At 12:30 PM 5/29/98 -0400, Rivka Swenson wrote:
>Has any one "checked" with Laura S-T?  I didn't apprehend her posting as
>satirical; rather, her point (as I understood it) seemed completetly
>common-sensical. If the point is that scholarship/readership/love of Twain
>(call it as you like it) does not progress as smoothly  as it might when,
>say, bibliographies aren't up to date, who would attack such a point, and,
>for heaven's sake, why?

OK, so maybe I was reaching in finding "satire" in her post.  :-)

But I have something of the same question you do, Rivka.  Why is there so
much hostility on this list?  I can tell that there are a lot of academics
here, so I expected that there would be at least an attempt to uphold the
academic ideal (which I always thought was a conjunction, truth AND
civility, not a disjunction, truth OR civility).

I was planning on going back to college next year in the hopes of getting an
advanced degree (in something), but if current academia is anything like
what goes on here, perhaps I'd better take a flak jacket with me.  Maybe
it's like what has been said about university debates: the less important
the subject being debated, the more acrimonious the debate gets.

And I also hope the list owner will clarify whether this is a list for
pack-rats who only want to use it to "squirrel" away obscure Twain facts, or
whether it might also be a list for those who want to *interpret* Twain. :-)

Just wondering,

Cordially,

^$^ -- the E-mailer formally known as Vern