Alan C. Reese writes that "this interest in the sexuality of Twain shows
a lack of imagination on the part of newer scholars to the field.  Left to
pick the bones of the subject and faced with years of arduous research,
they jump on the first sensation tidbit, implication, innuendo that
rolls their way."

I disagree.  Certainly the focus of Mark Twain scholarship, since the days
of Van Wyck Brooks, has been AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL criticism.  Certainly, then,
perhaps the younger scholars are "pick[ing] the bones of the subject," but
my sense of Mark Twain scholarship is that the established critics will
listen to no other way of defining the subject than the way that it has
been defined since the first part of this decade.

Perhaps nothing testifies better to the fact that this old line of critical
scholarship is completely exhausted than this prurient interest in
Clemens' sexuality.

Susan Reed
Heidelberg College