Let me try this seriously. Today, in my poetry workshop for seniors, one lady told me how angry she got after reading a poem of mine attacking Christian hypocrisy. She said "I'll show him, I'm going to see that friend in the nursing home I haven't been with in a while" and then it flashed on her--what I had said was true and my words had prompted her to do a Christian deed. We all talked about a guest poet the students liked and all the connections she had evoked in the group. Three of us talked about poems that had made us cry, our poems, poems about us, personal wires exposed. Without design, the class had explored the power of literature. That's liberal humanism. I enjoy mental masturbation as much as any of us--I enjoy being a portable encyclopedia. The Point is the Power of the Words, the Art, what they Arouse in the Reader. All else is appropriatly designated "secondary." It seems to me Mark Twain was clearly deeply engaged in the literary criticism of his time, and used it with wit, humor, insight, and was sometimes savage and inconsistant. But it was not the main theme of his life--but one mirror of his complicated career. I wonder what Mark Twain's resume would read like if it only listed his criticism. It seems to me liberal humanism--what an oddass term--might mean emphacizing creating and reading Primary Sources, and count amongst our tools thoughtful scholarly discourses. But it's Mark Twain I'm interested in, he is whom I want my students to respond to. I rememberfinding it odd no creative writing need apply on a Vitae- -only secondary research. I wonder if accepting that is a step in acedemic "degredation." The less informed Wes Britton