Happy Thanksgiving to everyone on the forum.  Please take the time to
check out the two following sites for some important Clemens news.  It
seems that "I am not an American.  I am the American." which is
prominently included on the cover the new Duncan/Burns cd and is a line
they have been touting at press gatherings is not a Clemens saying.  It
also is clearly not Clemens referring to himself as Duncan/Burns state.

I have also included below my understanding of the manner in which this
saying made the transition from a comment made by Frank Fuller and
recorded by Sam in 1897 to being a fullfledged Twainism in 2001.  This
sure drives home the importance of checking our facts and consulting
original sources wherever possible.  Be sure to check out the following
web sites:

Jim Zwick's incredible asset is at:
http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/quotes_not_twain.html

Barb Schmidt's wonderful site:
http://www.twainquotes.com/American.html

Here is the story of how this saying made the transition to a Twain
truism and marketing slogan:

It isn't that Clemens didn't write those words, it's just that he didn't
write them about himself. They appear in Notebook 41, kept from January
through June 1897, the relevant part while he was in Weggis,
Switzerland.

Here's the entire notebook entry:

Fuller--"I'm not going to stay in this hotel, it is not
safe. I saw suspicious men around; I think they are after my Waterbury."
                "Are you an American?"
                "No. I am not an American. I am the American."

There are a half dozen other entries in the same notebook attributed to
Fuller, who is clearly his wide-eyed optimist friend Frank Fuller. In a
list of anecdotes: "Fuller buying Waterbury watch" (33). Or, on page 50,

"Fuller can't get the face restored to his Waterbury because they won't
give him a deposit as security." Or, on page 38:

Frank Fuller, in a car or lobby will allow a lot of strangers to get
deep
into a harsh criticism of some public man or some man who has been
printing
something, then presently he begins to blush & look embarrassed--an
awful
silence, & they get embarrassed & begin to take back or modify what they
have said. Finally somebody actually apologizes to him; he looks
surprised,
says he is not that man, but was blushing about something he had
experienced years ago.

Or on page 53: "Fuller, imploringly, to whole dining-room of strangers,
'If you please, don't make so much noise when I am trying to eat.'"

So I'd say it was clear that this boasting speech about being "the
American" cannot safely be attributed to Mark Twain in his own person,
but
is rather something he imagines in Frank Fuller's mouth, a way of
characterizing a certain kind of boasting American. Just a few pages
earlier he has this entry: "Both kinds of Ameri--the most engaging & the
most offensive."

We do know a little bit about how the Duncan/Burns version got started,
and
really they are scarecly to blame. John Lauber in his The Inventions of
Mark Twain: A Biography (1990), says on page 287:

He luxuriated in his own celebrity, seeing himself as a kind of
unofficial
ambassador to the world, an embodiment of his country
and culture. He wrote a brief dialogue in his notebook:
                "Are you an American?
                No. I am not an American. I am the American."

No citation given, and no copyright notice pubished (no permission given
either--but that's no matter).

Then Lou Budd's essay, "Mark Twain as an American Icon," in The
Cambridge
Companion to Mark Twain (1995), p. 13,  picks it up: ". . . he didn't
hold
an insistent pitch until the late 1890s, when he jotted (presumably
thinking of himself): 'Are you an American? No, I am not an American. I
am
the American." His citation is to Lauber.

Then Shelley Fishkin picks up Lou's reference and writes simply: "'Are
you
an American?' Twain once jotted in his notebook: 'No, I am not an
American.
I am the American." Citation is to Budd.

And that's how we wind up with the now unstoppable "fact" that Mark
Twain
said "I am not an American. I am the American." Something he simply did
not
believe about himself, let alone say about himself.

Many thanks to Barb Schmidt, the human dynamo of Twain and Clemens
research.  Many thanks to Jim Zwick, great friend of scholars, Twainiacs
and Sam himself.   God bless everyone and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
I am attaching a jpeg with the copy of the page from Notebook 41.  If it
doesn't come through on the forum please contact me directly and I'll
e-mail copies during writing breaks.

Terrell