Rudd isn't depicted as all that unusual – father left his mother early on, disinterested in religion while his mother labors to bring him back to church, adrift in the high school years. Drawing from the true story of the 1902 murder by the grandson of Brigham Young through the Mormon blood sacrifice ritual, The Open Curtain gives us Rudd, a teenager in the midwest with his own troubled relationship to the Mormon faith. That sort of backstory makes one sit up and take notice, and in the case of Evenson's latest effort, The Open Curtain, the attention is rewarded. All of that: loss of job, of faith, of marriage, in the pursuit of an ideal in writing. The controversy also led to his leaving the Mormon church, and contributed to the end of his marriage. Many thanks to Matt Tiffany who alerted us - and who interviews Evenson at his own site - and kindly provides us with this Guest Review.īrian Evenson's own story is as interesting as the stories he invents: When faced with censorship from Brigham Young University, where he was told that he could only continue in his position as assistant professor if he agreed not to write anything again like his first book, Altmann's Tongue, he resigned. Brian Evenson will be appearing this evening at Beyond Baroque, reading with Maggie Nelson.
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