I agree with Mark Coburn;this forum is enlivened with comments, queries, observations from non-
Twain scholars as well as lay persons and students.  I am, however, ready to go on with some
other topics on Huck or other titles.

Miriam Shillingsburg
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----------
From:   Mark Coburn[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Thursday, March 05, 1998 9:49 AM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Re: Huck Finn Again

Regarding Sue Harris's last message, surely this forum does NOT at all
exist purely for academic exchange.  If that were the case, there would
not be so many postings like 'don't
miss what some tv show is doing on Twain tonight.'

It would be a shame, I think, if anyone with an interest in Twain felt
unwelcome or belittled on this forum.

But I am also VERY sympathetic with Gary Henrickson's comment that maybe
we've had enough for awhile on "nigger" in Adventures of Huckeberry
Finn.

The recent Oxford Twain edition includes 29 volumes, and is far from
being complete....  So how about anti-Paiute bias in Roughing It and
Twain's letters from Nevada for a change?  Or anti-Catholicism in
Connecticut Yankee?  Or Twain's assaults on the jury system in God knows
how many works?  Or "The Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut" as
a foreshadowing of Twain's late writings?  Or his handling of twinship
and switched identites?  Or cross-dressing in Huckleberry Finn?  Or the
hodgepodge of styles in A Tramp Abroad?  Or how much he did and didn't
recycle material from book to book?  Or the possible influence of
Pudd'nhead Wilson on Faulkner's Light in August?  Or the use of
Southwest humor in Joan of Arc?

Yeah, Gary, we might possibly find something else to talk about.

Yeah, Sue, it's your forum too.

Regards to all,
Mark Coburn
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