Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven
What if Heaven wasn't gates and harps, but a celestial bureaucracy run amok? Mark Twain, in his final published work, imagines just that, and it's the funniest, most subversive take on the afterlife you'll ever read. Captain Eli Stormfield dies rich and content, expecting the grand reception his pious friends promised. Instead, he lands in a celestial waiting room drowning in paperwork, gets assigned to the wrong epoch, and discovers that even God has trouble with committee meetings. The Heaven Twain conjures is absurd, disorganized, and oddly familiar, full of petty officials, endless forms, and a hierarchy that would make any corporation blush. Through Stormfield's bewildered eyes, Twain dissects everything from religious hubris to the human need for belonging, asking what happiness actually looks like when you strip away the ceremonies. This is late Twain at his finest: cynical, hilarious, and deeply human. He wasn't interested in heaven as reward, he wanted to know what we'd do with eternity, and his answer is both a comedy of errors and a quiet meditation on what matters. If you've ever wondered whether the afterlife would be as messy as life, Stormfield's here to tell you: it's worse.
Editions
X-Ray
“A nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean. At its cradle (to repeat a thoughtful adage) religion stands, and philosophy accompanies it to the grave. In the beginning of all cultures a strong religious faith conceals and softens the nature of things, and gives men courage to bear pain and hardship patiently; at every step the gods are with them, and will not let them perish, until they do. Even then a firm faith will explain that it was the sins of the people that turned their gods to an avenging wrath; evil does not destroy faith, but strengthens it. If victory comes, if war is forgotten in security and peace, then wealth grows; the life of the body gives way, in the dominant classes, to the life of the senses and the mind; toil and suffering are replaced by pleasure and ease; science weakens faith even while thought and comfort weaken virility and fortitude. At last men begin to doubt the gods; they mourn the tragedy of knowledge, and seek refuge in every passing delight. Achilles is at the beginning, Epicurus at the end. After David comes Job, and after Job, Ecclesiastes.””
— Mark Twain
“The institutions, conventions, customs and laws that make up the complex structure of a society are the work of a hundred centuries and a billion minds; and one mind must not expect to comprehend them in one lifetime, much less in twenty years.””
— Mark Twain
“[N]o language has ever had a word for a virgin man.””
— Mark Twain
“There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away.””
— Mark Twain
“Nearly all ancient peoples worshiped sex in some form and ritual, and not the lowest people but the highest expressed their worship most completely [...]. The sexual character and functions of primitive deities were held in high regard, not through any obscenity of mind, but through a passion for fertility in women and in the earth. Certain animals, like the bull and the snake, were worshiped as apparently possessing or symbolizing in a high degree the divine power of reproduction.The snake in the story of Eden is doubtless a phallic symbol, representing sex as the origin of evil, suggesting sexual awakening as the beginning of the knowledge of good and evil, and perhaps insinuating a certain proverbial connection between mental innocence and bliss.””
— Mark Twain
“The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action.””
— Mark Twain
“This is the tragedy of almost every civilization”
— Mark Twain
“Civilizations are the generations of the racial soul. As family-rearing, and then writing, bound the generations together, handing down the lore of the dying to the young, so print and commerce and a thousand ways of communication may bind the civilizations together, and preserve for future cultures all that is of value for them in our own. Let us, before we die, gather up our heritage, and offer it to our children.””
— Mark Twain
“There are not many things finer in our murderous species than this noble curiosity, this restless and reckless passion to understand.””
— Mark Twain
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven by Mark Twain free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Twain, Mark. Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. Lex, lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9.Twain, M. (n.d.). Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9Twain, Mark. Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/extract-from-captain-stormfield-s-visit-to-heaven-dcfbd68c-51fe-47e9-a2ce-bf81279eabc9.
