DIFFICULTIES IN DEALING WITH AN AMERICAN CLASSIC”. When I posted in defense of Mark Twain a couple days ago (October 29), I said that: “There is much discussion in this issue of Twain’s place in the canon.” “SA” (whom I take to be Stig Abell, the editor of the TLS) concludes in his introduction to the issue: “Twain is better considered as an embodiment of a certain type of ‘Americanness’, surely: unstable, sometimes marginal, knowing in his search for authenticity.” SA endorses the most vivid of Daniel Karlin’s comments on Twain, saying: “He [Karlin} accurately notes that ‘the best of Twain can’t be matched; the worst stinks; and they are served on the same plate.”
The subtitle of Karlin’s review is: “Difficulties in dealing with an American classic”.