A few more quick thoughts on the topic of Twain and autobiography:

1)  Michael Kiskis's edition of the original NAR dictaions is very fine
indeed -- and its introduction and supporting scholarly apparatus are
models for this sort of work, in my view.  This is a clear, teachable,
exceptionally user-friendly edition.
2)  Further, as Gregg Camfield already has pointed out, Kiskis has provided
the text as originally presented, and thus as "authorized," by Twain
himself.  Neither Neider nor Devoto did this -- as Kiskis documents
thoroughly.
3)  Camfield brief description of Twain's operative strategy ("a plan of no
plan, or rather a plan of free-association,"), is a bit simplified -- but
again his basic point is spelled out thoroughly in Kiskis's intro.  I will
simply add what I think Prof. Camfield implies -- that Twain's strategy is
definitely there, and that although the  first chapter opens with a
disclaimer of a plan, in fact Twain's dictations betray a well-thought-out
plan.  Kiskis demonstrates how Twain lifted passages from various earlier
writings, and edited as he went, etc., thus indicating an all-encompassing
artistic "plan" of a sort.
4)  finally, one obvious aspect of Twain's autobiography that has not been
openly stated but which most LIST members know -- and that is, the way that
much of Twain's output is autobiographical in nature.  This of course
includes travel literature like Innocents, Roughing It, Tramp, Following,
and so forth;  but also the very powerful "Old Times" and other Mississippi
writings.  Moreover, much of recent Twain critical readings focus on this
autobiographical presence -- to take one example, Lowry's _Littery Man_
reads Innocents, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as dramatic
re-enactments of Twain's own struggle to attain the status of author.
(forgive me for a one-sentence synopsis of a very fine book, Prof. Lowry !
! !)

Dr. Harold K. Bush
Konan International Exchange Center
Konan University, 8-9-1 Okamoto
Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658, JAPAN