Mark Twain
Edited by Bernard Devoto
Harper & Row 1962
Hello – Mark Twain does not need any recommendations from me. I wanted to tell you about the only book that every made me laugh out loud while reading it. Embarrassingly so, as I was in a crowded college cafeteria sitting by myself. The book is Letters From the Earth compiled by Bernard Devoto once he replaced Albert B. Paine at the task of administering Mark Twain’s unpublished papers.
Devoto completed the work and presented it for publication in 1939. Clara Clemens objected to the publication and it was shelved for twenty years until she withdrew the objection. Imagine.
The work satirizes Biblical themes and therefore is not for everyone. This journey begins with the first sentence, “The Creator sat upon the throne thinking.” This is not for the timid thinker, not for those who cling to two thousand year old answers and are content with it. Here the notion of heaven’s choirs and harps are questioned. Many other teachings are also fair game. His razor wit slices deep into the conceit of human hypocrisy.
Extract from Methuselah’s Diary, Was the World Made for Man?, and Something about Repentance are some of the chapter titles. Such an inquiry in the hands of Mark Twain is meant to chafe. Papers of the Adam Family a family history of Adam and Eve with Passages from Eve’s autobiography are include for your entertainment.
He raises his voice, howling into the wind of injustices that flow through his heart. The loss of two daughters and his wife during his lifetime hardened his thinking. Both business failures and personal loss heightened his bitterness and sparked his pen. From a master of American letters, read the indignation against man and God, Mark Twain’s Letters From the Earth. To borrow from Howard Mumford Jones, “The brilliant parts are compressed and savage.”
Letter From the Earth – Worth the Read
Footnote: In Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old there is a satirical story titled Political Economy. Do at least one thing for yourself this year. Locate this work and enjoy.