A few more quick thoughts on the topic of Twain and autobiography: 1) Michael Kiskis's edition of the original NAR dictaions is very fine indeed -- and its introduction and supporting scholarly apparatus are models for this sort of work, in my view. This is a clear, teachable, exceptionally user-friendly edition. 2) Further, as Gregg Camfield already has pointed out, Kiskis has provided the text as originally presented, and thus as "authorized," by Twain himself. Neither Neider nor Devoto did this -- as Kiskis documents thoroughly. 3) Camfield brief description of Twain's operative strategy ("a plan of no plan, or rather a plan of free-association,"), is a bit simplified -- but again his basic point is spelled out thoroughly in Kiskis's intro. I will simply add what I think Prof. Camfield implies -- that Twain's strategy is definitely there, and that although the first chapter opens with a disclaimer of a plan, in fact Twain's dictations betray a well-thought-out plan. Kiskis demonstrates how Twain lifted passages from various earlier writings, and edited as he went, etc., thus indicating an all-encompassing artistic "plan" of a sort. 4) finally, one obvious aspect of Twain's autobiography that has not been openly stated but which most LIST members know -- and that is, the way that much of Twain's output is autobiographical in nature. This of course includes travel literature like Innocents, Roughing It, Tramp, Following, and so forth; but also the very powerful "Old Times" and other Mississippi writings. Moreover, much of recent Twain critical readings focus on this autobiographical presence -- to take one example, Lowry's _Littery Man_ reads Innocents, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as dramatic re-enactments of Twain's own struggle to attain the status of author. (forgive me for a one-sentence synopsis of a very fine book, Prof. Lowry ! ! !) Dr. Harold K. Bush Konan International Exchange Center Konan University, 8-9-1 Okamoto Higashinada-ku, Kobe 658, JAPAN