Good to read your notes and comments, Sharon.  I want to mention the joint
session between the Cooper Society and the Mark Twain Circle, with Bruce
Michelson, Kerry Driscoll, and me standing in for the Twain side in what
some of us were calling the "Cooper-Twain Throwdown" (the official session
title was "The Trouble Begins at 3:30). I learned a great deal by going
beyond Twain's two essays on Cooper, especially by looking at what Cooper
critics had to say about "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses."  Here is a
link to an article that refutes Twain, point-by-point:

http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1988other-schachterle.html

I had read Cooper, and I had accepted many of Twain's criticisms of him at
face value, including the absurdity of the Indians jumping out of a tree and
missing the boat over and over, as well as other passages that it turns out
Twain had distorted.  I will continue to assign Twain's essays to my
students, but I will now also point them to this refutation.

We had a lively and interesting discussion, and a couple of people told me
it was the highlight of ALA for them.  We talked about the possibility of
doing this with other author groups--a James/Twain throwdown would be
awesome!  

John Bird

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sharon K.
Goetz
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 4:38 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Pictures From the ALA Walking Tour

On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Harold Bush wrote:
> Is there a listing somewhere of the papers presented by the MT Circle?
Can
> those panels be publicized on the LIST here for us unfortunate no-show
> wannabes?

I've posted notes on the sessions I attended, which include 1.5 of two
Mark Twain-oriented sessions, one each on Thursday and Friday:
http://reqfd.net/blog/?page_id=372

Best,
Sharon