norton was insane, an amusing conman, just very eccentric, or some combination of the three.
Either the San Francisco police chief or a judge, depending on which account you read, wrote that the Emperor “had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line.”
Dear Mr. Stirling,
The account I read about "Emperor Norton" does make it easy to think he was a mix of the conman, harmless eccentric, and the insane.
Sean
Gaiman's feminine personification of Death likes Norton more than any other king. She leads him away while his body is being found in the rain on the street.
Paul.
David,
Gaiman quotes what you quoted and attributes it to the judge.
Paul.
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