How do we get it right the first time? Is that even possible? As Mark Twain–author of many important works–once stated, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” In this post we are going to examine this quote. It has something to do with you as a writer and us as people. In the very least, the quote is about bending the rules after you’ve learned the rules. This is important to the writing process, regardless if you are a writer OR a Yankee from Connecticut.
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Book Review: Mark Twain’s ‘Letters from the Earth’
It goes without saying that Mark Twain has a myriad of books that are worth reviewing. In fact, I’ve reviewed A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court in excessive detail on The Writing Post. Yet, Twain has a great many short-form pieces that are worth discussing, including his essay collections. In Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, published “posthumously” in 1962, the author expresses his feelings about Earth and governance–and a few other life-adjacent topics.
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Mark Twain’s Sorrowful Last Words
Mark Twain allegedly was born during a visit from Halley’s Comet and died upon its return some 76.8 years later. Twain certainly has a lot of mystic about his legacy. His death and final words are up for debate as well. While this may be morbid, it’s therapeutic to spend time deciphering the last words of the dead if only to understand our own mortality and what they have to say before crossing over. In this post, we are going to look at Mark Twain’s last words, and see how they are in fact a little sadder than one would think.
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A Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain Overview
Today we are going to take a brief look at the Preface and A Word of Explanation sections of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain. In these sections we learn a little about our protagonist and a sort of metacognitive narrator who stumbles into him. Additionally, we are going to learn about the protagonist. We will glean a great deal from his thoughts about the new, albeit old, world that he now inhabits. If you have never read this book, this post will help guide you.
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Mark Twain’s ‘A Connecticut Yankee’: Parental Love
As I had read Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, I couldn’t help but think of the many themes in the text. Twain manages to explore a variety of disparate ideas. These include science and technology in an age when superstitions reigned, and the violence of society throughout time. He also analyzes the permanence of history, and even parental sympathies and loved ones. In this post, I would like to examine just one of these themes: parental love.
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A Look at the Era of Literary Realism and its Authors
We have looked at a lot of movements on this blog, but today we look at the era of literary realism. We have even discussed writers from this particular era, so it’s high-time to see what these realistic writers were up during the time of the American Civil War.
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