"the american mark twain"... ??

Here's a real head-scratcher:

"Vonnegut was the American Mark Twain. He even looked liked him. Everybody loved Vonnegut, whereas Norman was a much more controversial figure," says J. Michael Lennon, the literary executor for Mailer, who died Nov. 10 at age 84.

Last time I checked, Samuel Clemens, a.k.a., Mark Twain, was an American. It's like saying "He's the British William Shakespeare," or "She's the Russian Fyodor Dostoevsky!"

Kinda redundant, no? Ridiculous for a literary type, yes?