Remember how I had mentioned that cosmological lens?
First - how did Orson Scott Card end up on my shelf? Card is a very well respected Science Fiction author, having won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, along with many others. His novel Ender's Game is considered a masterpiece of the genre and is one of the rarefied novels to have won the Hugo and Nebula simultaneously. Card is also a "devout and outspoken" mormon - a member of the LDS faith - of which faith I also consider myself to be a devout and outspoken member. Card is a popular personality in the genre having famously suggested once that budding SF authors first read through the catalogue of award winning SF novels in order to get a sense of the conversation...
So why have I put off reading him for so long? I have his classics on my shelf, as well as lesser known works, like Seventh Son, but even before the random number generator my reading never took me there. I had friends in university who talked about LDS theology present in Ender's Game, and for reasons that I don't fully understand I bumped the texts to the bottom of my "to read list." I tend to shy away from the large body of "Mormon Lit" and maybe I caught a scent, perhaps false, and unwittingly closed a door. I'm no snob, I just like my theology from the source, unfiltered as it were.
So here I began reading Seventh Son thinking - a magic-realist novel about folk magic in an alternate history frontier America, I am so in! And I am. But 70 pages into the text I have a distinct sense of deja vu.
The opening scenes of the text are crisp, exciting - I know I just said "exciting," but I still thought of Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (you'll know why if you've read both). I also thought of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, especially "The Maypole of Merry Mount" as I read further. As I continued to read, I reached a point at which a blurry sense of familiarity burst into clarity. The point in the text I'm thinking of is when 6 year old Alvin Jr. awakens to find a shining being standing at the foot of his bed that proceeds to provide the boy with a vision regarding his burgeoning supernatural abilities and his responsibility in the world. For those in the know, see if you've heard this story: a large family travelling further into the frontier to hack their homestead from the virgin forest gives birth to a child of destiny; said child shows signs of this special destiny early in life - he portentiously shares the name of his father and forefathers and is curious about the differences of relgious belief within his family and society; he recieves multiple visitations in one night from a being of light standing by his bed in the middle of the night wilst his siblings sleep; the powers of darkness continue to threaten his destruction, most prominently by the "powers of water;" he is able to heal by the laying on of hands; he receives a vision in which a stone is cut from a mountain and rolls to fill, or become, the whole earth; this young man, "a maker," is considered to be the second most important maker in the history of the world since the first Maker turned water to wine at Cana... Need I continue?
I should note that the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr.'s elder brother's name was actually Alvin. Also, this link provides a brief explanation on the commonly held mormon belief regarding watery menace.
Clearly I'm reading a story that I've heard a different version of before. But should this matter? I've heard hundreds of versions of the Ring of the Nibelungen, the Arthurian legend, even Cinderella - and enjoyed many! Stories in literature surface and resurface, are re-interpreted and refurbished - witness Heinlein's classic Stranger in a Strange Land (disclosure: I loathe this novel). But does it make a difference to me if the story being retold is one that I consider profoundly sacred? And so it all comes back to the lens. Were I not LDS and reading this novel, I don't doubt that my reaction would be very different. Sorry, can't change that. I'm an unabashed proponent of Reader theory in this case. I'm enjoying the story, and this is far from a re-write of Joseph Smith - History. But I can't help noticing the similarities to a story that for me carries deep spiritual significance. And I ain't talkin' about the Hawthorne. But then, wasn't it me that just read Inferno? Apropos, no?
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