Since I've had a couple of Mark Twain posts recently, not to mention my articles in Boston Review and The Dabbler, it's perfectly natural to mention the Mark Twain awards, if only to lament the absence of actual writers in the list of winners. Richard Pryor? Lily Tomlin? Stand-up comedians, sure, but hardly worthy names to honor America's greatest comic writer. More mush for the booboisie, as H. L. Mencken might have said. What Twain–clearly totally unqualified for the Mark Twain award, as my buddy Jim Hynes points out–would have said hardly bears imagining; I mean, he thought Jay Gould was crude and vulgar.