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