ining the old and new material, the meaning of the book is altered. Robert Hirst, director of the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkely’s Bancroft Library, stated, “Calling this the unexpurgated version is good stuff for Madison Avenue, but it’s just not accurate . . . Mark Twain deleted this new material for sound reasons, and to put it into a new authorized version now is to mix up two levels of textural reality” (Getlin, 1). When most people think about Mark Twain, they think of a kind grandfather figure who wore a white suit, had white hair and sat on a porch and told stories. Mark Twain was a regular person and had difficulties just as regular people do. Twain had considerably greater successes in his life than the average person, but he also had problems and failures as other people do. When the original manuscript was discovered, the literary community and America took a second look at Twain and they saw a person who was normal and had very controversial ideas about controversial issues, such as slavery, that were important during his lifetime. ...
