I looked it up, and Sarah Palin does indeed go back to British Royalty
and also has a Mark Twain connection.  She traces back to the Duke...or
the King; I forgot which. Maybe both.  I betcha didn't know that.  I
found it on Ancestry.con.

Ron Owens
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:15:18 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Jerome Loving <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Source of quotation
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Can anybody out there tell me where in MTA I can find the following
statement about the steamboat JOHN J. ROE that appears in the Neider
edition of the Autobiography on the first page of chapter 16 (p. 79)?
"Up-stream she couldn't even beat an island; down-stream she was never
able to overtake the current." Neider's note on p. 79 states that this
was written July 30, 1906.

--
Jerome Loving
Texas A&M University
=========================================================================
Date:         Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:35:35 EDT
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         [log in to unmask]
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Or maybe Wikipedia?
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:43:40 -0700
Reply-To:     [log in to unmask]
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         sara willen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      ancestry, indeed!
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Hmmm...
Probably twenty people have already posted this -- but I'm late to the
party...
Sara

(From Soliloquy at Tomb of Adam, /Innocents Abroad/)


"The grave of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers,
far away from home, & friends, & all who cared for me thus to discover
the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a
relation.  The unerring instinct of nature thrilled in recognition.  The
fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths, &
I gave way to tumultuous emotion."
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:50:16 +0000
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         j guevara <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Ancestry Connection
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Every President as far back as Washington has been realted to British
royalty.
Obama too.  You don't get the job unless you are.  What? You thought you won
that little revoloutionary war?  tsk, tsk... silly American's.
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 23 Oct 2008 06:38:44 +1300
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Sheryl Squier <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: Ancestry Connection
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Hi all

I was talking to my Mum the other day about the discussion on the forum
about who is related to Mark Twain. Mum was telling me that Mark Twain came
to New Zealand and visited the family home, she is also sure that my Great
Grandmother met him. Well I guess this means somehow I am related. Does
anyone know when Mark Twain came to New Zealand?

It has been very interesting reading all the emails from the forum

Regards

Sheryl
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:20:15 +0000
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         [log in to unmask]
Subject:      Re: Ancestry Connection

Keep in mind that, thanks to the number of ancestors we have, that almost
everyone of reasonably pure British ancestry is related in some fashion to
the English Royal Family. Indeed, we are distant cousins of ourselves: we
have 68,719,476,736 great grandparents born in the middle of the eleventh
century, many many times more people than existed in the world. So Sarah
Palin being related to the Queen in no big deal.

And, of course,  much of that is speculation. In the 1930s my grandfather
got interested in family genealogy and developed a family tree going back to
Adam and Eve. He tracked his family, via the Mayflower to England and and
made a connection to British royalty, specifically to the Stuarts. They, of
course, were originally the stewards of the Scottish Royal family, descended
from outlaws banished from Ireland in the 6th or 7th Century. From there, he
went to the Irish genealogy and, to his satisfaction, that they, in turn,
came from Cornwall. Lo and behold there was Veronica  of the Veil and Joseph
of Arimathea, Jesus's cousin. From there it was an easy trip to Matthew for
the balance of the names!

And  how MT would have enjoyed making fun of that list!

Take care,

Bob Huddleston
Northglenn, CO
=========================================================================
Date:         Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:44:11 -0700
Reply-To:     [log in to unmask]
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         sara willen <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Joe Goodman & Henry Joachimsen
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Oh, my: trying, late at night, to deduce how Twain came to know a San
Francisco lawyer, Henry Joachimsen... I believe the link is Joe Goodman,
ex-Virginia City, but don't know how to get there from here.

Or maybe I'm wrong and the link isn't Goodman, but brother Orion, in
'63,  when Joachimsen was involved in sending Orion census figures...

Anyone know anything?

Thanks,
Sara
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:52:53 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Heather Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      WONDERFUL PROGRAMS AT THE MARK TWAIN LIBRARY
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Hi to everyone out there in the Mark Twain world.  I want to invite you all
to two great programs coming up in the library - both free, and both with
refreshments!

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 2 from 2 to 4pm Hurrah for Huck Finale: enjoy dramatic
monologues from the Barlow Players, and listen to a discussion of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by a distinguished panel of Twain scholars
and enthusiasts: Kerry Driscoll, Ben Gordon, Craig Hotchkiss and Bob Liftig,
moderated by Catherine Riordan.  Share your views with the experts!

TUESDAY NOVEMEBER 11 from 7 to 9 pm. Stormfield: a presentation by Kevin
MacDonnell.  Kevin recently produced a fascinating visual tour of
Stormfield, published in the Mark Twain Journal.

Please join us for the events, and the chance to look around the library
that Mark Twain established.

MARK TWAIN LIBRARY, 439 REDDING ROAD (RTE 53), REDDING CONNECTICUT, 06896.

Heather Morgan, Library Director.
=========================================================================
Date:         Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:00:29 -0800
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Darryl Brock <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      MR & games
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I'm wondering if there is some sort of online concordance or other
searchable index of Twain's works.  I'm interested in any mention of
games, sports, pastimes.  Not billiards or cards but outdoor games -- in
both his fiction and travel works.

Thanks for any tips you might have for me.
Darryl Brock
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:07:40 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Artworks <[log in to unmask]>
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That would be interesting to me also. I wonder if he mentions Warsaw,
Illinois in his work.

Sandy Seabold
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:54:46 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Allie Morgan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      MT's Short Story Narrators
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Hi Twain friends,

As I've been shaping my undergraduate thesis proposal, I've come to the
realization that while Twain's humor is a highly interesting topic (and one
that will tie in to almost any Twain study), it's not the most viable topic
for me to be tackling - so I'm shifting gears somewhat significantly. I got
so many helpful responses from you all in response to my last post that I'm
going to humbly ask your opinions one more time.

I'm now hoping to focus on the wide variety of narrators that Twain uses in
his short stories, especially those from the latter half of his career. One
of the main criticisms I've been hearing is that I've had too much
biographical focus (which is difficult for me to avoid as I find Twain so
fascinating), so I'm studying what effect this multitude of very different
voices has on readers of the short works, not necessarily what Twain had in
mind when creating them (though I'm sure this will come up too). As you all
probably know, the speakers of the short stories include a former female
slave, a larger-than-life ship's captain, a dog, Satan, and a 12-year-old
Austrian boy among many, many others.  I want to look at how they impact the
narrative "distance" between Twain, the first-person "I" that often
introduces the stories (if they are framed), and the character actually
relating the events.

This is obviously a broad topic and will include research into narrative
theory, but my main question for you all is: do you have any suggestions for
books or essays I should consider to help me understand the
creation/role/effects of his speakers? I'd also be happy to hear thoughts on
1)if you agree that a much larger variety of speakers/protagonists exists in
the short stories than in his other works (and not just because there are
more of them) and 2) how you think this impacts the way we read the stories.
I have a pile of books on his short works next to me, but I've found
relatively little that's specifically about the narrators of these stories
(or the function of Twain's narrators in general, except, of course, for
Huck Finn).

Thanks so much for your time and help!

Allie Morgan
=========================================================================
Date:         Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:37:50 -0700
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Gerald Stone <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Re: MT's Short Story Narrators
In-Reply-To:  <[log in to unmask]>
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Hi Allie--

Your proposed subject is still pretty broad for an undergraduate
thesis--you'd need the scope of a dissertation or a book to do it justice.
However, you mentioned:

"I want to look at how they impact the narrative "distance" between Twain,
the first-person "I" that often introduces the stories (if they are
framed), and the character actually relating the events."

Maybe just take a few of the stories and examine the relationship between
Clemens, Mark Twain, the narrator, and character telling the stories. The
frog, the old ram, the blue jay yarn, Huck's relating of the balloon
voyage, the True Story, and the snow-shovellers all come to mind.

Ron Powers's biography of Clemens (Mark Twain, A Life. Free Press: New
York, 2005) has some insightful passages about how Clemens framed his
stories in relationship to his predecessors in American humor such as
George Washington Harris, Joel Chandler Harris, and "Artemus Ward."

Disclosure: Powers dedicated his book to Bob Hirst, editor of the Mark
Twain Papers, so here at UC Berkeley, well....
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:35:44 -0400
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Twain Center <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      Elmira 2009 Call for Papers
In-Reply-To:  <[log in to unmask]>
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Call for Papers
The Sixth International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies
Elmira, New York
August 6 - 8, 2009

As we approach the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, we invite
papers related to any aspect of Mark Twain's legacy.  We have a special
interest in papers on the following topics:


Mark Twain and Money
Mark Twain and Contemporary Authors
Mark Twain and Politics:  Then and Now
Mark Twain and Friends -or- Enemies
Mark Twain and other 19th and 20th-century Authors
Mark Twain and the Problems of Influence
Mark Twain and Law
Mark Twain as Cultural Icon:  Use and Abuse
Mark Twain and Modernism
Mark Twain, Realism, and Alternate Realities
Mark Twain and the Americas
Mark Twain and the Child
Mark Twain and the Art of Irreverence
Mark Twain and Modern Asian Cultures
Mark Twain, Clothes, and Costumes
Mark Twain and Gendered Identities
Mark Twain and Regional Identity
Mark Twain and Europe
Mark Twain and Africa
Mark Twain and Talk
Mark Twain and Skin
Mark Twain and Spirituality
Mark Twain and the Business of Writing
Mark Twain and the Image
Mark Twain and Technology
Mark Twain and the State of New York
Mark Twain and Science
Mark Twain and the Politics of Race
Mark Twain and the Grave

Please provide a developed abstract of 700 words.

Developed abstracts will be due Monday, February 2nd, 2009.

Final papers must be suitable for a twenty-minute presentation.

Please send your attached abstract, via electronic submission, to
[log in to unmask]

Provide your name, mailing address, and email address.

Papers will be reviewed anonymously by panel chairs.

Papers submitted to this Conference may be reviewed for publication by
the Center for Mark Twain Studies or in the 2010 Mark Twain Annual.

Complete conference information is available on the web. Google Elmira
2009.
=========================================================================
Date:         Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:13:48 -0500
Reply-To:     Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Sender:       Mark Twain Forum <[log in to unmask]>
From:         Barbara Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:      BOOK REVIEW: Trites, _Twain, Alcott,
              and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel_
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The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by
Carolyn Richey.

~~~~~

BOOK REVIEW

Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel_. By
Roberta Seelinger Trites. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. 2008. Pp
209. ISBN 13-978-1-58729-622-2. $34.95.

Many books reviewed on the Mark Twain Forum are available at discounted
prices from the Twain Web Bookstore. Purchases from this site generate
commissions that benefit the Mark Twain Project. Please visit
<http://www.twainweb.net>

Reviewed by:
Carolyn Leutzinger Richey
Tarleton State University

Copyright (c) 2008 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published
or redistributed in any medium without permission.

Twain and Alcott: Their New Paradigm

As modern readers, we expect the youth of literature to set a better
example than the adults and we expect them to reform the adults with
whom they interact. We read any of the _Harry Potter_ series and revel
in the hero's triumph over the malevolence of Lord Voldemort and his
aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. We see Cassie in Mildred Taylor's _Roll
of Thunder, Hear My Cry_ overcome the racial prejudice of the
depression era South. We even see Stanley Yelnats of _Holes_ overcome
the racial and ageist prejudice of his later twentieth century society.
Each of these main characters sees the inconsistencies of adult society
and seeks to change them; they seek to better their elders and
themselves. However, from what or whom did this paradigm of the
youthful reformer come?

Up until the mid-nineteenth century, children's books typically fit
into one of two types of moralistic tales: the "ordeal tale" or the
"change of heart" story. In the ordeal tale, the good child
independently solves a dilemma in which he/she finds him/herself and
then returns home for the reward, the boon. In contrast, the child in
the "change of heart" story is not the typically good child but is a
child who must, because of some deficiency in character, reform
him/herself in order to survive until the story's end. Both of these
story types fit into the genre of literature classified as the
bildungsroman--the coming-of-age story--and they were the standard for
children's literature until the mid-nineteenth century.

In _Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel_,
Roberta Seelinger Trites addresses the changes to the bildungsroman
that Mark Twain and Louisa May Alcott initiated. She then provides the
connections that historically, ideologically, and socially link the
writings of these two authors. The adolescents of Twain and Alcott's
fiction, rather than reforming themselves as do the children of the
"change of heart" stories, effect changes in the adults of the world in
which they live. Trites organizes her book around the connections that
the two authors and their contemporary societies share, while she also
integrates into her argument the disparities between Twain and Alcott's
worlds that separate their views and experiences.

Trites begins by giving limited personal and literary biographies of
each author, noting both their similar experiences and societies along
with the divergent occurrences and details. Trites provides the
necessary background information to understand both the influences on
the two authors and the historical events that fashioned nineteenth
century post-bellum America.

One of the major strengths of Trite's book is the detail in which it
describes both the similarities and differences between the two iconic
American authors. She begins their biographies with the observation,
"The central irony of the relationship between Samuel Clemens and
Louisa May Alcott lies not in the authors' differences, but in their
frequently ignored similarities" (1). Trites details the aspects in
which the seemingly contradictory authors actually parallel and mirror
each other. While Clemens was born and raised in the frontier regions
of Missouri and Alcott in New England, each experienced similar
familial occurrences and tragedies. Both had youths that were
"truncated by family tragedy" (7), both lost siblings early in life,
and both suffered economic hardships that caused them to feel
responsible for the care of their families. While Trites addresses the
obvious similarities of the influence of slavery and the Civil War, she
also proposes that less publicized factors within their shared society
equally impacted each author. One of the most curious and intriguing
"connections" is that each had "mutual disregard" for the other. When
the "Concord Public Library in Massachusetts had banned [_Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn_] from the library, . . . Clemens responded with
characteristic wit . . . that the library had doubled the sales of the
book" (3). Alcott then responded, "If Mr. Clemens cannot think of
something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best
stop writing for them" (3). Trites carries this mutual disregard and
competitiveness throughout the remainder of her text to emphasize the
disconnections of the two seemingly like authors.

Trites presents her thesis in chapter 2, "The Metaphor of the
Adolescent Reformer: _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ and _Little
Women_." Mark Twain changed "boys' books" first in _The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer_ as he depicts a character who is not "good" but is
acceptable in his "badness."  In contrast, through Huck Finn Twain
creates the anti-hero who is not acceptable in any aspect of his
personality and behavior, but who becomes the impetus of change within
the adult society he inhabits. Twain changes the existing
bildungsromane, the "youth-who-needs-to-grow . . . on the path of
maturation that involves his own evolution into the romantic 'notion'
of the self-aware and Other-oriented individual" (41) into Huck whose
"moral crisis . . . is necessitated by a national crisis of morals"
(42). Trites then identifies the continued definition of the adolescent
reform novel for Twain as being "as much about the need for a nation to
mature as it is about a boy's need to mature" (42). Alcott also alters
the bildungsromane in Jo who is "something of a transcendent character,
a self-reliant nonconformist in the best Emersonian tradition . . .
[she] is a character who serves as a metaphor for her culture's need to
change" (50-51). The characters of both Huck and Jo articulate
differing aspects of needed growth for the nation. For her character
Jo, "Alcott's metaphor [identifies] . . . the need for Americans to
develop gender equality, [while] Huckleberry Finn serves as Twain's
metaphor for the need for Americans to outgrow their racism" (50).

Trites also examines the similarities in Twain's and Alcott's views on
philosophy, Christianity, sexuality, psychology. Through epistolary
texts and the published works of each author, Trites traces the
influences of Protestantism and transcendentalism. While each author
had a dislike for one of these two philosophies (Twain for
transcendentalism, Alcott for traditional Protestantism) the
combination of the two ideologies propelled both authors to create the
adolescent reformer who sees the need for change, first in the adult
society, and sometimes within themselves. Additionally, Trites
identifies the shared belief of the two authors that public education
"is the most powerful tool for reform available to the American public"
(70). Trites uses _The Prince and the Pauper_ and _An Old Fashioned
Girl_ respectively to delineate their authors' mutual concerns for
education and its reform.

One additional 'similar difference,' if I may use this oxymoron, is
Twain's and Alcott's individual views on gender and sexuality.
Traditionally, the female's literary genre was designated as the
"domestic" novel, while the male literary genre was the "action" novel.
Trites explains that "both authors have been identified with the
gendered patterns of boys' stories being about adventure and girls'
stories being about family" (112), but she adds that these prescriptive
genderized texts further cause "their ambivalence about writing for
youth" (112).  Despite their shared ambivalence, Trites reiterates,
"Twain and Alcott were instrumental in defining adolescent literature
in the United States as something that assumes youth are interested in
and capable of enacting social change" (113).

In the final chapter "Adolescent Reform Novels: The Legacy of Twain and
Alcott," Trites concludes by addressing the continued and ongoing
influence that each author and their novels have had on modern American
literature. She discusses numerous familiar texts that have followed
Twain's creation of the "American pattern of bildungsroman as a
picaresque: follow a boy on a trip and you'll follow him as he grows"
(144). His literary descendents include _Catcher in the Rye_ and _The
Outsiders_. Trites also includes Scout from _To Kill a Mockingbird_ in
her role as an innocent narrator as a descendant of Twain's influence.
Alcott has also established a distinct legacy with her character of Jo
creating "both the quintessential sister novel about female community
and the prototypical kunstlerroman or the female writer" (146), whose
descendants include _Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm_, _Anne of Greene
Gables_, and _Harriet the Spy_.

One consistent and persistent concern of literary scholars has been the
question of audience for Twain's texts. Is the intended audience the
adolescent or the adult?  Likewise, the literary scholars of Louisa May
Alcott (and the author herself) debate this same question--for whom is
Alcott's text intended? As she concludes her book, Trites returns to
this question of audience that has plagued the two authors and their
readers. Trites concludes that much of the American canon includes
texts that "involve adolescents or young adults struggling to
understand their role in society in ways that imply that change is at
least desirable" (161). The texts she subsequently lists contain novels
generally considered for the dual audiences of adolescents and adults.
The key factor and cohesive trait, she concludes, is that the
adolescent protagonist reflects the "author's idealism . . . . and
[while] not all of the literature of adolescence descends from Huck and
Jo, much of it . . . belongs to traditions influenced by the strain of
romantic evangelism that permeates American literature" (161).

Reflecting on the continuing dilemma of adolescent literature's place
in the American literary canon, Trites arrives at the same conclusion,
hopefully, that most literary scholars do--we cannot ignore adolescent
literature without risking the failure to understand the complexity and
interrelatedness of all American literature.