Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Mark Twain on galleys and mysteries.

Mark Twain to author-editor-critic William Dean Howells, June 28, 1884:
My days are given up to cursings—both loud and deep—for I am reading the H. Finn proofs. They don't make a great many mistakes; but those that do occur are of a nature to make a man curse his teeth loose. (Mark Twain-Howells Letters 493)
(For examples of Twain's spoofs of the mystery genre, read the Conan Doyle-inspired "A Double-Barreled Detective Story," 1902, and "The Stolen White Elephant," 1882.)

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