PORT ANGELES — Mark Valentine, an adjunct English instructor at Peninsula College, will discuss “The Dangers of Wildcat Literature” on Thursday.
Valentine’s presentation, part of Peninsula College’s Studium Generale program, will begin at 12:35 p.m. in the Little Theater at the Port Angeles campus of the college, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd.
In his presentation, Valentine will share a brief literary biography of Ned Buntline (the pen name for Col. Ezra Zane Carroll Judson) in the context of Mark Twain’s works and explore Twain’s satirical portrayal of the dime novelist and his writings.
Valentine’s interest in the topic was inspired by a National Endowment for the Humanities grant he received in 2007 to study Twain and his works at Elmira College, New York.
The four weeks Valentine spent there led him to begin an essay on Twain’s satires of Buntline.
Twain had read some of Buntline’s 200 dime novels, Valentine said, and “he lampooned both the author and his publications frequently, not only by branding them as ‘wildcat literature,’ but also by placing a Buntline potboiler, The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main (1847), as Tom Sawyer’s favorite novel.
“And we all know what kind of guy Tom was,” Valentine said.
Valentine has been an adjunct instructor at Peninsula College since 2006 and an educator since 1995.
He received a master’s degree from Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury College.
