Written by Mark Twain (real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens) - Audio book performed by McAvoy Layne - Audio-Original Program - 6 COMPACT DISCS

Publisher, Phoenix Audio (April 2009)

1996 Audie Award Finalist for Best Original Work Audiobook, presented by the Audio Publishers Association for excellence in Spoken Audio publishing.

Censorship kept Letters out of print until 1962, when the book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 18 weeks. This one-man performance reveals Twain’s droll, dark side with an irreverent look at the Bible.

An Original Performance Created by McAvoy Layne

UNCENSORED!

Based on Twain’s Writing Considered Too Controversial to Publish Until 1962!

This brilliant one-man performance based on Letters from the Earth is sharp, witty, sometimes wildly funny, sometimes dark and sacrilegious. The book, upon which the performance is based, was not published until 196z, but was then on The New York Times bestseller list for 18 weeks. This performance helps restore Twain's writings to their rightful place in American literature, freed from the murky shadow of censorship.

The first act exhibits Twain's astonishingly inventive imagination about Biblical themes: dialogue between the Creator and Satan, Adam and Eve, Noah and the animals. The second act explores Twain's idea that Human Beings have a defective Moral Sense, including sexual inequities, plus his comments about Methuselah's diary on baseball. Nothing is too holy for his rapier wit!

According to Twain, the sardonic revelation of Letters is intended to be a strong challenge to humankind to be better, "as against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand."

About the Author: Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens {1835-1910), is known to everyone as Tom Sawyer's and Huck Finn's literary father. His Mississippi boyhood, travels abroad, riverboat pilot work, and journalistic days in the West inspired classics that make him one of the best-known American writers ever.

About the Performer: McAvoy Layne is the ghost of Mark Twain. He has performed as a Twain impressionist throughout the world, is the author of Hooked on Twain, portrays Twain in the Discovery Channel's celebrated documentary, The Adventures of Huck Finn, and is the creator of the performance, Mark Twain : Wild Humorist of the West.