I think we are paddling into the similarly muddy waters of Sam taking
his name from an obscure book that he may have read.  There seems to
be a lot of this going on in Twain scholarship--scholarship in
general, really.

Dustin Zima
Elmira College

On 1/25/15, Arianne <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> It would be interesting to learn if there was a book on Lincoln in Mark
> TWain's library.  Wouldn't surprise me to learn that Mark Twain indeed read
> the account Lincoln wrote of a raft trip down the river.  If so, it surely
> could be an influence.  I'd love to read the Lincoln story.
>
> Appreciate the Kaplan comments, too!
> Arianne
>
> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 6:04 AM, Hal Bush <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> For the record, the assertions in that article are extremely tenuous at
>> best.  It's always fun to speculate but there is evidently, in this case,
>> no real evidence to support that Lincoln's stories are behind Huck Finn.
>> If I missed the evidence please enlighten me.
>>
>> As far as somewhat less specific connections between AL & MT, now that is
>> an interesting question.  Twain wrote about Lincoln on at least 2
>> occasions
>> and also gave at least one speech about Lincoln, for example.  I tried to
>> imagine the implications of that connection myself, in some of my work;
>> I
>> figure them both, in Twain's words, as "men of the border," a phrase I
>> like
>> a lot.  But maybe my favorite formulation is by Fred Kaplan:  "Just as
>> Howells has called Twain the Lincoln of our literature," Kaplan writes,
>> "I
>> could envision Lincoln as the Twain of our politics."  I like that!!
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 7:18 AM, Dave Davis <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > That's pretty interesting. First I'd ever heard of this Vote Lincoln!
>> book.
>> >
>> > SLC's (unpaid; maybe room & board, at best?) berth out West came
>> > through
>> > Orion. I don't know how big brother was selected for his post-- he must
>> > have had some connection to the territorial governor, James Nye? (Nye
>> was,
>> > of course, a Lincoln appointee.)
>> >
>> > DDD
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Prof. Harold K. Bush
>> Professor of English
>> 3800 Lindell
>> Saint Louis University
>> St. Louis, MO  63108
>> 314-977-3616 (w); 314-771-6795 (h)
>> <www.slu.edu/x23809.xml>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Arianne Laidlaw A '58
>