Beck’s book was said by Alex to have been originally pitched by her to her publisher AS A WORK OF FICTION! And yet the publisher, Alex said, apparently insisted it be minorly reworked into a memoirs!!!!! How ironic!
- – -
Publisher: “You know, brother, this is based on your true life, is it not? Why don’t you let us call this a memoirs! And in the parts where it’s fictionalized, well, y’know, ya really can’t let your being over obsessed with the truth get in the way of an interesting story!” And you really shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story!”

Author: “Yeah, I guess you’re right: Chi-chinggg!!!”
- – -
Lol. So: Martha’s Oprah Mag -reviewed “LEAVING THE SAINTS was BEFORE her James Frey fiasco! . . . Yet, DESPITE the controversy LEAVING had caused, no one paid it any mind UNTIL mister Frey’s came on board. And then when internet sleuths quickly figured out that HIS publishers had forced his fiction to parade as memoirs it’s only THEN everybody finally stood up and took notice. Go figure.

Mark: Hm: a sorta assigned /volunteer clipping service? (Your educated guess/ assumption, Mark, or you’ve you actually heard tell?)
=====
Oh, one more thing I remember from when sister Martha Beck’s book came out. She was on an NPR show that brought her brother Alex, too. Anyway, Martha was on first and she had it that her fam was completely ignoring her, wouldn’t talk to her, would have nothing to do with her.

Then after Alex comes on, it turns out that the fam had been trying desperately to have contact with Martha since the time she was finishing up the book and it was coming out, without success.
- – -
All lightheartedness aside here, though, folks (and I seriously mean that . . . !) But, Martha sounded like somebody who’s deeply troubled. And this makes you wonder if maybe this being-so-troubled was DUE to some kind of nefarious abuse in her childhood?; sort of like: first they abuse ya so much that they make you crazy, then they say noone can believe ya about this abuse caus, well, you’re obviously so crazy? Or, alteranately, the sort of intensity obsessiveness that genetically predisposed Nibley to be such a prolific scholar/ apologetic advocate, in Martha’s particular hothouse-strain makes her prone to promoting whimsy upon whimsy upon whimsy?; e.(-xempli g.(-ratia): claims she wasn’t hypnotized, when she was; neglects to mention she suffered abuse by a neighbor boy; neglects to mention, within memoirs dealing with angst vis-a-vis the Church, she’s gay; claims her family won’t speak to her when the exact opposite was the case; imagines the Latter-day Saint’s Work-of-God volunteers might be manning some room, somewhere, 24/7 so they can monitor all her telephone conversations?

OK: With that very last reference to a couple of “reasonably” paranoid (which is a contradiction in terms, but still — lol), passing references in sister Beck’s book to where she’s worrying about hearing clicks on her phone . . . maybe I’m startin to get lighthearted again. Sorry. But — still — the whole picture of Beck’s tales’ seeming modus operandi of being selected for emotional ‘n’ emotive effect over mere adherence to independently ‘n’ objectively verifiable truth does make me kinda wonder what way-out-there stuff her editor excised for being too whackily over the top to be believable?

Mostly stuff like arguing the Book of Mormon is a fabrication, that the Priesthood is a conspiracy for hegemonic domination of the innocent, and so on. There is a broad range of perspectives on what should legitimately constitute apostasy, but when one actively portrays and promotes an attitude more hostile to the Church than the average view on the outside looking in, the line has probably been crossed.

No, Jim, you’re exactly right, and I didn’t mean to suggest that either so aspired or attained. Gene was noble but not regal; Hugh Nibley I never knew. (What I meant was that their names were familiar to my childish ears, but also Important and Remote and Elevated, in the same way that “king” sounded.)