the shape
that's in your head, and never mind the one that's before your eyes."
Mark Twain's greatest work, writes Burde, was that which "drew
upon intuitive memory rather than studied observations." There was a
connection between writing and piloting-both require a special qual-
ity of memory-and Clemens dreaded the thought of failing as a writer
and being forced to make his living again as a pilot. He was unable to
sustain his imaginative identification with Horace Bix(who...