For 52 years, Hal Holbrook has been performing his signature one-man Mark Twain show. In his more than a half-century of re-enacting Twain's own late-in-life personal appearances, Holbrook has performed the show more than 2,000 times. In preparing for the show, Holbrook (who brings his "Mark Twain Tonight!" to Escondido on Saturday) has committed some 15 hours of Twain material to memory.

And yet, he's still discovering new Twain material, still adding new twists to the show.

"When people ask me to talk about Mark Twain, I end up talking about the world we live in, because that's what he means to me," Holbrook, 81, said by phone from his Los Angeles-area home. "I end up talking about what's happening to our country and our world, and it's in direct relationship to material I either have in the show or am looking to put into the show. This person that I was lucky enough to become glued to many years ago has so infiltrated my consciousness that he's a mouthpiece for me, if I can use that word. He's just such a great thinker. For me, I can find material in Twain to express my feelings about almost anything that is bothering me, that is troubling me about our country today.

"Last spring, I put a new number in the show because I found this extraordinary new material. It was exactly what I needed to find to say. I had come to the conclusion that the most dangerous fact in our country today, in my opinion, is the terrific anger, and even hatred, which has developed between the two political parties and the two basic philosophies -- the right and the left, if you want to call it that -- which exist in our country.

"That the political parties not only differ with each other -- which is what they're supposed to do -- but that they're using every means possible, honest or dishonest, to get the vote, to keep themselves in power or get themselves in power. They will use any device necessary. They will support the most outrageous, inappropriate candidate just to keep a seat in the Senate. They are attacking each other like wolves while the American people sit here helpless, watching these damned fools that we have elected allowing the country to go absolutely nowhere. We're dying for leadership. They are not serving the people of this country. They are deserting us. All in the name of loyalty to the party."

Holbrook said the Twain material he came across makes the above point perfectly -- and he promised it will be in his Escondido performance.

Interestingly, given that Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is the most-challenged book on school reading lists and in public libraries, Holbrook said he's never received a complaint about his reading from "Huck Finn" in his performances.

"Sometimes that seems a little unusual to me, given the fact that there are people who I think misunderstand the meaning and intention of the book and can't stand the use of the word 'nigger,' even as Twain used it, in order to legitimize the sociological culture he was writing about," Holbrook said.

"He uses (the epithet) and overuses it as a kind of sledgehammer to hit you over the head with it so you become uncomfortable with the word. There's no other real conclusion you can come to when you know about Twain, when you've taken the time to read enough of his writing to understand that he had all of his mature writing life been writing against racism and many times poking satiric barbs at the white man's idea that he was better than the Negro.

"The brilliance of 'Huck Finn,' which increases its depth as great literature but at the same time requires a certain amount of intelligence when you're reading the literature, is that this book is told through the mouth of a young, uneducated boy who was a juvenile delinquent in Hannibal and brought up by a racist father who beat him viciously. … Huckleberry reveals himself to us through his character and what he says, and doesn't realize that his own instincts are far better than what he's been taught to believe in.

"But you can't jump back every time you read the word 'nigger' like you've touched a hot coal and understand what the book is saying," he said.

Holbrook pointed out that Twain married into one of the leading abolitionist families in New York and once fired an Irish maid who refused to serve the great orator and family friend Frederick Douglass at dinner because he was black.

While in years past Holbrook limited himself to about two dozen performances of "Mark Twain Tonight!" each year to keep it fresh for both himself and audiences, he said that since he turned 80 last year ago he's doing three dozen or more shows a year.

"The last few years I've been doing more because I've gotten fewer jobs on TV and in movies as I've gotten older -- the emphasis is on the young. This season I'll be doing 33 or 34, and I just stop it at that. That's actually more than I want to do, but you have to earn a living."

If he's not getting as many nibbles in Hollywood as he once did (he was a regular on the television series "Designing Women" opposite real-life wife Dixie Carter, and in the "Evening Shade" series), Holbrook isn't exactly retired, either. In early November, he'll travel to the Anza Borrego desert and the Cleveland National Forest to shoot a few scenes for a new movie, "Into the Wild."

Written and directed by Sean Penn, the film is based on Jon Krakauer's best-selling true-life book, stars Emile Hirsch and Vince Vaughn, and is set for a 2007 release. Holbrook says he plays an older mentor to adventurer Christopher McCandless, played by Hirsch.

"It's a beautiful screenplay," said Holbrook, who portrayed the character Deep Throat in the classic film "All the President's Men." "I am playing a fellow (McCandless) met not far from you in the Anza Borrego Desert near the Salton Sea -- the last person he spent time with before he went to Alaska and disappeared."

But working with Penn and Hirsch isn't atop Holbrook's list of personal thrills these days. An upcoming benefit show in Weymouth, Mass., is his current passion.

"It's a benefit for the homestead of my great-great-grandfather, Jason Holbrook," he said. "I"m very proud that I have that lineage."

In fact, Holbrook said the old family homestead -- the same home where he and his sister were raised by their grandfather -- is now part of the Weymouth Museum and home to the Weymouth Historical Society.

"It's really a big deal for me."

Still, no matter where, or for whom, Holbrook is doing his Mark Twain show, he said he still gets a kick out of it at 81 years of age.

"It really is amazing to me when I think about it, that you can go out on the stage in this day and age of mall mentality and plastic thinking, armed with only the thoughts and words of a brilliant American writer and actually hold the attention of a whole audience of people for two hours -- actually make them listen minute by minute for two hours to what this man has to say. People will say it's a lot to do with how you do it, and I suppose there's a lot of truth to that, but the bottom line is the material: What this man is saying captures their interest and imagination and the only reason I can come up with is because no one else is saying it. No one is saying it. Pathetic, really."