With Sincere Apologies to Fans of Jane Austen 

However, she was not a favorite of mine. I was required to take various literature classes, including literature of the 1800's of the British sort. I rapidly found I did not care, in the least bit, for Jane Austen. To me her stories were about a rarefied social class. What others found to be a witty banter was not such for me. A dutiful English major, I slogged through Jane Austen with great hopes of reading the twisted essay A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift.

That likely explains why my tastes tend toward Hunter S. Thompson's tour de force Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and thev twisted Mentats of the planet of Tleilax serving House Harkonnen's Baron Vladimir Harkonnen.

I digress.

I wrote this note to present a Mark Twain quote taken from his essay about Jane Austen. Enjoy the greatest humorist produced in the crucible of our Republic:

Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.

I remember when I saw Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain. Folk, in the 1980's in a university town, folk from all walks of life walked out on Holbrook. His recitation of Twain's later works, such as Letters from Hell scandalized some in the audience. I then understood my mother's love of Mark Twain.