Books: Book Notes

MARK TWAIN: MAN AND LEGEND—DeLancey Ferguson—Bobbs-Merrill($3). This biography aims "to trace in detail Mark Twain's career as a writing man, passing over lightly or ignoring, his multifarious nonliterary doings. " DeLancey Ferguson (professor of English at Western Reserve University) does an orderly tour of Mark Twain's professional career through his last lonely years, solaced by frenzied billiard games, Baconian theories, a glorified piano player, the dictation of his Autobiography. " Every character he ever wrote about, including Joan of Arc," says Ferguson, "was either drawn from the intensive experience of his first thirty years or conceived in its spirit."...