MUTTON'S DECADENCE

Mullen reflects on the life that he led before he discovered religion.

The author was born in 1937 in Laramie, Wyoming, but he writes that he moved frequently because his father was unable to hold a job for very long; according to Mullen, his dad “couldn't stand prosperity.” Eventually, his father turned to religion and briefly became a preacher of sorts,but he apparently abandoned this occupation shortly after an argument about Scripture with a Sunday school teacher. The real meaning of his father’s tenuous conversion is never clear, but the author wonders if he “wanted to be behind a pulpit when the end of the world came.” Mullen chronicles his own self-described “wild and crazy life,” which he depicts as filled with wanton drinking and meaningless sex. After eight years in the U.S. Navy and more than a decade as a “journeyman carpenter,” he finally experienced his own religious conversion and considered himself saved. Mullen asserts that he is the prophet Elijah, entrusted by God with a special earthly mission, so much of the book is devoted to discussion of Scripture and Christianity in general, touching briefly upon such issues as the nature of belief, grace, and faith as well as love. Overall, the memoir is admirably candid, including disturbing recollections of Mullen’s sister’s apparent rape as well as incest. However, it’s riddled with errors (for instance, he says that he enlisted in the military in 1599), and it’s not always clear; at one point, for example, the author writes his father “beat the homosexual tendencies out of me” without clarifying what he means by this. It’s also never clear for whom this remembrance is intended, but its meandering character—at one point, for instance, Mullen shares his thoughts on war in the Middle East—makes it an unrewarding read.

An unsettling and confusing recollection.