DANGEROUS WATER: A Biography of the Boy Who Became Mark Twain. By Ron Powers. Basic. 328 pp. $24
Most literary biography leaves the image of a sour old man in pince-nez and tweeds chasing a fabulous butterfly. Sometimes he nabs the creature and pins it to his corkboard. Often he misses it altogether. In either case, we spend far too much time with the lumbering academic and not nearly enough time with his prey.