Prometheus Books to publish rare Mark Twain collection

S.T. Joshi has done it again. He’s come up with an incredible collection of uncommon writings by Mark Twain in What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays. As an editor and literary sleuth Joshi, an independent scholar who has edited collections of great American writers such as H.L. Mencken and H.P. Lovecraft, among others, has weeded out key writings by Twain on religion. Reminiscent of the French Enlightenment writer Voltaire, Twain had an unbounded contempt for religious hypocrisy and obstructionism. He peppered his essays with a razor sharp satirical wit, and his writing is characteristically sardonic and humorous in these essays.

Many of the essays in this book have not been readily available before, and Joshi provides helpful annotations to explain various historical, literary and religious references. The main essay in the book is What Is Man? (1906), a long philosophical dialogue about the nature of religion, where Twain asserts that altruism does not exist, that every human action is the product of outside influences, and we help others primarily as a means to make ourselves comfortable. Twain condemns religious exclusivity, the dreadful treatment of animals by a supposedly moral human race, and what he calls the hypocritical Christian thirst for money. Twain pulls no punches here, as he did in the posthumous collection of his writings, Letters from the Earth.

Although Twain maintained until the end of his life that he believed in God, he expressed a deep skepticism toward such religious beliefs as “special Providence” (God’s interference in the affairs of individuals), the concept of hell, the religious basis of morality, and the divine inspiration of the Bible. He had serious concerns about central religious tenants, and it’s clear that these weighed on his mind for much of his life. Twain’s family was uncomfortable with some of his writings (for instance, Letters from the Earth was not published until 1962, well after his death in 1910), and editor Joshi and Prometheus Books have done readers a great service by bringing Twain’s obscure but lively philosophical writings on religion to a wider audience.

There are many surprises to be had in any Twain collection, he was an undisputed master of many styles of writing, and Joshi provides a comprehensive introduction that elucidates Twain’s shifting attitudes towards religion in general. What we have here is a true American original, Mark Twain, thought by many to be the Father of American Literature, taking a straight aim at the multifarious claims of religion – metaphysical, moral and political – and exposing what he saw as their fallacies and deliberate obscurantism.



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