I am also, via DailyLit.com, reading Who is Mark Twain?, by the same. It’s a collection of essays, etc., and this paragraph, from “Jane Austen,” made me laugh out loud:

Does Jane Austen do her work too remorselessly well? For me, I mean? Maybe that is it. She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.