{"id":36255,"date":"2017-02-19T08:15:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T14:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=36255"},"modified":"2018-09-09T08:17:27","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T14:17:27","slug":"an-obituary-for-our-time-scott-abbotts-immortal-for-quite-some-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/an-obituary-for-our-time-scott-abbotts-immortal-for-quite-some-time\/","title":{"rendered":"An Obituary for our Time: Scott Abbott’s\u00a0Immortal for Quite Some Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first thing I read on opening Scott Abbott\u2019s\u00a0Immortal for Quite Some Time<\/em>\u00a0was that \u201cThis is not a memoir.\u201d I agree. This book is, in my opinion, the world\u2019s most perfect obituary. I\u2019ve been reading them in the newspaper since my mother\u2019s death in 1994, when I realized that most of the people at her funeral had learned that she\u2019d passed by reading her obituary.<\/span><\/p>\n

Obituaries come in many forms. The long-winded list of an old person\u2019s accomplishments along with his\/her progeny; the death notice, spare and sparse with a funeral invitation; the personal note, written by the deceased prior to being deceased; and what I call \u201cthe treasure hunt,\u201d a frustrating communique full of carefully crafted clues to a much larger story, intended to help those still living.<\/p>\n

I say \u201ctreasure\u201d because I believe that everyone has a unique story, which when told well becomes a universal story from which anyone can learn. I say \u201chunt\u201d because to find the story the reader must fill in the vast and empty spaces between the clues.<\/p>\n

And then, there are those obituaries suggesting that the deceased has unfinished business. These days the quantum physicists say that we don\u2019t \u201cend\u201d when we die but go on to occupy another, possibly parallel universe. We can either believe that this is possible or not. I happen to believe it, based on personal experiences for which no other reasonable explanation exists.<\/p>\n

Scott Abbott\u2019s obituary for his brother John, who died of AIDS on July 21, 1991, may fall into the \u201ctreasure hunt\u201d category except that the number of clues contained in its 256 pages leave, at least for this reader, little unfilled space. It is not frustrating. It is beautiful.<\/p>\n

As with the best of this genre, Abbot\u2019s is less about his dead brother than it is about himself. The clues, laid out in journal form spanning most of his life are to a story, a treasure that remains unfinished.<\/p>\n

The clues come in many forms. Abbott has included poems, photographs, shopping lists, and menus. There are letters and song lyrics. John\u2019s alarm clock ticks throughout, and dreams are recalled: (In 1989 in Germany, \u201c\u2026a naked man reads into an expanding condom until it bursts\u2014freeing letters and word fragments to conceive monsters, impregnate the universe\u201d.) Throughout the text, there are italicized questions. But from where? His inner critic? (The publisher\u2019s material says they\u2019re from a feminine source, but I\u2019m not sure.)<\/p>\n

Most of the clues are contained in Abbott\u2019s concise, sometimes haunting, sometimes poetic journal entries. My sense from the varied content contained in them is that Abbott doesn\u2019t wait for something notable to occur or for an important thought to form to pull out his journal. Rather, he seems to have made journal-keeping a regular practice. The simple act of sitting down with his journal and pen signals his inner world to reveal itself.<\/p>\n

A professor of integrated studies at Utah Valley University, Abbott began his career at BYU until his writing and general loss of faith drove him away. The literary clues come from his extensive reading and dependence on books and articles that not only inspired him but added heft and thrust to the building explanation and promise to the questions he\u2019s asking. The literary clues are, to me, most intriguing:\u00a0St. Maybe<\/em>\u00a0by Anne Tyler;\u00a0Howl and Other Poems,\u00a0<\/em>by Allen Ginsberg (\u201cAmerica, I\u2019m putting my Queer shoulder to the wheel,\u201d he writes after attending church during his earliest, questioning . . . and the singing of that song we all know and many of us still love, \u201cPut your shoulder to the wheel, push along . . ..\u201d).<\/em><\/p>\n

During a regular nap in his office, Abbott lays on a pillow of books (the top one being John Ashbery\u2019s\u00a0Flow Chart)\u00a0<\/em>and wonders about \u201can effortless transfer between book and brain.\u201d At one point, on an airplane, Abbott is reading\u00a0The Songlines,\u00a0<\/em>perhaps as a kind of counterweight to the Mormon \u201csister\u201d sitting next to him with whom he is avoiding conversation, and quotes the book\u2019s unrepentant English author, Bruce Chatwin:\u00a0\u201c<\/em>\u2019I would ram my face against her sheeny pink vulva and listen to the sound of the surf.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there is his reference to\u00a0Modern Nature,\u00a0<\/em>Derek Jarman\u2019s journal written after the late film director and author discovered he was HIV positive. Abbott read this book only to better understand his brother\u2019s homosexuality:<\/p>\n

\n

The passage in which Jarman describes boarding-school officials catching him in bed with a boy named Johnny echoes my anger during John\u2019s funeral: \u201cChrist! What are you doing? You\u2019ll go blind!\u201d Then the blows rained down, millennia of frustrated Christian hatred behind the cane . . . We were shoved into the wilderness they had created, and commanded to punish ourselves for all time. So that at last we would be able to enter their heaven truly dead in spirit.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes Abbott quotes from earlier works of his own, as with this passage presented in a paper read at a Sunstone Symposium: \u201cThe word, \u2018Mormon\u2019 can and does evoke thoughts of bigotry, exclusion, narrowness, and sectarianism. In John Gardner\u2019s 1982 novel\u00a0Mickelsson\u2019s Ghosts<\/em>, for example, Mormons are described as a \u2018sea of drab faces\u2019 dutiful, bent-backed, hurrying obediently, meekly across an endless murky plain.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a reference to\u00a0A Chorus of Stones<\/em>\u00a0by Susan Griffin, he recalls one of his BYU students calling the book \u201cpornographic,\u201d and \u201cpornography,\u201d she explains,\u201d leads to masturbation, which leads to homosexuality which leads to necrophilia.\u201d The woman quit the class and filed a complaint with the administration, claiming that Abbott\u2019s class is not \u201dGod centered\u201d as required by the university\u2019s mission statement.<\/p>\n

What is Scott Abbott trying to make sense of? Where do these clues lead? What questions is he trying to answer? There are many possibilities.<\/p>\n

Does he feel guilty for his brother\u2019s death (alone, sick, in a distant room)? Does Abbott question his own sexuality? Does he in some deep way, worry that the tenets of the Mormon Church are right and that he has created eternal problems for himself and his family? Or is he simply answering the call of his creative and possibly evolutionary imagination, which has not let his brother John die in the depths of the author\u2019s unconscious.<\/p>\n

Although Abbott had already begun to question his faith, after John\u2019s death he can no longer rationalize the life their racist and homophobic culture had forced his brother to live. Believing in the Mormon Church becomes impossible.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m finishing this review of\u00a0Immortal for Quite Some Time<\/em>\u00a0after Donald J. Trump\u2019s first full week in office. Last week, millions of women marched in protest of the new president\u2019s misogynistic, patriarchal ways. Yesterday, airports were jammed with people protesting his latest edict, this one to keep Muslims out of America. With the notoriously homophobic Michael Pence as his Vice President, LGBTQ people might be next. And after that, the intellectuals.<\/p>\n

Today is also Edward Abbey\u2019s birthday. He would have been 90.<\/p>\n

While many Utah Mormons held fast to their beliefs and voted for a third- party candidate, Trump won this state. That, plus our own elected officials are all on record as supporting Trump and their Republican Party.<\/p>\n

This book, this past week, and my dismay at the Mormon Church seeming to ignore the good and right and even what makes natural sense by not disavowing Trump has me wondering. What if Abbott\u2019s obituary for his brother, John isn\u2019t just a fascinating treasure hunt? What if the \u201cclues\u201d are actually the bread crumbs John drops from that parallel world of the dead for his very alive brother to follow?<\/p>\n

Immortal for Quite Some Time<\/em>\u00a0might be Abbott documenting his work on John\u2019s unfinished business. If so, this business can be none other than seeing that the author follows his own unfiltered inner voice on his own journey through the dogmatic maze in which both he and his brother were raised, and out into the real and free world. The real world of deep darkness and bright light, of personal, primary inspiration rather than secondary. The real world where evolution occurs.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s moving epilogue, dated 6 December 2015, supports this conclusion. After finding a letter John had written to a \u201cFriend\u201d during his mission to Italy, Abbott answers it. Again there are clues:<\/p>\n

\n

. . . of all I have learned from you over the twenty-five years I have followed your faint traces, friendship may be the most important lesson . . ..Lover and friend share the same root, as does the phrase, \u201cto set free.\u201d You have set me free, John. How I wish my much belated thoughts could have done the same for you. . . . [Y]our phrase \u201ccome sono fatto\u201d reflects your sense for the Italian idea of \u201chow am I made, how am I in my essential nature?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And readers? Either they will find Scott Abbott\u2019s story familiar because they are on a similar path, and it will inspire them to tell their own, or they will be drawn in because in quiet moments they know they need to start their own journey. They will know that this beautifully brave book, this unique obituary, will give them courage.<\/p>\n

Immortal for Quite Some Time
\n<\/em>Scott Abbott
\nUniversity of Utah Press<\/a>
\n2016
\n240 pp.
\n$24.95<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first thing I read on opening Scott Abbott\u2019s\u00a0Immortal for Quite Some Time\u00a0was that \u201cThis is not a memoir.\u201d I agree. This book is, in my opinion, the world\u2019s most perfect obituary. I\u2019ve been reading them in the newspaper since my mother\u2019s death in 1994, when I realized […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1582,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 13:13:50","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1582"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36256,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36255\/revisions\/36256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}