Good to read your notes and comments, Sharon. I want to mention the joint session between the Cooper Society and the Mark Twain Circle, with Bruce Michelson, Kerry Driscoll, and me standing in for the Twain side in what some of us were calling the "Cooper-Twain Throwdown" (the official session title was "The Trouble Begins at 3:30). I learned a great deal by going beyond Twain's two essays on Cooper, especially by looking at what Cooper critics had to say about "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." Here is a link to an article that refutes Twain, point-by-point: http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/articles/other/1988other-schachterle.html I had read Cooper, and I had accepted many of Twain's criticisms of him at face value, including the absurdity of the Indians jumping out of a tree and missing the boat over and over, as well as other passages that it turns out Twain had distorted. I will continue to assign Twain's essays to my students, but I will now also point them to this refutation. We had a lively and interesting discussion, and a couple of people told me it was the highlight of ALA for them. We talked about the possibility of doing this with other author groups--a James/Twain throwdown would be awesome! John Bird -----Original Message----- From: Mark Twain Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sharon K. Goetz Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 4:38 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Pictures From the ALA Walking Tour On Thu, 10 Jun 2010, Harold Bush wrote: > Is there a listing somewhere of the papers presented by the MT Circle? Can > those panels be publicized on the LIST here for us unfortunate no-show > wannabes? I've posted notes on the sessions I attended, which include 1.5 of two Mark Twain-oriented sessions, one each on Thursday and Friday: http://reqfd.net/blog/?page_id=372 Best, Sharon