I didn't intend for Lisa Steier's bold claim to go unanswered.  I was
away Sunday and wasn't able to see or tape the CBS program.  (In the
program did they continue the false claim about MT writing those works
at Hartford rather than Elmira?)  Lisa, no, it is NOT fair to say they
were written in Hartford AND Elmira.  It's not a matter of fairness;
it's simply incorrect!  And no, it's not a "feeling competitive"
situation.  And to suggest, just to be nice and compromising, to "make
it alphabetical--Elmira and Hartford" is just plain nonsense.  Lisa,
you declared that "from all [your] research [you've] come across
(comparing dates of letters, journal entries, etc.) one can deduce that
the novels were written in both homes -- Farmington Avenue and Quarry
Farm."  I cannot imagine what so-called "research" you claim, but how
about sharing them with us?  Does it include Twain's  letter to Howells
in the summer of 1876 when he stated he had written (at Quarry Farm in
Elmira) 400 manuscript pages of "Huckleberry Finn," and about which Dr.
James Cox ("The Fate of Humor") declares, "and there is no reason to
believe he did not."  I think it was also Dr. Cox, in a lecture here in
Elmira, who declared, therefore, that the little Elmira Mark Twain
Study is the most important literary building in America.  Lisa, I
think you trivialize and belittle the craft of writing when you state
that "a book consists of more than writing those final words of
manuscript."  The pondering that MT may have had in the tub at
Hartford, or elsewhere, doesn't compare with the laboring craftsmanship
of the manuscript.  Just ask our Huck Finn manuscript expert Dr. Vic
Doyno, who really knows, and who made a reference (MT Selected Writings
of an American Skeptic) to MT's "intellectual acuity" that "contributed
to the shape of his thought." There are many esteemed scholarly writers
on this list who truly know, from their own accomplishments, what that
means in the craft of writing.  I'll give Mark Twain the last words on
this, in a September 1886 letter to the Chicago Tribune reporter, Edwin
J. Park:  "The three summer months I spend here are usually my working
months.  I am free here and can work uninterruptedly, but in Hartford I
don't try to do any literary work.  Yes,...this may be called the home
of "Huckleberry Finn" and other books of mine for they were written
here."

Ron Owens