If This Party Gets Any Livelier, a Funeral Might Break Out!: The Chronicle of Young Satan, Chapter 7 • The Devil According to Mark Twain

Chapter seven of The Chronicle of Young Satan is the darkest chapter of the season, and there's no way to soften it. Nikolaus is going to drown in twelve days — Satan has already told the boys so — and the chapter is an unbearable countdown to a death his friends know is coming and can't prevent or explain. He drowns trying to rescue a missing girl, Lisa Brandt, who drowns with him. Twain calls those final eleven days some of the most precious of Theodore's life, and somehow that's not a contradiction.We dig into how the grief radiates outward from there. Lisa's mother curses God and swears never to pray again; a carpenter seizes her daughter's body as payment for an unpaid debt and buries her in a cattle yard, reported with a matter-of-factness that's almost more disturbing than outrage would be. When the boys beg Satan to help the grieving mother, he does — by rewriting someone else's fate without that person's knowledge or consent, sending a man named Fisher to hell in the process for something he does in a moment of anger that wouldn't have happened otherwise. Satan can't understand why this troubles them. He's never felt sorrow. He only understands it theoretically.We also get into purgatory — Satan claims it's been discontinued for not paying for itself — and an honest tangent into "souling," the real historical practice that became trick-or-treating. This is late, bleak, fully cynical Twain, and we walked away convinced he might be darker than Poe ever was.The Devil's Details show page/archiveBanana for Scale Facebook GroupConnect with Kynan on Instagram or LetterboxdConnect with Lester on Facebook, Instagram, or X ---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.Check out the other podcasts in the Banana for Scale family of podcasts:Every Minute of Everything Everywhere All at OnceThe Exorcist Minute