Some time ago I picked up a used copy of Letters From The Earth: Uncensored Writings By Mark Twain. Actually, I have another copy of this in the house which I saw while looking for something else on a bookshelf.
The book was pulled together posthumously by editors from writings Twain never published, things they found after he died. Like many authors, Twain started things, working toward some grand plan, then never finished them. Perhaps he realized the project didn’t make sense. Perhaps other things caught his interest. The editors found value in these writings and published it in 1938, more than twenty years after Twain’s death.
Thus, the book is a hodgepodge of materials, most of them dealing with religion and man, particularly relations between men and women. The Table of Contents is as follows.
- Letters From The Earth
- Papers of the Adam Family
- Letter To The Earth
- A Cat-Tale
- Cooper’s Prose Style
- Official Report to the I.I.A.S
- The Gorky Incident
- Simplified Spelling
- Something About Repentance
- From An English Notebook
- From The Manuscript of “A Tramp Abroad”; the French and the Comanches
- From an Unfinished Burlesque of Books on Etiquette
- The Damned Human Race
- The Great Dark
These vary in length from a few pages to fifty pages. Some I found interesting, if not illuminating. Some of his thoughts on women’s sexuality came from a different perspective and included things I’d never thought of. Some about sin and man’s relationship to God presented a skeptic’s or atheist’s viewpoint on Christianity. I don’t know if Twain was an atheist, but would conclude so just based on reading this book.
I found the article on James Fenimore Cooper’s writings overly critical. Cooper wrote a several decades before Twain began. Writing styles were different and had changed a lot in those years. This is the second piece I’ve read of Twain’s that pans Cooper. Not sure why Twain had it out for him.
I’m glad I read this as it tells me much more about Twain. I read almost all of it, skipping some of “The Great Dark” and most of the editor’s notes. I won’t be keeping it. Next time I leave The Dungeon for the Upper Realm, I’ll bring it with me and take it strait to the sale/donation pile. As a matter of fact, when I find that other copy of this somewhere on one of my many book shelves, it will go out as well. I’m not having a permanent Twain collection.