Back when I was being brought up on Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, nobody told me there was a more adult side to Mark Twain. I was introduced to some of the philosophical issues regarding morality in Huck Finn during a college philosophy course but even then, quite surprisingly, the fact that Mark Twain was such an opponent of Christianity was never mentioned.  In fact it wasn’t until a friend recommended Letters from the Earth that I had any notion that Twain wrote about topics more enduring than slaves on rafts and less trivial than white-washing fences.  Go ahead and call me an uncultured dolt; the only mistake you’ll be making is uttering such a gross understatement.

Letters from the Earth is not your typical atheistic rant: you won’t find a bulleted list of reasons that God cannot exist nor any logical proofs to that conclusion either. Rather than rehash the same classical arguments against religion, Twain’s Letters from the Earth doesn’t aim to prove anything.  Instead he holds up a mirror to the Christian faith and forces the reader to view it in all it’s absurdity.  Letters is written as a series of fictional correspondences from an archangel on Earth to his peers back in Heaven. What I believe makes the letters so interesting is that they are written from the perspective of a being that already knows the nature of God, the universe, and man’s place within it. The archangel’s transcendental knowledge of mankind at times gives his observations of humanity a very sarcastic, often comical twist.  He already knows that Christianity is wrong in almost every way it could be, and finds a sick amusement in reporting back the details of it’s misguided theology.

One might wonder about Twain’s choice for the author of these letters. They are written by Satan, but the Satan of Letters from the Earth is not necessarily identical to his biblical counterpart; of course, neither is God or any of the other characters in the story. Twain’s Satan is one of God’s right-hand men whose loose tongue lands him a short suspension from his duties; not the classical fallen angel, antithesis of all things good Satan that we all know and love. As the story progresses, Twain’s Satan uses his time off the job to check in on our quaint little planet. Letters from the Earth is the full report of his findings.

I enjoyed Letters from the Earth too much to do the story justice in a single blog.  Now that you know the premise I hope you’ll come back tomorrow to hear the book’s unique story of creation.  Through the next few days I will devote a full entry to each chapter.  Tune in tomorrow for the next installment!