>As for _Mysterious Stranger_, does anybody teach that
>anymore in a Twain class? What does one teach for the later
>mood?
>
>Cameron Nickels
>James Madison University


This year I taught No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger (UC Berkeley
paperback) for the first time as part of my "Mark Twain and the
Gilded Age" course here at Stanford.  I was a little wary that
students would find it too strange or sardonic or incomprehensible.
To my delight they loved it and declared it one of their favorite
Twain works, and after encountering so many works of Twain they were
excited to read something so wacky that smacked so much of
contemporary science fiction and fantasy.  They were also bemused by
all the philosophical and religious questions raised in the novel.
This was followed by selections from the recent compendium The Bible
According to Mark Twain and other sources (Captain Stormfield,
Letters from the Earth, Reflections on Religion, Little Bessie,
Extract from Adam's Diary, Eve's Diary), The Man that Corrupted H.,
and a collection of late political writings (The War Prayer, The
United States of Lyncherdom, Concerning the Jews, To The Person
Sitting in Darkness, other writings on the Philippines, etc.).
(Earlier we had read other later works, such as "My First Lie," "The
Turning Point of My Life")  Students suggested that we read those
pieces BEFORE reading No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, making it the
last book in the course because, as they remarked, after No. 44
everything else seemed anti-climactic.  What an unexpected response!

In the past I did teach The Mysterious Stranger edited by Paine and
Duneka with the explanation of its provenance.  Now that we have more
than 30 years for the shock to wear off that Paine and Duneka took
such liberties with Twain's text, we can evaluate it with perhaps
cooler heads.  The P-D editing is actually not so far off from the
kinds of editing and self-censorship Twain would have done, and the
spliced-together text does pull together a relatively coherent
narrative.  So, just so long as an explanation is given, I still
think some teachers, depending on the circumstances, can find it
useful for the classroom.  However, with the unexpected response to
No. 44, I am now toying with the idea of also including The Chronicle
of Young Satan (making the P-D version completely irrelevant).
Incorporating The Chronicle involves some serious xerox work, since
there is no paperback edition available, and the Gibson collection of
The Mysterious Stranger manuscripts, while available in hardback, is
too costly for students.

Hilton Obenzinger