{"id":3284,"date":"2012-02-04T08:52:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-04T15:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2012\/02\/america-stuck-in-the-teeth\/"},"modified":"2012-02-08T09:15:55","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T16:15:55","slug":"america-stuck-in-the-teeth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2012\/02\/04\/america-stuck-in-the-teeth\/","title":{"rendered":"AMERICA: Stuck In The Teeth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;entry_id=4888\" target=\"_blank\">from America Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<h1><a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;entry_id=4888\" target=\"_blank\">Stuck In The Teeth<\/a><\/h1>\n<p>POSTED AT: FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2012 07:25:58 PM<br \/>\nAUTHOR:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/blog.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;category_id=125\" target=\"_blank\">JIM KEANE, S.J.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In his memoir\/novel\u00a0<em>A Million Little Pieces<\/em>\u00a0(first pitched as the latter, then sold and made famous as the former, then eventually exposed as largely the latter), author James Frey tells the harrowing tale of undergoing a double root canal without any anesthetic.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the most cringe-worthy moments in the book, because anyone who has had a root canal\u00a0<em>even with<\/em>anesthetic can testify it\u2019s an uncomfortable experience, to say the least.\u00a0 To have two at once without painkillers seems beyond the realm of the possible.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.davidscottwritings.com\/gozzoli91.jpg\" width=\"240\" height=\"160\" style=\"float: left; margin: 8px\" \/>\u00a0 In Frey\u2019s case, it was\u2014he later admitted the details of the root canal story (among many other stories) were somewhat fudged. \u00a0In terms of the structure of Frey\u2019s book, however, the scene accomplished several tasks: it showed the reader just how serious his addictions were, that he could not have even novocaine; it provided a benchmark for physical pain that many readers could relate to in some fashion; and, perhaps most importantly, it established the author as a tough guy\u00a0<em>nonpareil<\/em>.\u00a0 Not a bad haul for a story about one\u2019s teeth, yes?<\/p>\n<p>I am teaching a class on Religious Memoir this semester, and our first text is Augustine\u2019s\u00a0<em>Confessions<\/em>.\u00a0 It includes of course the famous story of his theft of the pears; there are the years spent in dissipation; one finds the tales of his mother\u2019s stubborn refusal to give up on her son.\u00a0 Then, right there in Chapter 4 of Book 9, nary 500 words from his account of his own baptism: a toothache!\u00a0 Here is Augustine\u2019s account, addressed to God:<\/p>\n<p>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americamagazine.org\/blog\/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&amp;entry_id=4888\" target=\"_blank\">click to continue reading at America Magazine<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from America Magazine Stuck In The Teeth POSTED AT: FRIDAY, JANUARY 27, 2012 07:25:58 PM AUTHOR:\u00a0JIM KEANE, S.J. In his memoir\/novel\u00a0A Million Little Pieces\u00a0(first pitched as the latter, then sold and made famous as the former, then eventually exposed as largely the latter), author James Frey tells the harrowing tale of undergoing a double root [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3284\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}