What follows is a representative sampling of the text that has come to be known in both scholarly and law enforcement circles as “The Book of Junie” or Junie’s Psalms. As most extant scholarship has been sociopolitical or criminological in nature, it has focused on the work vis-à-vis its influence on the small provincial community where Temple was born, raised, and was well-known (nearly revered) for his athletic exploits and for his locally prominent (nearly infamous) family name.2
2 Best known (and even admired) for its resiliency in the face of what appears to be a predisposition to a sins-of-the-father type of scandal (e.g., the abrupt mid-life divorce, excommunication, and traceless disappearance of the family’s enigmatic matriarch, Virginia Temple; a persistent swirl of rumors surrounding the complex, oat-sowing romantic intrigue (ménage-à-trois/quatre?) between the Evers sisters, the Temple scion/heir [Brother Christian], and some unnamed/unknown fourth party; and then, finally, by extension, Junie’s hazy patri–/matrilineage and the controversies and conflict borne of it), the Temple clan’s is the quintessential American gothic story of late 20th Century: smoke-and-mirrors success, excess, tragedy, and resurrection…
TJ BEITELMAN 