Mis-Quoting Twain

Submitted by Jesse (United States), Feb 2, 2009 at 22:44

While I'm relatively disinterested in the topic at hand, I'm extremely interested in Mark Twain, and I hate to see his good name tarnished ... Those words were indeed spoken by Twain (well, most of them), and they were even in that order. You seem to have misplaced your ellipses and brackets; those are what really do the job. You see, you aren't quoting Innocents Abroad at all, but actually Joan Peters's From Time Immemorial. There, she invented the phrase which you quoted by replacing Twain's reference to the valley of Ain Mellahah with one to Jezreel, simply by misconstruing a single antecedent.

And besides, the original statement was factually incorrect, because the original work was satire. Innocents was not a genuine account, but rather a bitingly humorous account from an author known for his biting humor. This barren description merely added to his continuing jest at the Arabs.
So please, do your homework next time you decide to quote a great American author; it really isn't all that hard.

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