REVIEW
Howard G. Baetzhold and Joseph B. McCullough (eds.). The
Bible According to Mark Twain: Writings on Heaven, Eden, and the
Flood .
Athens and London: University of Georgia Press,
1995.
Pp. xxiv + 384. Cloth, 6-1/2" x 9-5/8". $29.95.
ISBN 0-8203-1650-4.
The following review appeared 18 September 1995 on the Mark Twain Forum.
Copyright © Mark Twain Forum, 1995. This review may not be published or
redistributed
in any medium without permission.
Reviewed by:
David Tomlinson <tomlinso@nadn.navy.mil>
U. S. Naval Academy
Commissions are donated to the Mark Twain Project
Mark Twain's writing is always a delight, and this anthology of
it is no exception.
Howard Baetzhold and Joseph McCullough have contrived to please both
general audiences
and scholars with a collection about Biblical characters and heaven, Eden
and the
flood.
Who can resist Twain's humanizing Adam and Eve? The first couple have no
knowledge
of human nature. They do not know how to deal with each other and,
according to
Twain, are mystified by the first baby. Most of us have felt ourselves at
such a
loss at least once in our lives.
We can all sympathize with Methuselah who as a youth of sixty defies
convention to
marry a woman of his choice, not the Princess Sarah who had been chosen for
him.
And when Captain Stormfield enters heaven, we are a bit surprised at what
he finds.
The materials remain fresh on a second, third or forty-seventh reading.
While most of the pieces included in the volume have been printed before,
some in
Twain's lifetime, some in Letters from the Earth
(1962) and some in Ray B. Browne's collection Mark Twain's Quarrel
with Heaven
(1970), all have been newly edited for this volume. Consequently,
phrases, sentences
and more which had been excluded by earlier editors are often included
here, carefully
but unobtrusively marked by a dagger so that the reader can know what is
new. There are even one or two previously unpublished small
pieces. Twain's writing is not punctuated by constant
footnoting, something general readers
will appreciate. Scholars will find that the text is more fully documented
than
many editions with note numbers showing, however. Any item not found in a
desktop
dictionary gets a note at the end of the book, catalogued by page number
and line number.
The documentation is user-friendly, however. That is, each note is easy
to find
and easy to read.
The book itself does not include a list of emendations, something textual
scholars
might like though few others would want the clutter. "A Note on the
Texts" says
that such a list is available from the editors to interested scholars.
What insights does this book furnish? It shows clearly that Twain's ideas
about the
Bible and the basic questions of life and death changed little over his
literary
career.
As always, Twain's analyses are unique. In considering the story of the
fall, he
does not blame Adam but God. "He was an unfair God; he was a God of
unsound judgment;
he was a God of failures and miscalculations; he was given to odd ideas and
fantastic
devices" (315). What was so unfair about God in relation to Adam?
He commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil; To disobey
could not be a sin, because Adam could not comprehend a sin until
the eating the fruit should reveal to him the difference between right and
wrong.
So he was unfair in punishing Adam for doing wrong when he could not know
it was
wrong. (315)
In his autobiographical dictations in June of
1906, Twain said almost the same things:
To Adam is forbidden the fruit of a certain tree and he is gravely informed that if
he disobeys he shall die. How could that be expected to impress Adam?
Adam was
merely a man in stature; in knowledge and experience he was in no way the
superior
of a baby of two years of age; he could have no idea of what the word death
meant. He had
never seen a dead thing; he had never heard of a dead thing before. The
word meant
nothing to him. If the Adam child had been warned that if he ate of the
apples he
would be transformed into a meridian of longitude, that threat would have
been the equivalent
of the other, since neither of them could mean anything to him.
(319-320)
Though he puts the sentiments in the mouth of Satan
in "Letters from the Earth," which
he wrote in 1909, they are the same. Twain's implied criticism of Biblical
characters
like Adam and Eve, Shem and Methuselah is that we do not see enough of
their humanity. He sets about to humanize them properly in the diaries he
writes of them. His
criticism of God, however, is just the opposite: the God of the Bible is
too human,
too capricious, too imperfect. The result is a thundering indictment of
God's unflattering characteristics.
The curious thing is Twain's attitude toward Biblical literalism. As an
adult, he
associated with the minister Joseph Twichell and a set of people who would
not have
viewed Biblical literature as literal truth. They would have seen it as
representing
the beliefs of those who did the writing of the Biblical books. The
imperfections of
the God of "Genesis," then, should not be attributed to God but
to those who wrote
about him. What the nineteenth-century sophisticates believed was never
what Twain
himself could take to heart, however. He had been raised in the Biblical
literalism of
the small Hannibal churches, and no fancy theological explanations would
relieve
him of the burden that the literalism he learned there imposed.
The other curious circumstances he could not overcome were the common ideas
about
heaven. Nevertheless, his failure to overcome them makes for wonderful
reading in
"Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," "Captain Simon
Wheeler's Dream Visit to Heaven"
and "A Singular Episode: The Reception of Rev. Sam Jones in
Heaven."
"Letters from the Earth" also contains Satan's dealing with
people's unrealistic expectations
for the hereafter. They believe they will make wonderful harp music when
they have
never been musicians before. They will love those they have disdained in
life. They will live without life's greatest joy, sexual intercourse, and
be happy.
Where was Eden? Twain's answer differed on that one depending on his frame
of mind
and the task at hand. The most memorable line, of course, is that extract
from Adam's
diary recording his utterance at Eve's grave. Generally it is taken to be
Twain's
comment on his wife Livy as well: "Wheresoever she was, there was
Eden." The most playful
answer comes in the "Extracts from Adam's Diary" published in the
Niagara Book
in 1893. There, he opines, Niagara was Eden.
The Bible According to Mark Twain
is such a delight that I hope a paperback version is soon available. I
can envision
using it in courses on Twain, on American literature and on the Bible and
literature.
My suspicion is that others will find the collection as enjoyable as I
have.
Contents
Preface, ix
Abbreviations, xiii
Introduction, xv
A Note on the Texts, xxiii
Eden and the Flood
Extracts from Adam's Diary, 3
Eve's Diary, 17
Autobiography of Eve and Diaries Antedating the Flood, 35
Documents Related to "Diaries Antedating the Flood", 85
Two Additional Pre-Deluge Diarists, 91
Passages from Methuselah's Diary, 97
Passages from Shem's Diary, 107
Adam's Expulsion, 111
Adam's Soliloquy, 117
Heaven
Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, 129
Captain Simon Wheeler's Dream Visit to Heaven, 189
A Singular Episode: The Reception of Rev. Sam Jones in Heaven, 195
Mental Telegraphy?, 203
Etiquette for the Afterlife: Advice to Paine, 207
Letters from the Earth
Letters from the Earth, 213
Appendices
Appendix 1. Original Continuation of "Autobiography of Eve", 263
Appendix 2. Planning Notes for "Autobiography of Eve", 275
Appendix 3. "Extracts from Adam's Diary" from the Original
Niagara Book
Version, 278
Appendix 4. Planning Notes for Methuselah's Diary, 287
Appendix 5. Passages from "Stormfield" Preserved in the
Manuscript but Deleted from Typescript or Proof, 299
a. Original Mrs. Rushmore and Daughter Episode, 299
b. Stormfield's Trouble with Wings, 302
Appendix 6. Discussion of the Fall from "Schoolhouse Hill", 306
Appendix 7. God of the Bible vs. God of the Present Day (1870s), 313
Appendix 8. Selected Passages on God and the Bible from Autobiographical
Dictations of June 1906, 318
Notes, 333
Works Cited, 381