Robert Keith Miller

This is a college textbook.

As such, it has a lot of prompting questions on form and technique. These did not interest me. Rather, I did like the anthology of contrasting, thought-provoking opinions on such topics as mandatory drug testing (particularly in professional sports), gun control, capital punishment, censorship in schools, animal experimentation, and the value of a higher education.

At first, I thought a whole chapter chronicling analysis of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” show more by Robert Frost, but in the end it was my favorite chapter for the arc of overly detailed musings to personal confession of the author.

From writing advice by George Orwell

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

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Mark Twain by Robert Keith Miller is a combination of biography and critique. The first chapter is a complete biography of Samuel Longhorn Clemens. The following chapters discuss a few of his works in some depth. The book talks about Life on the Mississippi, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Pudd’nhead Wilson, and some of Twain’s representative short fiction.

The book is what I expected it to be. I found it at show more the Library in the Literary Criticism section and that is what I got. show less

This is for school.