Wow -- I'd forgotten about Orwell's "appreciation" of Twain, a brief &
wonderfully pungent piece called "Mark Twain -- The Licensed Jester" (you
can find a pretty accurate version at
http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/twain/english/e_twain).

The thing about this fairly scathimg piece is, it seems to contain pretty
much everything Orwell had to say about Twain. It's hard to imagine him
contemplating a book about a writer who (he says) "gives all the while a
strange impression of being about to say something and then funking it."



On Dec 17, 2017 8:47 PM, "Clay Shannon" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I=E2=80=99m reading a dual biography of Churchill and Orwell. It says that
> O=
> rwell had wanted to write a biography of Twain, but was unable to interest
> a=
>  publisher in the project.
>
> Is this a well-known factoid?
>
> Sent by my Duckbilled Platypus =E2=80=9CWildpinkler=E2=80=9D=
>