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 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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] Subject: Re: Ancestry Connection MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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! MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 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 In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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]> Subject: Re: MR & games MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1"; reply-type=original Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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 In-Reply-To: <[log in to unmask]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit 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]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit 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_ MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT 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.