Introduction

As many of you know from past experience, it’s a long-standing tradition for the Mark Twain Circle to sponsor an annual reception at ALA. This year, however, we gather not just to drink and schmooze as usual, but to honor a very special person—Vic Fischer. When I first proposed this idea a year ago at the 2015 Circle business meeting, it was because I’d heard that Vic had retired from the Mark Twain Papers in February after nearly forty years of indefatigable service. Little did I know how short-lived this alleged “retirement” would be, and that six months later—much to our great fortune and delight—Vic would be back at his desk in the Bancroft Library two days a week. So officially—for the record—we’re not celebrating Vic’s retirement or semiretirement this evening, but his extraordinary legacy of work.

While I can’t hope to possibly list all of Vic’s contributions to Mark Twain scholarship. Here are some of the highlights:

• • Editing multiple editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first in 1988, then the “big” Huck in 2003 after the historic discovery of the missing second half of the manuscript; then the 125th anniversary edition in 2010, as well as a number of library editions of the volume.

• • Vic also edited The Prince and the Pauper in 1979, and assisted with the editingofA Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court that same year.

• • In the words of Ben Griffin, Vic is also the “maven” of many volumes of Twain’s Letters.

• • Additionally, he is an expert on Clemens’s years in the West and curated a traveling exhibit on that topic which was displayed at the most recent “State of Mark Twain Studies” quadrennial conference in Elmira in 2013. He coproduced a web version of the exhibit as well, which can be found at the Bancroft Library website (http://www.bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/mtwest).

And that’s just a taste of his productivity. I think most of us in the room have at one time or another benefited from the range and depth of Vic’s expertise and the generosity and kindness of his quiet ways. Just yesterday he was helping me to decode a watermark on the paper Twain’s unfinished “Extracts from Methuselah’s Diary” is written on in order to clarify the date of its composition.

In the words of Bob Hirst, who very much wishes he could be here this evening, “There is no more meticulous Mark Twain specialist than Vic, especially when it comes to paper and dating and cancellations . . . and you name it.” On behalf of the Mark Twain Circle of America, I would like to present you with a small token of our appreciation and admiration. Thank you, Vic, for all that you have done, all that you continue to do, and most of all for being you.