Catching up on a week's e-mail, I find a number of _ad hominem_ attacks populating the forum's postings. I admire Ann's corrective here, so I won't speak much to the substance. That said, I'm more than a little disturbed that many readers of the forum would assume from a published newspaper interview that Tom Wortham has been accurately represented. Any of the direct quotations embedded in a different context would not have elicited outrage and horror from members of this list. For instance, what Wortham is quoted as saying about Twain's use of the term "Nigger" is accurate, i.e., that Twain knew it would provoke readers. It's a necessary part of the ironic genius of the _Huck_. But newspapers are in the simplification business, and the over-all effect of the newspaper article makes Tom seem silly. Twain himself referred to newspaper reporters, himself included, as "newspaper reptiles" for cold-blodded abuse of living human beings in service of selling copy. I find it more than a little ironic that many on this list have not only accepted the paper's representation but have also devolved into simplistic name calling in the name of complexity. I would encourage those of you who castigate Wortham, rather than _The L.A. Times_, actually to read some of Tom's work, or pay attention to the way he edited _NCL_ for so long. There's more than one book that needs to be read closely from cover to cover, and I would hope that we'd have learned the grace to judge generously the "book" of a person's life. Gregg