> Apparently _1,002d Arabian Night_ was the railway circulation book Clemens > had discussed publishing anonymously. > > Is there a good critical analysis of this work which deals with switched > and confused sexual identities? Or any comparison of this work to _Prince > and the Pauper_? Is there any analysis at all? Barbara's questions are about the most favorable remarks I've seen. A footnote in _M.T.'s Letters to his Publishers_ (174) refers the reader to _Mark Twain at Work_ where Bernard DeVoto states, "[F]ortunately Howells disliked it when he read it, the following autumn [1883]. (Superlatives are risky but '1002' is probably the dullest of all Mark's works, it is almost lethal.)" (59-60) DeVoto also thought _The Prince and the Pauper_ "dull", written "in essentially an uncreative time" while "_Huckleberry Finn_ gathered dust for six years" (56). The introduction to "1,002d Arabian Night" in _M.T.'s Satires and Burlesques_ quotes Howells' 18 Sep. 1883 letter to Clemens, "'[I]t seemed to me I was made a fellow-sufferer with the Sultan' . . . '[I]t was not your best or your second-best' . . . 'skirts a kind of fun which you can't afford to indulge in' . . . 'falls short of being amusing'" (89). It's understandable why Clemens would wish to publish this piece anonymously as a railroad book. However, he was correct that it would have market value as, a hundred years later, Twain enthusiasts would wish to examine the book he wrote the summer he finished _Huck Finn_. perhaps pedantically short of being amusing, but not lethal, and, in good company, if considered dull-------larry marshburne [log in to unmask]