I am posting the following on behalf of Joe B. Fulton. ~~~~~ In his January 30, 2017, review of my book _Mark Twain under Fire: Reception and Reputation, Criticism and Controversy, 1851-2015_, Kevin Mac Donnell criticized my inclusion of certain material in my book. I feel that clarification is necessary. As Mac Donnell said in his review, there is more to the story. _Mark Twain under Fire_ is a history of Mark Twain criticism from its earliest stages to very recent criticism. In the book, I rely on many archival documents to discuss the forces that have contributed--and still contribute--to the scholarship on America's foremost writer and cultural icon. It is possible that, reading Mac Donnell's review, a reader might form the impression that my use of quotations in illuminating the controversy surrounding the Mark Twain Project on pages 142-144 of _Mark Twain under Fire_ may infringe on copyright and may even be potentially defamatory. This would be an unfortunate, and inaccurate, impression. Let me begin by describing the material. The correspondence written by many individuals to many different people was bundled by someone (Mac Donnell asserts it was Robert Hirst, director of the Mark Twain Project), given a title page, consecutively paginated, and dated July 16, 1985. Mac Donnell alleges that the person who bundled these letters together distributed them to four Twain scholars. Two of these copies were eventually donated to the Mark Twain Archives at Elmira College in Elmira, New York, where they have been available to scholars for years. Both have title pages and are dated. The copy I used was from the Louis J. Budd Papers and has all the earmarks of a book: a cover illustration, a title, a subtitle that calls it "A Selected Edition in Photofacsimile," a table of contents, chapter titles and epigraphs, and consecutive pagination. I refer to this collection in my book with the abbreviation _MTPC_, from part of the title on the cover: "The Mark Twain Project's Correspondence." I quote from only ten documents out of this 214-page bundle. All ten are on letterhead, one from the United States Information Agency. All are essential to the critical history I was writing. I quoted from these ten documents briefly, within fair use guidelines, and with the permission of the Mark Twain Archives. As for whether or not any of these documents are defamatory, I do not take sides in my book as to the charges levelled in those documents. I quoted from the documents in the _MTPC_ because they illuminate a dynamic within this critical community that is essential to the subject of my history. As Mac Donnell pointed out in his review, one _must_ discuss the Mark Twain Project in a book like _Mark Twain under Fire_; I would argue, too, that the Mark Twain Project has exerted such a tremendous influence on scholarship and criticism, that no history of Mark Twain criticism can be written without appreciating the conflicts that occurred during the 1980s among important members of this critical community. In my treatment, I believe I approached the matter legally, fairly, and responsibly. Dr. Joe B. Fulton, Baylor University