Ships of Hagoth is pleased to announce the release and publication of our first full-length message in a bottle, And All Eternity Shook, by Jacob L. Bender, available in both paperback and ebook formats here. The book–a work of experimental nonfiction based upon the author’s own experiences–concerns a young missionary who comes home after two years in Puerto Rico only to find his mother on her deathbed. Enraged, he wrestles with his God in passionate prayer as he pleads for her life; images and memories of his mission and his Mom jump, cut, and splice together in a cinematic crescendo, flashing furiously before his eyes as though he were the one dying and not her; all as he feels after some miracle, some impossibility, and the peace which surpasses understanding.
If we might be so bold, we would highly recommend getting the print version, since the book engages in a series of bold typographical experiments–frequently playing with the empty spaces between lines and paragraphs–that the ebook version only reproduces imperfectly. You can see some of that spatial play in the Chapter 1 excerpt we posted with our initial book announcement–and more especially in our Chapter 3 excerpt. (For that matter, a stealth excerpt from the book can be found in the author’s post on Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde). Even the book’s stark, austere, tomb-white cover plays with these empty spaces.
These empty spaces are especially apropos, because the phenomenon of missionaries losing loved ones while serving is a severely under-reported yet very real facet of LDS experience (indeed, the author knew at least two other missionaries who lost mothers just in his mission alone), a nigh-Abrahamic test of faith–yet one with virtually zero sermons, articles, books, or poetry on hand to help one process it. Hence the author had to find a new way express the inexpressible–to take seriously the idea that, if the “unspeakable gift” of the Holy Ghost manifests in “groanings beyond utterance,” then we must find radical new ways to speak it.
Often that takes the form of not saying anything at all; it is a technique the author earlier deployed in “Standby,” a personal essay that makes generous use of paragraph breaks and abbreviated images in order to explore the spiritual implications of flying nonrev. Perhaps not coincidentally, that same essay also makes allusion to his mother’s untimely passing in its section on Copenhagen. (For that matter, allusions to this event can also be found in his posts on Sufjan Stevens and Regina Spektor and on New Order and David Bowie.)
Yet the clearest antecedent is actually found in his AML[1]Association of Mormon Letters-shortlisted Sunstone essay “Low and the Hermeneutics of Silence,”[2]Of which the Director’s Cut can be found on this very site–as well as his review of Low’s most recent album HEY WHAT, and a retrospective of their cult Christmas album. wherein he argues of the critically-acclaimed LDS band Low: “It is specifically their minimalism, their fearlessness in embracing the silences between notes, that allows them to create a space for the things that can’t be said, that can’t be represented—the ‘unspeakable’ thing outside discourse that is most responsible for Mormon spiritual conversion. Low does not fear the silence; for them it is not nihilistic void, but the space where religious experience lies.” The essay itself also plays with these same silent spaces in its paragraph breaks–as does And All Eternity Shook. (Who was it that said “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”?)[3]Victorian art critic Walter Pater.
Yet we also share this book in the hopes—for “one must needs hope”—of sparking other works that also take seriously the idea, if the “unspeakable gift” of the Holy Ghost manifests in “groanings beyond utterance,” then we must find radical new ways to express it; that are, like Hagoth, “exceedingly curious,” and so build new ships in search of unknown lands; that don’t just say new things, but find new ways to say them.
We are of course keenly aware that the Venn Diagram overlap between Mormon Lit and Experimental Lit (already two very niche fields) is so infinitesimal as to be observable only by quantum physics; but inasmuch as we are the sorts of weirdos who unabashedly love both, we hope to attract similarly experimental LDS works–even if it’s only for an audience of us, still this audience would love to hear more. This is our message in a bottle.
About the author: Jacob L. Bender is also the author of Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), a work similarly rooted in his Puerto Rican mission service and his mother’s passing. In LDS studies specifically, he has previously written for Dialogue, Sunstone, Peculiar Pages, Ships of Hagoth, the Eugene England Foundation, and The Association of Mormon Letters.
And All Eternity Shook is available for purchase here.