VQR on NPR

NPR’s “On the Media,” produced by WNYC and hosted by Brooke Gladstone, features an outstanding segment on Mark Twain’s unpublished faux letter to the editor “The Walt Whitman Controversy,” available for the first time in our new Spring 2007 issue. Gladstone interviews Ed Folsom, who co-edited and introduced the piece with Jerome Loving, and the segment also features a dramatic readings of passages from the Twain piece—delivered by a surprisingly convincing Twain impersonator! Check out the segment, then read Folsom and Loving’s intro. There’s also a nice summary of the story behind the essay in Newsday. Unfortunately, the University of California Press and the Twain Project have asked us not to make the Twain piece public, but it is available online to subscribers and can be found at these fine bookstores.

And if you just can’t get enough Twain and Whitman, then check out David Caplan’s essay contrasting their ideas of patriotism, also published in our current issue, and Ed Folsom’s excellent essay on Whitman and the presidency from our Spring 2005 special issue on the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass.