Mark Twain impersonator comes to UNCA

Performing as Mark Twain for the past 33 years, Candler native Marvin Cole brought the life and readings of Twain to UNC Asheville students last week in a performance highlighting passages from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

“I hope they take away an appreciation for literature, reading and rereading,” Cole said of his aspirations behind each of his performances as Twain. “With a classic, you never read the same book twice.”

Dressed in the familiar white suit with a simple, burgundy bow tie commonly associated with Twain, Cole bears a striking resemblance to the famous author. His wispy white hair, bushy mustache and eyebrows also aid in the similarities between the impersonator and his subject. He performed for Patricia Baldwin's class studying Mark Twain's earlier writings.

“The best fiction forces us to question what we’ve always taken for granted,” Cole said in the introduction to his Twain presentation.

Cole’s performances of passages from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are prepared differently every time, depending on the audience. When performing, he captures Twain’s various written dialects and gestures, as well as giving the audience the context of each passage.

“One of the hard things about doing this is going from Marvin to Mark to Huck,” Cole said. “If I was from Hollywood it wouldn’t be, but I’m from Candler.”

He was born in 1932 in Pole Creek, just outside of Asheville. Cole attended Western Carolina University where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

He continued his education at Indiana State University where he earned his doctorate degree. Upon completion, Cole spent two years in Pakistan as an administrative officer at the University of Punjab. He then spent three years in Afghanistan as a higher education advisor to the president of Kabul University.

“In Afghanistan, there is between 70 and 90 percent illiteracy. I’m always reminded of that, that 90 percent of the people cannot read and write and they will follow anyone who has a little power,” Cole said.

“I think that we’re falling behind. People don’t read anymore like they used to. Television ruined that. We’re not as literate as we used to be and we certainly have a long way to go,” he said.

Cole performs an average of 25 Twain impersonations each year. He has performed in 20 states and before audiences as large as 3,000 people in both New York City and Charleston, but most of his audiences have remained smaller groups.

“Different groups have different reactions. Some audiences are fantastic, English teachers are usually very good, and literary people,” Cole said. “They can pick up on a lot of things. Accountants have a hard time laughing.”

Cole said he knows of about 12 other Twain impersonators nationally. Cole reads Twain’s works, as well as biographies and emerging letters the author wrote.

“I try to get the new books coming out about him,” Cole said. “They’re still finding letters that Twain wrote, that have been hidden in people’s attics and so they’re still learning about Twain.”

As people grow and have different experiences throughout their life, the reading of a classic can render different meanings, according to Cole. A book never changes, but hopefully the reader does, he said.

“When you read something out of a classic, that you may have missed 20 years ago, it’s because you haven’t had a particular experience,” Cole said. “Then when you read it again you say, ‘Oh, that’s what they’re talking about.’ You change, because you are picking up things and growing all the time. Books stay the same.”

Cole occasionally goes to bookstores and asks what people are buying. He said that Twain once made a comment about a classic being a book that is never read.

“I want people to read and shoot the T.V.,” Cole said. “Storytelling almost died when television came in, and teachers began to see that kids were not imagining things. That’s the reason that the movie is never as good as the book.”

Cole listed his top three classics as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden.

“Twain had a hard time finishing his novels. He’d go so far then he would stop,” Cole said.

“That’s what happened to Huck Finn, he stopped. It’s sort of in chunks, where as in To Kill a Mocking Bird it goes all the way through, that’s the reason it would be No. 1.” 

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