To Hell with It

February 15, 2021
The nonbeliever's guide to eternal torment. Fans of the formally innovative comic essayist Moore learned of his falling-out with the faith of his childhood via his 1997 spiritual memoir The Accidental Buddhist. Now, however, it turns out he's still working on freeing himself from the far-reaching aftereffects of Catholic school, inviting readers to join him in sloughing off the "massive emotional backpacks of needless guilt that have been strapped onto our tender psyches by organized religion and the pretzel-logic of medieval theology." In chapters linked to the cantos of Dante's Inferno, the author debunks the poem's "pulsing, perilous mixtape of Greek, Roman, and Christian myths and images." He also attacks the misinformation distributed by his first religion teacher, Sister Mary Mark (he's still unclear on how his donated milk money saved pagan babies); the writings of St. Augustine, "a great and devout man, a spiritual genius, and honestly, a bit of a wackadoodle"; The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, "a pint-sized paperback offering a significant dumbing down of key biblical teachings, written expressly for impressionable young ears"; and an even more bizarre book titled The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven (2010), which was "pulled from the shelves in 2015" due to a lawsuit questioning its veracity. To research Inferno-stoking vices such as gluttony, hoarding, and squandering, Moore competed in a chicken-wing eating contest in Kentucky and attended the annual "World's Longest Yard Sale," which stretches nearly 700 miles from southern Michigan to Alabama. The author also offers unexpectedly moving passages on the sad family history that inspired his mother to frequently state, "My hell is right here on Earth." Luckily, Moore found his own saving grace early on. "Each time that ugly snake of despair circled around and tried to take another bite out of me," he writes, "I was kept alive by humor and by incredulity." Unstrap your backpack of guilt and sit down for a laugh.

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