As a deal lawyer, I have written, argued about, revised and finalized contracts for a living for the last 22 years. The irony is, the more experience I have, the greater my fear of making a mistake. I'm afraid of typographical errors. What if I write 1.00% instead of 10.00%, as the interest rate, especially when hurried by a bank client to get a deal closed with some last minute changes?  Another thing I dread is to leave out a certain paragraph that is supposed to be in a particular kind of deal. I have bolted out of bed at 3:00 in the morning, gone downstairs and hooked up remotely to the office just to make sure I remembered to put in a promissory note signed just the day before a certain sentence that the bank needed to protect itself against some future harm. Perhaps the worst anxiety I have is I'll make a more subtle mistake, that I'll write something that everyone at the time thought was clear, but that 2 years later, read cold on a Monday morning in the bright light of day, is, well, not so clear, but in fact ambiguous in light of a recent event that this contract provision was supposed to cover.  I've come to believe that the written word is born in its own kind of original sin, that it is prone to waywardness and corruption, often regardless of our best intentions. More...

Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist (TLP) left me in a love conundrum. More...

After I had written my last AML blog post I realized two things: (a) I had forgotten to list Sweethearts among some of the best loved edible writings ... ever, those adorable Valentine's Day confections, those little tasty love "tweets" and (b) the Old Testament has some noteworthy, if not kind of crazy at times, ideas about writing, as pointed out by William Schniedewind in his wonderful book How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient Israel, the chief inspiration/blame for my last bit on edible writing. In this post I will do two things: (i) share some of Schniedewind's Old Testament insights on writing and (ii) suggest that these insights have a continuing direct bearing on Mormon authors today. Please forgive my lack of footnotes below--using books on Kindle makes it impossible to adequately document your sources. I have no similar excuse, however, for the absence of substance in this post and my obvious cribbing from Schniedewind. More...

I've always found certain figures of speech involving language and texts interesting. We have "food for thought," a phrase that goes beyond it's mere equivalence to "thought provoking," raising the reading experience to a taste sensation. We refer to "a consuming read," suggesting that the book itself is eating us, the reader, or that we are at least caught in its jaws and can't be extricated. And there is the "omnivorous reader," someone with a voracious intellectual appetite that knows no limitations.

Of course eating as figurative speech is not limited to texts, no doubt due to the universality, necessity and pleasure of eating as a human activity. Among others, people "bite off more than they can chew" and bad experiences "leave a sour taste in your mouth." And who hasn't been told by someone that they intend to make you "eat your words?" An odd phrase, but what better way to visualize taking back something you've said, the very sounds that come out of your mouth, if not by eating and swallowing your own words?  As a book lover, I've wondered why reading is never used figuratively with food. "Oh man, this Hollandaise sauce is so Nabokovian--it would make even sewage taste good!" Or, "Mmm mm, this Étouffée is as complex and tasty as a Henry James sentence."

There are at least five circumstances, however, in which "food for thought" may go beyond mere metaphor or simile. More...

To date, no one has adequately explored spittle and spitting in the Mormon experience. This blog post is intended as an introduction to this studiously neglected topic and an invitation to the further exploration of it. More...

It all started when Steve broke up with Carol around the fall of 1977. That every guy in my high school class wanted to date her was one of those truths held to be self-evident. She was funny, athletic and beautiful, but before this declaration of her independence it would have been futile to spend any romantic energy her way since Steve was equally funny, athletic and handsome, and, after all, our friend. One day after their breakup I asked Steve, in a hypothetical tone, whether he would mind if I asked her out, and, more importantly, did he think she'd go out with me if I did. He said he didn't mind and added, after some thought, that he saw no reason why she would not go out with me. As reassuring as that wasn't, it was all the encouragement I needed. And, after a little behind-the-scenes assistance from Laura, Carol 's best friend, I secured a date.  More...

Years ago when I wrote a column for AML-List, Ben Parkinson and I had several discussions about humor narrative voice, style and tone. As Ben pointed out to me, traditional literary humor usually required a sustained, single narrative voice throughout the piece like other literature, whereas contemporary humor, both written and performed, may mix style in a stream of consciousness, expecting a modern audience to follow any sudden shifts in voice, style or tone. In performed humor these shifts are easily understood due to a variety of signals from the performer, whether via changes in voice tone, facial expression or gesture. In writing, however, such changes are difficult to follow, although the modern reader may more readily recognize those shifts as a result of hearing and seeing comedic performances and recognizing many of its conventions translated to the page.

Ben further suggested that humor writing had essentially only two narrative postures: the wag and the knave (or fool). The wag is understood as a clever wit, a comedic observer with the reader's point of view, whereas the knave is not a wit, but mostly an unreliable narrator and (you hope) unintentionally funny. More...

In the recent archaeological dig that was my attempt to reconstruct life in the 70s I found a sealed tomb, a treasure trove that had yet to be excavated: old issues of The New Era. I ordered several copies of the first issues and spent many hours reading through all of the 1970s issues at www.lds.org.  The earliest volumes brought one word to mind: trippy. I'm serious. Some of this feeling was attributable to mere nostalgia, of course, but most of it was a result of the amazing production values. Compared to previous LDS church magazines, The New Era was downright colorful, some of the covers and illustrations at times suggesting psychedelic album artwork for Cream or Jimi Hendrix, like something you might imagine Austin Powers would like to read … if he were Amish.  And, they published letters to the editor.  Even more surprising than the burst of color in the pages was how outspoken these early New Era correspondents were: they were as bold as the magazine they often criticized. I'd like to share some of these letters with you. With the exception of one public figure, I've withheld the names of these early faithful dissidents quoted below in order to protect their latter-day descendants from unwarranted shame and persecution.

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I am constrained to share the gruesome details of a most heinous episode, a subject that has been, until now, shamefully covered up in the annals of Mormon history. Only a handful of students of Mormonism have had any previous inkling about this topic, but, unfortunately, they could not handle the truth. The Signaturi dared not consider it. The Tanners shrank in its awful presence. Sources at FARMS and FAIR have admitted in private conversation that they had no defense against it and dreaded the inevitable day when it would be revealed. It is a tragedy, I'm sorry to say, the telling of which will try the faith of millions of Latter-day Saints, yet it is a story that must be told in the name of honesty and courage.

Until recently, due to what has been diagnosed as post-traumatic stress syndrome, the surviving participants in this awful historical incident had lost all recollection of the same. Only through hours of extensive hypnotherapy sessions has one of them recovered lost memories of the events. And who is that one person you might ask? It is I, and I remain alone to write the sad tale. Although at times I have convinced myself that I was a victim, I have faced my own self justifications and I admit that I was a willing actor. What I did was not virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy. With deep remorse I confess that I perpetrated a crime against my fellow Mormons, yea, even against all of humanity. I can no longer hide my actions and I am willing to pay whatever price is necessary to repent of my sins. I confess that after having reached the age of accountability, as a teenager I was a knowing and wilful aider, abettor and accessory to the crime known as … More...