What if God was a true cowboy?

[_son of Ishmael]

I always thought that God was more like a biker

[_sock puppet]

"What if God was a true cowboy?"

Sounds like the chorus in Weird Al Yankovich's take on Joan Osborne's One of Us.

[_sock puppet]

"Cowboy!!Baby!
"With the top let down and the sunshine shinin'
"West Coast Chillin' while the boone's whinen
"I want to be a Cowboy!Baby!
"Ride At night cause I sleep all day!
"Cowboy!Baby/I can smell a pig from a mile away"

God could no more be a real cowboy than Kid Rock could.

[_lulu]

Where I grew up, that's they way real men looked.

Only they didn't go to church and kept a 5th of whisky behind the truck seat

[_zeezrom]

I think you need to read the novel The Backslider, by Mormon writer Levi Peterson. There you will be introduced to the Cowboy Jesus.

Seriously, this is such a prize. Thank you so much for pointing me to it, Blixa!

[_gramps]

...Picking up hookers instead of my pen, I let the words of my youth fade away
Old worn out saddles and old worn out memories, but no one and no place to stay

My heroes have always been cowboys,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viyc91cFI_E

[_cafe crema]

...Picking up hookers instead of my pen, I let the words of my youth fade away
Old worn out saddles and old worn out memories, but no one and no place to stay

My heroes have always been cowboys,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Viyc91cFI_E

They'll never stay home and they're always alone, even with someone they love..

[_Blixa]

I think you need to read the novel The Backslider, by Mormon writer Levi Peterson. There you will be introduced to the Cowboy Jesus.

Seriously, this is such a prize. Thank you so much for pointing me to it, Blixa!

I like Levi Peterson's biography of Juanita Brooks immensely, but I should say I'm not as much a fan of this novel. I think there are some very good things in it and I think it has a historical importance, but I also find it kind of clumsy. By that I mean that I think that some things in the book are not completely worked out conceptually and thus have a metaphoric clunkiness. The business with the main character's brother's self mutilation is my main example: I think it borders on the ludicrous.

I also find the entire treatment of sexuality in the novel problematic. I appreciate what Peterson was trying to do with it, and I'm sympathetic with that intention, but again I think it was handled in a clumsy fashion. But then again, maybe this "clumsiness" in just these places is what is most "Mormon" about it?

I've not read any of Peterson's other and later fiction. I keep meaning to, because I would like a fuller look at his work given my own interest in the convergence of Mormonism and literature.

I'll leave you one of my touchstone quotes to think on: “It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call for constant explanation.”
― Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country

[_zeezrom]

Thanks Blixa!

My own story is fairly clunky and clumsy so this should be interesting for me. It's on hold at the library... right behind Laird Borrelli's 2000 book...

[_Blixa]

Thanks Blixa!

My own story is fairly clunky and clumsy so this should be interesting for me. It's on hold at the library... right behind Laird Borrelli's 2000 book...

Just sayin'