Thursday, 02 June 2005

A. Cephalous, Anonymous No More!

Two events conspired to change my mind about blogging anonymously.  The first was an invitation to join the stable of writers over at the Valve.  The second was this comment over at Cliopatria:

True and False Repentance, II: Acephalous, a notorious pseudonymite, known to hang out at shady dives like Easily Distracted and The Valve, got a nod yesterday from Sharon Howard's History Carnival #9. Sez ‘e: "Random accolades from a professional historian ... is there anything a literary historicist covets more? (Hint: ‘No.')" We're glad to hear that recognition by historians steels Acephalous's nerve to come out of the closet and reveal his or her identity. Go, and pseudonym no more!

Real historians and, well, real literary historians have real names.  Now I do too. 

Jun 2, 2005 3:48:06 PM | Weblogs

4 Comments

Herjólf the Forgettable

Holy doodles, Acephalous, you stirred up yourself a little hornet's nest over at the Valve.

In other news, I think it's expressions like "holy doodles" that make me a very lame Viking.

Posted by: Herjólf the Forgettable | Friday, 03 June 2005 at 12:38 PM

Hrólf the Violent , One Mean Faggot

That's what you get for not being a medievalist like me (or married to one like Acephalous). The Viking algorithm hates you. As well it should. But I like you, if it's any consolation...

Posted by: Hrólf the Violent , One Mean Faggot | Friday, 03 June 2005 at 06:57 PM

ben wolfson

I can't remember how, but I had determined your identity prior to your formal unveiling. So (I think) your pseudonymity wasn't all that well protected before.

Posted by: ben wolfson | Monday, 06 June 2005 at 09:42 AM

A. Cephalous

It wasn't. I outed myself earlier when I linked to (another) awful essay I'd written years ago.

Posted by: A. Cephalous | Monday, 06 June 2005 at 01:14 PM

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We're Mormons, Sort of, Every Last One of Us For reasons I'm reluctant to explain, I've been reading Grant Palmer's An Insider's View of Mormon Origins even though it's addressed "to other second-, third-, and fourth-generation Mormons who will better understand where I'm coming from" (9). Palmer, as you probably surmised, is himself a fourth-generation Mormon. But in one of those gossamer dovetailings* that follow any period of sustained research on two entirely unrelated subjects, I think Palmer's attitude toward the Mormon Church (which, if I'm not mistaken, recently excommunicated him) epitomizes the healthy attitude literary critics ought to take toward our pieties. He writes: We like to hear confirmations that everything is as we assumed it was: our pioneer ancestors were heroic and inspired and the Bible and the Book of Mormon are in perfect harmony, for instance. We never learn in church that the Book of Abraham papyri were discovered and translated by Egyptologists or that researchers have studied Native American genes and what the implications are for the Book of Mormon. Questions about such topics are discouraged because they create tension; they are considered inappropriate or even heretical. This approach has isolated many of us from the rest of the world or from reality itself in those instances when we insist on things that are simply untrue. I know the analogy only has so much mileage, but I think it may be an accurate account of the group dynamics propping up once-scientific but still-fashionable theories in the academic humanities. The analogy also suggests that, like most of the Mormons I've had the pleasure of knowing, the people doing the propping are earnest, intelligent and hard-working and not at all deserving of the condescending opprobrium sometimes issued from the mouths of self-righteous "rational extremists" like Y.T.** *I dare you to literalize that metaphor. **To toot my own horn: the next time you want to lob some opprobrium in my general direction, you could do worse than "rational extremists."

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