He Despised Himself: An Evening with This Guy Sucked and The American Vandal
May 6 • 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Mark Twain was well known in his day for his strong dislikes: the novels of Jane Austen, Christian Science, Teddy Roosevelt’s politics, and his own shirt buttons. But top of Twain’s list was the human race, with himself as the prime example of its failings.
Join us May 6th at 7 PM for a live podcast recording with Matt Seybold, host of The American Vandal Podcast, and Claire Aubin, host of This Guy Sucked. Together with Erin Bartram, the museum’s Associate Director for Education, they’ll explore Twain’s petty dislikes, personal resentments, and enduring misanthropy—and the ways that victims of his ire clapped back. Twain raised hating stuff to an art. Join us for a raucous evening where we carry on his legacy.
Tickets are $10, free for museum members. Doors open at 6, with a cash bar available before the event. All ticket holders get 10% off in the museum store before the event; new members get 30% off.
Claire E. Aubin is a historian and postdoctoral fellow at Yale. She is the executive producer and host of popular general history podcast This Guy Sucked, and the author of a forthcoming book, The Homeland: Holocaust Perpetrators as Immigrants to America.
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies, founding editor of MarkTwainStudies.org, and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast. He is currently working on a book about the rise and fall of mass literacy from Twain’s youth to the present, tentatively titled Deliberate Deliteracy.
