Book Plug: 'Under the Banner of Heaven'

I have been increasingly interested in the history of the Mormon Church since I watched the PBS documentary The Mormons this past spring, which provided an actually-fair-and-balanced view of both Mormon history and the LDS Church today. My brother-in-law lent me Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven in June, but I only got around to reading it this past weekend. While Krakauer's book makes for very interesting reading, he dances around explicitly stating his argument, even though it is woven throughout the whole book: The violence, misogyny, blind obedience, and fear of outsiders noticeable in present-day Mormon fundamentalists has its roots in the very foundations of the Mormon faith, as laid down by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Krakauer therefore appears to partly accept the Mormon fundamentalist argument that they are more in agreement with Joseph Smith's revelations than the mainline LDS Church. I am not knowledgeable enough determine whether or not this is true, but Krakauer lays out an at least somewhat convincing case.

In any event, here are some interesting (at least to me) factoids from the book:

1. Joseph Smith had been convicted of fraud and was a well-known huckster in upstate New York before founding the Mormon faith.

2. Yes, magic glasses and gold tablets were involved.

3. The revelation on plural marriage (section 132 of The Doctrine and Covenants) was never made public during Joseph Smith's lifetime. Instead, Brigham Young revealed this juicy tidbit to the Mormon flock on their way to Utah.

4. Quotable Quote: "vengeance is mine, and I have taken a little" Brigham Young reportedly said upon seeing the monument erected by federal troops to commemorate the Mountain Meadows massacre, which included a cross inscribed with the epigraph, "vengeance is mine: I will repay, saith the Lord." Young ordered the monument destroyed.

5. Non-whites were banned from the Mormon priesthood until 1978.

Krakauer appears to be shocked by Mormonism's often-violent history and exclusionary beliefs, but every major religious tradition on Earth has its bloody episodes and its fundamentalists. The big challenge for the LDS Church now, according to both Krakauer and the PBS documentary, is to become more accepting of homosexuals, feminists, and intellectuals (many of whom have been excommunicated in recent years). The problem, of course, is that a religious movement can only accommodate itself to the culture of a given time so much before it loses the essence of what it was in the beginning. This may be the only thing mainline Mormons and the fundamentalists completely agree upon.

Law and Order: MLE

In the aftermath of fan disappointment in the epilogue of Book 7, JK Rowling revealed in an interview with the Today Show that Harry and Ron went on to become Aurors, while Hermione is currently "pretty high up" in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Essentially, Hermione is the equivalent of a wizarding prosecutor while Ron and Harry are detectives, which is why JK Rowling must, must allow the production of:

Law and Order: Magical Law Enforcement

. . . In the criminal justice system, Dark Arts-based offenses are considered especially heinous, in Great Britain, the dedicated Aurors who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, these are their stories . . .

In the first half hour, Harry and Ron would investigate the magical crime in question.

Adult, wisecracking Ron will be played by Damian Lewis.

The older, more grizzled, but increasingly sexually-confused Harry will be played by, well . . . Daniel Radcliffe.

In the second half-hour, Hermione will prosecute the crime with her fellow assistant DA, Nigel Nibblebottom, played the inimitable Stephen Fry.

Emma Watson and Stephen Fry together could produce that fantastic Jack McCoy plus incongruously good-looking female DA chemistry that is key to making Law and Order work.

Now, if this is not a good idea, I don't know what is.

Thriller-Prison Style!

You know, you've never really watched Michael Jackson's "Thriller" until you've seen it performed by the inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines.

Talk about it at Videocracy

Dual Allegiance-Some Cheesy Sports Videos

On the one hand, I was raised to be a Kentucky fan:




On the other, I went to Tennessee:



Ah, my sporting soul is always pulled in two directions.

Historiographical Plug: Read 'The Great War and Modern Memory'

While trying to procrastinate this past weekend, I found myself rereading one of the books that had the biggest impact on me as an undergrad, Paul Fussell's classic study on the effect of the First World War on literature and culture, The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell's desire to combine a discussion of war with an analysis literature, culture, and society (while obvious to me now) completely blew my mind when I was a sophomore in college. It also made me realize how painfully nerdy I was even compared to my already-nerdy friends. "Do you realize that the word 'breakthrough' first came into wide usage during World War I?," I would ask, "as in 'medical breakthrough' or 'scientific breakthrough,' because everyone was so obsessed with breaking through on the Western Front." This enthusiasm was typically met with appalled silence before someone would shift the discussion back to sports. Nevertheless, Fussell's study was one of the books that helped me realize that I wanted to go to grad school.


What has interested me more as a grad student is how The Great War and Modern Memory is as much a cultural document of the 1970's as it is a study of the First World War. Published in 1975, Paul Fussell has subsequently admitted that his book is "really about the Vietnam War as much as it is about the First World War." Fussell therefore did what historical scholars are, in theory, not supposed to do. He allowed his concern for the events of his own time to shape and inform his analysis of the past. The result in this case is nevertheless one of the most groundbreaking studies on the First World War, which has influenced almost all the scholarship that has followed. While I would agree with Jay Winter and many others that Fussell's study contains some interpretive (and a few factual) errors, it is still the book that I would offer to anyone who wanted to know why I became interested in trench newspapers (the subject of my MA Thesis) in the first place.

I am interested in what some of my friends in the UW grad program, most of whom study early-modern stuff, would offer as the book that really blew them away when they were undergrads. If any of you should come across this blog, please post your book of choice in the comments. I should probably learn to enjoy the early-modern period more anyway.

My Thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Warning! Warning! The following post contains massive spoilers! Do not read if you haven't finished reading the novel!











Well, after an all-night reading marathon on Friday night/ Saturday morning fueled by about six cups of coffee and one corned beef sandwich (Ron would not approve), I finished the final chapter of the Harry Potter series. What started for me out of boredom during the Thanksgiving break of my senior year at UT has now concluded in graduate school at UW. While I am hardly qualified to offer a full review of the book, I do want to offer my thoughts on aspects of the book that I know are coming under fire from some disaffected fans. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the insanity at the Leaky Lounge:



http://www.leakylounge.com/index.php?



1. Extended weeks and months of camping/ hiding with Ron, Hermione, and Harry. I actually found this aspect of the book very compelling. Finally, the Trio are out of the familiar setting of Hogwarts and are having to scrounge for food wherever they can find it. Personally, I love that the bulk of this book takes place outside of Hogwarts. Did we really need another year of annoying Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons, Ron and Hermione arguing over breakfast in the Great Hall, and (God help us) Quidditch matches? No, the series and the characters had moved on. Plus, the camping situation gave us one of my favorite chapters in the book, "The Silver Doe," in which Harry must retrieve a sword from a pond (in a doff of the hat to Arthurian legend), and Ron finally decides to 'man-up' and return to the Horcrux hunt.



2. The Slytherin locket having a Ring of Power-esque psychological effect on the Trio (especially Ron). To this I say, a good idea is a good idea. Look, Tolkien is the undisputed master of fantasy literature. If this is the most Tolkienian thing she does in seven novels, she deserves credit.



3. OMG! She totally promised in an interview in 1999 that we would find out such and such about so and so! Many fans are up-in-arms about some things that were, in their view, never fully explained. For those people, I say, get a life:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvzN8mGEqSc



Would you rather have a tightly-edited novel, or a big sprawling mess in which she has to resolve every minor plot point? Wait, don't answer that.



4. The magical tunnel running from the Room of Requirement to Hogsmeade is ridiculous. What was the point of Draco struggling to repair the Vanishing Cabinet? He could have just told the Room to create a tunnel. Well, Rowling does establish that Neville is unusually skilled at manipulating the Room, so that is as much of an explanation as we are going to get. For me, this falls under the category of 'accept it, and move on.' After all, it's not nearly as bad as Barty Crouch Jr.'s needlessly-complicated kidnapping plot from Goblet of Fire. Dude, just turn his chair into a portkey and have him sit on it.



5. Harry chatting with Dumbledore while in some kind of spiritual limbo was as retarded as the end of the second Matrix film. First of all, nothing, NOTHING! is as retarded as the end of the second Matrix film. Secondly, while I was concerned at first, I think Rowling pulled it off quite well. She ultimately leaves it to the reader to decide if it really was completely in Harry's head, objectively real, or some combination of the two. Plus, she had to create closure between Harry and Dumbledore somehow.



6. The Deathly Hallows were a stupid and pointless concept to introduce so late in the series. Here, I can do no better in their defense than one of the editors of the book, Cheryl Klein:



http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/



On the whole, I enjoyed the book very much, and found it a satisfying conclusion to the series. We got the really big answers we were looking for. Snape was good, Harry was a Horcrux, Dumbledore was not a saint, Ron and Hermione got married, Harry and Ginny got married. All of which bring us to the Epilogue. Apparently, some fans absolutely hate it. While I agree that Harry naming his son 'Albus Severus' does guarantee that kid seven years' worth of magical wedgies, while his more fortunate brother, James, becomes the most popular kid in school, I thought it was fine. Rowling, to my knowledge, never promised a Lord of the Rings-style appendix, which is what some fans wanted.

Basically, A good conclusion to the series that will allow me to move on with my life and get more important work done.

Welcome to my Blog!

Well, against my better judgement, and with the knowledge that I may not keep up with it, I have decided to start a blog to allow friends and family to get an idea what I'm thinking about or working on at a particular moment. So, good luck to you, my stupidly-named blog!