Well, now that I've been accused of being a sloppy scholar for the
second time on this forum, I think I'd best defend my defense of
Powers's biography directly, rather than indirectly.

Powers's book is NOT a scholarly biography.  He didn't intend it to be
a scholarly biography.  I heard him at Elmira say he intended the book
to engage, from a distance, America's current culture of political
antagonism.  (Clearly his book is not a verbal icon, so I'm not worried
about committing the "intentional fallacy.") Whether or not Twain is a
fit vehicle for that agenda is worth debating, but minor errors of fact
are irrelevant.  Paying attention to irrelevancies is called, in folk
wisdom, missing the forest for the trees.

I, too, teach freshman composition, and one of the things I teach is
that it is best to judge a piece of writing by the genre it inhabits.
Can you imagine grading  poems such as Williams's "The Red Wheelbarrow"
or Pound's "Cantos" by the standards of, say, the clear discursive prose
promulgated in Freshman English? I can see the comments: "William, Your
thesis is not clear, and the development is inadequate.  F." "Ezra,
These allusions show tremendous research, but you MUST CITE YOUR
SOURCES.  Unless you submit a revised draft with full citations (MLA
style), I will not record your grade.  I hope you appreciate my
flexibility; many teachers would fail this essay and refer you to the
Dean of Student Affairs for plagiarism.  And your diction leaves much to
be desired.  Use standard English, but if you must quote foreign words
and phrases, provide translations, unless they are defined in the
_Webster's Collegiate Dictionary_ I assigned.  Moreover, your diction is
inappropriately inconsistent.  Beginning Canto I with the slang 'hang it
all' only to use words like 'naviform' disrupts a consistent tone.  C."

Judging the world through a scholar's eyes may be fun, but it sure cuts
one off from most of human experience.

Thank goodness for Terrell's lovely sense of humor. And long live
Liver, my second favorite Greek after Seneca Falls.

Gregg