Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings

by Mark Twain, Bernard DeVoto (Editor), Henry Nash Smith (Foreword)

An American classic, with more than 320,000 copies sold-- some of Twain's most pungent and hilarious writings."The attitude is that of Swift, the intellectual contempt is that of Voltaire, and the imagination is that of one of the great masters of American writing." "--New York Times"

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Humor, Religion, Short Stories, Essays, Literature

239 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1962

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature." His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), with the latter often called the "Great American Novel." Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Do any of us die having said everything we wanted to say? Or having said everything that needed to be said? Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, certainly did not. When he died in 1910 he left behind a substantial cache of notebooks, letters, and unfinished manuscripts, much of which turned out to be a treasure trove of brilliant satirical and existential prose. Herein lies the problem. How do you publish what amounts to be three pages of notes here, eighteen pages of an incomplete essay there, twenty six pages of an unfinished story over there, in a coherent, logical, related format? You can't. What you do is what Bernard DeVoto has done; you combine a selection of the best bits, annotate it with explanatory footnotes, and send it out into the world.

"If science exterminates a disease which has been working for God, it is God that gets the credit, and all the pulpits break into grateful advertising-raptures and call attention to how good he is! Yes, HE has done it. Perhaps he has waited a thousand years before doing it. That is nothing; the pulpit says he was thinking about it the whole time. When exasperated men rise up and sweep away an age-long tyranny and set a nation free, the first thing the delighted pulpit does is to advertise it as God's work, and invite people to get down on their knees and pour out their thanks to him for it."

I'm more impressed with Twain than ever before. His satire was as sharp as any written today, and it's no big surprise that his publishers fought hard to keep so much of this out of the public eye. It wasn't until decades after his passing that Letters from the Earth saw the light of day.

"If [God] had had a motto, it would have read, 'Let no innocent person escape.' You remember what he did in the time of the flood. There were multitudes and multitudes of tiny little children, and he knew they had never done him any harm; but their relations had, and that was enough for him: he saw the wild terror in their eyes, he saw that agony of appeal in the mothers' faces which would have touched any heart but his, but he was after the guiltless particularly, and he drowned those poor little chaps."

Not all of Letters is so biblically condescending. If blasphemy isn't your thing, there's an irreverent slight on Britain's Prince Albert. Or how about a short story on the fallacious faculties of felines? Whatever your particular taste, there is surely something here that you can engage with, that will broaden your perspective and, just maybe, challenge your preconceptions about one of America's most beloved writers.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Satan's letters written during a visit to Earth, this is Mark Twain at his most cynical and offensive. This is a far cry from C.S. Lewis, perhaps even a Bizarro reflection. Long before today's crop of posturing, pompous-ass religious critics, Twain did it better, faster and funnier. For those who like their humor dark as unsweetened cocoa.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The first time the Deity came down to earth, he brought life and death; when he came the second time, he brought hell.”

Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth, which were written under the influence of various blows fate dealt him, like the deaths of his 24-year old daughter Suzy from spinal meningitis in 1896 and of his wife Olivia in1904, never saw publication during their author’s lifetime, probably because they were considered as heavy stuff even with regard to what could be expected of a satirist like Mark Twain.

They are a collection of letters written by the Archangel Satan, who is once again banished from the presence of the Almighty due to certain irreverent remarks on Creation and who, this time, ended up on the planet Earth. To while away his time and to amuse the other Archangels, Satan writes them a series of letters in which he comments on Man as such and on the Christian religion in particular. Satan’s first letter is comparatively harmless and amusing enough since it deals with the Afterlife as it is pictured by Christians, and here Satan states that in Afterlife Man seems to engage in all sorts of activities he shuns or grudgingly consents to during his time on Earth whereas he will abstain in his Heaven from whatever form of pleasure he has known here in this world, such as sexual intercourse.

The following letters, however, become more and more iconoclastic and bitter when the author uses the Bible and the tenets of religion in order to reduce the idea of a loving and caring God to absurdity. Partly, the letters employ a simplistic materialism, e.g. when pointing out the absurdities of the story of Noah and the Ark, but they go deeper than that, e.g. when the question of illness and disease is raised:

”The human being is a machine. An automatic machine. It is composed of thousands of complex and delicate mechanisms, which perform their functions harmoniously and perfectly, in accordance with laws devised for their governance, and over which the man himself has no authority, no mastership, no control. For each one of these thousands of mechanisms the Creator has planned an enemy, whose office is to harass it, pester it, persecute it, damage it, afflict it with pains, and miseries, and ultimate destruction. Not one has been overlooked.
From cradle to grave these enemies are always at work; they know no rest, night or day. They are an army: an organized army; a besieging army; an assaulting army; an army that is alert, watchful, eager, merciless; an army that never relents, never grants a truce.
It moves by squad, by company, by battalion, by regiment, by brigade, by division, by army corps; upon occasion it masses its parts and moves upon mankind with its whole strength. It is the Creator's Grand Army, and he is the Commander-in-Chief. Along its battlefront its grisly banners wave their legends in the face of the sun: Disaster, Disease, and the rest.
Disease! That is the main force, the diligent force, the devastating force! It attacks the infant the moment it is born; it furnishes it one malady after another: croup, measles, mumps, bowel troubles, teething pains, scarlet fever, and other childhood specialties. It chases the child into youth and furnishes it some specialties for that time of life. It chases the youth into maturity, maturity into age, age into the grave.
With these facts before you will you now try to guess man's chiefest pet name for this ferocious Commander-in-Chief? I will save you the trouble – but you must not laugh. It is Our Father in Heaven!“

It is not too difficult to detect the author’s chagrin at the loss of his daughter Suzy through an insidious and senseless disease behind these lines, and yet the deeper question of why a Deity allows His creation to suffer cannot be dismissed. Not even the usual counter-argument of pointing out Man’s liberty of action works here since diseases are usually not brought about by human actions but they simply happen.

The letters also deal with certain gory passages from the Old Testament, as, for instance, God’s cruel and inhumane treatment of the Midianites – which is probably due to the fact that when the Israelites developed monotheism, it was their god of war that by and by replaced all their other deities – but they also criticize the conception of God in the New Testament by pointing out that Jesus not only brought redemption and forgiveness but also the notion of Hell, which is true – just remember Jesus’s frequent announcement of “wailing and gnashing of teeth” for those who do not believe in him and follow his teachings. In a way, this is really hard in that believing in something is not an act of volition; what if I would like to believe but simply can’t? In this context, however, we ought not to forget that the New Testament was not divinely inspired the way the Qur’an claims to be but that it was written by human beings who had their failings and their interests – just consider the beginning of the Gospel according to Luke:

”Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Theophilus was probably a Roman senator or something similar, and Luke seems to have felt it necessary – doubtless with a view to converting this important person – to write down the life, death and resurrection of Jesus after examining the data available to him. Maybe this explains why Jesus in the Gospels threatens unbelievers with the prospect of Hell over and over again. In the Letters from the Earth, however, a more cynical explanation is given for the invention of Hell:

”Life was not a valuable gift, but death was. Life was a fever-dream made up of joys embittered by sorrows, pleasure poisoned by pain, a dream that was a nightmare-confusion of spasmodic and fleeting delights, ecstasies, exultations, happinesses, interspersed with long-drawn miseries, griefs, perils, horrors, disappointments, defeats, humiliations, and despairs – the heaviest curse devisable by divine ingenuity; but death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man's best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
In time, the Deity perceived that death was a mistake; a mistake, in that it was insufficient; insufficient, for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb.”

One might ask oneself the question: Who but the clergy would have any advantage from the notion of Hell?

As one can see, the Letters from the Earth is quite a serious criticism of (Christian) religion, not only of contemporary Christians’ morals but also of their beliefs but its deeper criticism only works if you fail to consider the historicity of the Bible, i.e. that it is, like all other religious tradition, not a word-by-word inspiration coming from the Deity Himself but a man-made interpretation of man-held values and tenets. Some of the basic assumptions made by the author need not even be shared, as, for example, the Letter’s notion that Man, being a divine creation, is not directly responsible for the way he acts since his nature was preordained by God. For all their shortcomings, though, the Letters offer a lot of food for thought, as here:

”We know what the offense was, without looking; that is to say, we know it was a trifle; some small thing that no one but a god would attach any importance to.”

Now that bit has not lost one tittle of topicality for are there not still enough fervent believers in all sorts of religions running through life and claiming that God, the highest Being imaginable, can seriously be vexed by a book, a caricature, a sentence or anything else deriving from puny Man? Hmph.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is our next book club selection, and I'm loving it as much this second reading as I did when I first found this little gem over 30 years ago. Twain had said it couldn't be published, and I can see why. Not many in his time period would have liked the idea of Satan being on earth and writing scathing satirical letters back to his buddies in "heaven" about the condition of humankind.

This is a thin little volume, but my version is getting lots of highlighting. His criticism of humanity is as timely today as it was in his own era--maybe moreso. One of the ideas that always makes me laugh aloud is that humans have invented a "heaven" where everyone sings and plays harps. However, Satan points out, hardly ANYONE on earth can sing well or play an instrument of any kind.

He and Kurt Vonnegut are kindred spirits--they are soft-hearted curmudgeons who criticize all the flaws in the human race BECAUSE they believe/hope/wish we could be better than we are.

[Rodrigo · Rating 3 out of 5]

No ha estado mal, irónico, mordaz y muy critico tanto con el Dios de los Cristianos como con el hombre que le adora.
Nos cuenta que ese Dios esta lleno de contradicciones de lo que se predica con los relatos del antiguo y nuevo testamento.
Ahh las cartas son escritas por Satanás que es enviado a la Tierra para observar a los humanos.
Valoración: 6/10
Sinopsis: El libro plantea la cuestión de cómo puede el hombre creer en un dios absolutamente bondadoso y al mismo tiempo creerse hecho a su imagen y semejanza, mientras en la tierra se matan una y otra vez sin aprender de sus errores.

Twain en este libro no niega la existencia de Dios, sin embargo por deducción le atribuye características tan distintas a las que estamos acostumbrados a otorgarle, que resulta muy difícil llegar a imaginar el Dios, no tan solo del cristianismo, sino que también al Dios en el que creen las religiones en general donde se le asignan características que tienen que ver con la trascendencia tanto humana como terrenal, para llegar a un estado de perfección.

Es un libro divertido, dinámico e irónico. Contiene las cartas que Satanás desde su exilio en la tierra a donde fue desterrado por Dios, escribe a sus amigos en el cielo Miguel y Gabriel.
# 28- Un libro que compraste de segunda mano. Reto Popsugar 2023

[David Withun · Rating 4 out of 5]

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[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

”Many of these people have the reasoning faculty but no one uses it in religious matters.”

Letters From the Earth was published posthumously — way posthumously. It first came out in 1962, fifty-two years after the author’s death. If not for Cold War shenanigans, it may have taken longer. Clara Clemens, the author’s only surviving daughter, had blocked publication, fearing that the harshness of the book would damage her father’s legacy. The Soviet press reported that the ideas of the great writer were suppressed in America, and at least partly in reaction to this, Clara Clemens agreed to its publication.

Mark Twain had satirized the Bible and Christian belief during his lifetime, but most often in humorous satires that, while they landed hits, were not packed with much venom. This work was different. It quickly becomes an absolutely brutal satire that gives no quarters in attacking perceived inanities and atrocities of Christian belief:

”It is claimed that, from the beginning of time He foresaw everything that would happen in the World. He foresaw that Adam and Eve would eat the apple, that their posterity would be unendurable and have to be drowned, that Noah’s posterity would in his turn be unendurable, and that, by and by, He would have to leave his throne in Heaven and come down and be crucified to save that same, tiresome human race again.
The whole of it? No! A part of it, yes. Now, how much of it in each generation? For hundreds and hundreds of generations a billion would die and all go to perdition, except perhaps ten thousand out of the billion…such Roman Catholics who should have the luck to have a priest handy to sandpaper their souls at the last gasp, and here and there a Presbyterian.”

”In time, the deity perceived that death was a mistake — a mistake in that it was insufficient for the reason that while it was an admirable agent for the inflicting of misery upon the survivor, it allowed the dead person himself to escape from all further persecution in the blessed refuge of the grave. This was not satisfactory. A way must be conceived to pursue the dead beyond the tomb. The deity pondered this matter during four thousand years unsuccessfully, but as soon as he came down to Earth and became a Christian his mind cleared and he knew what to do — he invented Hell.”

Mark Twain’s targets are familiar ones, particularly to ex-believers who struggled with these issues before leaving the faith. Chief among his targets are the doctrines of Original Sin and Hell. He hammered on the absolute monstrosity and injustice of these doctrines, of any god that would impose them, and on those who would teach them. He showed less mercy to these ideas and those who perpetuate them than a Presbyterian god shows to the damned.

Before this piece ended, Mark Twain had moved well beyond satire in his attacks. He moved beyond humor. It feels personal. He drove his points home savagely and repeatedly. Ultimately, he takes to quoting some of the harshest, nastiest Old Testament passages verbatim (those ones that never, never make it into Sunday School lessons or the preacher’s sermons), and to make sure you don’t miss the point amid the antiquated language, explains, blow by blow, what it all means. It becomes excruciating.

If your experience of Mark Twain is limited to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and other such light fare from his earlier, happier years, perhaps you should sit this one out. But if you are interested in the whole spectrum of this complex and brilliant writer, including the way the losses and bitterness of his final decade impacted his writing, then this book is a must read.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cynics bow down before the idol of your seething ire! Mark Twain's critique of the Earth's entanglement with religion as told by an oft-banished-bad-boy-of-heaven we all know (but not so well as we thought) singes eyelashes at times. A series of letters written by Satan himself during a term of expulsion from heaven depict the sad hilarity of mankind's relationship with it's creator. Satan's outside perspective yields Twain an opportunity to express his deep criticism of god-fearing culture. It begins, "This is a strange place, an extraordianry place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane."
At the time of his writing this manuscript he purportedly proclaimed in a letter to a friend, "This book will never be published...in fact, it couln't be, because it would be a felony." The theme of repression is expressed in Satan's own banishment and Twain's choice of perspective being eventual-pure-evil along with his belief the manuscript would never see the light of day push him farther in his advance on common decency than we mostly jr. high Twain excursioners are used to. Moralists will object, but if, like me, you like to see the gloves come off, this antiquated step over the line will take you ten rounds at least.
Also in this volume, such things as a dressing down of James Fennimore Cooper's prose style and a rousing "Unfinished Burlesque of Books on Etiquette", which explains how a gentleman should conduct himself when rescuing a maiden in a fire. This is the backwater of Twain's writing, and its swampy atmosphere can bog you down in places, but the strange creations you find in this volume show dimensions of the writer that were never allowed to become apparent in his lifetime.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay- after reading this... I so wish I could have sat down with this man and that I could have shared a drink and a chat with him. He was so witty and clever. Hilarious. He must have been something else...

[Jan Priddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came out in 1963, which is when I might have first read it. Purchased for 75¢ from the little bookstore at Aurora Village, the new mall about a mile or so north of our home in what was then the unincorporated community of Shoreline just north of Seattle. I might have been ten years old and in sixth grade, unless I bought it in the next year or in 1968? But I had read Huck Finn in 6th grade, again in high school, and a third time in my first English class at the University of Washington. I taught it for many years, despite some of my "smartest" students not liking it, though Toni Morrison did. I think they only skimmed and in that way missed the flavor of Huck's voice and all the humor.] I loved this book especially for how it talks back to some narrow religious types—didn't I? It does not contain two stories I was certain it did include. Anyway, I've dug out my old copy and mean to reread it next month. I will let you know.

NOTE: My copy is the Fawcett-Crest edition, which GR won't allow me to show, dated 1968 and 1963, and 1962. So my memory is likely wrong and I first read it when I was fifteen.

And I must hunt up the collection that includes "The Stranger" and "Captain Hornblower's Visit to Heaven," which must be the book I read as a young child? Those stories are the reason for five stars. I taught "The War Prayer" too, and it's not here either.

[Udit Nair · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is Mark Twain at his best. Humorous, witty and full of satire for sure. It takes guts to take down scriptures in a sarcastic way. The letters are full of insights but loaded with satire. I mean many religious people wont even realise how well author had managed to pose his views which essentially makes a case against bible and religion as a whole.

Some of the interesting bits are -

" Noah built the Ark. He built it the best he could, but left out most of the essentials. It had no rudder, it had no sails, it had no compass, it had no pumps, it had no charts, no lead-lines, no anchors, no log, no light, no ventilation, and as for cargo room -- which was the main thing -- the less said about that the better. It was to be at sea eleven months, and would need fresh water enough to fill two Arks of its size -- yet the additional Ark was not provided. Water from outside could not be utilized: half of it would be salt water, and men and land animals could not drink it."

"Disease! That is the main force, the diligent force, the devastating force! It attacks the infant the moment it is born; it furnishes it one malady after another: croup, measles, mumps, bowel troubles, teething pains, scarlet fever, and other childhood specialties. It chases the child into youth and furnishes it some specialties for that time of life. It chases the youth into maturity, maturity into age, age into the grave. With these facts before you will you now try to guess man's chiefest pet name for this ferocious Commander-in-Chief? I will save you the trouble -- but you must not laugh. It is Our Father in Heaven! "

" It is curious -- the way the human mind works. The Christian begins with this straight proposition, this definite proposition, this inflexible and uncompromising proposition: God is all-knowing, and all-powerful. This being the case, nothing can happen without his knowing beforehand that it is going to happen; nothing happens without his permission; nothing can happen that he chooses to prevent. That is definite enough, isn't it? It makes the Creator distinctly responsible for everything that happens, doesn't it? "

[Jordi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could write a long review of this amazing and shocking book. Mark like I've never seen him before; the Mark I always wanted to hear more from and did not find in his stories of mischievous childhoods in the Mississippi. But i won't write that long review, instead, i will sub it up in the following sentence: Man is a mistake. The human race, basically, is the most horrible species that ever dwelled this earth. We kill, torture, pass judgment, discriminate, and do the worst things possible with the excuse that we are superior, which is obviously a very wrong statement.
But whose fault is it that we're so horrible? is it our fault, or that of our Creator? Our Father in heaven, who hasn't spared us all the pains possible, that even an erring human father would not want his children to go through. Are we God's mistake? or merely his toy? Twain will tell you all about it, through the narration of Satan, Eve, and many others including himself.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 5 out of 5]

Писма от Земята, писма до разума: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/p...

Не очаквах. Знаех в общи линии, че в “Писма от Земята” Марк Твен погромява религията, но чак до такава степен изненада дори мен – сред тези кратки страници великият сатирик е по-мощен и краен от представимото – ироничен, циничен, саркастичен, откровен, направо жлъчен… и страница след страница карикатуризира и пародира християнството и персонажите от бибилията. Воглаве с това, Твен осмива и съвременната цивилизация във вида, в който я вижда към края на живота си и зловещо пророкува, че тя върви към самоунищожение – май е по-прав от всякога. Откровен до болка, той показва неморалното на морала, нелепиците, в които вярва човекът, въобразеното му величие на фона на злодеянията, които извършва ежедневно лично и вкупом. Твен надминава дори Докинс (трябва да си дочета Хичънс, за да видя дали и него) в критиките си – и това нещо е писано преди над век, просто изумителна смелост и достойнство, изумителен размах на разума в една не много различна епоха и в държава, която е убедена до маниакалност, че е хванала Господ за шлифера и тази й привилегия я освобождава от всякаква отговорност.
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/p...

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a varied collection of Mark Twain's later writings, from a period traditionally overlooked by American students but intensely scrutinized in Europe. The titular "Letters from the Earth" series include wry and mildly heretical musings on Biblical lore, Christian cosmology, and human nature in general. These were indeed the basis for a rather creepy children's Claymation TV show in the 80s called "The Adventures of Mark Twain," the sort of thing that nowadays would get program directors drawn and quartered in a megachurch parking lot.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scathing aspersion on the foundation and perpetuation of religion, especially the Judeo-Christian faith, heavy-handed yet with much merit. The best parts were the Letters from Satan and the Lowest Animal chapters.

Here, Twain goes against the grain, considering the time period, and says we need to be a little more humble as a species.

The crux of this whole collection lies in Twain's conviction that humans are low and silly creatures; we think too highly of ourselves, and an intelligent individual will eventually find the folly in superstition, religion, and human arrogance.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is bitter Twain at his darkest.

In essence he takes the view that Nature is so filled with irrational horror and pain that existence is hardly worth having. Humankind is not much better as its members thrive on stupid contradictions and cruelty. The Bible is filled with thousands of lies and Jesus Christ was himself a sadistic liar.

In such a cosmos God is incredibly stupid, evil, or non-existent. That last is the most comforting thought as it at least allows human beings to concentrate on their own survival without worrying about meaningless idiotic rituals.

There is no doubt but that Twain is deeply sensitive to the very real terrors and pain of life and these are challenges that everyone must face. Unfortunately, Twain thought that humans were merely complicated automatons. If that is the case, they haven't free will and their ability to freely change anything is questionable. So don't look for answers in this challenging piece. But then Twain wasn't trying to provide an answer; he wanted to force the reader to confront the ethical dilemma of existence.

[Seth · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the last year I've taken great care in crafting my reading goals towards something that will satisfy my need to be a more thoroughly educated guy. I've been an avid reader since my early teens, and as a byproduct I've gained a relatively good grasp of many key books. However, lately the gaps in my education have really become a bother. It is with that said, that I put forward Mark Twain as exhibit A: Letters from the Earth is my first substantial introduction to him. I think I read Tom Sawyer when I was really young, but I mention it mostly as a limp attempt to save face. And wouldn't yo know it, instead of obviously starting there, I begin with a collection of unfinished stories, sketchy essays and other miscellaneous material that was published posthumously. But maybe starting this way is a good thing. This work represents Twain at his most mature and also maybe his most honest. I couldn't help but think while I was reading it, that this may be the best way to get to know him as a thinker before I get to know him as author.

In the primary set of "letters" that share the book's title, Twain meticulously eviscerates the logical underpinnings of Christianity. While reading it, I found it difficult to ascertain how far Twain's anger goes. He saves most of his wrath for humanity, but the ultimate nature of God doesn't get away unscathed either. Near the beginning, his portrait of God during creation as witnessed by the three angels is kind of funny but not without a hint of reverence for divinity. However his distinction between Biblical law and the "law of God" offers little hope for a universally just creator. Man's nature, if it can be traced to a divine origin ultimately does a disservice to both parties if the two are mirrors of each other.

Then again, maybe Twain is simply illustrating that when it comes to this subject, humanity simply has to give up trying to codify the unknowable. This to me is somewhat confirmed by the tone of Satan's curiosity. It's like he's saying "get a load of these dumbasses!" when he describes biblical theology as a backwards set of moral rules that uniformly contradict human nature. Man is wired to enjoy sex, yet the Bible says we are to deny its gravitational pull on us. Heaven is a Christian's ultimate goal, yet it seems devoid of any intellectual value whatsoever. Heaven in Twain's estimation is a world where people sing and play harps in what amounts to some celestial blast of idiotic white noise.

I don't think the letters should be seen as a tract against humanity's natural inclination towards the spiritual, nor do I sense that it's ultimately saying the most reasonable path is all out rejection of God. No, this is a renunciation of an institution for the most part. Perhaps the most scandalous part of it all is the particular angel Twain chooses to take the potshots. Strangely, the Satan here doesn't refer to the fact that he is basically Earth's cosmic villain. This is a Satan that is simply reporting back to his buddies; he is stripped from his dark side in the same way Twain is stripping God from the Christian framework. The God that remains after this split is still problematic, but also more honest.

The rest of this collection is mostly taken from the last 20 or so years of Twain's life. The Papers of the Adam Family offer excerpts from the diaries of the first family on earth, the most interesting of which are Eve's entries. Her portrait of Adam as the humble first scientist and her notes on a crumbling civilization in the years before the flood were some of my favorite moments in the entire book. I also enjoyed Letters To the Earth, where heaven issues an itemized receipt of answered prayers to a miserly coal baron. Cooper's Prose Style is a hilarious but maybe mean-spirited attack on James Fenimore Cooper's literary crimes. The Damned Human Race takes on the notion that we are the pinnacle of evolutionary development, and demolishes the idea that our sense of morality makes us better than animals. Finally, the unfinished novella "The Great Dark" is something altogether different from everything that comes before and it's a real shame that it's basically a rough draft that was ultimately abandoned. When it's really working at first, you definitely gather an H.G. Wells vibe in this story about the veiled nature of ultimate reality.

So who is this Twain I've finally taken the time to meet? I hesitate to make a broad assessment because I have not read one sentence from any of his biographies, nor do I plan to sit down with the newly published Autobiography until I've read more of his material. Let's just say that he ultimately comes across as bitter in this instance. You sense he is very frustrated with how inconsiderate, hypocritical and vile people are to one another, and how our primary religious structures seem to only amplify these traits. This is not a book for someone that is offended easily, because his critiques are venomous in certain passages, and I must admit I was mildly surprised at how far he was willing to take his arguments. Maybe this says more about my preconceptions of Mark Twain going in, and perhaps as I read more I will decipher a better understanding of his overall outlook.

Quotes:

"It is most difficult to to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmnesses; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindnesses repented of in permanent malignities."
- Letters From the Earth; Letter VI

The Biblical law says: "Thou shalt not Kill"
The law of God planted in the heart of man at his birth says "Though shalt Kill"
- Letters From the Earth; Letter X

"Susy: 'Papa, I should think you would take pupils.'
No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience torpid through virtuous inaction are more to me than corner lots and praise.""
- A Cat-Tale

"No work of art can be intelligently and enjoyably contemplated unless you know about tone and feeling; unless you know all about tone and feeling, and can tell at a glance which is the tone and which is the feeling."
- From an English Notebook; Old Saint Paul's

[Guillermo Maddalena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesantes reflexiones para pensar 🤔!!!

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of largely unpublished material is the most impressive contribution to books by Mark Twain after "The Mysterious Stranger" of 1916, with which it shares an imaginative grandeur. Mark Twain thought, while he was alive, he was going to terrify the world with a metaphysical masterpiece, "What Is Man?" (1917), but that book is mostly unreadable. However, he included similar ideas in both "The Mysterious Stranger" and Letters From the Earth, and they are both better books as they demonstrate better the genius of his imaginative skills. The cosmic irony of The Mysterious Stranger, in which Satan, a nephew of the "great" Satan, visits a group of boys in the Austrian village of Eseldorf (really Hannibal, Mo., in disguise) results from the incongruity between Satan's enormous powers and celestial foresight, and his contempt of the values of the human race. This irony, almost savagely pressed into the consciousness of the reader, gives range, strength and splendor to the present volume.

The story of the publication of "Letters From the Earth" needs to be told. It was put together as a book by the late Bernard DeVoto, then editor of the Mark Twain papers, as long ago as 1939. Parts of it were even published in the magazines, but the book was delayed for almost a quarter of a century by the objection of Clara Clemens that the papers present a "distorted" view of her father's ideas. In this interval Bernard DeVoto has died, but Clara Clemens' scruples have been overcome, and Henry Nash Smith, who is the present editor of the Mark Twain papers, has got the book out. I picked it up many years ago in an inexpensive paperback version which I have referred to again and again to this day. This is the adult Mark Twain - far removed from his days of creating Princes, Paupers and Connecticut Yankees. (This edition includes bibliographical notes by Bernard DeVoto.)

[Kokelector · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twain con una prosa ingeniosa y llena de ironías propias de una autor clásico como él, nos muestra el mundo visto desde las divertidas cartas que envía Satanás al cielo, a sus congéneres celestiales. Desde la increíble imaginación que tiene la creación de dios al establecer los supuestos parámetros con los cuales deben guiar sus vidas, hasta las increíbles historias en torno al Arca de Noé, el diluvio, incluido el “pecado original” que el ser humano ha logrado cautivarse así mismo en torno a una religión que nadie les ha pedido que tengan. Twain en una seria de cartas, que llamaron ensayos, relata con absoluta ironía la visión de un ángel que no puede creer en lo que se ha convertido una religión inexistente creada solo por ellos mismos. Majestuosa forma de acercarse en primeros pasos al ateismo. Gran lectura para todos y todas que cuestionan sus credos o los credos en general.

Si quieres leerlo, acá lo encuentras.

[Ana-Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reason brings the courage to take a fresh look at myths and stories in the Bible that have been used as justification for mankind actions for centuries. With a fresh view and a sharp mind, M.Twain provoked me bitter smile after bitter smile while reading Satan's letters. But a first step to break the spell has been taken, so hopefully there is no coming back to dogma and superstition afterwards....

the letters can be read here: http://www.online-literature.com/twai...

[Anand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant. The failure and hypocrisy of religion and out puny imagination of God, Heaven and Hell leaves mankind exposed and ordinary.

[Hansen Wendlandt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read anything by Twain, and you come away rather the same: laughing at and angry with your fellow humans for being so witless and mean to each other. (Imagine what he would say about Fox News today!) Twain's cynicism and sarcasm are more refined in his classics, but generally, one feels that soul in this collection of obscure stories. Many are incomplete; a few drag as boring and apparently unedited; but there are a few inspired pieces worth reading.

The titular story, “Letters From the Earth”, is a gem that will still scandalize over-pious folk. Here, a stunned angel (Satan) describes the silly awkwardness that we have created as our religion. The cultural image of ‘heaven’, for instance, seems to have shifted over the generations, but the fact that 'we' never think clearly about our sacred projections remains the same, namely that we leave out of our idea great joys like sex and intellectual pursuit, and put in quite mundane unlikable ideas of clouds and singing. "Many of these people have the reasoning faculty, but no one uses it in religious matters." (24) Eden is cleverly re-imagined, as were the purposes and logistics of Noah’s Ark full of 68 Billion diseased flies. As the Letters reach forward to Jesus, Twain's satirical heresies move from humourous to bitter, as he blames Jesus for inventing Hell, and rails on God for bringing such disproportional wrath onto the poor and innocent.

“Papers of the Adams Family” has its moments, attacking such diverse topics as baseball, politics, music, old conservatives and greedy commercialism; but is a work in progress that doesn’t together well. "The Damned Human Race" is also worth a look, focusing squarely on the maniacal ways we treat each other, such that Darwin had it backwards--we did not ascend, but have descended from the more moral animals! Otherwise, there is much forgetable, excepting a few choice phrases scattered throughout:

"There has never been an intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent to live his life over again." (34)
“Man is a fool; you are now aware that woman is a damn fool.” (43)
"The nation has sold its honor for a phrase." (98)
"There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the pocket." (99)
"There is no place in London which is less than two miles and a half from any other place." (141)
"The Comanche has had no religion, and hence no pressing motive to reform his brother by killing him." (146)
"France is entitled to a distinguished place among the partly civilized peoples of our globe." (151)
Perhaps the oldest example of the phrase "What's up?" (160)
"You never see a man bald-headed on his chin." (183)

[Darrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way Mark Twain pokes fun at Christianity, it's no wonder these writings were originally censored. In Letters from the Earth, Satan reports back to heaven in a series of epistles making light of religion. He explains that Noah and his family were all disease ridden, since God's command to preserve two of every animal also applied to microbes. God, in his infinite wisdom, saw that diseases such as syphilis would be necessary in the world to come. I've got to say, picturing Noah going around and intentionally contracting diseases is quite hilarious.

Also included in this collection are the highly imaginative Papers of the Adam Family where Twain presents us with extracts from Methuselah's diary and Eve's autobiography. Since people lived to be several hundred years old at the beginning of the Bible, it was not uncommon for a man to meet his great great great great great great great grandson, although with thousands of descendants, he wouldn't be likely to remember his name. 100 year olds are referred to as children and a couple who wish to get married at such an early age are advised to wait a few decades. Eve is a scientist and tells us of Adam's discovery that water always runs downhill.

This collection is really a mixed bag. A Cat-Tale is a bedtime story full of puns that Twain told his daughters. There's an essay included in which he points out why Cooper is a poor writer using examples from The Last of the Mohicans, another essay detailing why Twain considered the French more savage than the Comanches, a travelogue from his time in England, and an appeal to use phonetic spelling. He pokes fun at books on etiquette by detailing the proper way for a gentleman to rescue a lady from a fire. In a piece title The Damned Human Race, he explains why humans are lower than animals when it comes to morality.

The highlight for me was The Great Dark, a surreal story which would have made Kafka proud, in which Twain details life aboard a ship traveling across a microscope slide. Microscopic creatures appear as giant monsters to the crew. Though they are traveling across just a single drop of water, it takes them years of traveling in the dark until they get to the bright spot illuminated by the microscope.

[John Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nearing the end of Mark Twain's life, he wrote a series of humorous essays on Judeo-Christian theology, including The Diaries of Adam and Eve and Letters from Earth, which were posthumously published. In the book Satan, who still resides with the rest of the heavenly hosts, takes a trip to Earth. This book consists of eleven letters he writes back to archangels Gabriel and Michael with his thoughts on humanity, Judeo-Christian scripture and morality. When Mark Twain wrote these essays, he was deeply in debt, had just lost his wife and one of his daughters; therefore, one can imagine that he might be despondent.

I believe, like many, Twain was trying to understand a God who would allow evil to exist and to reconcile the divinity as portrayed in the Old Testament with that in the New Testament. Regarding the day of worship, Twain states:

To forty-nine in fifty, the Sabbath Day is a dreary, dreary bore...The gladdened moment for all of them is when the preacher uplifts his hands for the benediction. You can hear the soft rustle of relief that sweeps the house, and you recognize that is its eloquent with gratitude.

Later, Twain quips regarding the inconsistency between one of the Ten Commandments and God's campaign against the Moabites through Moses:

...it was God himself who said: "Thou shalt not kill." Then it is plain that he cannot keep his own commandments.

Both C.S. Lewis and Mark Twain were atheists at one time or another. C.S. Lewis became an apologist (defender) of the Christian faith while evidently Mark Twain, even those he was buried in a Presbyterian cemetery, never renounced his atheism.

Whether you are an atheist or a Christian, there is something for all in this short novel. For example, Mark Twain's retelling of Noah and the great flood had me chuckling. If you are easily offended with someone outlining some of the inconsistencies in Holy Scripture, you might want to skip this book.

[Pianobikes · Rating 3 out of 5]

“La Biblia está constituida esencialmente a partir de los fragmentos de otras biblias que estuvieron de moda y después entraron en decadencia: carece, por lo tanto de toda originalidad.” ~ Cartas desde la Tierra de Mark Twain.

Lucifer es expulsado del Paraíso y desde la Tierra analiza el comportamiento del hombre y su relación con Dios y la Biblia. Así, nos habla del Génesis y del pecado original; de la ira de Dios y el diluvio universal; del sexo y de los propios mandamientos. Todo con un hilo conductor: la interpretación “sui generis” que el hombre ha realizado plasmando en la Biblia una relación con Dios basada en castigos y sacrificios. Más que criticar a Dios, lo que hace Twain es criticar al hombre por creer, ingenuamente, la historia plasmada en la Biblia. Y así extraemos frases como: “Muchos hombres sobre la Tierra poseen la capacidad de razonar, pero no la usan en materias religiosas.” O “Dios tiene un código moral para si mismo y otro distinto para sus hijos”.

Lectura conjunta del grupo #ClasicosFlash que si no fuese porque el anterior, también de Twain, me encantó, quizá le hubiese dado mejor nota. Pero este me ha resultado más repetitivo en su argumentación. Reconozco que ha sido un libro polémico y atrevido para su época, pero hoy en día la mayoría de los argumentos que esgrimen ya están superados. Eso sí, nos ha dado para comentar a punta pala.

[Describiendo Mundos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mi primer 5 estrellas del año.

Le tenia miedo a este libro, tenia miedo sobre lo que podría encontrar en sus páginas, pero una vez más el ingenio, la ironía y la sagacidad de Twain me han dejado con un gran sabor.

Pronto tendrán mi reseña en el blog.

[Bob Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hilarious! Christianity's silliness revealed.

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Twain raw. The scathing indictment of Christianity along with Twain's mastery of observational humor put me in mind of George Carlin.

[Joana · Rating 5 out of 5]

A friend of mine at work recommended me this book, I had no idea what it was about until she told me about it!!! As I've loved Twain's writing before - not his novels though - I took her recommendation, and this was excellent!!!
I really love the humor, satire and criticism in the book, the way it explores society and the hypocrisy of it all and of the church... the ridiculous way we over time have looked at the world and at God... some of the comments were what I thought when I read sections of the Old Testament, the cruelty we're ready to embrace if it's God willing, the death and famine and war we believe to be Godsend... Satan asks the question why would we believe in such a punishable God...
I also really like how he speaks of the way society views sex and Heaven, the way we picture an afterlife that lacks the things a lot of us find the most enjoyable about being alive, how ridiculous that notion is, that the reward would not be something we truly desire...
The story telling method is also really good, Satan seeing everything himself, coming down to Earth, with the knowledge of the Greater World and questioning how we see the Beyond. This is just a very fascinating read, with really good arguments put in a ironic commentary.

Read for the Orilium Autumn Equinox (magical readathon) and the prompt for a Qualified in "Lore" - letters featured in a book :)