title: Is He Dead? (Jumping Frogs: Undiscovered, Rediscovered, and Celebrated Writings of Mark Twain)
author:  Mark Twain 
description: "This master of the novel proves also to be a master at play construction. Is He Dead? has all the craftsmanship of a far more seasoned playwright's efforts, and the targets Twain establishes--mendacity and greed--are the twin evils he exposed throughout his distinguished career." --Tony Lewis, "Providence Journal-Bulletin"
zlib_text: The Jumping Frog
  MT jumped into national prominence on the basis of this tale about Jim Smiley and his frog, ﬁrst published in a New
  York newspaper in November 1865 and quickly reprinted around the country. Though MT later discounted it as a
  “villainous backwoods sketch,” it already adumbrates motifs that would stick with him throughout his career — including
  the use of a vernacular speaker and the unexplained appearance of a mysterious stranger. MT also kept returning to the
  tale itself, often giving a shortened version of it in his lectures and readings — including the tour with Cable he arranged
  to promote Huck Finn. I include it among the sources of Huck Finn, though, essentially for the way it shows MT
  developing the possibilities of a deadpan narrator. Like Simon Wheeler, Huck tells a tale that is designed to make readers
  laugh without, as MT puts it below, “without ever smiling.” From early on in his career, MT believed that when a
  humorist gave no sign that he understood the me