SOURCE: "An American Image," in Mark Twain and Southwestern Humor, Little, Brown and Company, 1959, pp. 140-73.

In the following excerpt, Lynn argues that in Twain's telling of the jumping frog story, the author stands the tradition of the conventional Southwestern folktale on its head. Lynn then goes on to discuss Twain's narrative technique and use of political humor.

In search of new forms to express a new idea of himself, Twain experimented in his Western period with a variety of humorous devices. Caricatures, puns, burlesques, hoaxes, and editorial bandinage were the stock-in-trade of Washoe journalism at the time, and Mark Twain of the Enterprise tried them all. In one of his most significant experiments, he produced a sort of literary ventriloquist's act, wherein the writer debated various questions with an uninhibited alter ego named "The Unreliable." By putting words in the mouth of this stooge, Twain was able...