Please add me to the growing list of those who thinks it tiresome to worry or speculate about what Mark Twain would have thought of w, Iraq, or the latest contestant dropped from American Idol. I can't help but wonder if folks on the Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Harriet Beecher Stowe lists are obsessing over what Poe et al would have thought about current events. I've been deleting these messages along with the spam offering breast and/or penis enlargement, kiddie-porn, viagra, Nigerian scams, and low refinancing rates. I wonder what Mark Twain would have thought of these spams? (God help us all if this provokes another thread). And I wonder if Twain himself ever spent his time speculating on what some long dead author might think of some current event (I'm sure this will send some people running to their copies of P&P or Ct Yankee or his essays looking for possible examples). I wonder what w would think of Twain if he could read books? Or whether any of Twain's works have been translated into Farsi? The climate on this listserv has become far from heavenly; I'd prefer to time-share in Hell in the company of Al Gribben and some others. Kevin