To what extent are TBM/Apologist tastes Brethren-directed?

[_Doctor Scratch]

I'm reading Sophie's Choice write now. I don't think they would assign that to read at BYU. I'm sure there is a rebel lecturer who might mention it as a good read but he would whisper it in the corner to the class.

It's Saturday, so I probably can't prove you wrong today.

But here's a little column for the LDS-oriented Meridian Magazine, by my friend Richard Cracroft, former chairman of English at BYU, former dean of humanities at BYU, former president of the Switzerland Zürich Mission, now an emeritus professor of English:

http://www.meridianmagazine.com/classic ... litry.html

Notice that it includes Sophie's Choice.

Notice, too, that it is not the LDS Cracroft who's actually recommending Sophie's Choice; rather, he's using a list written by Anna Quindlen---thus placing the "burden," as it were, on Quindlen (she also included Underworld I wonder if Cracroft would have been willing to name that title all by his lonesome?). Embarrassingly, the example of an edgy, bawdy, "un-LDS" literary work is The Wife of Bath's Tale from The Canterbury Tales:

One midnight, when I was sixteen or so, she asked me to read her a particular tale from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, when my bursts of laughter brought her to my room; she laughed so hard at the tale that she fell on her knees; then, having second thoughts, she said, "it's a classic, so it must be all right." And it was.

What's funny is that there seems to be some doubt that even this is appropriate for TBM consumption.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I'm not quite sure why Scratch is so vain about his supposedly edgy and "cool" reading, since he routinely reads so poorly:

Notice, too, that it is not the LDS Cracroft who's actually recommending Sophie's Choice; rather, he's using a list written by Anna Quindlen---thus placing the "burden," as it were, on Quindlen (she also included Underworld I wonder if Cracroft would have been willing to name that title all by his lonesome?).

No, folks, he's not using a list written by Anna Quindlen. That's a different list. He's using a list from the Orem Public Library, presumably staffed largely if not entirely by Mormons, and he declares that "It is as good a list as any to begin a reading list for the rest of 2001."

If he had not wanted to recommend Sophie's Choice, he could simply have failed to include that Orem Public Library list, or, even, have simply failed to write the column. Instead, he recommends reading Sophie's Choice.

It reminds me of a quatrain that Omar Khayyam addressed to Scratch:

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Sophistry nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Sneers wash out a Word of it.

What's funny is that there seems to be some doubt that even this is appropriate for TBM consumption.

By which Scratch seeks to hide the fact that, according to this retired BYU English professor, this former mission president, this former chairman of the BYU English department, this former stake president, this former dean of the BYU College of Humanities, writing in the very LDS Meridian Magazine, it's quite alright.

[_EAllusion]

Anyway, don't misinterpret my lack of quick response to be abandonment. I will be very busy today and probably won't be able to respond further until tonight. I'm almost late for my Shakespeare club and after that I have an afternoon of croquet and badminton lined up.

And you seem to think people believe these silly lies.

Are you by chance a stupid person who lives in rural Appalachia?

[_maklelan]

Are you by chance a stupid person who lives in rural Appalachia?

No, why?

[_Daniel Peterson]

You are aware that Gad is mocking DCP's random references to high culture to let everyone know he is living an envious [sc. enviable?], intellectually sophisticated life, right?

That envious was an interesting slip.

It reminds me of something that Shakespeare once wrote to Scratch Senior and Scratch Junior:

"O, beware, my lords, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on."

Did the Bard know you, too?

[_EAllusion]

Are you by chance a stupid person who lives in rural Appalachia?

No, why?

I hear that's what everyone keeps implying about you. The voices, they're everywhere. Cruel people.

By the way, Gad was just mocking a common style of post DCP writes. It was sarcasm. He wasn't seriously saying he was going to play croquet. Calling him a liar shows you can't follow some pretty basic context to figure out the meaning of a post. Not that you aren't an incredibly intelligent person who is in no way related to people who mine coal in West Virginia, but that's pretty dense captain grammar.

[_EAllusion]

You are aware that Gad is mocking DCP's random references to high culture to let everyone know he is living an envious [sc. enviable?], intellectually sophisticated life, right?

That envious was an interesting slip.

Yes, I meant enviable. Copyediting message board posts is notoriously not my strength Though on another level, envious does work there. The "he" is supposed to refer to DCP, not Gad in that sentence. An interesting slip indeed.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Oh, I know what you intended, EA. But, of course, it really won't work to suggest that I want everyone to know that I lead an "envious" life.

I've just been thinking about something that Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote about Gadianton Scratch. It reads, in part, as follows:

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on cheeseburgers hath fed,
And drunk Bordeaux of bargain price.

[_maklelan]

You are aware that Gad is mocking DCP's random references to high culture to let everyone know he is living an envious, intellectually sophisticated life, right?

So here (viewtopic.php?p=255376#p255376):

Anyway, I'm off for the evening. Time to retire to the den with my favorite pipe and a glass of Scotch. As I looked over my bookshelf earlier in the day, I became racked with guilt over what's now going on a four week neglect of Shakespeare. I suppose I owe the slighted playwright an apology of my own, eh? A forty-five minute read should provide adequate restitution. Perhaps I'll have time afterward to enjoy Camelot on the big screen and before retiring to my chambers quickly browse my Klimt collection while listening to G.F. Handel's Radamisto. Looking forward to it, as I've had a long day. Brunch with a colleague at a local coffee house and then I took my neighbor and his wife out to dinner to the Market Street Grill. Unfair payment I suppose for their treat to La Caille over the weekend. I viewed several live plays in the morning by various local theater companies and between brunch and dinner, hooked up with an old Ivy League pal of mine for several games of chess and some rowing practice on the pond. I'm not sure what was more tiring, countering his extensive Fischer repertoire, moving the boat along the pond, or our intense debate over the best Russian translation of Hegel's Philosophy of History.

and here (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=9932&p=256441&hilit=+this+afternoon#p256441):

I will be very busy today and probably won't be able to respond further until tonight. I'm almost late for my Shakespeare club and after that I have an afternoon of croquet and badminton lined up.

he's just mocking Dan Peterson?

[_Calculus Crusader]

Cultured is recognizing Joseph Smith was a charlatan.

CC, I don't think you realize how silly you look when you dump on Mormons for believing in a preposterous religion. You agree with the Mormons when they say that there's a cosmic primate that created the Earth...

No, I do not. I expressly reject the belief that God has a body of "flesh and bones." As for Jesus Christ, I do not believe he is consubstantial with God, nor do I believe he is a subordinate god.

...and that he can make you live forever if you telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master...

Romans 10:9

9...if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

...and that this primate lived on Earth about two thousand years ago and did magic tricks for a couple of years before he was sacrificed to save you from the hell to which he will send you if you get pleasure from looking at boobies, and then he magically came back to life...

Jesus Christ lived approximately 2000 years ago and I believe that he performed miracles and was resurrected by God. As for hell, I already corrected you in the other thread.

...and that some nomads tripping balls in the desert wrote this stuff down accurately.

If anyone is "tripping balls," it's you. (Perhaps you found the jar in which your girlfriend stores them.) The authors of the New Testament were not nomads. They were educated, literate people. (The same goes for the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament.)

So, when you treat Mormons like credulous idiots because they also think that this primate visited another group of people who wrote stuff down, it's really quite amusing.

Mormons are not necessarily dupes because they believe Jesus Christ visited another group of people after his resurrection. They are dupes because the book they get the belief from is a transparent fraud.