Mr. Clemons ...

... Paul Davis On Crime: Scholar Unravels The Story Behind 'The Father of American Literature' Mark Twain.

Hard to see how Twain can be considered "the father of American literature" (which is what Faulkner called him), since quite a bit of first-rate literature was written in America before Twain, including Moby Dick (1851), The Scarlet Letter (1850), and Leaves of Grass (1855). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn didn't come along until 1884 (when it was published in England; it came out in the U.S. a few months later in 1885).