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Mark Twain Circular 12 Mark Twain Circular Newsletter of the Mark Twain Circle of America Volume 29 November 2015 Number 2 that I get paid to think about and talk about President’s Column Mark Twain, something I would do for John Bird nothing (but don’t tell my university). Winthrop University As another year begins to wind to a close, I think about how much of my year has centered around this person who died over a hundred years ago. I spent much of my summer reading all the Twain books and articles from 2014 for the “Mark Twain” chapter in American Literary Scholarship, Inside This Issue then scrambling to Twain Talk: distill all that into 20 Peter Messent pages of summary Fall Feature: and evaluation. Nee Brothers’ New Mark Twain is Indie Film, Band of indeed alive and Robbers well in the academy, Mark Twain Circle: and now it is time to I am teaching a graduate seminar on Mark Annual Minutes turn my attention to Twain this semester, a class I have taught two Member Renewal the scholarly work or three times before. It is always a great Calls for Papers: from 2015. My good experience and a great privilege. Most of my ALA 2016 friend from ten students had read Huckleberry Finn, but MLA 2017 most had not read anything else by Twain graduate school, before the class started. So it is very exciting Gary, stopped by the to share with them and watch them read other day on his way to Florida, and I was works including “A Jumping Frog,” Innocents telling him how envious I was of him back Abroad, Roughing It, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry then in the early 1980s that he had published Finn, A Connecticut Yankee, Pudd’nhead on Mark Twain and had been included in one Wilson, and No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger, as of those volumes. As I read through those well as a number of shorter pieces. This volumes to begin my dissertation, I used to intense focus on Twain’s life and works is think about what it would be like to publish exhilarating for me, and I hope it is for them. I an article on Twain and have it reviewed by drive home each Monday night after our the likes of Lou Budd or Hamlin Hill. In my three-hour class with so many ideas floating wildest dreams, I did not imagine that it might around in my head. What a great job I have be me writing that chapter someday. 43 Summer began with ALA in Boston, where one of Quarles Farm, we were able to take trips to of the Mark Twain Circle sessions was the birthplace site in Florida, MO, to the Mark “Returning to the Scene of the ‘Crime’: The Twain Cave, and to go on a dinner cruise on Whittier Birthday Speech Re-enacted and Re- the Mark Twain Riverboat. It’s great to be in a examined.” My somewhat offbeat idea was to place where nearly everything is named for recreate the controversial speech, with a Mark Twain! (I suspect he would heartily number of different voices chiming in. “The approve of Hannibal’s new brew pub.) I am Mark Twain Players” included Bruce already looking forward to 2019. And Elmira Michelson as narrator, David Carkeet as is now less than two years away… William Dean Howells, me as Mark Twain, and Kerry Driscoll, Kathryn Dolan, and Dennis As part of an endowed professorship I Eddings as a number of characters, including currently have, I am supposed to give an Whittier and various newspaper accounts. annual lecture to the university community. The room was packed, and the discussion that Talking about Mark Twain to groups beyond followed was one of the most engaging I have our relatively small scholarly community is seen in many years. That speech is like important, and I was gratified to have nearly Rashomon, interpretations varying wildly 100 students, faculty, staff, and local residents according to point of view, with Twain’s own show up for my talk, “Born To Trouble: Mark reactions the most wildly variant of all. Our Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the ‘N’ Word, plan for the 2016 ALA is to do something Censorship, and Race.” I also talked about similar with Twain’s bawdy, centering around Huck and Mr. Mark Twain with two local 1601. See the call for papers in this issue and senior citizen lifelong learning groups, the let me know if you would like to join the Mark second one an enthusiastic audience of nearly Twain Players. 200. It is gratifying to see that interest in Mark Twain remains so strong. In early July, I was part of a Twain panel, “Mark Twain in the West” at the International Mark Twain has been the center of my year in Humor Studies Association conference in several other ways, but I think you get the Oakland, with Ben Griffin and Vic Fischer of idea. The seeds for all this were sown over 30 the Mark Twain Papers, chaired and years ago, when I decided to focus on Mark organized by Linda Morris. That trip to the Twain for my dissertation. Today’s PhD West Coast allowed me to spend two days students are dissuaded, even forbidden, from conducting some research at the Mark Twain writing a single-author dissertation. A Papers, always a great experience, as anyone graduate of our MA program is about to start who has had the privilege will attest. I am writing his dissertation at another institution. convinced that time does not operate He was rabid about James Joyce, almost normally within the Bancroft Library; that big monomaniacal, managing to make a campanile seems to ring much more often connection to Joyce in nearly every paper he than other clocks, and before you know it, it is wrote, no matter what the topic. I asked him if 4 p.m. and time to leave the archives. his dissertation would be on Joyce, but he At the end of July, I gathered with many shook his head sadly. “I might get to include Twainians at the 2nd Clemens Conference in Joyce,” he said, “but they won’t let us write Hannibal, MO. Henry Sweets and the people at about a single author.” the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum put on an excellent conference, well-attended, “They won’t let us.” Wow. I am certainly glad with numbers way up from the first one four such a stricture was not in place 30 years ago. years ago. Although their recent flooding Even then, there were warnings not to focus prevented us from touring the reconstruction (continued on p. 9) 2 12 Twain Talk An Interview with Peter Messent Welland—a Twain scholar—headed up the Department and literature program. What was your dissertation topic and who directed your dissertation? I'm beginning to sound older than I am but I did not do a PhD as I got my first permanent academic job before completing my Master's dissertation. This is no sign of genius but of an early 1970's British University system that was fast expanding, especially in the field of American Studies (unfortunately, no longer true today!). But my 60,000-word Master's dissertation was titled "American Humour Between Three Wars" and focused on Twain, Ring Lardner and Kurt Vonnegut. Don't ask me what the third war was: I think the Civil War? Or perhaps Vietnam? It's a title that doesn't really make sense. My supervisor was Dennis Pete (in blue) with Daisy and Scarlett. Welland but we weren't really on the same wavelength and I really didn't know what a What's your earliest memory of reading dissertation was meant to be. So it's not a piece Twain? of work I'm at all proud of and I suspect was profoundly unoriginal in almost every sense. I I wish I could remember! I studied Huckleberry guess it is the same in the U.S. but young Finn at University where (unusually for the scholars now in the UK are expected to publish period) I took an American Studies degree. But from the very start of their career. But I'm sure I must have come across Twain before I remember a senior colleague saying to me that. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn have become early in my career that no literature scholar part of our collective unconscious, our cultural was ready to publish until they were in their memory, and that's my excuse. I guess I'd forties, and in my case I suspect they were right. read versions of them as a child or had them My first book was an edited one for the read to me or maybe seen TV programs based Twentieth Century Views series on Occult on them. But more than this I cannot now say: Literature! And I was 36 when that came out. no blinding moment of recognition! I'd written to them suggesting they needed an update of their Hemingway book Where and when did you first encounter (another favourite author of mine) and they Twain in the classroom? said no, but would I do an occult literature one. So careers are built? My occult phase did not At Manchester University, UK, where Dennis last long. 3 43 Have your impressions of Twain and his and to the myth and symbol approach (which work changed at all over the years? earlier critics had also critiqued). Twain became for me a many-sided author who could Yes, in all kinds of ways, and that's mainly to do be read in a multitude of different ways.
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