I'm continuing to read Under the Banner of Heaven...and Mormonism is wilder than I thought. I have only a vague notion of the story of the religion until I saw an episode of South Park about it, which was remarkably accurate. It's fascinating that the story is implausible even on South Park. I had never bothered to read another version of it, just thinking that the South Park guys must've embellished it greatly for effect, but not so! In fact, the story is that Joseph Smith mysteriously found these gold tablets that no one ever got to see.
And some of the things that have been done in his name by Mormon fundamentalists, wow...Of course, not to be confused with the legitimate LDS church, a completely different thing.
Here's one of my favorite lines from the book: "And although his [Joseph Smith] perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the
American republic." I guess I never thought of Calvinism as being worse than "absolutist and unyielding."
On another book...I loved James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Now everyone is all benout (how do you spell that?) about him completely lying about most of the "crucial" parts of the book. That bugs me. First, it's still a great story, and pretty well-written in my opinion. You get what life is like for him as an addict. Second, he fully and completely admits that he's an ass in the book. Well, yes, he's proven it. He's just an ass in a different way than he purported himself to be. So be it. If people feel let down by him, or deceived or lied to, get over it. People get famous for much more insidious things than this.
4 days ago
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On James Frey - I heard NPR's take on the whole debacle on the way home from work the other day, and it got me thinking that the whole backlash with the book indicates that the media is a lot more right-wing and moralist, or is playing to a moralistic audience, than I would have guessed - because what self-respecting, progressive member of society would throw a fit about Frey embellishing his story before they would question our obsession with "true" stories. But now, because of Frey and his publishers milking the memoire genre for all it's worth, people have to face the reality that no objectively "true" story could ever make its way through the publishing process to a shelf at Barnes & Noble. And facing this can shake one's faith in a lot of things - and the American public doesn't take too kindly to being shaken. That's what I think :)
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