Just a thought tossed into what's already an extremely thoughtful 
mix: there's a monumental difference between "flawed" and "failure." It 
certainly could be argued that "Huckleberry Finn" and "Connecticut 
Yankee" are structurally flawed. I'm trying to wrap my brain around the 
notion that either of these books would be classified as failures. If 
this be failure, please, let me write something 1/100th as good.
      But flawed? Is there a work of art that isn't flawed in some way? 
And just because something is flawed doesn't mean it's not a 
masterpiece. In his introduction to an annotated edition of Bram 
Stoker's "Dracula," scholar Leonard Wolf writes, "Let me say at once 
that we have a complete masterpiece, flawed here and there, as the 
Chinese insist masterpieces should be, but, nevertheless, the real thing."
     Seems to me the same might be said of "Huckleberry Finn," 
"Connecticut Yankee" and many other Twain works. Which isn't to say 
there are not failures within these works -- flaws, if you will. Even 
the last third of "Huckleberry Finn" is now viewed in a vastly different 
light, thanks to the scholarship of Vic Doyno and others. The appraisal 
presented by William M. Gibson and others, if hardly overturned, has 
been treated to a substantive alternate interpretation. Whatever the 
view of this ending, or "Connecticut Yankee," for that matter, I'm 
guessing that most of us would contend that we are in the presence of 
the real thing.



-----Original Message----- From: Scott Holmes 
<[log in to unmask]> To: TWAIN-L <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Fri, 
Apr 20, 2012 6:44 pm Subject: Failures in the works of Mark Twain I've 
been aware for some time now that there has been dissatisfaction with 
the concluding portion of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but not until 
this last year have I become aware of what seems to be a sense of 
failure in much of his work. =20 A few weeks back I mentioned I was 
reading Cox's Mark Twain The Fate of Humor and I was surprised at the 
thought that Connecticut Yankee and/or The Prince and the Pauper were 
failures. Upon finishing this book it seems to me that Cox felt most of 
Twains work were failures. And this surprised me greatly especially 
sense he seems to be so well informed on the topic. =20 I started today 
on Lawrence Howe's Mark Twain and the Novel. This appears to argue that 
the failures were not Twain's but are structural. Nevertheless, the idea 
that there are failures or faults in these works surprises me. In fact 
it disturbs me. I suppose this is because I am not a literary critic or 
even academically trained in English (my degrees are in Geography). In 
my mind, a book, in this case a novel, is a failure only if it fails to 
interest the reader and/or proves to be unreadable. This is not the case 
with any of Twain's works in my experience.=20 On further searching for 
why this sense of failure exists I came upon a review of Cox's book by 
Kristin Brown. It would seem that Mark Twain IS a Humorist and must 
write humorous material, otherwise "Twain had attempted to suppress his 
genius". This is the crux of my problem with the idea that there are 
failures. This strikes me very much like the argument that Miles Davis 
was a failure after he progressed beyond Bebop. An artist is not allowed 
to venture away from their established genre. Humor might have been his 
"strongest suit" but by no means need it be his only suit. Thoughts?