In 2014, when Kevin Malone’s opera Mysterious 44 premiered in Manchester, England, the production featured narrative voiceovers by Richard Dawkins. It was a fitting choice. Funded in part by Dawkins’s Foundation for Reason and Science, Malone’s operatic interpretation of Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger accorded with the evolutionary biologist’s worldview. The final revelation of Twain’s Stranger—that “there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream”—seemed to anticipate Dawkins’s conclusion that “the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” For Malone, Twain’s “antireligious story” was liberating. It had subverted his Lutheran upbringing when he read it as a boy.
But is this an effect that Mark Twain would have celebrated? The prevailing assumption is that he would, and with devilish delight. But his life and work contain meanings that stand in contrast, if not opposition, to the common perception of his irreverence.
Read Full Article »