Hal,

You raised such good questions I had to mull over what you said before
responding.  In particular, your observation that Ham Hill's MARK TWAIN:
GOD'S FOOL is as "distorted" as INVENTING MARK TWAIN without raising the
same ire was especially on target.

A few assumptions came to my mind thinking about your point. Mostly, I keep
thinking about what we sanction and who the audiences for these books are.
Firstly, my guess is that all college teachers would expect students reading
either GOD'S FOOL or INVENTING MARK TWAIN would be doing so expecting (well,
hoping)  their readers would be looking over these texts with an academic,
critical eye as part of their bibliographies for school projects.  I'm sure
others who aren't academic pick up these books as well because they're
interested in Twain in particular or American literature in general. Their
contexts are wider, perhaps, than readers who want to know which is the
best, most reliable starting-point for reading about Sam Clemens.

So the recent debate, I think, came from a question about which book we
would recommend to a general reader exploring Mark Twain with less in-depth
awareness of the contexts of literary studies.  The outcome seemed to be no
one book hits the mark for a "standard" bio. (I suppose no one reads John
Gerber's Twayne bio anymore?)  I think many of us still feel caution
regarding INVENTING MARK TWAIN because, for one matter, we don't want the
sexuality issue to become part of any ongoing discussions about the author.
I know my students would beam in on these pages as they do with similar
issues with other authors. We live in a sensationalist culture, and such
issues are of more interest than Twain's family relationships.  By
downplaying INVENTING MARK TWAIN, we downplay having to deal with an issue
most of us felt was gone years ago. Further, I think some of us avoid
recommending the book for general readers as such might imply sanctioning
this material.  Twainians can debate any ole issue we want to to our heart's
content, but once an issue gets into the popular press or popular culture at
large, we would have to keep re-visiting the point endlessly at the expense
of more important, pertinent matters. So that issue, for me, wasn't whether
or not to recommend the book at all.  It was to which audience should we
sanction the text.

I also think the discussion appropriately looked at the subject of a
"standard" biography in general and INVENTING MARK TWAIN was but one example
of why we are in the peculiar position of not agreeing on a standard text by
anyone.  No matter which text is recommended, even Twain's own
autobiographical dictations, disagreements arise as to which version is the
"standard." This says much about Our Author, the complex re-actions we have
to him, and, for many, our life-long fascinations with his life and works
that rarely result in firm conclusions.