Scott,

   Wonderful, wonderful review.  I read it once, then walked around, and
thought about it, and smiled, and wanted to read it again, so I did.  I
thought I was the only person who felt this way.  When I was living overseas
and young and dumb and awakening to "The Innocents Abroad", I thought "I'm the
only person that really understands Mark Twain's heart.  He is my soul
brother."  I have thought it many times since.  So just replace your name with
mine in the review and everything's fine.  We'll have no scuffles.  Claim to
know Cyrano de Bergerac's heart, too, and we might have trouble.

   It makes my heart warm to think that there's another person that feels the
same way about Twain.  That is Twain's glory... that the words of a man who
lived a hundred and thirty years before me could speak so clearly and directly
to me.  That's why I've painstakingly entered his books into my computer, and
published them on the Web--so somebody else can have the same fun I have
reading his words, to awaken a vast interest in everything he wrote, to have a
wonderfully funny friend that we can quote on any given subject, and to know
someone that we've never met but feel a genuine human affection for.  I think
I know him too, and I think that anyone who bristles at an attempt to bring
him to more people didn't know him.

   Alan

   P.S.  I'm not a "scholar" so my thoughts may (and should) have no import to
the world.  I find it amusing that I was treated with great respect, (often
deference,) when I had one of the early Mark Twain sites on the Web (one of
the first Web sites, even) and my e-mail address ended with ".edu".  I was
faculty of the University of Colorado, but in an engineering position.  Funny
how my authority was destroyed when people found out I wasn't a literature
"scholar".  But nor was Mr. Clemens.  Yet I still love him, regardless.
Perhaps that's wrong, and perhaps I should be ashamed.  All right, then, I'll
GO to hell.

   P.P.S.  I got a phone call this evening from a friend of mine who I turned
on to Twain many years ago.  He thought the Burns film was "great," and this
is the second compliment I've heard out of his crotchety ass in 15 years.
From him a compliment is epochal.  (I was the recipient of the other
compliment, and it still ranks as my favorite of all that I have received, due
to the scarcity of said item.)

   "An author values a compliment, even when it comes from a source of
doubtful competency." --Mark Twain

   P.P.P.S.  Twain would love you too, Scott, my friend.  Well done.  You're
precisely the (other) person he wrote for.  Just don't claim "Roughing It" as
your own.

--
   Alan Eliasen
   [log in to unmask]
   http://www.mindspring.com/~eliasen/twain/



Scott Dalrymple wrote:
>
> Some of you might get a kick out of my "review" of Ken
> Burns' film, published in The Wichita Eagle.  This
> address should take you there:
>
> http://web.wichitaeagle.com/content/wichitaeagle/2002/01/18/editorial/dalrymple0118_txt.htm
>
> Scott Dalrymple
>
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