Larry, good questions all. Sometimes a big fish is simply a big fish; a cigar is just a cigar. Examining "cultural context" beyond a writer's stated intentions is a slippery slope I'm not given to play on. It's a matter of choice and perspective. Critical study of literature is yet in its infancy as opposed to critical study of history. And...say, aren't you the guy who let the witch hunt over that "white" statement? I seem to recognize you as the one with the white-hot torch... never mind... In my current work I must review many biographies and a few literary articles and often find "great leaps" into the abyss of speculation, assumption, and questionable conclusions based on such things as "cultural context." Please understand my present work is one of the historical record, but I am not blind to the lenses any historian must peer through. I simply try to be objective--it's an ideal, never fully to be realized. For example, I'm now working in 1886, the year Sam took his family and steamed across the Great Lakes, then rail and steamboat down the Mississippi to Keokuk. Various biographers comment on this trip with sloppy scholarship, faulty or specious reasoning, and with assumptions not documented. One biographer remarks, "Their destination was Keokuk, Iowa, and the Orion and Mollie Clemens household, where Jane now lived. They did not venture farther south for a look at Hannibal, Missouri." [So far, the author sticks to the historical record, supported by many sources] The town had lately depressed Sam, and was still years away from the recognition as literary holy ground. Given his wife's and daughters' lingering discomfort with Papa's scruffy origins, the question of 'worth of detour' probably never came up." I have a "lingering discomfort" with such "scholarship," having studied the primary materials for this period. Sam depressed by Hannibal? Livy had discomfort with his origins? His daughters too? I can understand why a writer might question a 1,500 mile trip by rail, steamship and steamboat without going 45 miles more to look over Dad's old stomping ground--but where is citation such judgments? Sam often told stories of his youth to his children--many letters by others testify to this. If his family had "lingering discomfort" with his origins, such stories would have been out of character for him. And another biographer simply dismisses the entire trip with, "After a difficult two-week swing west to see Sam's mother and siblings in Keokuk, the clan settled into Elmira for the summer..." Sam did not characterize the trip as "difficult," nor did Susy in her biography which strangely stopped in mid-sentence during the trip. On the contrary, Sam characterized the travel as restful in letters afterward, including the two-day train trip back to Elmira. Nit picky? maybe. More to your question--Sam's responses to questions about his characters were usually straightforward. The "mental masturbation" referred to was written to Will Bowen years before about romanticizing or inventing the past, and not specifically about "guessing" about a fictional character's motivation. What many non-writers don't seem to understand is that characterization is a quilt of experience, a real person or persons, and *imagination* which is always a step or two or a thousand, from reality. Quite often, good fictional characters are grand exaggerations based on real persons. Guessing about such things may be fun and in rare cases instructive, but one should remember that fiction sets out to convey emotion, whereas non-fiction sets out to convey information, which is why good fiction requires Coleridge's suspension of disbelief. Therefore, to speculate about motivation behind the character without regard to the author (the school of lit study that says, "since we cannot know the writer's intent, we can dismiss it") may be a convenient way to study texts, and may be popular with some English professors, it allows all sorts of erroneous, albeit creative, treatments. And with Samuel L.Clemens especially, we have a rich and vast historical record with which we CAN know, in most instances, intent. Make sense? Does to me. Now, What was your question? What was your intention? Mine? ha. DHF