<p><span class="deck"> Before the assembled great of literary New England Mark Twain rose to poke gentle fun at their pretensions. Would they laugh, or was he laying an egg?</span> </p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> You entered it only rarely, and you weren’t meant to be comfortable there. But every house had to have one, no matter how high the cost</span> </span></p>
<p>In 1885, when Samuel L. Clemens' delightful daughter Susy was thirteen and he forty-nine, she secretly began a biography of her father, "Papa"—Mark Twain—soon discovered it, to his immense pleasure</p>
<p><span class="deck"> <span class="typestyle"> The author of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ never set foot on our shores, but he had a clear and highly personal vision of what we were and what we had been</span> </span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><span class="typestyle">For years it was seen as the worst of times: bloated, crass, witlessly extravagant. But now scholars are beginning to find some of the era’s unexpected virtues</span>. </span></p>
<p><span class="deck">The modern city plays host to conventions and tourists, but it still retains the slightly racy charm that has always made it dear to its natives.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">For a hundred years now ,Americans have been reading as comedy Mark Twain’s dark indictment of chivalry, technology, and all of humanity.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck"><lead_in> WILLIE MORRIS</lead_in> revisits a book that nourished him as a boy and discovers that the landscapes which the young Samuel Clemens navigated are in fact the topography of Morris’ own life.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">Hal Holbrook has lived with him nearly as long as Samuel Clemens did, and he explains why Twain still has the power to delight and to disturb.</span></p>
<p><span class="deck">It’s the poetry every American writes every day—a centuries-old epic of abuse, taunt, criminality, love, and bright, mocking beauty.</span></p>
