BRIEFLY NOTED:

_Black Fire: The True Story of the Original Tom Sawyer and of the
Mysterious Fires That Baptized Gold Rush-Era San Francisco_. By Robert
Graysmith. (Crown, 2012).  288 pages. Illustrations by the author.
ISBN 978-0307720566. $26.00.

Graysmith, a political cartoonist for the San Francisco _Chronicle_
and crime book author, focuses on the history of fires that ravaged
San Francisco during the Gold Rush era and a young fireman named Tom
Sawyer. The last quarter of his book is devoted to claims that Tom
Sawyer and Mark Twain were intimate acquaintances and that Twain used
Sawyer's name in the title of _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ in homage
to his old drinking partner. The claim is not a new one to Twain
studies, even though Graysmith's article in the October 2012
_Smithsonian_ generated some excitement and publicity. The Museum of
the City of San Francisco's website has featured the Tom Sawyer/Twain
story since at least 1998.

For entertainment value, Graysmith attempts to recreate meetings
between Sawyer and Twain, word-for-word conversations, facial
expressions, body movements, and thought processes--none of which are
based on any historical record found in Mark Twain's known journals,
letters or writings. Graysmith makes much of the episode in _Roughing
It_ featuring a character named "Sawyer" whom Mark Twain asked to
provide laughter at one of his San Francisco lectures. However, the
editors of the University of California edition of _Roughing It_
(1993) identify that character as San Francisco fireman William M.
Slason, who died in 1872.

Graysmith's book contains a lengthy bibliography--mostly about San
Francisco history--but no notes or citations. In a December 21, 2012
interview in the San Francisco _Chronicle_, Graysmith stated his Twain
research consisted of a visit to Twain's Hartford House in
Connecticut. He said nothing about visitng the Mark Twain Papers
across the Bay from his San Francisco home. He defended his thesis by
stating Twain never challenged Tom Sawyer's claims. However, there is
apparently no record of Twain's having been aware of his claims. Twain
is known to have ignored other men's claims to having been the
original Huck Finn, so it would not have been out of character for him
to ignore Sawyer's claim had he known of it.

Twain researchers interested in Graysmith's primary source material
should consult the published interviews of Tom Sawyer that appeared in
the San Francisco _Call_ newspaper on July 14, 1895 and October 28,
1898 when Sawyer, a saloonkeeper, entertained reporters with his tales
of drinking and carousing with Mark Twain. These interviews are
available free online at the California Digital Newspaper Collection
website.

One of the best reviews of Graysmith's book appeared in the Cleveland
_Plain Dealer_ by Daniel Dyer on October 30, 2012.  Dyer concluded
"Twain's silence on the question is loud" and Sawyer's claim comes
down to a question of "he said/ he didn't say."