Gilda Trillim Read online

  WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT

  Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

  Beautifully bizarre! I could not have taken this dizzying journey except for a master hand leading me through the surprising giggles into the even more surprising blessings of grace, wisdom and healing. I really don’t think Gilda is fiction, for I fell in love with her, and as she and I both know, love is stunningly real.

  Carol Lynn Pearson, poet, and author of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men.

  This quixotic novel may well be one of the best stories ever to emerge from the Mormon imagination. Gilda Trillim is a complex, delightful character who calls forth the very best in human (and rodent) nature.

  Jana Riess, author of Flunking Sainthood and The Twible

  What a mad, marvelous, and compulsively fascinating heroine Steven Peck has created in this novel—a woman who can spend a year painting pictures of an apple seed and write a novel describing the contents of a single drawer. By carefully scrutinizing the microcosmos of everyday life, Gilda Trillim (but really Steven Peck) starts to answer some of the biggest questions of all, like “Where did God come from?”, “How do complex patterns emerge from random chaos?”, and “Why does anything even exist at all?”

  Michael Austin, author of Useful Fictions: Evolution, Anxiety, and the Origins of Literature and Rereading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem

  Like The Scholar of Moab, A Short Stay in Hell, and Wandering Realities, Steven L. Peck’s Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats is a victory for the Mormon imagination in the twenty-first century. No one breathes life into the inner world of the Mormon misfit better than Peck. His writing is as complex and sophisticated as it is delightful and engaging. He shows why contemporary Mormon literature deserves a wider readership.

  Scott Hales, author of The Garden of Enid: Adventures of a Weird Mormon Girl

  Peck’s novel-disguised-as-master’s-thesis pushes not only the boundaries of genre but those of humanity and faith as well. Gilda Trillim’s narrative is simultaneously absurd, grotesque, marvelous, and poignant—we need her messy spirituality, the euphoric animal vomit that is her manna from heaven, for through it she teaches us that madness and destruction can be vehicles for exploring the unreachable and communing with the invisible. Once again, Peck gives us a crucial contribution to Mormon letters which explores familiar paths like the atonement, as well as the more uncharted terrain of the feminine divine, with grace and insight.

  Emily Gilliland Grover, Professor of English, Brigham Young University–Idaho

  Gilda Trillim has sprung from Steven Peck’s head as fully-formed and singular a woman as you’ll ever meet. Hers is an engrossing, uncanny world, pulled into existence by an author at the peak of his creative power. Absolutely compulsive reading.

  Emily H. Butler, author of Freya and Zoos

  You are one of the lucky few to be living on this very planet at a time when a physical copy of Gilda Trillim’s wit and wisdom can be placed into your waiting hands. I envy the roller coaster of colorful images and wrenching emotions your mind is about to enjoy as you uncover Gilda’s spunk and spontaneity as a one-handed naturalist who writes creatively, paints particularly, and has a wicked badminton return. Come with her as she susses out the meaning of love through engaging with potheads and fishheads and attempt to understand her wide-reaching philosophical musings that stretch across the cosmos and then constrict into the core of an appleseed. Even though you are not a rat (unless you are and then congratulations for getting your paws upon this scripture!) you will find much to learn about the universe and finding one’s place within it. By willing the one-handed, full-hearted, and perhaps-insane Gilda Trillim into existence, Steven Peck again captures the wonder and failings of being human and the mystical connections between the natural and religious world that make life so delightfully complicated.

  Emily W, Jensen, writer, blogger, and editor of A Book of Mormons

  Washington, USA

  First published by Roundfire Books, 2017

  Roundfire Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach, Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK

  [email protected]

  www.johnhuntpublishing.com

  www.roundfire-books.com

  For distributor details and how to order please visit the ‘Ordering’ section on our website.

  Text copyright: Steven L. Peck 2016

  ISBN: 978 1 78279 864 4

  978 1 78279 881 1 (ebook)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954753

  All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

  The rights of Steven L. Peck as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design: Stuart Davies

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY, UK

  We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page of Katt’s Thesis

  Thesis Preface

  Introduction

  Vignette 1: Gilda Trillim’s Maternal Great-Grandfather Arnfinnur Skáldskapur

  Vignette 2: Letter to Babs Lake—On Winning the Uber Cup, May 1957

  Vignette 3: A Letter to Babs Lake on Relationships among Bottled Goods. Events Circa 1959

  Vignette 4: Some Documents Compiled from Writings about Her Stay in a Soviet Orthodox Convent. Events Circa 1961

  Vignette 5: Letter to Babs Lake about Her Studies in Junk Drawer Ecology. Events Circa 1964

  Vignette 6: Notes for Gilda’s Novel Muskrat Trap. Letter Written September 1965 about Events Circa 1949 with a Note Added around 1986

  Vignette 7: Gilda’s Reflections on Her Melancholy. Circa 1962

  Vignette 8: Letter from Babs Lake to Her Mother Mathilda Lake. June 1962

  Vignette 9: Trillim Cooks Emily Dickinson’s Black Cake. Circa 1962

  Vignette 10: An Account of Gilda’s Vision under the South American Hallucinatory Drug Ayahuasca. Circa 1966

  Vignette 11: Gilda’s Poem My Turn on Earth. Written Circa 1951

  Vignette 12: Trillim’s POW Experience in Vietnam. 1968–1970

  Vignette 13: Meditations at Apua Point, Big Island Hawaii. Circa 1972

  Vignette 14 Trillim in New York Notes. Circa Late 1972

  Vignette 15: Article from The Greenwich Peeper by Pseudonymous Author, ‘Madam Alley Cat.’ October 15, 1972

  Vignette 16: Interview with Reporter Dob Klingford, Published in The Paris Review. July 3, 1981

  Vignette 17: Gilda Writes an Event. Circa Summer 1983

  Vignette 18: Letter from Trillim to Babs Lake from Nairobi, Kenya where Gilda was Teaching a Short Course in Writing. August 12, 1988

  Vignette 19: Trillim’s Reflections on Bodies. Journal Entry. La Sals, September 6, 1988

  Vignette 20: Fragment from Travel Magazine Article: “Dreams of an Ancient Kingdom: Remembering Old Siam” by Rose Butler. Published Jan 15, 1989

  Vignette 21: Gilda’s Write-Up for Her Mother’s Funeral. It Was Not Used there for Unknown Reasons. July 13, 1989

  Vignette 22. Babs Lake’s November 3, 1996, Letter to Her Mother

  Vignette 23. A Small Fragment of a Text Supposedly from Gilda, Found in a Romance Novel, Discovered 2002

  Vignette 24: Gilda’s Final Note Written Two Months after Her Mother’s Death. Given to Me by Babs Lake, 2013

  My Thesis />
  For Jim Faulconer who made a difference.

  Acknowledgements

  I’ve been helped by many people and I would like to thank a number of people for help with this book including Christine Allred, Tana Arnoldsen, Michael Austin, Melanie Beus, Shelli Gustafson Birrell, Amri Brown, Sara Burlingame, Emily Holsinger Butler, John Crawford, Katie Snyder Evans, Steve Evans, Emily Grover, Karen Hall, George Handley, Erin Hill, Emily Jenson, Tracy McKay-Lamb, Dian Monson, David Morris, Kristine Nielson, Jana Riess, Ardis Parshell, Mark Quinn, Julie Smith, Aaron Taylor, Richard Tenney, and Jaren Watson. I’m also grateful to the permabloggers at ByCommonConsent.com who gave me space to explore the early stages of this project. Special thanks to Jenny Webb, an amazing editor, who edited the entire book prior to my submitting it for publication (all subsequent mistakes are mine). I’m also grateful for my wife Lori and my patient children who have given up so much of me to let me write.

  An Academic Work Disguised as a Novel Disguised as an Academic Work

  Note: Some references of this novel in the endnotes are authentic, some are fictional creations. Distinguishing between the two is left as an exercise for the reader.

  Title Page of Katt’s Thesis

  Gilda Trillim: Shepherdess of Rats

  Thesis

  Kattrim G. Mender

  A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts and Sciences in the School of Esoteric Literature Mervin Peake Online University of the Arts and Science

  Date

  August 25, 2019

  Thesis Preface

  Call me Katt. My mother did.

  I am Rusty and Chastity Mender’s boy. This is my thesis. It will be bound in a light blue cover, with glow-in-the-dark star stickers gracing the cover added by my sister Wynona. For such I promised her she could do and I always keep my promises.

  My thesis committee suggested that I give some personal details about my life to help the future reader get to know a bit about me. Not that I matter. It’s just good to know the sources of things sometimes.

  It is getting dark now and I’ve just lit the lantern. I’ll start the generator in a bit. The sheep I’m tending are nearby up on the eastern flank of Waas, in the La Sal Mountains of southeastern Utah. I’m watching them for a month so the herders can take a short vacation back to Bolivia. My dad likes me to touch base with our family’s roots and spend some time doing what Menders have always done for near 150 years—ranch sheep.

  It is early fall. Elk are whistling their breeding status nearby. Just for fun I go out on the front steps of the round sheepherder’s trailer and slip a plate call into my mouth and imitate their voice. I sound out long and loud like a lusty male. One ready to breed and fight. The two go hand in hand often enough and I get a lively response so press the matter on. Even though there is still a glow in the west, it’s getting dark. I sit down on the top step and watch as the first stars of Cassiopeia appear above the hills to the northeast. The male is rubbing his horns through the branches. It is near. I walk down to the bottom of the steps and pick up a small aspen branch loaded with terminal twigs. One left over from a dead tree I chopped up for firewood earlier today. I rub it up and down the steps, feigning the action of a male elk making a challenge by worrying a low-branched tree with his antlers. The bugling male explodes into the meadow, nostrils flaring, looking fierce and undaunted. I let out a whistle long and loud.

  Stanislaw has seen it too and rises up. He’s a big white Maremma, fierce as a demon. With me he watches the rutting male. Even with my poor human olfactory equipment the musky scent is virile and overpowering. The dog’s hair is rising, but he doesn’t bark. We are both awed. The monster feigns a strike at an imaginary foe, his antlers dipping up and down in the air. He is powerful and wants to show he means business. What female would not be impressed? The elk bugles, its body tight, head tilted toward the mountaintops. I thrill to the sound. The reverent stillness that follows could not be captured by a thousand poems. The silence lasts for only a second before Stanislaw barks and rushes forward. There is the crash and rush of vegetation as the beast flees into the stand and then all is quiet again. The dog does not chase it long before he returns and plops down in his usual place near me. We sit together in silence.

  Saturn is fully disclosed now sitting above the shadow of the La Sals and the Milky Way is starting to Cheshire Cat its way into the blackening sky. I go around to the other side of the trailer and start the generator. It kicks up with a single pull and the air fills with the smell of gas exhaust. I enter the trailer. Close the door and boot up my Mac. I pull up some videos on the elk rut and learn some things I didn’t know. On YouTube I watch a bow hunter take a big one down near Medicine Bow National Forest in southern Wyoming. The man in the video is shaking as he approaches the beast. He says over and over, “Shit. Did you see that? Right through the heart! Right through the heart.”

  It’s later now and I pull down my copy of Red Dog Flying by Gilda Trillim. It was written within about thirty miles from here in a cabin on the Utah side of Buckeye Reservoir. I am supposed to write a small article about Trillim for the Association of Mormon Letters by tomorrow. She is the subject of this master’s thesis. I’m working on my degree in Literature. I’m doing it online from the Mervin Peake Online University of the Arts and Sciences. It’s not yet accredited, but they expect it to be such soon and are much cheaper than most schools. They were kind enough to accept me even though my bachelor’s degree was not distinguished in any sense and I’d flunked out of another master’s program.

  I pull down a large milk crate heavy with file folders and place it on the floor. My thesis is a compilation of Gilda Trillim sources. I’m trying to ferret out whether Trillim was a mystic, a fraud, or a madwoman. I can let it slip now that I can’t tell. But hopefully I’ll shed a little light on the unanswered question that will ease someone else’s path when they are trying to do the same at some future time.

  My background for this? I decided to turn away from Philosophy at Brigham Young University when some of my favorite professors fled for greener pastures, those perhaps where philosophy was more appreciated. I finished my degree in English. I was never a good student because I struggle with tests as they make me anxious and jittery, and I can’t spell worth a damn, so I squeaked by with many ‘Cs’ a few ‘Ds’ and graduated with only a 2.1 GPA. Be that as it may, toward the end of my program, I felt a call to study God. After graduating from BYU I went three years to Claremont’s theology school, but was forced to leave after I flunked my prelims twice. I have terrible immediate recall and when people are staring at me expecting me to answer questions, I look as hollowed-eyed as a grazing ewe. If there is any pressure at all I slip completely away from coherence and appear even less insightful than a hunk of mutton on the hoof. It is hard to grow up among sheep and not to pick up some of their ways I fear. After my disgrace in California, I turned back to literature after being inspired by a friend of my Mom’s cousin—we call him HT. He was strange, but they say you could sense something deep in his heart. Plus, he wanted to make something of himself. Like me.

  My mother introduced me to the subject of this thesis when she furnished me with several Trillim novels to read while up here on the mountain. They are odd, but of such a strangeness that suits well the long, lonely nights in the upper reaches of the La Sals. They left me pondering for days and I decided that I needed to bring these to the attention of others. Those who have time not only to read, but to stretch their minds to the distant stars set bright in cold mountain air. So for my thesis I decided to do a source biography on Gilda Trillim.

  There are many I would like to thank for help on completing this thesis. First my advisors, Mary Locken whose passion for all things Gilda Trillim has been an inspiration to me. She first agreed to assist me studying Trillim’s work when she found that, not only had I read a fair amount of the writer, but like the author, I was a Mormon, and that I had spent a significant amount of time i
n the La Sals—the same place that Trillim spent her final years before her death in Thailand in 1996. Dr. Locken was endlessly encouraging and assisted warmly in my efforts to bring this group of interesting documents to light. The other members of my committee, Lenoir Forb and Ravenstar ‘Gerald’ Nightingale, were also of great help in completing this work.

  My father Roy Mender, or Rusty as he was known around the bunkhouse, paid for trips far and wide to follow the twists and turns of Gilda’s life and allowed me to visit many of the Trillim Archives around the world including Russia, China, and Ethiopia. After reading Dark Leaves in Winter, he believes he was visited by Gilda’s spirit in a dream. She commanded him to fund my studies of her life. He has never looked back from the requirements imposed by that vision, including selling two hundred acres of good grazing land to see it through. I am grateful also for his love and encouragement in believing in me. My mother, Chastity Mender, has never doubted me. For that I’m most grateful of all.

  Introduction1

  In this thesis I explore one of Mormon literature’s most important pioneers. You are unlikely to have heard of her, however, because sadly her reputation within the LDS community has largely fallen off likely because she was suspected of being a lesbian, a no no in Mormondom. Also unfortunate is that interest in her work among American literary critics has somewhat waned since its peak in the late ‘90s. Still, there continues to be a steady stream of dissertations, theses, and papers discussing her work. Despite her star setting somewhat in the West, she still has a large following in other parts of the world. For example, in China a major retranslation of some of her best work was just released this week in Beijing. She has an impressive following among a group of scholars in Ethiopia, where central aspects of her work seem to speak to the Ethiopian Orthodox mind with more affinity than in many other places around the world. Her largest academic following, however, is found in Russia, where Trillim spent a significant amount of time.