Introduction
1. Based on a paper delivered to the Association of Mormon Letters, March 2019.
2. With the advent of modern computer technology there has been a revival of the French School with its attempt to take the power set of the words in the novel with the constraint that each subset includes at least one of the types of words (objects, attribute, etc.). While there have been some interesting readings using these techniques, (see e.g., Guimond, G. G. and Y. Meunier. “Badiou, Set Theory, and Trillim: The Ecstasy of the Void. Author & Text 34 [1998]: 234–41) my own feeling is that these have largely failed.
3. See Levant, S. and M. Gregson. “Emergence of Meaning and the Unnecessary Inclusion of Conjunctions: Linkages, Networks, and Ecological Relationships in Trillim.” Feminist Studies 6 (1999): 24–56.
Vignette 1
1. I’d like to thank the staff at the Church History Library for helping me with access to Arnfinnur Skáldskapur’s journal and family letters. Also thanks to the (still in existence) Redbearded Horseshoers, for access to the minutes of early meetings.
2. The dresses he changed can still be seen in the Astral Room at the Redbearded Horseshoers’ Lodge in Salt Lake City.
3. Jorge Luis Borges, discussion published in the Columbia Forum and later quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles by John M. Templeton (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 1998. 141).
1. Smithy, J. G., H. Z. Chang, and R. Gallacci. “Trillim, the 1957 Uber Cup, and the Hidden Influence of Merleau-Ponty.” The Gilda Trillim Quarterly 7 (2012): 126–38.
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1. I used this as the reference although it is unknown to me which one Trillim actually used, but this is the same translation: Proust, Marcel. Swann’s Way—Remembrance Of Things Past. Vol. 1. Trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff. New York: Henry Holt And Company, 1922. Accessed November 11, 2012 (The Project Gutenberg): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7178/7178-h/7178-h.htm.
2. Leopold, Aldo. “Thinking Like a Mountain.” In A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River. New York: Ballantine Books, 1970.
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1. It is unknown what this apparent fight or falling out is about.
2. Scovell, E. J. River Steamer. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1956.
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1. Steig, W. Abel’s Island. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 1976.
Vignette 7
1. Hankski, F. “Dating Trillim’s Note on Melancholia.” The Gilda Trillim Quarterly 2 (2007): 123–25
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1. Obviously this must be the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Her use of the word Nazi may reflect some familiarity of his work as interpreted by the French Existentialists of this time period (indicating she was more familiar with what she was reading than Babs seemed to be aware).
Vignette 9
1. Recipe repeated from Millar, J. “Black Cake: (A Recipe from Emily Dickinson, for Emily Dickinson).” Collapse 7 (July 2011): 411. Not Trillim’s original unknown source.
Vignette 10
1. Trillim, Gilda. “Adventures of Mind, Tragedy of Body.” Look Magazine (July 1967): 11.
2. Blinova, P. “Drugs and Madness: Trillim and the Argument for a Flashback.” International Journal of Historical Psychology and Behavioral Science 6 (2001): 109–17.
Vignette 11
1. De Azevedo, L. and C. L. Pearson. My Turn On Earth: A Family Musical Play. Embryo Records. 1977.
2. A sonnet.
3. A sonnet.
4. Satan starts with a series of couplets.
5. A villanelle
6. A sestina.
7. An Italian sonnet.
8. A set of limericks.
9. An Elizabethan sonnet.
10. A pantoun
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1. The Paris Review 101, (Winter 1986). “Gilda Trillim Interview.” The Art of Fiction. No. 94b.
2. These words come from Gilda Trillim’s unpublished papers. They are located in the Archive, and the story of how I found them is well worth telling, but not here.
3. Gilda Trillim’s unpublished papers.
4. Some scholars, in particular Jan Sillitoe of Princeton University and Ping Hsu of the University of Beijing have formally discounted Gilda’s story of rats feeding her, and have argued at several academic conferences that this is exactly what she was doing, and her stories started as avoidance of what she had had to do to survive and became so embedded in her consciousness that she came to believe the story. However they are a minority. Especially in light of the eye witness account of the Soviet delegation’s report on Gilda’s relationship with the rats contained in the files at the Russian Academy of Science.
5. Gilda Trillim’s unpublished papers.
6. Larson, S. “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text.” BYU Studies 18 (1978): 2.
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1. There are those who wonder if there is a real object behind the phenomenological experience of the possible object. Berkley held that all was the mind of God generating all sensual experience and that all was just a perception of an object He wanted us to experience. There is no refuting that possibility that ‘thought’ is all that is real. I may be the only real mind in the word. I cannot refute that, but that is not the way to bet. Yes, it’s nothing but a wager that objects exist, but one I am willing to make and accept without further proof—Kit.
2. Note: I don’t know Trillim’s actual reference but this is contained in: Sweet, D. Heraclitus: Translation and Analysis. New York: University Press of America, 1995. 123.
3. Appears to be an original translation. Compare to Porete, M. The Mirror of Simple Souls/Marguerite Porete. Trans. and Intro. Ellen L. Babinsky. Pref. Robert E. Lerner. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Yahweh, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993. 79.
4. Appears to be an original translation. (Compare to Hadewijch.) Hadewijch: The Complete Works. Trans. and Intro. Mother Columba Hart, O.S.B. Pref. Paul Mommaers. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1980. 195.
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1. Petrov. S. “Gilda Trillim and Monty Smith: Minimalist Connections.” Western Culture 13 (1998): 320–33.
Vignette 17
1. Ovid. Not sure of Gilda’s reference. I reference Ovid. The Art of Love and Other Poems. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. 66.
Vignette 18
1. SLP. “What the Ant Knew.” Silver Blade 15 (16 Sep. 2012).
Vignette 19
1. Iguchi, A. and K. Khornezh. E. “Elves in the La Sals: More Evidence of Undiagnosed Schizophrenia in Gilda Trillim.” Literature and Mental Illness 29 (1999): 343–62.
2. J. Faulconer. “Divine Embodiment and Transcendence: Propaedeutic Thoughts and Questions.” Element 1, (spring 2001).
3. This person (or strange; creature, as many believe it to be) is not unknown among those who have spent significant time in the La Sal Mountains. The Hispanic herders who worked for my father call her la pequeña elfa. Some of the cowboys call her ‘Littlefoot.’ And now I must confess. I have seen her too. I’ll explain momentarily. After reading Gilda’s account, I started asking around to see if anyone else had seen the woman Trillim describes. Most were loath to admit they had encountered this individual and among those who did, most of the accounts were reports of fleeting glimpses, usually in the late afternoon.
I wanted to put some rigor into my explorations because I thought if I could interview this strange person, it would add much to the Trillim story, especially if she could corroborate the account of their meeting. While many think she is some sort of supernatural entity, I, of course, do not.
I began to formally chart where these reported encounters had taken place, thinking I might be able to triangulate back to the place where she lived (I was convinced that she lived up here in the mountains). She has been seen over much of the La Sals but only in the densest aspen forests, typically in roadless areas. I was able to locate eight accounts of encounters made by those who snatched a clear enough glimpse to claim to have gotten a good look at her. I also obtained accounts of sixteen fleeting glimpses that had enough detail to warrant further consideration.
Gilda’s encounter is typical. Sometimes the strange woman is described as naked. Sometimes as wearing clothes similar to what she was wearing when Gilda saw her. Part of the problem is that the woman has become the fare of starlit campfire stories. A number of people have heard the story of the fey woman and repeat them corrupting the genuine narratives. When this occurs, the ‘I thought I saw her’ accounts start to outnumber actual detailed reports. I believe this is what happened with Bigfoot in the northwest. This creates a difficulty because people who have heard the legend of an elf creature and have been primed to see an elf, start to let their memories of a glimpse of an unexplained movement in late afternoon light augment their experience with memories of the stories they have heard. They add details and amendments resembling popular accounts to the original experience. These often enough start looking like archetypal fairies from fairytales complete with wings, or pixie skirts, or other Tinkerbelle accoutrements.
However, the eight solid accounts are worth noting in that until I enquired, in all but two cases the men (they were all men) who repeated them to me had never mentioned the encounter to anyone else before. I have deposited these accounts in the archives of the Utah Folklore Association at Utah State University. I give only two in this work. I include my own as well.
The first was from a hand who worked for my father. He says this happened in 2008 in June up near Minor’s Basin.
“Yeah, well I was riding a four-wheeler down a back logging road because there were some fences your pa wanted me to mend. I parked it and had to walk the line for a couple of miles into some dense aspen most of the morning. I came to a little clearing and decided to have some lunch. I pulled out my sandwich and a RedBull I had and then laid down to rest, propping my pack up against a tree to use as a pillow. I must have nodded off but when I woke up I see what I thought was a little girl looking at me, but it wasn’t a little girl because she had tits like a full-grown woman and they were bared for all the world to see. She was just standing there and when I opened my eyes she looked for just a moment and then ran like a deer into the deep forest. It took me a minute to come to and to be honest I was pretty sure I was dreaming. But it seemed pretty real and I’ve never seen nothing like it before.”
The second encounter was from a Mexican ranch supervisor who worked for my father (I’ve translated this from his Spanish).
“It was during the muzzleloader hunt about the end of September 2012. I was up high in the Beaver Basin. I was on Slayer, up that road that runs up by the flanks of Waas. I was alone up there, largely because a big Pine had come down on the road and no one had cleared it away yet. It was blocking ATVs, motorcycles and trucks, but the horse had no trouble going around it. I was plodding through some light snow when I spotted a three-point standing broadside in the road looking at me. Slayer came to a halt and I slipped out of the saddle. I had the rifle out and moved forward real slow and took the shot. I thought it was dead on behind the front leg, but it was high and the gutshot beast busted up hill. I followed on foot, it being too rocky for the horse. The wounded animal was leaving a blood trail wet and clear. It was losing a lot of blood. I knew it could not get far so I reloaded the gun with three pellets, put in a bullet, reprimed, and started following it up the hill. It was crazy steep. I found the buck sitting in some underbrush breathing hard. I finished it with a good heart shot. Now I was glad that it had run uphill ‘cause it was going to be easier to drag him down to the horse instead of up. I had my elbow length rubber gloves because they were talking then that some of the deer had Mad Deer Disease so I put those on and gutted it and grabbed it by the horns and started pulling it down the hill. It was pretty overgrown so about half way down to the road I stopped to rest.
I was sitting on a boulder, when I look up and see what I thought was a little girl standing there. She was in a buckskin dress of sorts and wearing a crown-like thing on her head. I’d heard of this elf in stories and knew a guy who had seen her. I said ¡hola! and she asked me in Spanish if I was going to pay the tribute for the deer off her mountain. I asked what it was and she said a small piece of the hindquarter. I was actually pretty scared. This girl was like a woman but smaller, but she had devil eyes, and so I told her to take what she would like. She was fast and just stabbed a long-bladed knife right into the butt and carved out a piece. Said ¡gracias! and then took off up the hill. She was a rabbit.”
One can see from the map that the encounters (more certain encounters are in blue, and less in red) run along a line running roughly from the Buckeye Lake (near the yellow pin marking Trillim’s cabin) to the Mt. Waas area.
In the region near the most sightings, I set up a deer stand high up in a pine. I used logging shoes and climbing equipment to set it up and then I waited high above the forest floor.
I waited three days on the first attempt. Sitting in my deer stand, eating, reading, and watching. I nearly went batty. Long into the night I would stare through my night vision scope, looking at the trail below me. I saw deer, bear, and cows in abundance. About two weeks later I tried again. This time I was successful. Sort of. I didn’t find her, she found me. I fell asleep (so many of the accounts report sleep preceding her appearance) and when I awoke she was looking at me, squatting on a branch of the pine in which I was concealed. She was dressed in camo pants and a black T-shirt—quite unexpected given the reports I’d heard. Like finding a leprechaun dressed in jeans. She was small. Maybe four feet high and lithe as a dancer. She looked older than I expected, maybe even some graying on the edges of her dark brown hair. Her eyes were clear but there was a bit of age about them. I would put her perhaps as old as thirty-five or even forty. This quite surprised me as I expected more a young girl as the reports tended to suggest.
I made no move, but looked her in the eyes. Then I smiled. She did not smile back, but said, “¿Sabes que facillo sería matarte?” (Do you know how easy it would be to kill you?) I didn’t know what to say, but nodded. Then in American English she said, “Stop looking for me.” Then added in Spanish, ¿Entiende?” She then climbed quickly down the tree, making an almost fifteen-foot drop at the end from the lowest branches of the Ponderosa to the ground. I finally had enough clarity of thought to shout after her, “Did you ever meet Gilda Trillim?” It was a stupid thing to say, since she had only met her twice in brief, random encounter. How would she know who Trillim was? But as if in answer, she turned and smiled at me and flipped me off, just as she had Gilda. Then she turned away and began moving as if she meant to sprint away. I called out almost in desperation, “Do you have a name?” This stopped her. She turned her head up, almost in amusement, and said, “Estrellas. My name is de las estrellas.” Her Spanish and English were both flawless. The name translates as ‘From the stars.’
Since then I have given up the search. I felt a genuine threat in her first declaration to me. I took it seriously. There are human laws, but there are also mountain laws. Someone who does not want to be found must be allowed that right. But these things I believe about her. She is educated. Her diction is very good and there was a wryness about her that spoke of intelligence and mischief. No one has ever seen her in the winter, so I believe she spends her winters elsewhere. But something in her look when she raised her middle finger led me to believe it was a dog whistle, signaling me that she knew who I meant. She was letting me know Gilda was known even to her.
Most important in this she was a real person. A number of scholars, most notably, Gillian Weaver of the University of Idaho, have argued that Gilda was going mad and these hallucinations were signs of some sort of mental collapse that might explain the strange turn her life took toward the end. She was not mad—unless I am as well.
Vignette 20
1. Etulain, R. W. “Wallace Stegner and Western Spirituality.” Literature and Belief 21 (2001): 255–71.
2. Stapley, J. A. and K. Wright. “Female Ritual Healing in Mormonism.” Journal of Mormon History 37 (2011): 1–85.
Vignette 22
1. Friedman, K. T. and G. N. Glick. “Wild Fluctuations: Was Gilda Trillim Bipolar? A Look at New Evidence.” The Journal of Historical Psychological Research 45 (2007): 344–51.
2. Steward, M. “Empress Trillim is Wearing No Clothes.” The New York Review of Books 58.16 (2011): 34–36.
3. Tobkin. M. “Trillim, McCarthy, and Stegner: One of These Western Writers Has Crashed the Party.” Quarterly West 57 (2004): 28–35.
4. Lightfoot, S. A Comparison of Jungian, Freudian, and Lacanian Perspectives on Trillim’s Life and Work. PhD Dissertation. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. 2011.
5. Franks, K. “Was Gilda Trillim Dying? A Re-examination.” Journal of American Studies 41 (2007): 321–29
Vignette 23
1. Donatello, A. “A Fragment from Trillim’s Last Day.” Trillim Archives Catalog #1497. 1999.