The Annual Christmas Letter

(My roommates and I mailed out the following Holiday letter I wrote; we feel it's an improvement upon the genre).

Merry Christmas, Chappy Chanukah, a kickin’ Kwanza, a solemn and dignified Ramadan, and Happy Gregorian New Year to all of our loved ones! It’s been a banner year, let us tell ya’ll what we’ve been up to!

David Harris had quite the surprise, when his experimental Quasar-detection-array accidently opened a portal to a parallel universe, one where everything good is evil and evil is good—where the Taliban is a group of pacifist, democratic feminists, and the Salvation Army is a cadre of anarcho-terrorists! Long story short, this portal led to a climactic battle to the death between evil-David and good-David. Fortunately, good-David triumphed, while our David was vanquished.

Brian Fabbi finally put his Middle-Eastern studies degree to use, and traveled to Tunisia to light himself on fire in front of a police station, thus igniting the Arab Spring. Miraculously, he survived, and continued on from country to country, fomenting rebellion in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, throwing rocks at cops and Molotov cocktails at tanks. He it was who shot an escaping Gaddafi in Libya. He is currently hunting down Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Jacob Bender took a job teaching at-risk inner-city high-schoolers. Though they were initially suspicious of this “white cracka’,” he won their respect by breaking the arm of a drug-dealer first day of class—and then won their hearts with his inspiring deconstructions of Joyce. Jacob later deconstructed the entire drug operation, in a giant school-yard explosion he calmly walked away from without looking back. His students then all passed the AP exam.

Jon Buck, unsure of a direction in life, took a walk-about spiritual journey through the deserts of southern Utah. There, he stripped naked, lived off the land, smoked mad peyote, and communed with the universe. When a ravaging coyote tried to take him down, he wrestled it with his bare hands and ate its heart. Now a remorseless savage, he attends business school.

Tyler Bronson used his Taiwanese-Kung Fu ninja skills to hunt down Osama bin Laden. He tracked Osama all the way to northern Pakistan, and alerted Seal Team Six to his presence, for which Tyler still inexplicably apologized. Tyler was not he who shot Osama, but he did shoot the dog, which, depending on who you ask, was either kind of a dick move, or pretty awesome.

Eric Melonakos bridged the final frontier, death itself. He re-animated the brain-tissue of a rat that had been clinically dead for seven minutes. Wild with hubris, he used his mad science to bring a girlfriend to life with cadaver parts. Horrified, Eric ran screaming from his mountain laboratory. The monster then tried to kill Eric’s loved ones, but was destroyed in a burning wind-mill by a mob of angry German peasants. So Eric got a real girl-friend instead.

Happy Holidays!

Love, David, Brian, Jacob, Jon, Tyler, and Eric!

Settlers of Catan Sucks

Last night I was hanging with some old college friends. Inevitably One of them wanted to play Settlers of Catan. They talked me into it by insisting that the board game would be but the background, a prop, a mere casual past-time, during which we would engage in pleasant and intellectually-stimulating conversation. Mostly they were hoping enough time had passed since I last played that abomination that I'd forgotten how much I hated it.

And in fact, they were right: I had forgotten how much I hate Settlers of Catan, though I quickly remembered. And this pleasant and intellectually-stimulating conversation of course never materialized--for once Settlers of Catan begins, any remotely intelligent thought grinds to a halt.

This wretched board (bored?) game is the clearest demonstration yet of the stultifying and regressive effects of trade and commerce on the other-wise boundless human intellect, as everyone's entire mental energy becomes completely occupied with trading the requisite stones and sheep for a brick to build a road in order to complete a settlement and attain the requisite "victory points" necessary to bring the whole asinine ordeal to a merciful close.

And yes, the game is as painfully convoluted and dull as that previous sentence.

There's never been an hour of Settlers of Catan that I didn't feel had been inexorably robbed from my finite number of hours on this earth, that I didn't resentfully want back.

How is Settlers of Catan like real settlement, anyways?! What colonizer has ever actually built houses on the conjunctions of randomly distributed, octagonal, mono-agricultural harvesting areas? How is this terra-forming project not determined by armed conflict on competing claims, revolts from indigenous peoples, from your own settlers, pirates, malaria and natural disasters?

See, this is how you know that this sorry excuse for entertainment was created by Germans! Please note that the Germans have never settled anything. Oh, sure, they've conquered--oh so briefly--a few long-settled neighbors; the Germans have been efficient, oh so efficient, pulling out their slide-rules and compasses in order to organize oh so precisely their modes of conquest--that is, they've treated conquest like a game of Settlers of Catan.

And the result? Failure, repeated and resounding failure, time and time again. The rest of Western Europe--England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch--have all long understood that colonization is a messy, dirty, morally-ambiguous, at-times reprehensible affair. It would never occur to them to produce such a reductive, clean, insultingly-over-simplified and naive game about settlement.

At least Risk gets some blood on your hands; and Monopoly, if nothing else, acknowledges the naked and horrible avarice that guides commerce. Settlers of Catan won't even own up to its own naive convictions--it's a bland and uninspiring wish-fulfillment that doesn't even pathetically offer the vicarious thrill of global conquest.

I met this girl once who claimed that she was undefeated at Settlers of Catan. I offered my condolences that she wasn't undefeated at something that matters.

Angels: They Are Scary

They are not fat little naked babies beaming beatifically along the ceilings of late-rococo French frescoes. They are not air-brushed, honor-code compliant BYU students bouncing on a trampoline in white skirts for some dude's Deseret-book approved photo project. They are not Photoshopped underwear models digitally tweaked for the Victoria Secret Christmas ad campaign. And they certainly are not Precious Moments (tm) caricatures of that photocopied (and copyrighted) blonde-and-exaggerated-puppy-blue-eyes head sitting atop stock-photo wings-robe-and-halo #147.

They are nothing so safe, contained, and commercial as that.

No, according to every scriptural record extant, when an angel appears, they are described as brighter than the noon-day sun, with a "countenance like lightning," and when they speak, the Earth shakes. The first words off their lips are always "Fear not," for even the righteous Prophets fall to their faces in utter terror at the awful and horrible sight of a full-fledged angel in glory. You do not squee "awwww," you don't ask its number, you don't take a picture--at best you are drained of all your strength and consider your own nothingness; at worst the first-born in all of Egypt is slain, and/or you lie in a coma for three days.

I merely bring this up because Christmas is upon us, and there will be lights, and tinsel, and Virgin Mary Maternity Cards, and Michael Buble gently crooning "Fall on your knees/hear the angel's voices..." and Michael McLean having lil' Handel running Celestial choir practice the night of the Nativity for "The Forgotten Carols."

No, no, when Luke 2 reports of the Shepherds, "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men," that was absolutely terrifying. These were praise choruses of such overwhelming power and brilliance quite beyond our own comprehension, let alone those of Late-Classical semi-nomadic illiterates. I don't mean that as a knock on the Shepherds, I'm mostly sure an encounter with a single angel, let alone a multitude, would be enough to send me to my knees. And not because it was so peaceful that it lulled me to sleep. Quite the opposite.

I love Christmas, I really do, commercialism and cult-of-Mithra-origins and warts and all. But I just know, I can feel it in my bones, that we're about to suffer through yet another round of "War on Christmas" Culture-War op-eds in the papers and blogs (as part of the season now as carolers and Charlie Brown specials), and all I got to say is, if we're going to put the Christ back in Christmas, if we're going to call attention to the fact that this was once a religious holiday, then seriously, let's make this religious.

And I don't just mean sitting quietly in the chapel (though I fully concede that that can be a religious experience too)--no, I mean that sense of overwhelming awe that comes at realizing that there are a trillion trillion stars beyond our own meager night-sky, that there are forces quite above our meager comprehension, that overwhelming sense of the sublime that briefly shatters your mind and illuminates your soul. Joy to the World, not Silent Night, was always my favorite Christmas hymn--this is Mary in travail without anesthesia, screaming into the night, these were choruses of angels whose cries of Peace on Earth Good Will to men were all that kept the Shepherds from running and crying in holy terror.

I want a sense of awe back in the Christmas season, and an acknowledgment of the grandeur and awful glory of God. I want even atheists and agnostics to gaze into the cold sky of a Christmas Eve, peer through the fog of their own frigid breath and feel the awesome wonder of creation, of our own nothingness and exaltation, and feel that awe bring them closer together, not farther apart.

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and mean it. I want angels to frighten you. And I want to feel a Peace that comes because of the Post-Sublime shattering, of that reconciliation with God and nature and the movements of the stars in the sky, and not merely because we're all exhausted from yet another ugly-sweater party.

The Open Are Actually Closed

When I read Infinite Jest over the summer, David Foster Wallace in his labyrinthine end-notes diagnoses one of his own characters, who initially appears to be the most open lover in the world, is actually the most closed. I knew exactly what Wallace meant when I read that.

About a year ago, I borrowed a friend's car while my own was in the shop. I forgot to top off the tank (as I normally do) when I returned it to her. She had 3 options: 1) Politely ask me to sport her a few bucks, which I would have gladly done, with my apologies; 2) Let it go; or 3) complain about it to her mother through texts. And then accidentally send one of those texts to me. Specifically the one comparing me unflatteringly to my autistic brother.

Guess which one she chose.

She came over and apologized profusely the following day. I was angry, but we made up, and it's water under the bridge now, so I won't bother naming who it was. And in fact, my purpose here is not to dredge up petty old grievances, but as a round-about introduction to a larger theory I've developed:

The most socially open people we know are actually the most closed.

For this girl is in fact one of the most most friendly, sociable, positive and gregarious individuals I know, sharing numerous personal anecdotes in conversations. One could be forgiven for thinking that she was actually open with all aspects of her personality.

After the aforementioned incident, I reflected that part of why her text stung is that I'd always assumed better of her, seeing as how friendly she always is, which I realized was rather naive of me. Of course she has a hidden mean streak she doesn't let show through--we all do.

She is not my only data point. I've known a number of similarly gregarious, positive people, and each one I've gotten know to any depth has at some point betrayed some darker side in contrast to their own sunny personality. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not accusing any of these people of being "fake" or "hypocritical" or anything adolescent as that; no, we each of us hide our most vulnerable selves, and perhaps the most morose people we know are actually just the least successful at hiding them. Perhaps the socially awkward are so simply because their defense mechanisms are too obvious.

I've gotten to the point where I just assume now that the open, the gregarious, the positive and sociable, are just practicing a sleight of hand, distracting us all from their other selves. I don't hold it against them--I'm as guilty as any.

The Fisher-King

In certain ancient Arthurian legends, a knight of the Round Table must go in quest of the Fisher-King, who defends the Holy Grail. The King has been wounded, rendered powerless and therefore infertile, and consequently all the land is likewise left sterile. Crops do not grow, livestock die, babies are still-born, etc. The quest of the knight, then, is not just for the Grail, or even to heal the Fisher-King, but to restore life itself to the land.

Key to these fragmented, ancient Celtic myths appears to be that the knight seeks to the fisher-king to ask a "loaded question" of some sort. What the answer is appears to be irrelevant. No wisdom is bestowed, no boon granted, no epiphany experienced--in fact, it seems that just the act of asking the question itself, whatever it may be, is the most important part of breaking the curse on the land.

I use this esoteric piece of ancient myth as a round-about way to discuss a "panel" discussion, made up of Bishoprics and their wives, at Church last Sunday. Anonymous questions were submitted, one of which was, "how can singles feel less loneley."

The panelists gave it the ol' college try, giving the standard, generic cheer-leading suggestions to "live life" and "not wait for life to happen to you," to "get out there and serve," throw your own parties, ask people out, read, write, learn, study, do projects, don't just sit there "alone and feeling sorry for yourself." The congregation itself participated in the responses, and one could see their thrashing and struggling, as even the most sincere and well-meaning, I suspect, at least unconsciously, knew they were all wholly inadequate to the question.

Part of their problem is that they didn't really understand the question at all.

For indeed, some people really do just sit alone and feel sorry for themselves on a Friday night, and do need to be told to "get out there" and such, but I don't think that was the entire question.

For other people throw parties and no one comes, or go on dates that go badly, or even just averagely. But even that's not the entire question.

For some people are the life of every party, they enter effortlessly into and liven every conversation, they go on many and great dates, and have fun with all their friends--but then they come back home you see, and the house is still empty. And they know from hard experience that just because things went well tonight doesn't mean they'll go well the next. And that's when the creeping dread sinks in, as they wonder if they will ever fully escape this encroaching loneliness.

And reading literature and studying and learning new things and improving one's self when there is nothing else to do on a Friday night, while commendable and productive, are not ways of replacing the loneliness, but only coping with it--these are mere substitutes, consolation prizes and poor ones at that. An ethos of "Well, I might as well" pervades these sad replacements for relationships, and still does not answer the question.

Frankly, I'm don't think the question has an answer--and I don't mean that despairingly. Quite the inverse, I think an answer that openly acknowledges the difficulty, nay, impossibility of answering that question sufficiently is the most meaningful answer one can given. Folks don't want your impoverished advise, but your acknowledgment. As with the Fisher-King, it is the asking of the question itself that breaks the curse on the land, and not any response of the Fisher-King himself.

The answer that acknowledges its own failure is the only adequate response, is the only right answer, and the only one that enables life to continue. This is paradox that I did not at first understand in Arthurian legend, but lately I have better understood.

E-readers

When someone writes "e-readers don't glare in the sun," I wanna scream, "You know what else doesn't glare in the sun? a BOOK." When I work on a computer screen all day, the last thing I want to do is look at yet another.

Furthermore, CD sales are down this year, while vinyl sales are UP. People have decided that if, in this period of rampant piracy, they are going to buy music, then by golly, they're going to buy a RECORD, something you can touch, something with decent equalization, something that won't get LOST when the EMP bomb wipes out the cloud.

Similarly, as we approach the cusp of mass-pirated books, many people may decide they wish to own something tangible, real, maybe even hard-bound, something that won't get remotely deleted by our internet overlords: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

The Recognitions comes to Deseret Book (expanded)

In The Recognitions by William Gaddis, a gifted artist is recruited by an unscrupulous art dealer to paint forgeries in the style of old Flemish Renaissance masters, and then pass them off as "lost" originals to wealthy art patrons.

But, the protagonist is such a dedicated artist, that his "forgeries" are actually as passionate, detailed, nuanced, and in many ways "authentic" as the old masters whose style he is imitating. He doesn't "copy" them so much as paint with their same feeling of religious devotion.

When I recently read this portion of The Recognitions, I was reminded of a recent conversation with a friend, who told me of this new promotion at Deseret Book wherein they are selling reproductions of 1830 Book of Mormons specially constructed to look 180 years old--they are bound in leather chemically treated to look well-worn, certain pages are strategically "water-damaged" and torn, or made to look like the original scriptures of Porter Rockwell, etc, etc.

These are not mere 1830 facsimiles (I admittedly own one of those), no, these are custom built to appear as authentic, 1830 editions that have survived the ages as a family heirloom. Retail price: $500-$1,600.

I wondered aloud to my friend who this product's intended market is. "Wealthy Mormons who wish to appear extra spiritual to their friends," he quipped. "Yeah, you see why I have a problem with it!" I quipped back.

And now that I'm reading The Recognitions, I've been able to localize further what my problem is--for Gaddis's title is a direct allusion to The Clementine Recognitions, a first-century Christian text by St. Clement. Like St. Clement's Recognitions, I've found that Gaddis's is as concerned with religious--specifically Christian--authenticity and forgery, as he is with artistic.

That is, what does it mean to be authentically devotional, whether in religion or art (and for Gaddis's protagonist, these are the same thing), as opposed to plagiarizing this devotion to impress others?

When I visited Deseret Book's flagship store and checked out for myself these faux-1830 editions, I was suitably impressed with the sheer craftsmanship that went into each replica. Nonetheless, these acts of religious and artistic devotion are being produced, a la The Recognitions, in the interest of forgery and in-authenticity, for a faux-religious and faux-artistic sensibility.

For if we truly valued art and beauty for its own sake (and not for how cultured it makes us appear), then Gaddis's artist could produce his paintings and sign them by his own name; and if we were truly committed to our faith, than those $700 would be going to the sick and afflicted, the poor and widowed and orphaned, and our LDS artists could at last commit to making original art on their own terms.

But then, the text of these "authentic replicas" is still that of the Book of Mormon--the text is the same that was translated from plates of Reformed Egyptian in 1829, written in the melancholic prose of Israeli refugees during the Diaspora. The whole foundation and self-proclaimed "keystone" of the LDS religion is this Book of Mormon text contained within these expert forgeries--the text remains true, in ever words, even as the medium is forged.

This theme of truth contained within forgery is one that might have appealed to Gaddis himself, inasmuch as The Recognitions is his long-form meditation on the complex conflation of truth and counterfeit. In a sense, really, LDS-affiliated Deseret Book may be the proper place to see Gaddis's meditation in action, given the tensions already extant within the Book of Mormon between copy and original.

For example, in the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ appears to these Israeli refugees in Pre-Colombian America...and quotes Isaiah and Malachi. That is, God quotes his own messengers quoting him, complicating the very nature of authorship itself. Similarly, Wyatt in The Recognitions paints Van Eyck from the same stance of devotion as Van Eyck, even as he forges him--and here I use "forgery" in its double-sense, both to "imitate" and to "create."

Joseph Smith adds another layer--an uneducated neophyte transmits a text into a new language; yet as every translator knows, every translation (which we can call a trans-linguistic imitation) is also a creation, for the writer must render the intent of the original text into a unique set of differing parameters. We as Mormons believe Joseph Smith was inspired of God to perform this transmission, but how much of this transmission was filtered through Joseph Smith's own artistic sensibilities? For that matter, how much did (the real) Van Eyck and (the fictional) Wyatt filter their own transmissions of divine inspiration? For that matter, how much did Gaddis filter these divine inspirations as he wrote about masterful forgeries of Flemish devotional art in his first novel?

These questions have been on my mind as I have been most recently re-reading my own facsimile of an 1830 Book of Mormon--this astoundingly complex text nonetheless betray Joseph Smith's own lack of education, as he consistently confuses "was" and "were" (a mistake that I, as an English instructor, I am grateful was corrected in later editions). Joseph Smith wasn't just a transmitter--he was an interpreter--as was Isaiah, as was Malachi, as was Van Eyck, Wyatt, and Gaddis himself. God himself, far from being the mere initial transmitter, is Himself participatory in this process, as demonstrated by the moment in the Book of Mormon when Christ interprets Isaiah interpreting Him. In other words, this interpretive process is reflexive and reciprocal, and provides another layer of ambiguity between the mutual meanings of "forgery" at play in The Recognitions. (It is in this regard that the fact that the prophet's surname is "Smith" becomes interesting, inasmuch as a "Smith" works at a forge).

I initially thought the premise of The Recognitions to be fanciful, until I began to see it among those professing my same faith--and likewise, how in turn the Book of Mormon has enriched my understanding of Gaddis. It had been my most recent Recognition.

In Which the Satirical Becomes Nigh Indistiguishible From the Sincere

So a friend of mine burned me a copy of "The Book of Mormon Musical" soundtrack, and finally, out of sheer morbid curiosity, I gave it a cursory listen.

It was of course a quite satirical, ironic, and sarcastic portrayal of LDS adherents, doctrines and beliefs. I was expecting that. But, what caught me off guard was how...similar, how familiar it sounded, how close it was, in musical style and even content, to all that "LDS music" Deseret Book pushes onto undiscerning Sunday School Teachers and Seminary instructors.

Seriously, "I Believe," for example, would not sound out-of-place on, say, "Saturday's Warrior" or "My Turn on Earth." In fact, reword a couple of of the more irreverent verses (and not even that many), and suddenly it's not entirely clear that these are supposed to be laugh lines. It could have easily fit on some lame EFY CD--and a song sung by mock-missionaries in jest would've been sung by real missionaries in earnest. I bet I could whistle it around BYU and no one know I'm being sarcastic. Some girl might even ask me if it's by Michael McLane.

Also, I've read that "The Book of Mormon" is not just a send-up of Mormonism but also of Broadway in general, but here again I had the same reaction--a few slightly-less-ironic lyric changes, and suddenly the songs sound like a straight-faced Broadway show-stoppers, something on par with "The Sound of Music" or "Wicked," and not a farce.

Frankly, for however much the audience was laughing at the Mormon lines (I YouTubed "I Believe" and heard their reactions), I wonder how much the joke is on the audience itself--on the tools who pay up into the hundreds to hear songs so formulaic, so contrived, that even the foul-mouthed hacks behind "South Park" could not only easily ape its style, but sweep the Tonys with it. The audience may have gone to see the Mormons mocked, but failed to catch the prank on themselves--the Emperor wears no clothes.

It makes me wonder who the joke here is really on--for when satirical expressions of faith or art become near indistinguishable from the sincere, well then, what does it even mean to be sincere any more?

In Which It Appears That It Is Still Possible To Approach Edgar Allen Poe With Fresh Eyes

Oh, Utah schools, I don't know about you.

See, I was teaching Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" to some college freshman the other day (I posit that the story is structured like an argumentative essay--he's convincing the reader he's "dreadfully nervous" as opposed to "mad"--I don't say his argument succeeds), when one of my students--a product of Utah schools--declared how much she loved that story.

But not because she loved Poe already, you see--she had actually never even heard of Poe. After class, she even told me how she'd googled this Poe guy, since she enjoyed the story so much, read some more of his stuff, learned how he innovated the genre of short story, even read this cool poem of his called "The Raven!" She was just so stoked to learn about this awesome, brand-new writer she'd never even heard of, called Edgar Allen Poe!

So on one hand, it was delightful to see someone encounter Edgar Allen Poe with utterly fresh eyes--to realize that that's still even possible--and to see that she still thoroughly enjoyed him, even without all the cultural/historical hype that surrounds him. I'll confess it encouraging to see a student so fall for a great writer based on his own merits, and not merely because she'd been culturally trained to.

But on the other hand: Really, Utah schools? Really? A students graduates from your system, and has no idea who Edgar Allen Poe is? Do you have any excuse for that oversight? Dare I ask her if she knows who Bill Shakespeare is?

This is only one example, Utah schools; I have many others.

Acceptably Pretentious Literature

Literature isn't like music, I've realized--rattling off a bunch of writers no one's ever heard of will not cause people to ooh and aah at your insider knowledge of the underground. Just try and rattle off your favorite small-press heroes--your David Markson's, Gary Lutz's, Gordon Lish's, etc--and you'll get a bunch of blank stares from people wondering why you don't read real literature--that is, books they can also prattle about pretentiously.

The tragically hip wish to associate with reading that's "edgy," but still popular, it seems.

But there's little refuge in the "classics," either--name all the Dickens, Shakespeare, Twain and so forth you've read, and folks assume you're just regurgitating all your reading from High School, and question if you've read anything since.

Same thing with all that "ethnic" lit--your Richard Wrights and Toni Morrisons, etc--it is generally assumed you read these more out of multi-cultural duty than love, sadly.

Even the longer classic stuff they didn't make you read--your Tolstoys and Hugos, Goethes, Melvilles and Cervantes--make you appear more as a stodgy, stuffy, hopelessly-out-of-date throw-back, as opposed to some cutting-edge intellectual. Not hip at all.

You'd think the 20th century would thus be safer ground, but really it's even dicier--I've learned the hard way that even if you sincerely and honestly love, say, James Joyce, that any attempt to share that love with others will come across as sheer pseudo-intellectual posturing.

"You can't even understand it!" they decry (as though either Modernism or Reality is supposed to be understandable), "You're just too afraid to come off as ignorant to admit that this is nonsense!" I guess they've been burned by the Emperor's New Clothes before, and the burnt child fears the fire (I've found that the humble and kind, that is, those who don't have ego-problems or chase fads, are the only ones actually cool with my love of Joyce).

Mentioning Faulkner (especially The Sound and the Fury) will provoke actual hostility among those infuriated by books that challenge, not flatter, their intellectual self-image; likewise, Pynchon, Gaddis, Wallace, and anything by Beckett that isn't Waiting for Godot will similarly get you pigeon-holed as a pretentious, condescending, elitist, and an all-around self-important douche-bag who surely must not enjoy reading (I suspect they project themselves more than anything).

It should just go without saying that no American reads poetry anymore, either.

Yes, I'm afraid the only valid reason to read any of the preceding writings is because you sincerely love reading them, not because they'll impress anybody.

I have thus here compiled a brief list of Acceptably Pretentious Literature, books guaranteed to make you look cool and "intelligent" at parties, but are not so inaccessible that you actually have to work very hard to read them. (Please note, I'm not knocking any of these books, I've read and enjoyed and recommended them all--but this isn't a list for people who love reading, it's for people who wish to appear well-read):

• Catch-22 By Joseph Heller
  
• Catcher in the Rye By J.D. Salinger
• Unbearable Lightness of Being By Milan Kundera
• The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde
  
• A Room of One's Own By Virginia Woolf
  
• Slaughter-House Five and/or Cat's Cradle By Kurt Vonnegut
  
• Waiting for Godot By Samuel Beckett
  
• Jane Eyre By Charlotte Bronte
  
• Pride and Prejudice By Jane Austen
  
• House of Leaves By Mark Danielewski (Even this is pushing the outer-limits of acceptability).
  
• White Noise By Don DeLillo
  
• One Hundred Years of Solitude By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoyevski (No conversation about Nietzsche is complete without it).
  
• Hero With a Thousand Faces By Joseph Campbell (No conversation about Star Wars is complete without it).
  
• Tao te Ching By Lao Tzu (Only 81 pages! You can read it in an afternoon!)
• The Prince By Machiavelli (Also short!)
• Man's Search for Meaning By Victor Frankle
  
• Dante's Inferno (Just be careful not to read Purgatorio or Paradiso, as well)
• The Count of Monte Cristo By Alexsandre Dumas (The abridged version is acceptable, and now you can complain about the movie as a bonus!)
  
• Anything by Malcolm Gladwell (Business majors love him because he blows their minds with ideas that are first-semester to other majors!)
  

Again, I must emphasize that, with the exception of Gladwell, these are all worthy classics that everyone should read just for the sake of expanding your mind and broadening your horizons. All I'm saying is that these are the only books I've encountered thus far that you can safely discuss at parties. What else would you add to this list?

Adam and Whitman

"And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many" (Moses 1:34, Pearl of Great Price).

"I am large....I contain multitudes" (Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, ll. 1316).

I wonder out loud if when God calls the first man Adam, if that is in reference not only to progeny, but also to the near-countless multitude of identities, both extant and potential, that every man contains within himself (for "I am made all things to all men" (1 Cor. 9:22) writes St. Paul), of which Adam would be but the archetypal first example.

William Gaddis on Self-Help Books

"...prescriptions of superficial alterations in vulgarity read with excruciating eagerness by men alone in big chairs...[they] swung keys on gold-plated monogram bearing ("Individualized") key-chains, tightened their arms against wallets in inside pockets which held their papers proving their identity beyond doubt to others and in moments of Doubt to themselves, papers in such variety that the bearer himself became their appurtenance, each one contemplating over words in a book (which had sold four million copies: How to Speak Effectively; Conquer Fear; Increase Your Income; Develop Self-Confidence; "Sell" Yourself and Your Ideas; Improve Your Memory; Prepare for Leadership) the Self which had ceased to exist the day they stopped seeking it alone" (The Recognitions, pp. 285-6).

Also:

"The means, so abruptly brought within reach, became ends in themselves. And to substitute the growth of one's bank account for the growth of one's self worked out very well...
for as long as the means had remained possible of endless expansion, those ends of other ages (which had never shown themselves very stable) were shelved as abstractions to justify the means, and the confidently rational notion of peace, harmony, virtue, and other tattered constituents of the Golden Rule would come along of themselves was taken, quite reasonably, for granted" (The Recognitions, pp. 290-1).

Culminating with:

"Everything wore out. What was more, he lived in a land where everything was calculated to wear out, made from design...with only its wearing out and replacement in view, and that replacement was to be replaced. As a paper weight...lay a ceramic fragment from the Roman colony at Leptis Magna in North Africa...valueless as objet d'art...and little else, except that it had been made to last" (The Recognitions, pp. 319-20).

The Recognitions comes to Deseret Book

In The Recognitions by William Gaddis, a gifted artist is recruited by an unscrupulous art dealer to paint forgeries in the style of old Flemish Renaissance masters, and then pass them off as "lost" originals to wealthy art patrons.

But, the protagonist is such a dedicated artist, that his "forgeries" are actually as passionate, detailed, nuanced, and in many ways "authentic" as the old masters whose style he is imitating. He doesn't "copy" them so much as paint with their same feeling of religious devotion.

When I recently read this portion of The Recognitions, I was reminded of a recent conversation with a friend, who told me of this new promotion at Deseret Book wherein they are selling reproductions of 1830 Book of Mormons specially constructed to look 180 years old--they are bound in leather chemically treated to look well-worn, certain pages are strategically "water-damaged" and torn, or made to look like the original scriptures of Porter Rockwell, etc, etc.

These are not mere 1830 facsimiles (I admittedly own one of those), no, these are custom built to appear as authentic, 1830 editions that have survived the ages as a family heirloom. Retail price: $500-$1,600.

I wondered aloud to my friend who this product's intended market is. "Wealthy Mormons who wish to appear extra spiritual to their friends," he quipped. "Yeah, you see why I have a problem with it!" I quipped back.

And now that I'm reading The Recognitions, I've been able to localize further what my problem is--for Gaddis's title is a direct allusion to The Clementine Recognitions, a first-century Christian text by St. Clement. Like St. Clement's Recognitions, I've found that Gaddis's is as concerned with religious--specifically Christian--authenticity and forgery, as he is with artistic.

That is, what does it mean to be authentically devotional, whether in religion or art (and for Gaddis's protagonist, these are the same thing), as opposed to plagiarizing this devotion to impress others?

When I visited Deseret Book's flagship store and checked out for myself these faux-1830 editions, I was suitably impressed with the sheer craftsmanship that went into each replica. Nonetheless, these acts of religious and artistic devotion are being produced, a la The Recognitions, in the interest of forgery and in-authenticity, for a faux-religious and faux-artistic sensibility.

For if we truly valued art and beauty for its own sake (and not for how cultured it makes us appear), then Gaddis's artist could produce his paintings and sign them by his own name; and if we were truly committed to our faith, than those $700 would be going to the sick and afflicted, the poor and widowed and orphaned, and our LDS artists could at last commit to making original art on their own terms.

I initially thought the premise of The Recognitions to be fanciful, until I began to see it among those professing my same faith. It had been my most recent Recognition.

William Gaddis on writing

...and as about a good an explanation as any for why I long ago quit enjoying "fluff reads" or "fun reads" (whatever those mean).

"Most writing now, if you read it they go on one two three four and tell you what happened like newspaper accounts, no adjectives, no long sentences, no tricks they pretend, and they finally believe that they really believe that the way they saw it is the way it is, when really...it takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands on them, people brought up reading facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises." (The Recognitions, pg. 113).

Ghostbusters Tonight!

A trio of academics on enforced sabbatical turn to the private sector to practice their most peculiar research! A budding young romance is threatened by the spectre of past devilry! A childhood memory of merriment and mirth turns to mayhem! And streams are crossed in reckless acts of gallantry, bravery, and daring-do!

We should be pleased by your company for our viewing of that cinematic masterpiece, the incomparable "Ghostbusters," for we fear none such phantasms!

Everything's Better Than When You Were 15

Sometimes I look at my near-prehistoric, 5-year-old iPod with a mere 30 gigs of hard-drive; or note that my itunes library doesn't even reach into the quintiple digits; and I sigh that it's been nearly 2 whole months since I last got new music; and I start to think, Man, I'm tired of listening to the same old thing, I need to get some new tunes--

That's when I recall the National-Lampoon-style Drive Across America my family took in '98, and my parent's garbage-sack full of cassette-tapes--all soft-pop of the '70s--which they popped in one after another, after another, after another, an endless Moebius strip of magnetic tape and Barry Manilow.

And I remember that mine only refuge during those 8-hour cornfield drives of Kenny Rogers, Loggins, and Chesney was my walkman and grand-total of 5 CDs, which I likewise listened to on constant loop. I basically memorized The Beatles Revolver that July.

I then glance back at my current itunes library, and I say, Man, don't get greedy, don't get greedy--

Why Did No One Tell Me That Wittgenstein is Hilarious?

About a month ago, I read David Markson's haunting Wittgenstein's Mistress, which is the fictional first-person ramblings of a woman who is apparently the last living person on earth after some unnamed cataclysm. She travels the world, living inside famous museums such as the Louvre and the Prado, burning the frames for heat, while carefully nailing the original paintings back onto the wall. The book itself is written in the terse, austere style of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus--or at least so I'd been told, so I decided I should actually read the original Wittgenstein to see for myself.

I'd heard Wittgenstein quoted before, and it's easy to see why: Witty's terse style (that's what I'm gonna call him, cause he's so witty--see what I did there?) lends itself to easy one-liners, yielding such jems as "the world is the totality of facts, not things," "Philosophy is not a theory but an activity," and "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

But here's what I wasn't expecting about Witty: just how frickin' funny this guy can be! I'm willing to bet money this point is rarely if ever made. Take for example the following line, coming at the tale end of some relentlessly logical proposition: "But in fact all the propositions of logic say the same thing, to wit, nothing."

I near 'bout cracked up when I read that.

Then a couple pages later, I lost it again at: "And surely no one is going to believe that brackets have an independent meaning." I mean, brackets, really? This guy's hilarious, I'm not even being sarcastic!

I truly believe that all this is intentional humor, cause he finishes his own introduction with: "...the value of this work consists in that it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved." That should've tipped us all off to his dry sense of humor.

Seriously, I might just buy Tractatus just to mark all the funniest lines.

9/11/11

Where were you when that first solar 1 was a 0? (Appropriate, given how rigidly binary have become our ideologies since).

I was on the verge of my freshman year of college, rolling over in bed, sure that Mom was yet again concocting wild stories to wake me up before 10.

Post that bench-mark, my peers began to consume the news far more voraciously, as one should hope they would. I, however, who had trained so dutifully as a responsible-citizen-in-training growing up, cutting my teeth on news-columns, Newsweeks, and CNN (I may in fact remember the Clinton administration better than Bush 2.0), actually receded in my news consumption.

Not that I retreated, mind you--far from it; in fact, I dare say my interest in current-event-commentary decreased precisely because my total view increased. I almost say it became eschatological, a ten-dollar word signifying the study of how it all ends.

For it is one thing, you see, to read of Joseph Smith describing "destruction writ large on everything we behold," but quite another to actually see it collapse before your very eyes, and that on nationally-broadcast TV. One begins to realize that such is not an aberration--that even among the best of circumstances (a phantom if there ever was one), we should be beholding all we hold as most immutable and eternal crumbling before our very eyes. 9/11 was but the most obvious display of what we should be noticing all around.

Becoming increasingly eschatological, I took up the moniker of the Latter-day Saints, and served as a Mormon missionary in Puerto Rico barely a year later. One swiftly became aware of how much more correct, how much more real, is this broader view than whatever passes for news-coverage, when the older missionaries became perplexed and confused at the announcement of the invasion of Iraq--"I thought we were hunting Osama bin Laden," they expressed cogently--while those brand-new (at least the American ones) confirmed their love of America and hatred of France.

So I missed the whole of the Democratic primaries, the euphemistic Patriot Act, and the "Mission Accomplished" PR debacle whilst on that eschatological mind-set, and good thing I did, for I beheld far more clearly the "destruction writ large"--for though we watched no news, the newspaper-stands declared quite loudly to all passers-by the number of killed Puerto Rican soldiers of each passing week. The disgraceful Abu Ghraib torture photos, buried in State-side publications, were not similarly hidden in Latin-America.

It wasn't just sound physical structures we beheld collapsing.

Wendy's, I'm Afraid We're Going to Have to Break Up

Wendy's

We had our good times, didn't we? While BK and McDs duked it out on the airwaves, everyone in the know knew the truth: Wendy's was where it's at. You weren't just "fast food," you weren't just "over-processed, flash-frozen, barely-digestable meat product," you weren't just "another alarming symptom of and significant contributor to the American obesity epidemic," no. You were something special, Wendy's. You were our place. You were my place. I thought we'd always be together.

Don't cry. It's not you, it's me.

Maybe I just got a little older, a littler more mature, a little more boring, that I couldn't just kick back and chow down on the good times, like when I was a teenager, or a missionary, or a hungry young college student. We were wild and restless and carefree way back when, and living for today! You were packed with preservatives, carbs, fat and grease, but we didn't care! For you tasted good and life was for living and living was for today.

Sadly, I just can't seem to enjoy you like I remember.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken that trip to Europe; no offense, but after partaking of Parisian cuisine, you kind of suffered in comparison. Now, I figured that I just needed to re-immerse myself in America, and then I'd forget all about my fancy French rendezvous and return to my first love once more, which was you, Wendy's.

Sadly, that doesn't look like it's ever going to happen.

Cause frankly, while we're being honest....it's not me, it's you.

You got nasty, Wendy's.

Cause I've been talking to my peers, even my own students, and we all agree: Wendy's, you've really let yourself go. Maybe you used to look good, but not anymore. I can't even stand the sight of you now. I derive no pleasure from eating you. You're gross.

It's tragic, really. I derive no pleasure from your food, I don't like your smell, or even your frosty's. That's how bad it's become, Wendy's. Your frosty's now suck.

Wendy's, I'm afraid we're going to have to break up. Whenever I see that smiling little ginger on your road-way signs, I'm not filled with nostalgia, or pangs of remorse for what could've been--just regret, regret for all the years and dollars I wasted on you. I'm leaving you Wendy's, and the whole fast food scene, and lookin' to hook up with something healthy that won't make me feel disgusting the next day.

So long, Wendy's. I'd say take care of yourself, but looks like you've already given up on that. Don't call.

Catch-22 at 50, and my own reading at 10

As my 10-year High School reunion passes unattended and unobserved, I cringe at quite a few late-adolescent moments; but one I still stand by is the day I ran into the backyard and threw my copy of Catch-22 into the air, in joy and exultation. I have just finished the novel for a third time (the 50th anniversary edition seemed as good an excuse as any to buy my own copy), and I was gratified to read that in the back appendix, that Christopher Hitchens, a writer with whom I often sharply disagree but greatly respect, likewise sent his own copy "hurtling skywards with a yell of triumph." I still feel the same way over a decade later.

I bring this up because the novel's ending is often cited as "weak;" Norman Mailer called it "Hollywood." This, for me, is like the critique that the book's characters are "flat," or "just a collection of tics." Of course they're flat and empty--the whole point of the book is that these characters are relentlessly dehumanized, and that often quite literally! It's a book not just about the insanity inherent in war, but also in the very civilizations that allow war to exist, nay thrive. These characters are often dead long before they're blown out of the sky.

It is the same with the ending; critiquing it's sudden optimistic turn misses the whole point, for the novel could not have ended any other way. To bleakly kill him off would have been but a predictable cheat.

For Yossarian has to escape, Yossarian must stay alive--and what's more, must stay free--because more even than the Prince Hamlet of Act III, who clings desperately to life merely because he fears death "the undiscovered country" even more, Yossarian fears death because he sees the intrinsic value of life.

By contrast, the insane system that entraps him sees life only in how it can be traded for profit and advancement; but Yossarian, the last sane man alive, wishes life for its own sake--life is its own reason for being, and it is beautiful and grand and wonderful enough in and of itself.

Yossarian requires no other justification for staying alive than the fact that it is glorious to be alive! Simply living is a subversive act; just staying alive is an act of rebellion.

As such, Yossarian must affirm that his logic is greater, is better, than the fiends who surround him. His enemy is anyone trying to kill him--whether they be complete strangers blowing flak at him just because he's dropping bombs on him, or his own commanders who would gladly trade his life for a promotion. For all of the novel's relentless horror and black-as-coffee comedy, a jubilant joie de vivre permeates through the character of Yossarian, and thus the novel can only end with him escaping the catch-22 at last.

Yossarian's joyous desertion, then, is ironically a call to action. Killing off Yossarian at the end would have been the real cop-out, lazy ending--it took courage for Heller to set him free, just as it takes courage to set ourselves free. As Yossarian himself says at his final escape, "I'm not running away from my responsibilities, I'm running to them." Living is its own responsibility, its own raison d'etre; war is waged to protect life, so thus without a healthy respect for and love of life, war loses all meaning. War and honor and sacrifice do not give meaning to life--quite the inverse, in fact.

Yossarian escapes not because he's special, or some Nietzschean superman, (on the contrary, when asked "What if everyone acted the way you did," Yossarian responds with the humble, egalitarian, "Well then, I'd be a damn fool to think otherwise, wouldn't I!"), but simply because he's alive, and that's reason enough. We, too, are also alive, and that is reason enough to treasure life as well.

Modernism, Fascism, America

When I return to grad school, I hope to study British Modernism, a literary period that corresponds with the rise of European fascism. There was a time, before WWII, when "fascism" wasn't just a catch-all for whatever action of government you didn't like, but was in fact considered a viable alternative to aristocracy, communism, and democracy. Democracy in particular was seen to have failed, due to its tendency to elect weak, substance-less leaders, to elevate mediocrity, to play to its citizens' basest tendencies, and for its governmental deadlock, waste, and inefficiency--all things we still rail against the U.S. govt. today.

Fascism was seen to resolve all those problems inherent to democracy--Adolph Hitler, for example, really did fix the failing German economy; Benito Mussolini is to date the only Italian head-of-state to successfully challenge the mafia and make the trains run on time; General Franco did in fact stamp out communism in Spain.

In sum, the fascists fixed the economy, eliminated govt. inefficiency and waste, battled communism, cut down on crime, increased prosperity, patriotism and national unity--and committed some of the most horrific atrocities in human history.

I bring this all up because, more so than usual, America's govt. is lately bogged down in deadlock and indecision, amid accusations of massive govt. waste and inefficiency. If we had a strong, decisive, uncompromising leader, (so goes the argument on both sides), we wouldn't have this problem--no, we'd instead have far worst problems, those of fascism.

For you know why America is deadlocked right now? Because we disagree; because in America, dissenting voices are in fact heard. Deadlock is ironically a sign of a healthy democracy. Whatever else America's sins may be, freedom of expression is still real here. This freedom is at once our greatest strength and greatest weakness.

I sometimes see asinine window stickers sporting eagles in front of American flags, reading "freedom ain't free." I merely offer that perhaps deadlock and inefficiency is in fact that price we pay for freedom.

SLC Punk

I've been told by those I describe them to that I have interesting roommates. Briefly, my roommates since I've lived in SLC have been the following:

• A Physics PhD student Jewish-Atheist from Boston who bikes, skis, jogs, and had a heart-attack and pace-maker surgery at age 27 due to undiagnosed Lyme disease. He currently owns a house he rents out, and has a live-in girlfriend who is the daughter of the former mission-president of Puerto Rico (the one before my mission pres). He sagely sold his stocks before the crash of '08, prompting me to 1) question his socialist bona fides, and 2) jokingly ask if there really is some secret Jewish Cabal running the world's banks, and if so, could he give me stock tips.
• A Computer Science PhD student Atheist from Baltimore, and an accent to match. In spite his Atheism, he has a strong Protestant work-ethic. He enjoys the hookah. While Prop 8 seemed the main sticking point about the LDS Church for the former roommate, coffee by contrast appeared to be his. From both these first two roommates I heard many a diatribe against Utah's liquor laws, and consequently they loved John Hunstman, despite their liberalism.
• Another Jewish roommate, just graduated from Utah, originally from the south-side of Chicago. He dressed all G'd-out and thugged-out, but it never felt like posturing from him; rather, it seems that's just how a normal human being dresses where he's from. He's proudly Chicagoan, but has no plans to move back, the main adjective he uses to describe Utah being "calm," implying that that's the opposite of Chicago. His life's goal is to retire either to the Avenues or Florida.
• A true freshman hispter-ish trendy kid who had to learn the hard way that selling steak-knives is a crock. A fastidiously clean roommate who twice gave the whole apt. a deep-clean, majored in Drama even though he's pre-Med, and would occasionally have girls sleep over in his bed but not have sex (one girl even claimed to be LDS and would probably die a virgin). Draw your own conclusions.
• An inactive Mormon who gets hammered drunk on weekends; great sociable, likeable guy; served mission in Texas; dealing with the aftermath of an unfaithful wife so don't judge; once, this girl passed out after only 4 shots while pre-gaming (I've learned more about drinking here than from even my roommates in Denver), and she puked all over his mattress. He just threw out the bedding. When one Atheist roommate heard his sad story, even he said, "Dang dude, you need to go to Church!"
  
• Another Atheist, former-tight-end for BYU football, completing his degree at the U, married but amicably separated (the first time she visited, I asked if she was his girlfriend, and she responded "I'm his wife" and I just nodded), his wife's an ex-mormon and he's read the Book of Mormon and taken all the missionary discussions--twice. Keeps the Word of Wisdom more faithfully than his wife, but for purely health reasons. Would go to divinity school if he wasn't an atheist. Trained with Navy Airborne, but now is entering the Peace Corp.

End of this month, I will be moving in with LDS roommates once more, first time since BYUI. 3 years ago, I happily moved in with non-Mormons when I first attended Utah, because it was nice to be around guys who weren't in a constant, quiet panic to get married. My new roommates are guys I know and like, and while I'm sure we'll get along, the marriage-panic is not something I look forward to. And while moving in with these guys will be a return to normalcy of sorts, I also fear my string of interesting roommates is coming to a close (though at least a couple of my new roommies may take that as a personal challenge. I hope they do).

Extracts From The Book of Amos

And for the big finale, the Politician raise his arms in the air, flashes his million-dollar smile (total assets valued roughly $190 million), and declared, “My friends, a glorious future awaits us, if only we will rely on the values that make this nation great! These are values I make no apology for, I ask no pardon for them, for these values that have made our nation prosperous. And I promise you that when I am elected, I will bring back the values that made our nation great, and use them to make our great nation even greater than ever!” The crowd roared and cheered, and the Politician made many other promises: to end the evils of dole with welfare reform that suppresses an ethic of hard work among our nation’s poor; to combat the tyranny of socialism; and to improve the economy by providing free market incentives that increase wealth and prosperity.

The crowd roared its approval once more, and the Politician strode confidently off the stage. Yet what was his surprise, but as he exited, yea verily, he was miraculously transported away by the Holy Spirit; wherefore, instead of encountering his advisers and pollsters and hair-stylists, he instead found himself standing on the stone steps of an ancient pyramid, high among the lush rain forests of Central America. The Politician loosened his tie instinctively in the humidity, as he stared on in bewilderment.

Immediately he was approached by a humble figure, an old man with a long beard, white hair, and modest robes: “Behold, I am Amos,” said the figure, “Son of Amos, who was son of Nephi, who was son of Nephi, even that same Nephi who was ordained disciple by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ at the time of his appearance among us after his resurrection in Jerusalem, the land of our fathers. I have charge of the records that have been kept since the times of our father Nephi, son of Lehi, when they were guided by the Lord God out of Jerusalem to here, the Promised Land.”

“Ah, so then you are a Nephite!” exclaimed the Politician reverently, for indeed he was a faithful Mormon since his youth (though he tended to downplay such in the national media).

“Nephite?” said Amos, “Ah, yes, once we called ourselves Nephites, before the time of the visitation of our Savior. But behold, now we have abandoned such distinguishing, for there are no manner of Nephites, nor Lamanites, nor any manner of –ites among us, for we are all one, the children of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom of God.”

“Come, come now, brother!” said the Politician, “Don’t let anyone make you ashamed of your beliefs: offer no apology, ask no pardons for your values. If you are a good Nephite and a conservative, than exclaim it so!”

“Conserve…ative?” asked Amos, perplexed.

“Ah, yes, you of course cannot openly announce your party affiliation, I understand, for the Church’s official stance has always been one of political neutrality,” said the Politician, “I understand your position, and your need to keep quiet on certain…sensitive…issues. I myself dance sensitively around certain topics, in the interests of politics.”

“You have been brought here, by the hand of the Lord,” said Amos, attributing these strange, incomprehensible comments of the Politician to the doubtless foreign customs of his own land, “To behold the doings of his people in the Promised Land, at a time when there could not have been a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God. I am given to know that you currently seek the chief judgeship of the great gentile nation—”

“And a great nation it is!” exclaimed the Politician.

“—that has inherited the land of promise in the latter days,” continued Amos, “wherefore, the Lord doth seek to instruct you in the ways of a truly great nation, the one that was established by his own hand when he visited us, and has stayed consistent for nearly two centuries.”

“Two centuries of stability!” exclaimed the Politician, ‘Brother Amos, I am overwhelmed! Why, surely there is so much that mine own nation can learn from yours! Amos, I will gladly receive instruction from you, so that I might bring about the salvation of my own country.” And indeed he was overwhelmed, yet even as he shook Amos’s hand firmly, the Politician seemed to dimly remember from his youth reading the Book of Mormon, and it was roughly at about the two century mark, he remembered, when the Nephites fell into apostasy, eventually being destroyed by God for their wickedness. And in fact, the more he thought about it, the more the Politician pondered if such sustained stability could only signify a controlled economy, one that refuses to release the full power of the free market economy, and prevents the people, no matter how well-intentioned, from fully living up to their privileges. Quite frankly, such a lack of free-market volatility seemed to imply, socialism…perhaps even…communism.

The Politician suddenly realized that he had been granted a chance by God to save the Nephites from themselves; indeed, he did in that moment take it upon himself to build the Nephites into a great nation that would outlast their own destruction, and perhaps even defeat the wicked Spanish when they came in a thousand-odd years, and ally themselves with the righteous Protestant English when they arrived a few centuries later. Why, such a defeat of the Spanish could even retroactively resolve the Mexican immigration crisis his own great nation was experiencing! His capacity to effect good in both times could be unlimited.

The Politician felt humbled by his calling.

“I am humbled by this calling,” he told Amos, “When do we start?”

Amos first showed him the surrounding city of Zarahemla. The Politician could do nothing but admire the health and friendliness of all the people he met, and he began to despair that he would have nothing to do to improve their lot. “Amos, this city is charming!” he confessed, “Why, your wealthiest must truly be investing in industry to keep so many of your poor so gainfully employed!”

“Wealthy? Poor?” said Amos, once again confused by these strange terms, “No, no, my friend, here we have not rich nor poor, nor bond nor free, but we are all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift. We have all things common, you see.”

“All things common?!” exclaimed the Politician, his worst fears realized.

“Yes, all things common,” smiled Amos, “We seek first the kingdom of God, and then we seek wealth, and then only to cloth the naked, and to feed the hungry, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.”

“No re-investment?” said the Politician in disbelief, “You mean you sink your public funds and revenue streams into such government expenses as welfare relief and health care? My, my, my, brother Amos, you cannot grow GDP through such wasteful expenditures! Don’t you know that such smacks of diabolical socialism?”

“Socialism?” said Amos, again confused and now getting annoyed, “You did hear me earlier when I said that there are no manner of –ites among us, right? As in, your very concept of political ideologies and divisions is foreign to us.”

“So much the easier to control the populace when there are no dissenting voices,” the Politician reasoned to himself, “I must seek to liberate this people from this tyranny of socialism, and I must do so without Amos to hinder me, for clearly even he, the very elect, have been here deceived! No, no, I see here clearly enough: God has sent me here to overthrow the scourge of socialism, so that I can return to the Latter days and do again likewise!”

The next day, the Politician began making his rounds among the local farmers, his jacket and tie off and his French-cuffed sleeves rolled up to the elbows, to show he was one of them and ready to work. “Brethren!” he declared, “Why do ye waste the bountiful harvests with which God has blessed you? He gives you all you need and surplus to spare, and how do ye repay his bounteous blessings? Why, you waste it all by just giving it away, keeping the economy stagnant and slow! Waves of waves of the poor and idle live off the sweat of your hard labor, becoming indolent, and slothful, like unto the Lamanites of old. Be it any wonder that there be Lamanites in the land again, with such an indolent economy as this? Behold, why do ye not preserve the increase of your surplus unto yourself?”

“It is our way,” responded one, “Established by the Savior Himself at the time of his appearance unto us.”

“Brethren, brethren,” he said, smiling indulgently, “We shall all surely be living the United Order at the Millennium; but in the meantime, we must live in the present, and deal with things as they actually are!”

“United…Order?” said another, confused by this name for an order he didn’t know needed a name.

“Brethren, behold, I say unto you!” the Politician continued, pumping his fists, “Remember that our Heavenly Father has given us free agency! Freedom is what this great land is founded upon, and if we have not the freedom to sell our surpluses, why, then, our gifts are not gifts at all, but extortions! This redistribution of wealth stagnates the market, which in turn slows the economy, prevents job creation, and hinders innovation. It keeps the masses dependent upon the government, and therefore subjugated, such as unto the plan of Satan himself!”

He was starting to get to them. “Would not such a system of sales make some richer than others?” ventured one.

“And what’s so wrong with that?” asked the Politician sincerely, “Do we not read in the scriptures that some must increase more than others, that some are worthier of a better inheritance? Ye farmers, you know quite literally that as we sow, so shall we reap: Should not the industrious receive more than the indolent and lazy? Should not those who sow receive all that they reap? Are not the poor so because they have so reaped by their indolence?”

“Yes, yes, Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery,” suddenly broke in Amos, more than a little perturbed that his guest and charge from the Lord had given him the slip that morning, “therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just—King Benjamin warned us of such! And again, he added: whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars?”

“Precisely my point!” said the Politician gleefully, overjoyed that his next point had been prepared so splendidly, “Aren’t we all beggars, frankly, but not upon God, but upon the State that keeps them down, so that they durst not enjoy their privileges as children of God?”

“Ah, yes, for every man fares in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength,” quoted Amos, now disgusted, “Such was the doctrine of Korihor, the AntiChrist, at the time he was tried before Alma for the murder of Gideon.”

“Brother Amos, please, please, let us cease the name calling and partisan politics!” pleaded the Politician, taking the high road, “Korihor, as I recall, preached fornication, adultery, and denied the Christ; I, by contrast, stand by the old Christianity that made this country great! Moreover, Gideon was a murderer, as you yourself have just confessed: he wished to enforce his doctrine upon others. I, however, do not wish to force anybody! Those who wish to continue to donate their entire surplus to the poor are still as free as ever to do so—but it will because they choose to, not because the state requires it of them.”

“Our ‘state,’ as you call it, requires no man,” said Amos, “Compulsion only occurs when men oppress the hireling in his wages, and the widowed, the orphaned, and the poor; what happens, pray tell, when men no longer give freely to the poor?”

“Why, my brethren, they be those who will actually be helping the poor!” exclaimed the Politician, “For by selling their surpluses, they will be generating wealth that can be reinvested towards job creation, fostering innovation!”

“Ah, yes, and to the wearing costly apparel and pearls and the things of the world, and lifting themselves up in the pride of their hearts!” declared Amos.

“Amos, my good brother, think of all the money that will trickle down through the increase in the market for luxury goods—does not God wish us to be happy and enjoy our blessings, after all? An expansion of luxury goods can only improve the economy, for increased consumption equals increased demand, with increased industry to meet demand. Jobs will increase, indolence decrease, wealth abound and spread around, and make this country truly great, with a military to match, able to withstand any power that threatens us!”

“God said he would preserve us,” declared Amos, “And prosper us in the land, if we will but keep his commandments.”

“Ah, but it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do,” quoted the Politician sagely, “How can we expect God to prosper us if we do try to prosper ourselves? Let us liberate the economy, and at last liberate ourselves!”

Before Amos could interject again, the Politician flew into the part of the stump he knew by heart: “My friends, a glorious future awaits us, if only we will rely on the values that make this nation great! These are values I make no apology for, I ask no pardon for them, for these values that have made our nation prosperous. And I promise you that when I am elected (for I here today declare my candidacy for the Chief Judgeship), I will bring back the values that made our nation great, and use them to make our great nation even greater than ever!” The crowd roared and cheered, and the Politician made many other promises: to end the evils of dole with welfare reform that suppresses an ethic of hard work among our nation’s poor, to combat the tyranny of socialism, and to improve the economy by providing free market incentives that increase wealth and prosperity.

Amos could only behold in despair, as the old ways were resurrected before his very eyes. Now there was no law against a man’s belief; for it was strictly contrary to the commands of God that there should be a law which should bring men on to unequal grounds. Thus, Amos did not condemn the Politician. Nevertheless, he prayed in his heart, and as the Politician strode from this rally among Nephite farmers, smiling and waving at his supporters and shaking hands and kissing babies, yea verily, what was his surprise but he found himself surrounded by his advisers and pollsters and hair-stylists, just after his rally in the present day. He pondered if perhaps he had just dreamt this entire Nephite encounter, and if perhaps the heat and the stress of constant campaigning was getting to him. That is, until one of them asked: “Sir, where is your jacket and tie? You were wearing them on stage just a minute ago.” And another: “ow did that mud get on your shoes so quickly? And where did that day-old stubble on your face come from?”

And in fact, he had day-old stubble, his jacket and tie were nowhere in sight, and there was Central American mud on his otherwise-immaculately-polished Oxfords. It was then that he knew that his trip was real, contained all in that split-second that he left the stage (for all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto man). At his wonderment at this miracle, he dared request out loud for that which he only asked in the privacy of hotel rooms: “A Book of Mormon! Quick, get me a copy of The Book of Mormon!”

After a moment’s confusion, and several more minutes of scrambling, his aides finally scrounged up for him a paper-copy, such as missionaries hand out. In the quiet of his stylist’s chair, he searched through it, to see if he had indeed changed Nephite history through his efforts and his eloquence, and thus if the Book of Mormon had been rewritten as a result. He scoured and scoured, but there was no reference to his own name, nor his visit, and only a half-a-verse acknowledging the existence of Amos. Instead, he found only references to how “they had all things common,” and “There were no manner of –ites” and “there could not be a happier people” and the “one hundred and ninety and fifth year” when Amos took charge of the sacred records; and shortly after was recorded only the following by Mormon:

And now, in this two hundred and first year there began to be among them those who were lifted up in pride, such as the wearing of costly apparel, and all manner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the world.

And from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them.

And they began to be divided into classes; and they began to build up churches unto themselves to get gain, and began to deny the true church of Christ.