"In other words, the difference it made is not necessarily the difference I anticipated. I went into this with the hope that if I could understand where a lot of my patterns and emotional turmoil come from, I could get free of it. But that isn't necessarily true. In fact the more you understand, the more you're going to have to live with."
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-06-28-9406280123-story.html

I'm finishing up his book "Shot in the Heart". We are distantly related.

Have you "enjoyed" the book, if that is the appropriate word?

I just finished it.

It was a hard read. I could see my mother in it throughout. The ghosts of visiting her mother's neighborhood and home kept coming to mind.

It was an enjoyable read for me personally because of its dark almost poetic rendering of the complete disintegration of his family. At the end he is left with only a somewhat homeless brother and his ghosts. I loved how he loved and hated the concept of family. It was a love poem and a raging against the blood ties that bind.

You and I read it the same way.

It takes someone with great psychological and literary instinct as well as deep exposure to write such a penetrating book about a tragedy like that family. Gilmore fit the bill. And as you say, the themes resonate: perhaps more with you than me, but I believe the patterns of polygamy wielded their pernicious influence over us descendants of plural marriage unto the third and fourth, even the fifth and sixth, generations.

I'm topping because I like the book and, more importantly, I think it has a lot to say about Mormonism from the perspective of people who were in it a long time and remained on the dysfunctional and superstitious fringes.

Mikal is an agnostic or atheist, an excellent and insightful writer, whose life was torn apart by the interplay of Mormon supernaturalism and parental abuse, patterns that went back generations.

His statement, quoted by EB, is worth consideration. When you spend your formative years in a cult, does learning to understand what happened free you from its pernicious influence or just enable you to see that influence? To what extent can you really become free?

In Mikal's case, he thought he had escaped his horrible upbringing and yet was unable to form adult relationships with women. (There would be value in some readers here considering the possibility that problems with love may not stem from a particular gender but from one's own childhood.) Mikal concluded that while he didn't suffer as much as Gary, in many ways he was permanently crippled.

It's an important question, I venture.

"(There would be value in some readers here considering the possibility that problems with love may not stem from a particular gender but from one's own childhood.)"

I agree and also think that not only childhood but for converts to Mormonism, problems that stem from selling one's soul to an ideology which never produces a reality of love as it can more fully be expressed in human life. Mormonism circumcises that kind of love for the hopeless promises of eternal ego continuation with candidates for love.

Thank you for the link. That sounds like a very interesting book.

I've always thought it was so incredible that in order, for instance, to cut hair, you have to take classes and pass tests and get a license.

Yet to have child after child there are no requirements at all. You can be angry and violent and abusive or addicted and have no care or wanting for a child yet society allows and encourages people to pop them out, one after another, and those damaged people, such as Mikal, are left to try to get by in life somehow.

Yes, it's not really a biography of Gary Gilmore: its a biography of the family. The one shot in the heart is not just Gary but the entire family, going back several generations.

It is like the Banner of Heaven, Krakauer's wonderfully illuminating volume that is also about Mormonism and family dynamics and violent crime. And Mikal Gilmore is a more elegant and psychologically aware writer--probably in part because Mikal shared Gary's life from birth.

The book invites Mormons and ex-Mormons to consider the effect of the religion on their families, expectations of others, and relationship skills. Mikhal writes that even those who "escape" do not, in many respects, escape.

Thanks for the heads up Elder.

I remember how I enjoyed reading Mikal's writing in Rolling Stone back in the 70s.

You are welcome.

I haven't read that but I liked listening to Shot In The Dark growing up. Bark At The Moon first.

Its a short read. You might enjoy it. It is dark. Not going to be made into a Hallmark Movie any time soon.