The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism [Paperback]

In an anything-but-apologetic apologia, Mary Eberstadt challenges the many spokesmen (and they are almost all men) for the New Atheism in her satire, The Loser Letters. Reminiscent of Ted Turner's infamous comment that Christianity is a religion for losers, the Loser in this book is God.

The intimidatingly intelligent Eberstadt has established herself as an incisive writer who engages explosive and controversial topics. She critiqued the practice of administering strong drugs to schoolchildren in an effort to promote better school performance in Why Ritalin Rules and extended her treatment of the topic in her book, Home Alone America.

She has exposed the effects of the sexual revolution and has chronicled developments from Anglican acceptance of contraception at the Lambeth Conference in 1930 to the denomination's current warfare over homosexuality. She presents a uniquely perceptive view of pop culture with arresting titles such as Is Food the New Sex? and Eminem Is Right. She makes frequent, and provocative, contributions to the Wall Street Journal, Policy Review, Commentary, and First Things.

The Loser Letters, Eberstadt's first published work of fiction, draws on a long satirical tradition from Juvenal to The Screwtape Letters. Eberstadt's protagonist, a young woman named A. F. Christian (as in, "A Former Christian"), details the journey of her enlightened abandonment of her "cradle Dullness" (namely, her Christian faith) and her adaptation to atheism. Christian writes excited, star-struck letters to the self-described so-called "Brights" of the New Atheism, in which she gushes about the Brights' superiority while candidly evaluating the weaknesses that limit the New Atheism's ability to win new converts. With this device, Eberstadt delivers a gripping story line with a chilling twist at the end and, in the process, administers a smackdown of the New Atheism.

The Loser Letters is a must-read for anyone interested in the current atheism debate, for believing parents, and for readers who enjoy a good black comedy with deep themes. I, for one, cannot wait for the response from the Brights. Bring it on!

I read these letters when they were first published on National Review Online. I had never cared for apologetics before this, but for me, this opened up a whole new way of looking at the subject. Every time I describe these letters to someone, they are always shocked and amazed, just like I was. The dark twist in these letters is exquisitely gut-wrenching. I can't imagine why anyone would not love this book.

If you're already a Christian, and enjoy seeing people who aren't Christians being satirized and made into amoral, ridiculous idiots, you will enjoy this book.

However if you are like me, and were hoping for something to challenge your thinking about atheism and faith, save your money. This book will only insult you and offer you nothing new to reflect on. Make no mistake: the "loser" in the title is only superficially referencing god. By the time you close the back cover, you understand that the "loser" can only be A.F. Christian, the execrable character whose letters these are purported to be.

Mary Eberstadt's self-styled atheist is a caricature, a parody of a person who capitalizes the second person pronouns of the exalted atheist minds she reveres, as though she believes them to be deities worthy of that kind of respect. Further, she seems deeply (and strangely) literate on Christian thinking and literature, because she seems to spend the entire book warning said deities that they must not reference so-and-so, because his logic is ironclad! And stay away from mentioning such-and-thus, because we atheists are wrong on that. And if we are to succeed in our mission to destroy the culture--because after all, that's what all atheists want, isn't it--we must not refer to these particular statistics ... and so on. As a final insult, she details the circumstances by which the ersatz protagonist cast off her belief in god because it was somehow inconsistent with her decision to abort her child, in other words, because it was easier to be an atheist than to accept the existence of the Christian god and be saddled with the requisite responsibility and guilt, as if they necessarily go hand in hand at all. (One is not required to believe in any god to believe that abortion is wrong; these two beliefs have virtually nothing to do with each other.) The book's title is plainly intended to reference the writer of the letters rather than the "loser" she refers to in them. She is entirely shallow, stupid, hiding behind a veneer of cutesy, overenthusiastic Gen-Y language and gimmicky puns, like some kind of brainwashed college-age liberal activist, instead of giving an authentic, sincere counterpoint to modern Christianity for the purpose of respectful, rational deconstruction. Her author is either incapable of conceiving of such a thing (the reasonable atheist searching for truth), or just too lazy to imbue her character with any redeemable faculties of reason.

C.S. Lewis claimed he did not enjoy writing The Screwtape Letters, because (one presumes) it was difficult for him to think like a minion of the devil, to see the world through evil eyes. Eberstadt does not even attempt to see the world through the eyes of one whose faith is broken. She instead makes a contemptuous clown of her character. There is nothing in her writing to offer any understanding of the real challenges facing people who struggle to comprehend the difficulties of faith, Christian culture, its bewildering dogma and its inconsistent values & practices. Writing as someone who wanted this book to give me new insights and ideas to consider, I instead got a Juvenalian hit piece aimed not at respecting my confusion, or trying to engage it and help me through it, but satirizing it and making sure I knew that some Christians really don't care whether I believe or not, they just think I'm an idiot ... a loser.

Mary Eberstadt, if your goal was to entertain Christians, preaching to the choir so to speak, your book is a success. But if you wanted to reach people whose faith is uncertain and try to invite them to Christianity ... you're not helping, you're giving them the middle finger.

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