Satan finds human beliefs about themselves almost insane, pointing out that their conception of heaven leaves out everything humans find most pleasurable in life (particularly sex). The eponymous story, “Letters from the Earth,” is a set of eleven letters written by Satan to the archangels Gabriel and Michael about his travels. The collection is very long and uneven in quality, so this summary will cover the best known and most critically lauded of the pieces. Of course, the irony is that by the time this work was finally published, Twain’s critical view of Christianity was no longer as eyebrow-raising as it must have been when first written. However, it is clear that Twain actually authored most of these short writings much earlier in his career, and they are of a piece with the harsher truths of works like Huck Finn. The idea that America’s pre-eminent humorist was also a genial atheist and Biblical debunker was shocking for some critics, who have argued that these must be the works of a man suffering deep grief over the deaths of his wife and daughter at the end of his life. The pieces were gathered by Twain’s literary executor Bernard DeVoto in a collection titled Letters from the Earth, and they feature sharp takes on the inconsistencies and illogic of Christianity and biting criticisms of American life. In 1962, more than fifty years after Mark Twain’s death, his daughter finally allowed the publication of the essays and satirical short stories that were deemed too irreligious and controversial to see the light of day when he wrote them.
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