Fellow Twainiacs,

    I'm about a quarter into  the Kaplan bio, and have been very happy with
it thus far (the trouble with being a Twainiac who also loves trains -- I've
just come off a jaunt southward -- is that one keeps meeting very interesting
people, which eats into the reading time).
    As I've said before, Hitchens has made his contrariness into a cottage
industry of sorts. I think he's spot-on about  that bulimic princess creature
and Mother Teresa.
    But he misread Kaplan's book.
    That is, if he really READ it. I review books too, and know there are
many out there who scan rather than read the books.
    A pity. It would be nice, though, if Jonathan Yardley of The Washington
Post or someone (preferably Russell Baker) at The New York Review of Books
weighed in on the volume.

Kathy O'Connell
Record-Journal
Meriden, Conn.