Collective residencies / RELIGIOUS BELIEFS / Olot
ADAM MORRIS
From Friday, 29 September 2017 to Friday, 13 October 2017
Bio
Adam Morris (Harrisburg, 1983) is a writer and translator based in San Francisco, California. He is translator of Hilda Hilst’s With My Dog-Eyes (Melville House, 2014); João Gilberto Noll’s Quiet Creature on the Corner (Two Lines, 2016) and Atlantic Hotel (Two Lines, 2017); and Beatriz Bracher’s I Didn’t Talk (New Directions, 2018). He is editor, with Bruno Carvalho, of Essays on Hilda Hilst: Between Brazil and World Literature (Palgrave, 2017). His writing and translations have appeared in BOMB, The Believer, n+1, Los Angeles Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. At Faber, Adam Morris will be working on the manuscript for his first book, American Messiahs, a cultural history of messianic movements in the United States. It will be published by Liveright/W. W. Norton.
Project
The United States has produced a startling number of self-declared messiahs and messianic communities. Although messianic sects are usually dismissed as “cults” that distract from more legitimate social forces, Americans claiming to be the messiah have organized impressive experiments in alternative lifestyles, and often located themselves on the radical fringe of movements for progressive social change. Each succeeding messianic sect emulated aspects of its predecessors and contributes to a narrative of American messianic socialism that stretches back to the American Revolution. American Messiahs reevaluates the role of messianic movements in American struggles for racial justice, women’s equality and workers’ dignity.
At Faber, the leisurely dinnertime conversations among residents allowed me to reconsider my project
As a writer and researcher I often find myself tunneling deep into archives of letters and old newspapers, or sneezing over dusty library books that no one has plucked from the shelves for a while. The worlds I discover and revisit in my research grow more wonderful as I explore them and discover connections to other regions of knowledge. I’m an independent scholar, so usually I travel alone. But occasionally I find myself in the company of travelers far more seasoned and wise than I. The Faber residency period on religious beliefs was one of these experiences; it offered me the fabulous opportunity to convene with people with a deep interest in all sorts of religious beliefs. It is not so often I have the opportunity to regale a dinner table with recondite tales of forgotten messianic sects in America! At Faber, the leisurely dinnertime conversations among residents allowed me to reconsider my project and my ideas in light of other religious traditions. I learned a lot about my own project as I listened to others discuss theirs. Perhaps best of all was the gift of time we shared: there is no better blessing for writers and scholars than to put them in a room and tell them they have only to sit and think and write. And of course, the misty mountain views didn’t hurt! I leave Catalonia with much affection for Olot, for Faber, and for my fellow residents.
