Hi folks:
 
Here's a good piece on Kevin MacDonnell's research.
 
All the puzzle pieces seem to fit, as those of you who 
attended the Elmira conference already know.
 
Roger Durrett
Charlotte, NC
 
* Apologies if this has been previously posted.  If it was,
  I missed it.
 
 
How Samuel Clemens Actually Became Mark Twain: He Stole a Bad  Joke
 
AP 
_Zach Schonfeld_ (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/authors/zach-schonfeld/)  
270 Views 5:06 PM ET  
It only took us a century and a half, but we may have finally  learned the 
real source of Samuel Clemens' ubiquitously recognizable nom de  plume: he 
stole it from a humor journal so lame that he quickly invented a  cooler 
story to pass off as true. But he wouldn't have gotten away with such a  trick 
today. 
The theory is according to a find by a Texas book dealer and  scholar, who 
managed to stumble upon what seems to be the first recorded  appearance of 
the name "Mark Twain"—in a humor journal called Vanity  Fair (no, _not the  
contemporary magazine_ 
(http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/a-new-theory-on-mark-twain) ) two years before Samuel Clemens adopted it.  Thankfully, Austin's 
Kevin Mac Donnell was sharp enough to recognize the  significance of his 
find, though he was really only poking around Google Books  and modestly _told 
the  Los Angeles Review of Books_ 
(http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/a-new-theory-on-mark-twain)  that  anyone could have done the same: 
“I wasn’t looking for what I found. I stumbled across it,” Mac  Donnell 
said in a phone interview. With a flair for folksy humor that made Twain  
famous, he also added that “you could train a cat to do what I did. You could  
train a garden slug to do what I did, but the cat would be  quicker.” 
Scholars have never been clear on the source of Twain's pseudonym, but  
stories emerged during his lifetime. One famously _suggested "Mark twain!" was 
the writer's trademark cry_ 
(http://www.territorial-enterprise.com/mt_name.htm)   in a Virginia City saloon he frequented, meaning "Mark two more 
drinks." Twain  himself claimed an altogether different source for his pseudonym: 
he said the  name had been used by Isaiah Sellers, a riverboat captain who 
died in 1863,  and "as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent 
hands upon  it without asking permission of the proprietor's  remains." 
But that's been in question for quite a while, particularly  after 
researchers _scanned  Sellers' river reports_ 
(http://books.google.com/books?id=Yj2RPXR4JjwC&pg=PA107&lpg=PA107&dq="as+he+could+no+longer+need+that+signature"&so
urce=bl&ots=5NzSySvWsS&sig=zUjNlI2Z9C3hR7Y9x4OoHAadig8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=DB5PUsu
HL_a-4AOHzoHIBQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q="as%20he%20could%20no%20longer%2
0need%20that%20signature"&f=false)  and found no appearance of the Twain 
name. Plus,  Twain himself cheekily _cast doubt on his own  version of events_ 
(http://www.petrifiedtruth.com/archives/001113.html)  late in his life. Mac 
Donnell's find, by  contrast, adds up pretty well: Twain was known to read 
the short-lived humor  journal, which lasted only from 1859 to 1863, and he 
even used some jokes by the  journal's chief writer, Artemus Ward. Why 
obscure the source, then? Besides the  obvious fact that the riverboat tale made 
for a better story, Mac Donnell's  theory is simple—the journal wasn't 
funny, and Twain knew  it: 
And then there was the stigma of  being associated with Vanity Fair: the 
fact that its contributors,  the so-called “Phunny Phellows,” were, well, not 
funny. “By the time Twain  became famous, they were going out of style 
pretty quick,” Mac Donnell said. A  specialist in 19th century literature, he 
added that: “In 1873, when Clemens was  challenged on the source of his pen 
name, he had already patented the Mark Twain  scrapbook. He had already 
branded himself Mark Twain. He had signed book deals  and established his name. He 
wasn’t about to go backwards into the Phunny  Phellow mold.” 
The LARB heralds the story as an indispensable example  of Twain's savvy 
self-branding, of how shrewdly he talked up his folksy Missouri  roots and 
concocted long-lasting stories to go along with it. Rightly so. But  it's also 
a fine indicator of just how much writers of Twain's stature could get  away 
with in the 19th and early 20th century, borrowing ideas or names  
wholesale, before the Internet _sprouted  its own cottage industry of fact-checking_ 
(http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/08/everyones-a-fact-c
hecker/260660/) , myth-busting, and sourcing. Had  he adopted his pen name 
today, Twain's decidedly uncool namesake almost  certainly wouldn't evade 
detection—we'd know plenty about his early life, and  we'd _probably  have his 
yearbook photo on file_ 
(http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/03/philip-roth-goes-to-the-prom-photos-of-famous-authors-as-teenagers/274
377/) , too. 
But, Twain _famously  wrote in a letter to Helen Keller_ 
(http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/05/bulk-of-all-human-utterances-is.html) , "all ideas are 
second-hand, consciously  and unconsciously drawn from a million outside 
sources," and "ninety-nine parts  of all things that proceed from the intellect 
are plagiarisms." And the writer  knew better than anyone: some sources are 
cooler than  others. 
All photos: Associated Press 
Want to add to this story? Let us know _in  comments_ 
(http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2013/10/now-we-know-how-samuel-clemens-became-mark-t
wain/70161/#dsq-content)  or send an email to the author at 
[log in to unmask] (mailto:[log in to unmask]) . You can  share ideas for 
stories on the _Open Wire_ (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/open-wire/) . 
_Zach Schonfeld_ (http://twitter.com/zzzzaaaacccchhh)