Mormon Tabernacle Choir Sings The Blues

Anyone who has spent any time with me lately has heard me go off about Mormonism. I’ve been reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, and I swear to God no book has given me more “Holy shit! Can you believe that!” moments than this one. Anyone not acquainted with the Church of Latter Day Saints will be bowled over by its history, which must be one of the strangest secrets of the United States.

I think the highlight was the story of Joseph Smith, the married founder of Mormonism, nearly being castrated by an angry mob for bedding a teenager who had been living in his household (they settled for a tarring, feathering and “severe beating”). Anyway, there’s shocks a plenty in this book that takes you up to the present day with the even more controversial and astoundingly violent polygamy practicing Fundamentalist offshoots of the church. Don’t mess. And if you’re in Utah– watch your back.

“I Am Not Dead”

Strange post, this, newsworthy, right. prompted, sure. But let’s see.

Recently finished reading Making Money by Terry Pratchett the umpteenth volume of his astoundingly prolific and widely circulated Discworld series. It’s a peculiar series, one that began as a highly clever fantasy parody and then quickly evolved into something singular of it’s own (sound familiar?). Reading Pratchett books is something I have done for a very long time, strange to think that I am still reading the same author that I have been since I was in at least the beginning of High School. Pratchett has put out more than one book a year since I discovered him through Prisoners of Gravity–where he was interviewed I believe on more than one occasion, but a section on book covers stood out the most, pointing to the slightly cartoony, candy-pastel coloured vividly detailed strangely-melting work of Josh Kirby, who would later be placed by another fiend for detail, but this time with a more realistic edge to it– perhaps reflecting the change of tone in the overall series. But yes, it was the discussion of the character “the Luggage”, an animated trunk with hundreds of muscular little legs scurrying underneath, that first stuck with me; and made me snag it when I saw it at the Paperback Exchange, the quite accurately named used book and comic shop in Scarborough.

Anyhow. I’ve read these books, at least one a year for about 18 years now, so my memory of Pratchett is old enough to drive or at least buy a pack of smokes.

There’s so many reasons why I’ve kept coming back to his work over the years.

This most recent book allowed me to visit these familiar pleasures; oddly anarchic heroes; a devious political edge; a sophisticated and satirical idea of urban life in his renaissance inspired sprawling city-state Ankh Morpork; snappy dialogue from sneaks and rubes; a plot that bangs along like so many gears in a great machine. Ankh Morpork is Pratchett’s analogy for our way of life; its pessimistic and yet still affectionate characterization of our most selfish instincts finds it’s closest analogue in the found in city of Springfield on The Simpsons. Making Money did not quite deliver well, the grand sense of wisdom that inhabits the best of Pratchett’s writing–when the author grapples with truly complex themes of human motivation, and forces of history, religion, belief etc; etc;. Not that I think he is incapable of doing this anymore–on the contrary, I think in the last few years he has been on an upswing ever since he knocked it out of the park with Night Watch; an incredibly complex mystery set against the backdrop of civil disobedience and revolution, all delivered with chiaroscuro nuance of character.

So it is with great sadness that I learned that Pratchett had been hit by early onset Alzheimers disease. Which is terrifying really–but from his statements he seems to be taking it all in stride. He promises that he has a few books left that he will complete. But it’s quite something, after constructing such an edifice of the imagination, to think that sometime soon he won’t be able to return to it anymore. Or that for the readers who have visited the Discworld for decades now that, it too will becoming to an end.