https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/books daily 0.75 2022-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/3d464c28-6413-4bcc-b57b-24aeb33ee88b/IMG_8681.jpeg Scholarly The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. —James Joyce, “Araby” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/879a40d6-2212-4234-8f34-98471f0f2145/IMG_8686.jpeg Scholarly - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/107c18c6-915d-4731-80af-56bbd6bedd56/IMG_8684.jpeg Scholarly - Barbed wire is made of two strands of galvanized steel wire twisted together for strength and to hold sharp barbs in place. As creative advertisers sought ways to make an inherently dangerous product attractive to customers concerned about the welfare of their livestock, the fence accrued a fascinating and troubling range of meanings. In The Perfect Fence, Lyn Ellen Bennett and Scott Abbott explore multiple uses and meanings of barbed wire. They survey the vigorous public debate over the benign or “infernal” fence, investigate legislative attempts to ban or regulate wire fences as a result of public outcry, and demonstrate how the industry responded to ameliorate the image of its barbed product. Because of the rich metaphorical possibilities suggested by a fence that controls through pain, barbed wire developed into an important motif in works of literature as diverse as The Virginian, The Grapes of Wrath, Wise Blood, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Ceremony, and “Brokeback Mountain.” Tropes first exploited by advertisers became staples of American literature as writers explore ranching, native, gender, and religious identities suggested, proscribed, contested, and enforced by “the thorny fence.” Early advertisements proclaimed that barbed wire was “the perfect fence," keeping “the ins from being outs, and the outs from being ins.” Bennett and Abbott conclude that while barbed wire is not the perfect fence touted by manufacturers, it is indeed a meaningful thing that continues to influence American identities. Website for the Book https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/contact daily 0.75 2022-11-12 https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/we-a-friendship daily 0.75 2022-01-06 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/445c30ad-50c4-4b83-bca7-001d1397183b/we+cover.jpg We - Elik Press, Salt Lake City This book describes a friendship, or, better said, it explores a friendship, or perhaps we should say it documents a friendship, celebrates it and performs it, a friendship that began in 1984 in Tübingen, Germany, the university town where philosophers Hegel and Schelling and poet Hölderlin were once roommates, a friendship that deepened when we crossed the Austrian/Yugoslav border to follow a character in Peter Handke’s Repetition for our book Repetitions, that matured when we traveled up the Drina River with Peter Handke and drove through south-western American landscapes for our Vampires & A Reasonable Dictionary (of which a reviewer claimed that it was a two-seater with no steering wheel, a claim we contested by pointing out that the car had two steering wheels), a friendship informed by relationships with Marina Abramović, Era, Julije Knifer, Nina Pops, Alex Caldiero, Sam Rushforth, and above all Peter Handke—the hero of our books and the author of works we have translated and that have translated us. Žarko’s genre-stretching stories assert that their realities, including space and time, are narratively constructed, and that gender, Aristotle’s unities, and even punctuation! are, subject, to, authorial, whim. Scott writes an “approximate biography” of his friend Žarko and offers “An Amicable Correspondence” between Žarko, Sonosopher Alex Caldiero, and himself. Letters by Goethe and Schiller augment the correspondence and when Schiller, approaching the end of his life, hopes that he and Goethe “can walk together down as much of the road as may remain, and with all the more profit, since the last companions on a journey always have most to say to each other,” we understand him well. Two friends join us in this book about friendship: Nina Pops, Serbian/German artist (Cologne) whose work we featured on the covers of our first two books and who has colaborated extensively with Žarko, contributes two works. Alex Caldiero, Sicilian/American (Utah) poet, sonosopher, musician, and visual artist, is featured in the amicable correspondence that comprises one section of our book. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/29f19cfe-4ef1-4447-adb6-f8a92110dbc9/IMG_8677.jpeg We https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/1641313334330-O16H9YIDBYMDJ3J4DV73/knjiga-o-prijateljstvu.jpg We https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/27a7a60d-b66a-44d5-b617-22786df123f1/IMG_8678.jpeg We https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/6681f992-0fc4-4a40-a404-ec06d99a9005/IMG_8679.jpeg We https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/eb4455fc-3a19-4447-b3a4-ce0d8f87891f/IMG_8680.jpeg We https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/fa868b71-a041-4b9d-bbc3-51f3e1814884/nina1.jpg We by Nina Pops https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/46edd5a2-1c5f-4090-94b5-075c1b69dd6c/nina2.jpg We By Nina Pops https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/about daily 0.75 2024-02-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/56c94ee5-c141-4ddf-934b-cc6db8e88c8d/Foto%5B13%5D.jpg About Scott Abbott is the author of eight books ranging from the scholarly Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel and The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire (with Lyn Ellen Bennett) — to the personal Wild Rides & Wildflowers: Philosophy and Botany with Bikes (with Sam Rushforth) and Immortal for Quite Some Time — to three books rooted in the former Yugoslavia with Žarko Radaković: Repetitions; Vampires & A Reasonable Dictionary; and We: On Friendship — and to a book of essays about the idea of a university and academic freedom at BYU, Dwelling in the Promised Land as a Stranger. His translations include works by Peter Handke and Gregor Mendel. He blogs at “The Goalie’s Anxiety” (https://thegoaliesanxiety.wordpress.com) Professor of Integrated Studies, Philosophy and Humanities at Utah Valley University. Lives in Woodland Hills, Utah. https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/immortal daily 0.75 2022-01-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/70f16207-eb18-42ac-aaaf-d70496b6e288/IMG_8682.jpeg Wild & Immortal - Website for the Book While neither of the authors is a philosopher (Rushforth is a botanist, Abbott a literary critic), in the course of peripatetic conversations they both turn to philosophy (as they do to poetry and art and science) for answers and for good questions. Chapter titles are one indication of the topics under discussion: This is True Worship, Ecstatic Phenomenon, Jesus is the Answer, As Common as Paradox, As Odd as Love, Transcendental Balance, God Stories. Epistemology is a constant concern: “You’ve stumbled onto something controversial and interesting here,” Sam says. “It’s a classic disagreement between the lumpers (me included) and the splitters. Your second guide [with a larger number of species] was written by splitters and your first by lumpers.” “I bought those guides,” I tell Sam, “expecting scientific facts. Instead, I get judgments, assessments, interpretations built on biases. ‘Truth,’ Nietzsche wrote, ‘is a mobile army of metaphors.’ I’m fifty years old and have known this for decades. Now I know it again.” Human interaction with nature is a related question: Sam’s standing form, silhouetted against the valley below, reminds me of early nineteenth-century paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. Responding to the new sense among German Romantics for the importance of the subject as it relates to objects of perception, Friedrich painted human figures from behind, their gazes turned to nature. “Nature,” Friedrich’s contemporary Schelling wrote, “is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature.” There are questions of aesthetics:“ Getting dark. Mountain hanging over us. Wind whipping up. We’re insignificant here.” “Sam, I don’t want to put words between us and the experience, but your response bears out Kant’s theory of the sublime. Nature overwhelms us with sheer size or power, then reason moves us past fear to a fine mixed pleasure.”“No shit,” Sam agrees thoughtfully. Theology haunts the authors, although neither is a believer: “Stanley Hauerwas claims that only ‘god stories’ have the power to inspire commitment, only stories that start ‘In the beginning...’ I pressed him on the issue, claiming that plenty of atheists with no belief in any sort of divine creation live strongly committed lives.” “What did he answer?” Sam yells back from high on the hill. “He’s a hell of a smart guy,” I answer, “so I’m not sure exactly what he said. I think I partly misunderstood his original point, and I think he said that like you and me, he sees human existence as absolutely contingent. But that god stuff confused the issue for me. I think he underestimates the commitment potential of stories that end with death!” In short, as the authors converse about family and friendship and wilderness and loss and botany and mountain bikes and aging and sex and meaning, they have no recourse but to turn to philosophy now and then. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/d4314f46-e0be-4818-833e-3cff374d4024/IMG_8683.jpeg Wild & Immortal - Website for the Book My brother John died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of forty. The most surprising thing I learned as I began to write about him was that you can’t describe your brother without describing yourself. And that can be uncomfortable, especially if you are a heterosexual, practicing Mormon. Immortal For Quite Some Time is a work of what I call “fraternal meditation.” The book shares the fragmented structure of Peter Handke’s A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, a self-conscious struggle to write about his mother after her suicide, and of Susan Griffin’s remarkable investigation into the violent public and private consequences of silence, A Chorus of Stones. In fits and starts I sketch my versions of a lonely, funny, talented, hard-luck, bisexual, ex-Mormon and his ostensibly more stable brother. The former has no choice but to suffer this outing at the hands of his brother. And the latter, although he can choose what he discloses about himself, risks radical redefinition of a self constructed according to LDS guidelines by devout LDS parents. Wary of triumphant narratives that celebrate a writer’s courageous escape from a repressive culture, I add to my first-person account a critical female voice that questions my assertions and ridicules my rhetoric, creating a dialectical structure that distinguishes my book from others I know. Curious about photographs and their possible roles in biography, I employ them at arm’s length. Missing my brother, I move from the cold vision of autopsy to direct conversation during the book’s final sections. The LDS Church has been an active supporter of so-called “defense of marriage” initiatives in Hawaii, Alaska, California, and more recently before the Supreme Court. My book invites readers into the intimate workings of a secure, warm-hearted, educated, sweetly racist and homophobic LDS family, at least one member of which might have lived better and longer in a society that recognized gay marriages. A very early version of this work won first prize for “Book Manuscript, Creative Non-Fiction” in the Utah Arts Council 1994 Original Writing Competition. Three sections of the manuscript have been published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought (Spring 2011, Fall 2011, and Spring 2013), one part in saltfront(Winter 2015), and one piece in Irreantum (Nr. 1, 2005). https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/home daily 1.0 2024-02-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/1641263820201-DXAU88KC5YCOL3N47472/Foto%255B6%255D.jpg Home with co-author Žarko Radaković https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/1641263889334-UA5ZDI5KR8N6P6J50Z9X/IMG_0394.jpg Home with co-author Sam Rushforth https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/1641267018577-9AXXE42DSQ3OO6YU468G/IMG_0613.jpg Home with Henry in Brittany https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/cda4a73d-4622-4903-bfb1-c7d6ee86aee6/peterscott.jpeg Home with Peter Handke https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/1641267170244-VQDH35HCPAJCRORNY8B0/IMG_2660.jpg Home with co-author Alex https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/2c7ffa50-b5b5-49fc-9a03-99c23293486d/zarkoandscott.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/121e2db2-becb-44fb-9291-87441499e807/IMG_6230.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/b12f5c9d-4662-4f95-9414-5b79252d2741/scan0016.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/505df49b-1797-4139-a9d3-c8518651f552/samscotttwins.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/8612dbe7-e0f7-4aae-86db-e1e7b2695990/scan0025.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/679db741-6718-4d26-b551-664a9620ce2b/Image+1-4-22+at+9.06+AM.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/795a99a1-c953-4aaf-8010-07914e0047b8/steven.jpg Home https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/19335e29-db2b-4ac2-88fd-12a46dbcf3a5/scan0004.jpg Home https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/dwelling daily 0.75 2022-09-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/f34fee5a-71fd-46de-adc0-0648f1212f00/Screen+Shot+2022-02-16+at+12.23.22+PM.png Dwelling Book - Make it stand out Final page of the AAUP Report https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/382765dc-966e-43d4-ae6a-a2274c29eb70/steven.jpg Dwelling Book - Make it stand out Steven, Dietrich, Gabriel, and me…a few years ago https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/814016cc-b5f9-46cd-a1d6-b90271425df3/IMG_8870.jpeg Dwelling Book - Make it stand out Royden Card Woodcuts Accompany Each Chapter https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/7c73a80a-3a4b-49a9-b274-c9f08dcf2b32/Screen+Shot+2022-02-16+at+12.18.42+PM.png Dwelling Book - Make it stand out First page of the AAUP Report https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/9f4f5cb6-fff8-4005-8446-bd1e1737258c/Screen+Shot+2022-02-16+at+12.43.47+PM.png Dwelling Book - Make it stand out The cover , after an original woodcut by Royden Card, was designed by Christian Harrison. Sections of the book are separated by additional Card woodcuts. Many thanks to Royden Card and to Andi Pitcher Davis, who made this happen. Royden Card Fine Art https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/149b0988-64f5-4478-94e5-0e0f0b392642/final+cover.jpeg Dwelling Book - Personal Encounters with Mormon Institutions Preface by Cecilia Konchar Farr, Foreword by William Evenson 1. “Mickelsson’s Mormons,” The Sunstone Review, September 1982 2. “House of the Lord, House of the Temple: A View from Philadelphia,” with Steven Epperson, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Fall 1987 3. “Will We Find Zion or Make It? An Essay on Postmodernity and Revelation,” Sunstone conference on Zion, 1990, Sunstone, December 1994 4. “One Lord, One Faith, Two Universities: Tensions between ‘Religion’ and ‘Thought’ at BYU,” Sunstone, September 1992 5. “The Provo Window: Late Night Thoughts on the Purposes of Art and the Decline of a University,” Annual of the Association for Mormon Letters, 1996 6. “Clipped and Controlled: A Contemporary Look at BYU,” Sunstone, September 1996 7. “On Ecclesiastical Endorsement at BYU,” Sunstone, April 1997 8. “Telling Stories” (review of Wayne Schow’s Remembering Brad: On the Loss of a Son to Aids), Sunstone, July 1997 9. “Sinister Virtue: The Effects of Cultural Despair on Academic Freedom at BYU,” AAUP Conference on Religious Institutions and Academic Freedom, Chicago, 1997 (unpublished) 10. Debating the Possibility of a Mormon University: Notes from an Appeal, 1998 (unpublished) 11. “Mitt Romney, BYU, and Abortion Rights,” Boston Globe, 27 October 2002 12. Reviews of New Work by Brian Evenson: “Mormon Civilization and its Schizophrenic Discontents” and “Affliction Fiction” 13. “Hermeneutic Adventures in Home Teaching: Mary and Richard Rorty,” Dialogue, A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 2010 14. “New LDS Restrictions on Children of Gay Parents Make Perfect Sense,” The Goalie’s Anxiety (blog), November 6, 2015 15. “UVU President Matthew Holland Continues His Battle against Marriage Equality,” The UVU Review, November 13, 2017 Published by BY COMMON CONSENT PRESS Announcement of the publication Order the Book Here https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/8d66686c-c1e2-46df-9f14-7e23e769607a/IMG_8867.jpeg Dwelling Book - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61d3964507f64d4a7bd68fcd/c4274948-0cfe-42de-be21-918ff492567a/IMG_0394.jpg Dwelling Book - The sign is ambiguous, but not the friendship https://www.scottabbottauthor.com/vita daily 0.75 2023-08-08