> Wild Nights! > By Joyce Carol Oats > > I thought this was interesting as the session for SAMLA is > partly on the Angelfish club. > > Jules I found Oates' treatment to be an unpleasant misreading of the actual events, reflecting a harsh imposition of modern sensibilities about old-age, children, authors, fans, etc., and if that was not bad enough, full of historical error. Despite the obvious artistic license allowed any work of fiction (changes of names, places, some events), she obviously tries to get historical facts correct, but gets many of them wrong: she gets Susy's death date wrong, says angelfish pins were enamel and gold (they were enamel and sterling silver; I have four including Clara's, as well as Twain's large one with a wreath around the fish), she says Twain's autograph was an illegible scrawl, that Livy died in 1903, that Twain had trouble recalling when Susy died, she spells Susy "Suzy", she says that every girl Twain loved when young was now dead, she places Clara at Twain's side during a modern day book-signing held at the Lotos Club with lines of fans waiting to have their books signed, says that Twain signed title-pages of books for strangers (he routinely avoided doing such a thing to avoid having his autograph clipped from a book and sold), says that John Clemens died in 1857 and that Twain was eleven years old that year, etc. But even if she'd gotten the facts right, it still struck me as an unpleasant "imagining." This is not a book review, just a personal reaction to her treatment of Twain. I have nothing against Oates; just this story. The other stories in the book may be indeed be ingenious treatments that truly capture their subjects, but discouraged by the Twain piece I did not read the others. Kevin Mac Donnell Austin TX