I will blushingly admit that I have worked 35 miles south of Hartford for 5
years, and haven't been to a Twain House event or tour - taking Twain's
advice never to put off until tomorrow that which could just as easily be
done the day after tomorrow. However, when I heard about yesterday's
program, I couldn't resist. A day of listening to a distinguished group of
Pulitzer prize winning biographers sounded like an intellectual feast. It
was.

   One of the things feeding my inertia the past 5 years was uneasiness
about negotiating Hartford's interstates. This time I figured that by
arriving before 8 AM, I'd avoid the mess. WRONG. I84 was already down to one
lane due to a particularly horriffic accident in the left lane, just before
the aptly-named Asylum Street. Worse yet, I followed directions from memory
rather than by taking another look at the directions, and found myself in
neighborhoods that looked less and less likely to host a group of scholars.
Eventually I muddled my way back to the Headquarters of the Hartford
Insurance Co.

   The program started promptly 15 minutes late. John Boyer, director of the
Twain House got up to introduce the program in general and Justin Kaplan in
particular. I'd already admired Boyer's work as a smooth but thoughtful
spokesperson for Twain when he was on C-SPAN (and by the way, I'm surprised
that C-SPAN was not in Hartford that day). He said that as recently as 10
years ago, the Modern Language Association did not consider Twain
significant enough to study at their annual conferences, so these annual
symposia were devised by the Twain House to fill a scholarly gap. By the
mid-1990's, the MLA had realized the oversight (let's see now - was that 60
or 70 years since Hemingway's statement about Huck Finn? Hello?) Since that
time, the symposia have continued, but with more general themes of matters
that were important to Twain.

   Kaplan, in a delightful keynote speech reminded us of Twain's remarks
that biographies can never get to the heart of the real person, and then
followed that with a long list of quotes from famous authors explaining why
biographies should not be attempted. He also reminded the group that Twain's
own designated biographer Paine was met with constant roadblocks in his
quest for the facts about Twain - most of them laid by Twain himself.

   Lewis H. Lapham, a writer and editor of Harper's Magazine, ably moderated
the first panel discussion. James Atlas amusingly described the pitfalls of
writing a biography of a living author - in this case Saul Bellow. Prior to
the book's publication, Atlas said that he decided to push the boundaries by
writing an article about his talks with Bellow. Edmund Morris pushed the
boundaries in his own way in writing "Dutch," the official biography of
Ronald Reagan. He decided that the Bittburg visit was the central moment of
Reagan's presidency, and he filled the chapter about the visit with poetic
imagery. This was controversial, but as I recall, the main controversy about
the book was that he included long conversations that he couldn't have
heard, causing some people to wonder if it was biography or biographic
fiction.

   Dr. Jerry Watts, a Trinity professor who had written about Ralph Ellison
and Amiri Baraka told about the pitfalls of choosing a subject. He said he
couldn't write about someone he despised, like, for instance, Reagan, or
someone he admired too much. He said there are also pitfalls to being in
demand as a spokesman for African American intellectuals. Once he was
invited to be on CNN with Pat Buchanan - he told CNN and he told us in no
uncertain terms what he thought about Pat Buchanan. They found somebody
else. Curiously, nobody asked Dr. Watts what he thought about the current
controversy of Baraka being asked to resign his post as poet laureate of New
Jersey.

   Sylvia Morris, wife of Edmund, wrote a biography of Edith Roosevelt
because she felt that her husband's book on the rise of Theodore Roosevelt
gave her short shrift. She told how she was worried about how to write this
book because Edith was a thoroughly private person who never gave
interviews. Synchronistically, she got a call one day that they had found a
trunk full of Edith's diaries at Sagamore Hill - giving Ms. Morris all the
material she would ever need to write that book.

   The luncheon was a particularly good selection of cold sandwiches and
salads. People sat at long tables and engaged in the good-natured
intellectual conversation that you would expect. This inspired me to
complete a mental list that had been puzzling me for some time: things that
bring out the best in people and things that bring out the worst in people.
The second list was easier - driving, politics and the Price Club. The
second list had troubled me. I couldn't get past Dogs and Baseball. It turns
out the the true answer is dogs, baseball and Mark Twain.

   The afternoon session had a bit more Twain content. William Miller, who
wrote an "ethical biography" of Lincoln mentioned the curiosity that Twain
had nothing to say about Lincoln, even though he was known to be close
friends with Grant and Sherman. I remember a particularly savage ditty that
Twain wrote around 1865 as a satire of the grief that swept America, and
probably Whitman in particular:

He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead,
He's dead, he's dead, he's dead.

   Otherwise, Twain had good things to say about Lincoln and the
emancipation proclamation in 1907. Miller also took a mild jab at the White
House's current occupant, who spoke glowingly and inaccurately about Lincoln
recently. Similarly, Willaim S. McFeely, who won a Pulitzer for his
biography of Grant said that given the current state of affairs, we need
Twain now more than ever. Just imagine Twain's take of George W. Bush.
McFeely also said that he tried to find evidence that Grant had a sense of
humor - after all, he never smiled in photographs (but neither did Twain for
that matter). The best evidence was the veteran's reunion speech where Twain
trod on dangerously thin ice when describing the baby Grant's attempt to
suck his big toe. In the payoff line, Grant laughed uproriously.

   Morris spoke again, and described Twain's utter disregard for Roosevelt.
He said that gave him the shivers to read about two of the giants of his
childhood intersecting. He also made the curious statement that he was much
more fond of Tom Sawyer than Huck Finn.
I'll have to do some checking to see if Twain's dislike of Roosevelt was
mutual.

   Dallek said that as much as he admired the accomplishments of Lyndon
Johnson, the more he found out, the less he liked the man as a person. He
has recently finished a biography of JFK, and he said he had the opposite
problem with Kennedy. In spite of the glaring flaws, the more he found out,
the more he liked Kennedy. He said that he was the first person to see JFK's
full White House medical records, and that the information is incredible -
Kennedy was given near lethal doses just to keep him functional. Tune in
December, when that will be excerpted in, I believe, Harper's magazine.

   At that point I slipped quietly out because the Twain house closed at 4,
and I wanted to see it again. I didn't take the tour, but I was impressed
with the progress of the huge new museum being built next to the house. I
walked around the house, taking close-up pictures of the brickwork and other
odd shots - they will turn up soon on my Twain pilgrimages web site, but I
used real film, so it will probably be a week or so before these turn up. I
spent $12 in the gift shop, when I really wanted to spend about $200.

   A day well spent - congratulations to all involved.


Terry Ballard
Quinnipiac University