Sheldon,
Your remark about scholars' general lack of interest in Twain's western
years is true. But I don't fault the scholars particularly. The merchants on
C Street in Virginia City are too obsessed with selling mugs and dice and
T-shirts to worry much about history or literature...and San Francisco is
too self-absorbed to even realize that he ever lived and wrote there.
No wonder few realize that Twain got his real literary start in the west.
Sincerely, Tom Muzzio (Publisher) Territorial Enterprise. Virginia City,
Nevada