16th5,2ohoh8 (featuring Lucas, Steinbeck, Maupin, Woodbury and the Allreds)

.

080) Madman Gargantua by Mike Allred with Laura Allred, finished September 9

I've been aware of Madman for a very long time---probably since, roughly, the time it went to color. But I never picked one up and read it, except a Madman/Superman crossover at the Provo Library that I started but didn't get, so put back on the shelf.

"Getting" Madman can be a bit tricky. And I was well into this tome's 800-plus pages before I really caught the rhythm. But once I did---wow! I can see why people are so enthusiastic about it.

I first started thinking about Madman again because of a post Ken Jenning's wrote that Mr Fob referred me to as I was writing my Motley Vision post on comics.

As I wrote and read and talked with other comics people, I decided that the only way to start into Madman was to buy the book I've just read. Problem: it costs $125 retail. Which is, say it with me, a crapload of money.

But things fell into line all at once. Ken wrote me about the post and mentioned some other things I suddenly had to read (and were in the big book). My mother-in-law gave me giftcardery to BnN. BnN online had a retailer selling the big book for $60. Which is still the most I've spent on a single volume since college textbooks, but I did it. And I don't regret it.

Most of the reviews quoted within the book cite the books manic pop-sensibility. Sure. You betcha. But I'm much more interested in the Mormon philosophy. Not so much the shoutouts to the Three Nephites (mere throwaway references, really---they could be anybody), but the lead's delving into questions that have a very Mormon flavor, and his arriving at very Mormon-sounding answers.



My only complaint about this book is that even when on the cusp of 900 pages, it's still not enough. It doesn't have the preMadman Frank Einstein. It doesn't have the crossovers (eg, the Superman one). And, most awful but most forgivable, it doesn't have the new stuff. Crap. This means more money leaving my pockets.

Let me know when the collections start being released.... Because I really want to read the wedding scene.

In the meantime, I'll let you know as soon as I find and watch my dvd of G-Men from Hell.

under a month

079) Star Wars by George Lucas, finished September 9

Yep, it's about as poorly written as you'ld imagine. But, especially at the beginning, there was something so wonderful about reading the book and have the movie play out in my mind.

I haven't watched Star Wars, I'm pretty sure, in over ten years. But it's still deep in my psyche and I loved reading this book, no matter how lightweight it was. And it was also fun to note the differences and see proof that the Star Wars universe of 1976 (the book's copyright date) didn't have things like midichlorians (not surprising), the Luke/Leia sibling connection as revealed in later films (not that surprising either), or the correct face of Chewbacca (pretty surprising). More interesting were ways in which Obi-Wan isn't much like Alec Guiness or Han Solo like Harrison Ford.

This merits saying: George Lucas was crazy lucky to have the cast he had---especially Ford. Some of those lines, removed from the actors' delivery, are just ridiculous. Without the in-front-of-the-camera talent the film had, it would have been a disaster. Lucky Lucas.

Lucky us.

since last October

078) Angel Falling Softly by Eugene Woodbury, finished September 1

I renoticed early on in reading this book (as I've noticed and renoticed with other LDS fiction) that I tend to be hypersensitive to others' depictions of the Church and its membership. But unlike the atrocities in Miss Misery, I force myself to recognize my experiences are not universal and a book's version of things must be valid when the author is as LDS as Theric is.

Probably my main issue of this sort in AFS was in the depictions of Rachel, "the bishop's wife" (see more here). Whos she seemed to be and who she was expositorially described to be did not mesh for dozens and dozens of pages. For a long time, I feared my report on this book would read like the thesaurus entry for disappointment.

Disappointment was, after all, my first experience with a Zarahemla-published book. I pulled my punches when I reviewed Brother Brigham because, at the time, I had a working relationship with Zarahemla myself (although this hasn't stopped BB's author from publicly blasting me as an unskilled reader and an elitist; his wild-eyed insistence that only story matters and quality of writing be damned suggests I should not introduce him to my brother). That bookshared a lot of qualities with this one, notably the collision of Normal Utah Mormons with old Halloween standbys. (though I rush to point out that the halting beginning of AFS was only a problem with the beginning).

In theory, I don't have anything against this juxtaposition of Mormon and monster. In fact, I think it's exciting and fascinating and a marvelous challenge for the LDS writer. In a world where a hand to the square takes care of most anything, how to scare me with the supernatural?

Woodbury's solution is to remove the supernatural from the equation entirely. His vampires are purely natural (although in a wholly unlikely manner--but hey! this is fiction! suspend your disbelief!)

Since I've already gone on in some length about this book, I'll stop before I fill up too much more space. I hope some of you will read it so we can talk about it. It's a book that welcomes discussion.

since late the previous week

077) The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin finished August 29

Postmodern commentary:

So I picked up this book after Lady Steed left me. I had seen it around and when I opened the cover and discovered, holy crap, it was dedicated to me, that I had to read it. So I bloody well did. Although I took some breaks for casual truckstop sex and for the deaths of several relatives. And to answer the phone.

When I finished the book, Lady Steed turned towards me in bed and said, How was it?

Pretty good, I said. Pretty good.

about a week

076) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, finished August 25

It's been over fifteen years since I read this book and developed an everlasting hatred for it. I'm only reading it now because I have to make my sophomores read it (I'm giving them two days). My take now?

It's extremely well crafted. It offers a litany of human suffering. It's perfect in its concision. It's excellent in many, many ways.

And it's a total downer.

Freaking Steinbeck....

two days

Previously:

075) Added Upon by Nephi Anderson, finished August 24
074) The Last Flower by James Thurber, finished August 19
073) Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form by Scott McCloud, finished August 17
072) The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories by Nicholas Gurewitch, finished August 12
071) The Dreamer by Will Eisner, finished August 12
070) The Blot by Tom Neely, finished August 6
069) Strange Stories for Strange Kids edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly, finished August 6
068) Survival Rates by Mary Clyde, finished July 30
067) A Week in October by Elizabeth Subercaseaux, translated by Marina Harss, finished July 29
066) Lehi in the Desert & The World of the Jaredites by Hugh Nibley, Ph. D., finished July 29
065) A Son Is Forever by various, finished July 29
064) Good ol' Snoopy by Charles M. Schultz, finished July 13
063) Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi, finished July 13
062) A Doré Treasury edited by James Stevens, finished July 12?
061) Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; finished July 8
060) The Enoch Letters by Neal A. Maxwell, finished July
059) Sock Monkey: The Inches Incident by Tony Millionaire, finished July 3
058) The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 by Thomas Ott, finished July 2
057) Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi, finished July 1
056) 300 by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley, finished June 16
055) Fox Bunny Funny by Andy Hartzell, finished June 16
054) Where Did I Leave My Glasses?: The What, When, and Why of Normal Memory Loss by Martha Weinman Lear, finished June 15
053) The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier, trans. Lorin Stein, finished June 14
052) The Legend of Spud Murphy by Eoin Colfer, finished June 10
051) Good Bones and Simple Murders by Margaret Atwood, finished June 10
050) Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's, Humor Category edited by D. Eggers, K. Shay, L. Epstein, J. Warner and S. Kleid, finished June 9
049) Bikeman by Thomas F. Flynn, finished June 5
048) Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, finished June 5
047) The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, finished June 2
046) Sixty Poems by Charles Simic, finished May 30
045) Replay by Ken Grimwood, finished May 28
044) The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future by Thomas Nevins, finished May 27
043) W;t by Margaret Edson, finished April 19
042) Halo and Sprocket Volume 1: Welcome to Humanity by Kerry Cullen, finished May 17
041) Storm Front by Jim Butcher, finished May 16>
040) 20th Century Ghosts by Joe Hill, finished May 9
039) I Am the President of Ice Cream by Geoff Sebesta, finished May 4
038) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, finished May 3
037) The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester, finished May Day
036) The Drifting Classroom Vol. 1 by Kazuo Umezu, finished April 30
035) The Complete Peanuts 1965 - 1966 by Charles M. Schulz, finished April 29
034) Nextwave: Agents Of H.A.T.E Volume 1: This Is What They Want by Warren Ellis et Stuart Immonen et al, finished April 29
033) Batman: Hush, Vol. 2 by Jeph Loeb et al, finished April 29
032) Batman: Hush, Vol. 1 by Jeph Loeb et al, finished April 28
031) Chéri by Colette, finished April 17
030) Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, finished April 13
029) Animal Farm by George Orwell, finished April 8
028) Macbeth by William Shakespeare, finished April 7
027) On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell, finished April 4
026) The Great American Citizenship Quiz: Can You Pass Your Own Country's Citizenship Test? by Solomon M. Skolnick, finished March 23
025) Long After Dark by Todd Robert Petersen, finished March 23
024) The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, finished March 21
023) Robot Dreams by Sara Varon, finished March 10
022) The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964 by Charles M. Schulz, finished March 9
021) Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, finished March 7
020) Unorthodox Practices by Marissa Piesman, finished March 5
019) Happy Hour at Casa Dracula by Marta Acosta, finished March 4
018) A War of Gifts: An Ender Story by Orson Scott Card, finished Leap Day
017) Watership Down by Richard Adams, finished February 26
016) Old Boy Volume One by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi, finished February 25
015) Case Histories by Kate Atkinson, finished February 18
014) Ultimate Spider-Man: Ultimate Collection, Vol. 1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, finished February 15
013) Trusting Jesus by Jeffrey R. Holland, finished February 11
012) Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham et al., finished February 11
011) Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach, finished February 4
010) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, finished February 3
009) American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, finished LDotFMotNY
008) Zombification: Stories from National Public Radio by Andrei Codrescu, finished January 22
007) Marriage Lines: Notes of a Student Husband by Ogden Nash, finished January 22
006) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, finished January 20
005) The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams, finished January 14
004) Lord of the Flies by William Golding, finished January 10
003) Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, finished January 7
002) The Marketing of Sister B by Linda Hoffman Kimball, finished January 2
001) Animal Farm by George Orwell, finished January 1



The First Five ( 001 / 005 )
The Second Five ( 005 / 010 )
The Third Five ( 011 / 015 )
The Fourth Five ( 016 / 020 )
The Fifth Five ( 021 / 025 )
The Sixth Five ( 026 / 030 )
The Seventh Five ( 031 / 035 )
The Eighth Five ( 036 / 040 )
The Ninth Five ( 041 / 045 )
The Tenth Five ( 046 / 050)
The Eleventh Five ( 051 / 055)
The Twelfth Five ( 056 / 060)
The Thirteenth Five ( 061 / 065)
The Fourteenth Five ( 066 / 070)
The Fifteenth Five ( 066 / 070)

The Erotic in LDS Lit Part IV: The Sex Talk

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If you fear, fear not. If you fear not, fear.
---J. Reuben Clark

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A few years past between our marriage and the birth of the Big O. I knew my parents were anxious for us to produce and I was waiting for them to ask us when we would finally be having a baby so I could make some snide answer, such as "How should I know? I'm still waiting for my sex talk!"

This isn't entirely fair. One morning in the car, my father and I had this conversation:

Dad: So I heard on the radio about this girl, and her grandma had promised her a new car when she graduated from high school if she was still a virgin. So she told her boyfriend they could only have anal sex.

(awkward silence)

Dad: Did you know that having anal sex doesn't mean you're still a virgin?

Me: Um. Yes.

Dad: Good.

So that was my sex talk. That was it. No anal sex, son.

For the record, this is not the Church-sanctioned manner of sex talkery. Not even close, in fact. Listen to this:

"Intimacy does not occur in a vacuum, isolated from other human relationships, from values, or from our perceptions of ourselves and others. It is only one part—although a very important part—of our relationships with others. To understand intimacy properly, we must understand the proper nature of the family and of our relationships with others and the values that influence those relationships. We must understand our true roles with regard to each other. Teaching human intimacy to our children is only one of many ways in which we help them to prepare for eternal life. But it is a very important responsibility we have toward our children." (from the peculiarly generic-sounding A Parent’s Guide, which is all about giving the sex talk to your kids, from the time they're babies to the time they're adults)

This book is careful to point out that you don't tell four-year-olds what you tell sixteen-year-olds. And a fairly explicit explanation of where babies come from is followed up by instructions to

"Be cautious to keep your own bodies and intimate sexual relations private. Children do not need to see or hear details of your private sexual life. They see and hear enough in the normal course of family life. They may feel threatened if a parent becomes too descriptive. Children usually learn subtly and cumulatively from ordinary daily contacts. There is much good that comes from drawing a veil between the children and yourself regarding private, intimate life. This is not a veil of fear or disgust, but one by which the body and its functions are robed in modesty and honor."

Right. I think we can all agree that at some point kids should know what penises and vaginas do together. But knowing about Mom's and Dad's? Not so good.

Before we got married, Lady Steed and I read The Act of Marriage, which was an excellent book and no doubt saved us from some painful/embarrassing moments in our early weeks and months. How did it do this? By being pretty danged explicit and direct. This was a good thing: we were two virgins about to get married. This was useful information.

The Act of Marriage was at the time (and still is?) highly recommended at BYU to people heading towards marriage. Marriage-prep classes had it as an optional text (for those engaged or married), for instance.

I suspect the success of that book on BYU campus was the impetus for Between Husband & Wife, a similar volume from a Mormon press.

It's hard for me to compare these two books. I read Act of Marriage almost ten years ago as a virgin, shortly before my own marriage. Between Husband & Wife I have only read parts of, and only recently. (Incidentally, another Mormon intro-to-sex-type book is And They Were Not Ashamed, which I like more already, just for its excellent title.) But I don't really need to compare them, either. My point here is that it's good to be explicit in the appropriate circumstances. Talk about the clitoris, yes, thank you. Be direct.

I don't want to suggest that most people within the Church fail to recognize that knowledge is good, but sometimes you have to wonder. I believe there are plenty of people who would view books like those listed above as pornographic. And they're not entirely wrong: it is all about sex, yes; a "porn reader" could read a book like this for masturbatory purposes, yes. But to then suggest that makes the books inherently evil or their authors depraved is not, I hope, a leap we are willing to make.

Silly says she found Act of Marriage to have little applicability to her personally, but I don't think she would then argue that reading books like that was damaging or unhelpful.

Frankly, we are force-fed so much bad information, that it's almost irresponsible not to read an intelligent, spiritual book, just to get one's facts straight before the honeymoon.

I know this sort of practical nonfiction is not often considered part of "literature," but I still think we need to laud and recommend books that celebrate the holy in marital intimacy and deliver information that can make the difference between pain/nervousness/disaster and a calm, loving comfort in those first nights together.

100% Fun

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So I've been checking out cds from the library--albums I own on tape--so I can rip them. And no, I don't feel bad about it. No one would whine if I was switching formats, cd to mp3, so why tape to mp3?

Anyway, not all the albums are as great as they where back in '94 or '95. But today I checked out Matthew Sweet's 100% Fun and baby it holds up. Every song is still awesome.

So in honor of my reuniting with this album I've already listened to approximately 1.5 billion times (although not really in over ten years, alas), I've set you up with clips to play while you take the Matthew Sweet Lyrical Challenge. Each line comes either from 100% Fun, John Donne's Holy Sonnets, or one of my posted plays. No fair peeking!

(Note: I used a random-number generator to arrange the questions. To eliminate blogger bias, you see.)

1
To poor me is allow'd
No ease; for long, yet vehement grief hath been
Th' effect and cause, the punishment and sin.

2
A distant splash.
A pause.
Splashing, as of a large creature foundering.

3
And gluttonous Death will instantly unjoint
My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space

4
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic sprite

5
We sail all day
We row all night
We sweat our blood
to make things right
Masculine tears
course into the sea
But masculine fears?
On, none have we!

6
There’s a smog moon coming I can always feel it
The cartoon trees cannot conceal it

7
the sky is gray,
the fields post-harvest,
a few rocks;
Harvey sits on one

8
Thinking looks good but I don’t like the taste
A mind is a terrible thing to waste

9
I’ll take or leave
The room to breathe
The choice to leave you
I’ll throw away
A chance at greatness
Just to make this
Dream come into play

Please put your numbers into the comments. Good luck! (And, if you cheat, have the decency to admit it. Thanks. You bastard.)

Svithing because I can

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Did you read Uncle Orson's column in Mormon Times last week? I'm going to quote shamelessly.

. . . as I came to church last Sunday, I . . . [found] three scraps of torn paper, each about an inch square, lying near the main couch.

The fact that there were only three scraps suggested that some adult had frantically picked up all the other scraps but missed a few. I instantly pictured some mom, loaded down with a paper-tearing toddler, a baby in a carrier and a huge diaper, toy and snack bag, dragging her burdens away from the couch, only to notice the scraps she had missed and think, I just can't set anything down to clean those up. Somebody else will have to do it.

That somebody else was me.

How did I know it was my job? Because the scraps were . . . there, and I saw them.

I bent over. I picked them up. I walked 10 steps to the garbage can tucked up under the never-used coat rack, deposited the scraps and then walked into the chapel just in time to help the usher open the folding curtain to the pass through and help set up chairs because somebody had decided not to put any back in the overflow after the youth dance in the cultural hall the night before. . . .

My calling in our ward is not "foyer trash police" or "guy who interrupts the other ward's gospel doctrine class in order to get chairs out from under the stage in the cultural hall," but I did those jobs this past Sunday.

Because they needed doing. Nobody cared that I did them. The only reason I remember is because I knew I was going to write this essay.

We sometimes think that our callings consist of the slot that we've been assigned to fill -- the job that gives us our ward identity.

But that's not so. Our calling is to do whatever needs doing that we have the authority to do. . . .

Do you want to see the Kingdom of God on earth? It's there in our chapels and classrooms and foyers, and it consists of ... us. Friends and fellow-servants in his house.

Here's to picking up the scraps of paper we see.

Here's to holding the door for the person behind us.

Here's to grabbing left-behind bulletins as we walk out of the chapel.

Here's to doing out part.

last week's svithe

(an unofficial) The Erotic in LDS Lit Part III.V: Breaking down the controversy over Angel Falling Softly, or, Theric is always right

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I imagine most readers of Thmusings have mostly missed the controversy over Zarahemla Books' latest, Angel Falling Softly by Eugene Woodbury. If so, this is a good place to start. I recently nabbed me a copy and, since it finally arrived in the mail, I read it this past weekend. Because I was reading it so shortly after the controversy reached its peak, my thoughts naturally turned to the issues raised by the complainants. I may have missed the zeitgeist by now, but given my impeccable taste, touted intellectual credentials, and gross self-importance, I thought I had better weigh in and let everyone know who's wrong and who's right.

1. Woh! Sex!

Um. Yeah. More than most LDS fiction, no question. Yes a(n unconsummated) lesbian sex scene. Yes, married people making love with evocative metaphors. Yes, the seduction of an elders quorum president (don't worry! he fled!). Yes, a horny college boy.

Listed out that like, it does actually look like a lot. But this is a vampire novel, for heaven's sake! Ask your id what vampires are for, it'll tell you: Vampires represent the attractions of forbidden sex. A vampire novel without sex is something else. Sex-free blood drainer? You must be thinking of a ghoul.

Which isn't to say that therefore the book should necessarily be sex-heavy. But I do think we can say there was no misrepresentation on this point, and I think that counts for a lot.

2. Yipes! No tidy ending!

I guess not. But I found the ending quite satisfying. Not satisfying if this were my actual life, but in terms of fiction and a story well and honestly told.

3. Eek! Crappy writing!

Okay, so no one's talked about this. But it needs to be said.

The first fifty or seventy pages or so were not without some egregious problems of style. Then they went away. What the heck? Did someone forget to edit the beginning of the book? Or does Woodbury just have a hard time establishing his characters? Because that's where most of the problems were. I'll talk about this in more depth when I next review five books. For now, just relax and know that most of the book was fine and my 'crappy' was totally uncalled for.

4. Bleh! Business!

The book, as published, features one corporate takeover. Originally there were two. One is just right. Sure, I didn't know all the jargon, but I had the same problem in the hospital. No problem -- I don't have to know everything to follow the story.

5. Zowie! Heresy!

So. Taboo to mix Mormons and vampires? Yes, according to some. Why? I'm not sure. The mix of paranormal and, uh, spirinormal can be awkward and uncomfortable and it can be totally screwed up (seen it), but this book steps up to the challenge. First, these vampires aren't supernatural. Maybe unnatural, but not supernatural.

Second, isn't fiction at its best as a weird laboratory? C'mon -- of course it is! Admit it! How else do you explain the phenomenal popularity of Harry Potter or Twilight? And Mormon lit deserves an elbow in the best pots as well as boring old realism.

Conclusion? AFS was a good book and I liked it. Yes, the sex is over many people's tolerance levels -- I can respect that. Yes, it asks some interesting questions -- I demand that. But no: it's not evil, it's not destructive, it's not even badly written (once, you know, you get a few dozen pages in).

It's not the best book I've read this year, but it's a very good one. That it's been controversial is, I think, healthy. The tenor or that controversy, however, has not been so healthy.

Next time, people, let's try to take a deep breath -- get some more oxygen in our bodies before we leap off a bridge. Just a thought.

(read the book for yourself)

The Erotic in LDS Lit Part III: Test Case

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If you fear, fear not. If you fear not, fear.
---J. Reuben Clark

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Before we get started, let me quote again Levi Peterson, the gentleman we met back in Part I: "There is health in treating the broad range of experience . . . in viewing clearly the full spectrum of human act and emotion . . . ."

I'm taking that as a truth as we get started in this week's look at a bit of fiction that runs head-on into sex without, in my estimation, becoming unholy or untrue.

I don't think I'm the first person to draw an analogy between what Mormons think of sex and what we think of the temple: they're not secret, per se, but sacred. Which looks a lot the same on the outside, but we know the difference, right? We just haven't found a good way to express that difference yet. Someone get on that.

So, while looking at "the full spectrum of human act and emotion" during this sequence of posts, we're specifically considering the sacred erotic in literature. Today's test case, Todd Robert Petersen's "Family History" (available in his excellent collection Long After Dark--my review here).

It's an interesting choice for a test case because it starts with what reads like a shameless and far-from-sacred sexual encounter. The encounter ends before any actual sex starts, but that doesn't mean it could not qualify as one of Jorgensen's "porn events" (see Part II). If that opening scene was all I knew of Petersen (not Peterson, keep 'em straight) was this one scene, I might well have a different opinion of him. But! That scene starts a novella that followed fifteen short stories, some of which were among the best I have ever read. I felt like I knew this author enough to trust he knew what he was doing. Remember this definition of porn from Publishers Weekly: "It is one of the tropes of pure pornography that events are without consequence. No babies, no STDs, no trauma, no memories best left unexamined." This is exactly true---porn is sex without consequences. Not so in "Family History."

"Family History" belongs to the long heritage of conversion stories, so popular in Mormon literature. But I need to keep in mind that when Larry and Mona do it like bonobos in a Vegas hotel room, they don't share my moral code.

FoxyJ was telling me the other night that she's noticed many Mormon consumers of art do this: judge characters by the viewer/reader's moral code. She's against this. How can someone (fictional or not) be held to a standard they don't know? A great thing about fiction is that, yes, we can judge them, but shouldn't we judge them according to the light and knowledge they have received?

(Note: Judging characters is different from judging texts. Larry and Mona have hot sex. Okay. But if Larry and Mona have hot consequence-free sex, that ceases to be okay and now the text becomes a lie. Not okay.)

(Note: And judging the author becomes something anew. Judging an author by his characters might be impossible. But judging an author by a text becomes inevitable. Although we should be careful to remember that we can mistake and misinterpret. And an author, after all, is a genuine human being. Judge not that ye be not judged.)

To me, these are the questions with which we should judge "Family History" as a text:

1. Was the text written for the sole purpose of titillating the reader?
(My answer: no. But if the early sex scenes do titillate the reader, that only increases the power of the entire work. Which gives us a gray area. And people hate gray areas. Phooey.)

2. Does the text show that sexual behavior has consequences?
(Yes. Although I want to rush and point out that sexual behavior can have different consequences for different people at different times. A reader who wants ever fornicator to die of AIDS will be disappointed not only in fiction but in real life.)

What are the consequences in this case? Larry falls in love with a one-night stand which screws up his life. He ends up marrying her. Later, when he's LDS, he tries to destroy everything he wrote about those times to hide his rapscallery from his son. Unsuccessfully. His raised-Mormon, now-adult son finds the document we know as part one of the novella and he's shocked by it:

"He was right--my father's account of that weekend in Las Vegas was horrible, but I couldn't get past the idea--once I was over the shock--that as my parents were in Vegas, God might have also been there. If we believe in the gospel, then we have to accept the fact that bad people or selfish people can always come around."

But, as his mother tells him, "These stories don't get told much in our church, David. We want stories of success without having to hear about the struggles of sin. . . . There has to be an opposition in all things, otherwise we could not be redeemed. And the opposition is part of the whole. . . . Please consider that as you write our history. Please record all of us. Let our lives be of use."

WARNING! I'm not suggesting that sex scenes in literature are necessarily depictions of sinful behavior. In fact, I would (in general) much rather stumble across what I've been terming "holy sex." But, back to Peterson (note the o), "There is health in treating the broad range of experience . . . in viewing clearly the full spectrum of human act and emotion . . . ."

The erotic experiences of life are part of that. And, regardless of what the sexual actions of characters are, are the consequences of those actions true? I suggest we use that as a guide, and in this story, the answer is yes. And the result is a beautiful, artful, holy story.

Next week, The Erotic in LDS Lit Part III: The Sex Talk.

Oh boy!


(FREE BONUS!!! Tomorrow, only on Thmusings, part III.V, which partially discusses the sex in another LDS book! Be there! Er, here!)

New tag

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I haven't really started tagging posts on Thmusings because it seems dishonest. Dishonest because adding tags to old posts now cannot precisely represent my thoughts on said post then. But to just start in the present and ignore the past is even worse! Egad! So, to date, my only tag has been for the thvlogs.

Today that changes. Today I tagged all the five-books-of posts. It seems like a good idea. So I'm doing it.

But my blog is intended to provide an honest representation of the past. So this post serves as notice that I am rewriting history. In a very mild way.

Be advised.

(new label)

Well, duh.

.

(link)

Don't kill flies, where they are, but where they're gonna be.

Think fourth dimensionally.

This is obvious.

Take it from me,

Thmaster Flyslayer.