From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #104 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Monday, July 17 2000 Volume 01 : Number 104 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 04:55:32 -0400 From: "Shawn and Melinda Ambrose" Subject: RE: [AML] Reading Group (was: Andrew's Poll) Melissa wrote: I hesitate to volunteer to lead another online reading group, because having just had a baby I can't tell how much free time I'm going to have or even how much sleep I will be getting in the next few months. (Though the number of books I read never seems to drop just after I've had a baby; this says something about my priorities, I'm sure.) Melissa Proffitt I must add that my reading increased when I was pregnant and increased still more after the babies were born. I had a lot of time to lie around (three months morning sickness each time) and then a lot of time to sit around (nursing 11 months on up to 16 months for the youngest). But then, when I stopped nursing the time disappeared! Hmmmm. Makes me want another one! ;-) Melinda L. Ambrose - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 04:55:39 -0400 From: "Shawn and Melinda Ambrose" Subject: [AML] RE: Genre (Edgar refers to the 'limitations' of a genre as 'boundaries'-a subtle, and not altogether meaningful distinction, IMO. How does a 'boundary' differ, meaningfully, from a 'limitation'?) Jason_______________________________________________________________________ _ I must say that a boundary, while like a limitation, is simply a perimeter which may not be crossed without consequences, a line in the sand, so to speak. A limitation is more than a mere line, it is an obstacle to be surmounted, a cliff or gully or brick wall. All right, this applies to genre fiction as opposed to mainstream fiction in that to qualify as genre fiction you must adhere to the general subject matter (who dun it) or the general plot (boy gets girl) or the general setting (outer space or fairy land). These are limitations if you want to write something that appeals to everyone, but only boundaries if you want to appeal to people who like these categories. Next subject: Have you ever noticed that spelling has a lot to do with aesthetics, the way a word looks on the page? I give the name John as an example. Jon is just as correct, phonetically, but looks childish to me. Yes, Jason, I read your whole post. It was interesting. Melinda L. Ambrose - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 04:55:42 -0400 From: "Shawn and Melinda Ambrose" Subject: RE: [AML] What Can AML-List Do for Me? Another odd little commonality--these were all men. Are we more apt to lose our (rational) minds than women? Are we gents more prone to let go of will and surrender our volition to visions? Not to get Barbara H. after me with a sharpened pencil, but, as I pushed my little mower around and around in an ever-constricting gyre, I wondered: Could this ability to let go and allow the spirit (of whatever) to possess us, possibly, have anything to do with our being allowed to exercise our priesthood while the women are disallowed from exercising theirs? Luckily all I had to do was ask my wife and she told me no. TGMN will likely be visionary, and written by someone who knows a thing or two about metrical language. Not that you (whoever) shouldn't give it a shot. A person's reach should always exceed their grasp. It's called striving for perfection. Tony It is indeed curious that the vast majority of "great" writers have been men... but then, the vast majority of "great" mothers have been women, and you cannot tell me that motherhood grants you time for writing. We have to steal time for writing from other activities, things like eating, sleeping, washing clothes and faces, hugging and consoling and teaching and laughing and living. I also think that many women could write circles around the great writers, if they made it a priority to do so. It's not a high priority to me at this time in my life because I have children to raise and a husband to care for and scriptures to memorize. I would like to be like Elder Bruce R. McConkie, who could quote scriptures for chapters at a time, not to show off, but to understand them fully. Good night! Melinda L. Ambrose - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 10:15:20 EDT From: KGrant100@aol.com Subject: [AML] Movie Ratings >Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2000 17:24:33 -0500 >From: "Darvell" >Subject: [AML] Movings Ratings >I just read an article on the Deseret News web site that appeared in the >Los Angelos Daily News regarding the financial success (or the lack >thereof) of rated-R movies. While listening to a Christian radio station (www.klove.com), I heard something similar about the low revenues generated by R-rated films. The news item I heard cited a study by a UC Irvine professor of economics. With a little searching, I was able to locate it online in PDF format: http://aris.ss.uci.edu/mbs/personnel/devany/Web/Papers/r-rated.pdf The paper is entitled, "Does Hollywood Make Too Many R-rated Movies? Risk, Stochastic Dominance, and the Illusion of Expectation," and the authors are A. De Vany and W. D. Walls. De Vany described the paper as follows: "My latest paper on the movies estimates the probability distributions of budgets, revenues, returns and profits to G-, PG-, PG13-, and R-rated movies. The distributions are non-Gaussian and show a self-similar stable Paretian form with non-finite variance and non-stationary mean. We stochastically rank these distributions to investigate film critic Michael Medved's argument that Hollywood overproduces R-rated movies." If you're interested in more research on motion pictures by this professor, point your brower to http://aris.ss.uci.edu/mbs/personnel/devany/devany.html and scroll down to the link "Motion Pictures." (The link to the PDF file is also on this page.) Interesting stuff! Kathy P. S. Thanks to all who responded to my request for anecdotes for the _Ensign_ article on singles. Last Thursday I had a long session with the editor and got some great feedback. So now I'm on to more revising :) - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 10:11:23 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: [AML] Re: ADAMS, _Prodigal Journey_ Richard R Hopkins wrote: > Amazon is a bit difficult to work with, so we'll see. How is Amazon.com hard to work with? - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com ================================== Check out Worldsmiths, the new online LDS writers group, at http://www.wwno.com/worldsmiths Sponsored by Worlds Without Number http://www.wwno.com ================================== - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 14:13:51 -0600 From: Jacob Proffitt Subject: Re: [AML] eBook Query On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 15:03:46 -0600, Bruce Grant wrote: >I need to pub a textbook on Chinese (Sino-Korean) Characters, for = members of >my classes. The best format for it is electronic, eBook perhaps, = because of >its length and complexity, and because only several dozen will sell each >year. Adobe Acrobat with Web Buy and Adobe PDF Merchant would keep the = book >from being copied illegally, but PDF Merchant costs a cool $5,000. >Microsoft's MS Reader is not yet available for PCs, and I don't know = what >MS's equivalent of PDF Merchant will cost. > >Have any answers? If you're only selling a couple dozen a year, then why are you so worried about copying? How much are you charging? Since you are using if for = your classes, wouldn't it be easier to monitor copying on a more mundane = level? Like issuing key codes for accessing the download web site (like a = student ID for example). That way you can track who access your web site and whether or not they paid for the book. Electronic copying of works is easy, and even Adobe PDF Merchant isn't = going to make it impossible. You're probably better off moving your choke = point off the book. Also, it seems to me that this is probably an issue for others in your situation. Other teachers you might know. Maybe you could pool your resources and tackle the $5,000 in pieces. Maybe you can get your school= to foot the bill and make it available to all the teachers who need it. Jacob Proffitt - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 21:05:41 GMT From: "Dallas Robbins" Subject: Re: [AML] Great Authors Annette, I must heartily dissent against your assessment of Faulkner. His prose is sublime; every time I enter one of his novels, I feel as if I am being lifted up out of my world, and moved along an narrative rhythm to an exploration of stories, problems, and consequences, that seems unparallel in the 20th/21st century. Longs sentences have put off many people to Faulker's stories; but it would not be fair to call him long-winded. A recent article on Faulkner, in the June issue of the Atlantic Monthly, explains eloquently that: "The novelist's job - the one Faulkner designed for himself - was to 'arrest motion,' to capture in an 'inconclusive and inconcludable' sentence, one in which 'human experience' is 'reduced to literature.' This was impossible, he knew, but he was compelled to try it anyway. It was his ambition to put everything into one sentence - 'not only the present but the whole past on which it depends and which keeps overtaking the present second by second.'" Of course Faulkner knew the peril of over-reaching, as he described as "talk, talk, talk: the utter and heartbreaking stupidity of words." But as this recent article also states that Faulkner knew that the "language had to rise naturally from the thoughts and actions of characters." I see Faulkner's prose as a way to bring human experience to the expression of words as close as possible. As individuals, we usually don't think and talk in grammatical, complete, medium length sentences; nor do our actions represent coherent, complete sentences, with periods. All our actions usually flow out of the past, which ultimately is affecting our future. Time is to large, far-reaching, and unpredictable to reduce to short and medium length, grammatical sentences. Faulkner's sentences usually have the rhythm, feel, and movement of experience, and it's affect on the rest of our lives. Faulkner's style has sometimes been placed in the steam-of-consciousness technique, similar to Gertrude Stein and James Joyce, (who Faulkner thought went to far and was consumed by his own talent); but pigeon-holing him would limit our capacity to appreciate his amazing body of work. I would say that no body of work since Shakespeare encompasses and explores more human emotion, nature and experience than Faulkner. (I would admit that Dickens and Dostoevsky would make it a close three-way tie). Don't pass through this life until you read him. Dallas Robbins editor@harvestmagazine.com http://www.harvestmagazine.com P.S. Of course we all have our unique writing voices, and that should be priority in writing anything worth while. Imitating Faulkner will impress no one, and will probably get you no where. But we should explore our unique voices, in spite of grammatical conventions. >From: "Annette Lyon" >And Faulkner is so long winded that I've always >been surprised how much acclaim he gets. My gosh, almost the entire first >page of _The Unvanquished_ was ONE sentence! Try writing those kinds of >sentences and see if any editor will give you anything but a printed >rejection slip. Faulkner did deal with some real issues, and his >Yoknapatawpha County (sp?) is very real for many readers, but that doesn't >make him one of the four greatest writers of all time. A good writer, >maybe. >In the top ten? Not even close. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 15:25:28 -0700 From: Barbara@techvoice.com (Barbara R. Hume) Subject: Re: [AML] Genre >It seems to me that genre classification is sometimes arbitrary, that while >some books clearly follow certain boundaries and conventions and can easily >sit in a certain genre, others don't, yet are categorized in the same way. It's more a marketing ploy than a real description of the books. I thoroughly enjoy, for example, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, but they do not fall comfortably into a genre. They just tell a fascinating story about some compelling characters. But publishers and booksellers and distributors are frustrated by books they can't put a label on. They don't know how to deal with them. In the same way, my expectations make me cautious about each new book in this series: they are not romances, so I can't be sure she won't kill off Jamie Fraser! When the next one comes out, I'll have to make certain he doesn't die, or else I won't buy the book. I wonder how many writers feel pressured to go in a certain direction or leave out some things they'd like to include because of the marketing need to categorize their books? The first time I wrote a novel, I meant to write a science fiction book, but it included so many elements of the romance that it was really a cross-genre thing. But to me, a story had to have those elements in it to be satisfying. How many people would like to include more romance in their adventure novels, or more mysticism in their westerns, but their editors lop off those elements so the books can fit into the cubbyhole they've been assigned to? One reason LDS fiction gets such a lukewarm reception is that writers are compelled, by editors or by their own concern, to lop off elements that might make the story richer or deeper, but would take them out of the comfortable cubbyhole of LDS fiction as perceived by LDS publishers and readers. barbara hume - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 15:34:37 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] eBook Query Bruce Grant wrote: > > Dear List, > > I need to pub a textbook on Chinese (Sino-Korean) Characters, for members of > my classes. The best format for it is electronic, eBook perhaps, because of > its length and complexity, and because only several dozen will sell each > year. Adobe Acrobat with Web Buy and Adobe PDF Merchant would keep the book > from being copied illegally, but PDF Merchant costs a cool $5,000. > Microsoft's MS Reader is not yet available for PCs, and I don't know what > MS's equivalent of PDF Merchant will cost. > > Have any answers? Try these guys: http://www.softlock.com They provide lock codes to your .pdf files and manage the database for you, for far less that 5K. - -- Thom Duncan - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Read the further adventures of Moroni Smith, the LDS Indiana Jones! The long-awaited second episode in the Moroni Smith LDS adventure series, _Moroni Smith: In Search of the Gold Plates_ is now available as an e-book at the Zion's Fiction web page: http://www.zfiction.com - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 15:39:43 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] Great Authors Annette Lyon wrote: > > So what makes an author great? Longevity? Yes. Shakespeare's the man. After 500 years, his stories can still captivate audiences, whether they are done traditionally, or adapted to different formats ("West Side Story"), or turned into teen flicks: "Ten Things I Hate About You." Who in our language has produced so many good stories that continue to speak to so many people of so many different languages after so many years. - -- Thom Duncan - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Read the further adventures of Moroni Smith, the LDS Indiana Jones! The long-awaited second episode in the Moroni Smith LDS adventure series, _Moroni Smith: In Search of the Gold Plates_ is now available as an e-book at the Zion's Fiction web page: http://www.zfiction.com - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 16:05:48 -0600 From: "Alan Mitchell" Subject: Re: [AML] Genre In response to the "romance" label--my teenage daughter reads a lot of them and I noticed that if the title is in large cursive then it is romance. So whether the story is about AIDS, bulemia, stamp collecting, or a male witches' boarding school (not!)--if the title is cursive, its romance. Alan Mitchell - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 23:36:26 -0400 From: "Shawn and Melinda Ambrose" Subject: RE: [AML] Great Authors Annette wrote: Another thought--since styles and perspectives change, how can we really pick the best "of all time" when we're stuck in our own views of what works today, in the year 2000 So what makes an author great? Longevity? The effect on the culture/world at large? Skill at producing the current style or appealing to the current audience? Somehow I don't like any of those possibilities. Reply: I'm curious to know if anyone thinks Chaucer is great. I know he's required reading for a lot of classes and that the stories he tells are interesting, but does that make him great? Is his influence due to timeliness (such good verse printed in vernacular English at the time was noteworthy, was it not?) ? I would vote for Tennyson and Washington Irving and Sir Walter Scott and Dickens and Jane Austen, but I'm sure that other authors are great in their day but less accessible to us because the language has changed. I'm thinking of Beowulf and Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress-wonderful literature but at the very least plodding when you have to consciously decipher it. In this way, transparent prose will at best turn rosy and at worst turn opaque with age. I'm thinking of the old saw: John Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained. (quoted from some kid's book report at some school, U.S.A.) Melinda L. Ambrose [MOD: As a former-quasi-medievalist, I'm going to pitch in an opinion to save a post (since List volume is running high at the moment). Chaucer is often considered as perhaps the first truly great English writer, though he had other equally gifted contemporaries: William Langland, the author of _Piers Plowman_, and the unknown poet who wrote _Pearl_ and _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ are generally awarded equally high marks. And with all three authors, it's not just for good stories, but for excellent style as well, together with subtle and powerful imagery, an eye for vivid detail, powerful insights into life and the inner workings of the individual, and all those other things we look for in great literature. But Chaucer wrote in a dialect that was closer to modern English, and wrote in genres that are closer to what we read today, and so he's much more widely appreciated than the others. It's much like Melinda says: the language can, and all too often does, provide a barrier to appreciation. One of the more noble pursuits of English departments, in my opinion, is to help provide readers with the tools they need to understand and appreciate great writers whose language and/or style we now need help deciphering.] - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 21:08:56 -0700 From: Jeff Needle Subject: Re: [AML] eBook Query Can you produce the document in Word? If you can, you can get Microsoft Word Viewer, a free program from Microsoft, that will allow you to view any Word document without having Word on your computer. It's what I use for my free Scripture Quad program. It's just great, and doesn't cost a cent. If you need more info, let me know. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 21:10:54 -0700 From: Jeff Needle Subject: Re: [AML] Review Archive Announcement At 08:14 PM 7/14/00 EDT, you wrote: >Michael Martindale: > >I don't suppose I can convince Jeff to quit reading until I >pass him into first place, can I? > >_______________ > >Maybe a church calling would slow him down a bit? > > :-> <-: :-> > >Larry Jackson > > >(Just funnin' here. Let's not restart the "convert Jeff" thread again.) > Howl!!! Great comment. Did anyone catch Pres. Hinckley at a press conference a few months ago? Someone in the audience was obviously a member, complaining about Church callings taking him away from his family. Hinckley's answer was, "You have too many callings." Great answer. - --------------- Jeff Needle jeff.needle@general.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 06:23:52 MDT From: "bob/bernice hughes" Subject: [AML] Great Authors Annette Lyon wrote: "But Yeats and Faulker? Give me a break. Sure, Yeats has some great poetry, but I don't think he is in the same league as Milton. (I think Wordsworth and Tennyson are far better.)" Just a brief diversion here, not to detract from the original request... I think Yeats is better than Wordsworth. Wordsworth is one of my favorites, but after investing a lot of time reading the two, I find that Yeats connects with me as a reader, while Wordsworth is off wandering lonely as a cloud o’er some vale and hill. Other readers realized this long ago, too. J.K. Stephen parodied Wordsworth in a sonnet written 120+ years ago, yet I find it captures somewhat my own sentiments. I share Stephen's parody below: A Sonnet TWO voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep: And, Wordsworth, both are thine: at certain times Forth from the heart of thy melodious rhymes, The form and pressure of high thoughts will burst: At other times--good Lord! I'd rather be Quite unacquainted with the ABC Than write such hopeless rubbish as thy worst. This sonnet parodies a couple of Wordsworth's best known sonnets (and the parody is a well-crafted sonnet, too). Specifically, Wordsworth’s "Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland" begins with the lines: TWO Voices are there; one is of the sea, One of the mountains; each a mighty Voice: In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, They were thy chosen music, Liberty! And Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us" includes these lines: It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Stephen's parody is perfect. I especially like his "good Lord!" at a turn of the poem mocking Wordsworth's "Great God!" And he simply nailed the problem with Wordsworth. Of course, much of Yeats is so dense and mystical that it is incomprehensible, but when Yeats gets it right, he is much better than Wordsworth. For example, I have been out in the extreme elements in many situations, and Yeats' "Mad as the Mist and Snow" captures the emotion, the thrill, the exhilaration that I sometimes feel far better than any of Wordsworth's poems, even though Wordsworth fancies himself "Nature’s Priest." Maybe it's a guy thing. Yeats' "The Song of Wandering Aengus" connects with guys in a very deep way; you feel his "Lake Isle of Innisfree" in the deep heart’s core. No, it's not a guy thing. My wife loves to hear me recite Yeats' "To an Isle in the Water" since it connects with women in a very deep way. Now Tennyson is another story. But that's for another diversion... Regards, Bob Hughes ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 22:23:16 JST From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] (Andrew's Poll) Mormon Short Stories (Andrew's Poll) Time for Andrew's Poll to turn its gaze to short stories. I'd like for you to tell us what your favorite (I'll stay away from the word "best") Mormon short stories and story collections from the 1990s have been. You can vote in the following categories: Mormon short story-general Mormon short story-speculative fiction Mormon short story-juvenile Mormon short story collection (single author) Mormon short story anthology (multiple authors) Of course you don't need to vote in all of the categories, just as many as you want. And if you demand to create your own category, go ahead and try. Individual stories need to have been published somewhere, like a magazine, story collection, or web magazine, in 1990-1999. Any story by a Mormon is applicable, as are stories about Mormons by non-Mormons. I won't bother going through the nomination process this time. I list all the possible short story collections and anthologies I can think of below. I think I have them all covered, tell me if I left someone out. As for the individual stories, why bother nominating them? Just go ahead and tell us what your favorite story or stories are. Also tell us, if you remember, where and when it was published. And again, please vote. I don't have time to read everything, and I'd love to hear your reccomendations. Short story collections (single author): Phillys Barber, The School of Love. University of Utah, 1990. Phillys Barber, How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. University of Georgia, 1992. Phillys Barber, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination. Signature, 1999. John Bennion. Breeding Leah and Other Stories. Signature, 1991. Orson Scott Card. Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card. TOR, 1990 Orson Scott Card. Monkey Sonatas. TOR, 1993. Fantasy. Orson Scott Card. The Changed Man, TOR, 1992. "Tales of dread." Orson Scott Card. Cruel Miracles. TOR, 1992. Religious stories. Orson Scott Card. Flux : Tales of Human Futures. TOR, 1992. Science fiction. Mary Clyde. Survival Rates. University of Georgia, 1999. Brian Evenson. Altmann's Tongue. Knopf, 1994. Brian Evenson. Prophets and Brothers. Rodent Press, 1997. Stories with Mormon themes or characters. Brian Evenson. The Din of Celestial Birds, Wordcraft, 1997. Stories set in South America. Michael Fillerup. Visions and Other Stories. Signature, 1990. Lewis Horne. What Do Ducks Do in the Winter? and other western stories. Signature, 1993. Walter Kirn. My Hard Bargain, Knopf, 1990. Levi Peterson. Night Soil. Signature, 1990. Paul Rawlins. No Lie Like Love. University of Georgia, 1996. Darrell Spencer. Our Secret's Out. University of Missouri, 1993. Brady Udall. Letting Loose the Hounds. Norton, 1998. Margaret Blair Young. Elegies and Lovesongs. University of Idaho, 1992 Margaret Blair Young. Love Chains. Signature, 1997. Short story anthologies: Christmas for the World. ed. by Curtis Taylor and Stan Zenk, Aspen, 1991. Bright Angels and Familiars. ed. by Eugene England, Signature, 1992. Washed by a Wave of the Wind: Stories from the Corridor. ed. by M. Shayne Bell, Signature, 1993. Turning Hearts: Short Stories on Family Life. ed. by Orson Scott Card and David Dollahite, Bookcraft, 1994. Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Reader. Ed. Thomas Lyon and Terry Tempest Williams. Gibbs Smith, 1995. Once Upon A Christmastime. Deseret, 1997. In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions. Edited by Robert Raleigh. Signature, 1998. >From the Outside Looking In. edited by Chris Crowe. Bookcraft, 1998. Please get your votes in over the next two weeks. I'll try to wrap it up around the end of the month. Andrew Hall Nagareyama, Japan (for one more month) ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 16 Jul 2000 22:33:43 JST From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] (Biblio File) Mormon Short Stories In preparation for this month's Andrew's Poll, I'm doing a Biblio File on Mormon short story collections (not short stories in general, that would be too hard). The Mormon short story is a much smaller genre than novels, with a much more limited audience. For the most part the "adult popular" wing of Mormon fiction, represented by the authors published by Deseret, Bookcraft, and Covenant, is dominated by novels. Those authors and presses have published very few short stories, representing, I assume, the reading tastes of their audience. Short stories have instead been produced largely in three separate fields, "literary", speculative, and juvenile, each with its own central magazines providing a consistent forum for publications. Well, first let's go back a little. The first significant Mormon short story authors I can think of were the "Lost Generation" authors, in particular Virginia Sorensen. Although she is mostly known for her novels, she also wrote a collection of autobiographical stories, published as Where Nothing is Long Ago: Memories of a Utah Childhood, 1963. Maurine Whipple also wrote several unpublished stories, which were discovered soon before she died. They were to be published as Maurine Whipple: The Lost Works, edited by Veda Halle and Lavina Fielding Anderson, by Aspen Press, but I haven't heard anything about the project for a while. It may have died with Aspen Press. Two of the stories have been published, in the Christmas for the World and Bright Angels and Familiars anthologies. Sam Taylor also published a few short stories. The modern wave of short story authors began with BYU students (and later BYU professors) Donald Marshall and Douglas Thayer in the late 1960s. It is not a coincidence that their careers came to fruition at the same time that the start of the independent Mormon journal Dialogue, which began publication in 1966, followed by Sunstone, which was created around 1974 (? I forget exactly when). These journals provided a forum for Mormon authors from the "literary" wing, publishing one or two, sometimes three or four stories an issue. Donald Marshall. The Rummage Sale. Heirloom, 1972. Donald Marshall. Frost in the Orchard. BYU Press, 1977. Thayer, Douglas. Under the Cottonwoods and Other Mormon Stories. Fankson, 1977. In the late 70s there was a small spate of books published that were made up of connected short stories, stories in chronological order about a central character or group of characters. All of the authors were BYU related people. Farmer, Gladys Clark. Elders and Sisters. Seagull Books, 1977. Stories about missionaries in France. Kump, Eileen Gibbons. Bread and Milk. BYU Press, 1979. Stories about frontier-era Utah. Petsco, Bela. Nothing Very Important and Other Stories. Orion, 1979. Missionary short stories. Clark, Marden J. Morgan Triumphs. Orion, 1984. About a man growing up. Almost a novel. Also, it wasn't published, but Donna Christine Ackerson also wrote a collection of connected missionary stories for a BYU MA thesis, Tales from the Tracting Book. 1977. Oddly enough, none of these authors seem to have published much fiction after these works. Although Marden Clark has written a lot of other things, poems and essays. Also, Harlow seems to have some connection to most of them in some way or another. All of the collections up to this point were published by BYU Press or small Utah based publishers. I think Orion Press, which published several interesting things in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is the same, or at least some kind of forerunner, of Signature Press. Several of the Orion books are now in the Signature catalogue. In 1982 one of our most celebrated writers, Levi Peterson, had his first short story collection, The Canyons of Grace, published by the University of Illinois Press. It was the first collection published by a non-Utah national press. Around 1989-1992 there was a remarkable boom in short story collections by Mormon authors, mostly published by national presses. Eugene England called 1989-1990 the "annus mirabilis" (I guess that is a good thing) of Mormon fiction, with "nearly as much first-rate Mormon fiction published as in the previous ten years." Phillys Barber, The School of Love. University of Utah, 1990. Phillys Barber, How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. University of Georgia, 1992. Bennion, John. Breeding Leah and Other Stories. Signature, 1991. Card, Orson Scott. The Folk of the Fringe. Phantasia Press/Tor, 1989. Card, Orson Scott. The Worthing Saga. Tor, 1990. Card, Orson Scott. Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card, TOR, 1990. Chandler, Neal. Benediction. University of Utah, 1989. Fillerup, Michael, Visions and Other Stories. Signature, 1990. Freeman, Judith, Family Attractions. Viking, 1988. Kirn, Walter. My Hard Bargain, Knopf, 1990. Mortensen, Pauline. Back Before the World Turned Nasty. University of Arkansas, 1989. Peterson, Levi. Night Soil. Signature, 1990. Sillitoe, Linda. Windows on the Sea. Signature, 1989. Spencer, Darrell. Woman Packing a Pistol. Dragon Gate, 1987. Douglas Thayer, Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone and Other Stories. Gibbs Smith, 1989. Young, Margaret Blair. Elegies and Lovesongs. University of Idaho, 1992. Things slowed down a little after that. Signature kept putting out collections every couple of years, and Brian Evenson put out three collections. Spencer, Darrell. Our Secret's Out. University of Missouri, 1993. Horne, Lewis. What Do Ducks Do in the Winter? and other western stories. Signature, 1993. Evenson, Brian. Altmann's Tongue. Knopf, 1994. Rawlins, Paul. No Lie Like Love University of Georgia Press, 1996. Brian Evenson, Prophets and Brothers. Rodent Press, 1997. Chapbook. Brian Evenson, The Din of Celestial Birds, Wordcraft, 1997. Margaret Blair Young, Love Chains. Signature, 1997. Udall, Brady. Letting Loose the Hounds. Norton, 1998. Phillys Barber, Parting the Veil: Stories from a Mormon Imagination. Signature, 1999. Clyde, Mary. Survival Rates. University of Georgia, 1999. Signature has been basically the only Mormon press to publish short story collections by a single author in the 1990s. The Signature published books often had Mormon characters and situations, while the non-Signature ones tended not to have those situations. For example, compare the stories in Margaret Young's University of Idaho Press collection in 1992 with her 1999 on with Signature. Most of Evenson, Udall, and Rawlins stories don't use specifically Mormon characters or situations. Do you notice all the books published by the University of Georgia? Three in the 1990s, plus one by Darrell Spencer in 2000. I wonder what the connection is? I know some of them were Flannery O'Conner award winners, maybe that has something to do with it. There are two other active genres of short stories, juvenile and speculative fiction. Juvenile short stories have been helped by the fact that the Friend and New Era publish stories every month. Many of those authors have gone on to publish juvenile novels, but the only one to publish short story collections has been Jack Weyland. His stories have been collected in four books: First Day of Forever and Other Stories of LDS Youth. Horizon, 1980. Punch and Cookies Forever. Horizon, 1981 A Small Light in the Darkness : And Other Short Stories. Deseret, 1987. Night on Lone Wolf Mountain and Other Short Stories. Deseret, 1996. Weyland won a 1983 AML special award for his fiction. Also, an anthology of New Era stories, From the Outside Looking In, edited by Chris Crowe, was published by Bookcraft in 1998. Speculative fiction. Of course Card was the trailblazer. He published lots of stories in the 1970s and 1980s, almost all of which were collected in the hardcover Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card, TOR, 1990. The collection was broken up into four separate books with different themes (science fiction, fantasy, horror, and religious) for the paperbacks. Also his "Mormon Lake" stories are collected in The Folk of the Fringe, Phantasia Press/Tor, 1989, and "Worthing" stories in The Worthing Saga, Tor, 1990. An earlier collection, Cardography (Hypatia Press, 1987), contained stories later incorporated in Maps in a Mirror. He has only written a few stories in the 1990s, focusing on novels instead. There have been lots of other speculative authors, many of which were trained at BYU, publishing their stories in the student-run magazine The Leading Edge, which began publishing in 1981. There were three volumes of the science fiction anthology LDSF, published in 1982, 1985, and 1987, by Millennial Productions and Parables Press. Many have gone on to become nationally published authors, but none of them have their own short story collections yet. M. Shayne Bell has probably had the most published stories, usually with a couple a year in magazines like "Asimov's". Many of the authors were represented in Washed by a Wave of the Wind: Stories from the Corridor. ed. by M. Shayne Bell, Signature, 1993. For an anthology of Mormon speculative fiction authors, see Marny and Scott Parkin's bibliography (http://home.airswitch.net/MormonBib/) Oh, I guess you could also go back to Raymond F. Jones, who was a prolific writer in the national SF market since the late 1940s. Also Zenna Henderson's 40 or so stories on Mormon-like aliens called "The People" in the 1950s-1970s. They were collected in Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson. NESFA Press, 1995. Anthologies There have also a few anthologies of fiction. The first was A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints. ed. by Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert, Bookcraft, 1974. It was created as a textbook for a Mormon lit class at BYU. It has short stories by Thayer and Marshall, as well as plays, poems, essays, and novel excerpts. The same two editors also put out the short story collection Twenty-two Young Mormon Writers (Communications Workshop, 1975). Next came Greening Wheat: Fifteen Mormon Short Stories. ed. by Levi Peterson, Orion, 1983. Authors included Wayne Carver, Kevin Cassity, R. A. Christmas, Dennis Clark, Kent Farnsworth, Sibyl Johnston, Bruce W. Jorgensen, Eileen Gibbons Kump, Lynne Larson, Donald R. Marshall, Joseph Peterson, Karen Rosenbaum, Linda Sillitoe, and David Lane Wright. We had quite a few collections in the early 1990s. First _Christmas for the World_. ed. by Curtis Taylor and Stan Zenk, Aspen, 1991. It had stories and some poems about Christmas, most of which involved Mormon culture and situations. Then came _Bright Angels and Familiars_, ed. by Eugene England, Signature, 1992. It aimed to be a kind of "Best of Mormon Short Stories", and really is the definitive collection so far. _Washed by a Wave of the Wind: Stories from the Corridor_. ed. by M. Shayne Bell, Signature, 1993. Science fiction from Great Basin authors. About half of the stories were Mormon-related. _Turning Hearts: Short Stories on Family Life_. ed. by Orson Scott Card and David Dollahite, Bookcraft, 1994. _Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Reader_. Ed. Thomas Lyon and Terry Tempest Williams. Gibbs Smith, 1995. Hundreds of selections of diaries, essays, short stories and poems about Utah, for the State Centennial. _Once Upon A Christmastime_. Deseret, 1997. Various Christmas stories, with selections by Margaret Young, Kathryn Kidd, Jack Weyland, Benson Parkinson, and others. _In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions_. Edited by Robert Raleigh. Signature, 1998. Unlike the other collections listed, the stories in this one almost seem to vie for being the most shocking and irreverent. Ron Carlson, Walter Kirn, Brian Evenson, Levi Peterson, Pauline Mortensen, Phyllis Barber, Rob Van Wagoner, Dorothy Solomon, Helen Jones, Johnny Townsend, Jan Stucki, Kristen Rogers, Dawn Houghton, Derek Gullino, Lee Ann Mortensen, Joanna Brooks, Bob Bringhurst, and Kathryn Egan. _From the Outside Looking In_. edited by Chris Crowe. Bookcraft, 1998. Christmas for the World, Turning Hearts: Short Stories on Family Life, and Once Upon A Christmastime each contain several stories by "adult popular" authors who have not published many short stories, and are as close as we have come to collections of stories from that wing of authors. A word on Magazines: The older Church magazines, like The Era and the Relief Society Magazine, published fiction, but I think most of the pieces were serialized novels. The Ensign published a few short stories in the 1970s. Especially of note is the July 1977 issue, a special issue on the arts, with lots of stories, poetry, and art. This was when Orson Scott Card was an Assistant Editor there. I think this was the one where President Kimball wrote about "Shakespeares and Miltons of our own." Not much fiction has appeared in the Ensign since 1970s, and it even stopped publishing poetry at some point, I think. The New Era and Friends still publish fiction, though. As I mentioned, Dialogue and Sunstone have been our most consistent sources of quality short stories. BYU Studies has also published short stories here and there since Clinton Larson helped to found it in 1956. There have been a few literary magazines at BYU over the years. I won't try to list them all. I am aware of Century II, which published student works around 1979-1980, and Inscape, the English Department's current creative writing journal which has been around since at least 1981. The more recent issues of Inscape can be found on the BYU web page. Also, as I mentioned, the speculative fiction writing wing at BYU is served by The Leading Edge, which has been around since 1981. I found a Brian Evenson story from when he was a BYU student in the back issues. Irreantum, AML's literary magazine which began publication in 1999, is the second attempt at launching a Mormon literary magazine. The first was Wasatch Review International, 1993-1996. I believe Tory Anderson was the editor-in-chief. I seem to be cursed with Mormon journals. I sent subscription checks to WRI and This People at just about the time when they folded, sucking up my money with them. This week I just got my subscription check to Irreantum back in the mail. I sent it six months ago, but messed up the address, and it had wandered around between Japan and Utah since then. I thought my parents had been hoarding the issues. I'll try again. Weber Studies, a journal from Weber State University (I'm not sure if it is still around or not), did a special issue on Mormon fiction around 1992 or so. This People was a mainly non-fiction magazine whose articles and columns ranged from fantastic to dreadful at any time (it was pretty good around 1988-1991), limping along financially throughout the 1980s and 1990s, finally folding around 1998. It ran an occasional short story, including a couple by Orson Scott Card, if I remember correctly. As far as Mormon fiction, the most notable thing about it was Eugene England's column in the 1990s on recent Mormon books. Short stories and collections which have won AML awards (I am missing a couple): 1978: Award for Short Story: Douglas Thayer, stories from Under the Cottonwoods (Provo, Utah: Frankson Press, 1977; Sandy, Utah, Orion Press, 1977.) Award for Short Story: Donald Marshall, stories from Frost in the Orchard (Provo, Utah: BYU Press, 1977; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985) 1979: Award in Fiction -- First Prize Levi S. Peterson. "The Confessions of Augustine." Denver Quarterly Winter (1978); "Road to Damascus." Dialogue 11.4 (178): 88-99. (Later included in The Canyons of Grace.) Award in Fiction -- Honorable Mention Karen Rosenbaum. "Hit the Frolicking, Rippling Brooks." Dialogue 11.3 (1978): 65-71. (Collected in Bright Angels and Familiars) 1980: Award in Fiction Bela Petsco. Nothing Very Important and Other Stories. Provo: Meservydale Publishing Co., 1979. 1982: Robert A. Christmas. "Another Angel." Dialogue 14.2 (1981): 117-31. 1983: Award in Fiction--Short Story Levi S. Peterson. The Canyons of Grace. Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1982. 1984: Award in Fiction--Short Story Neal C. Chandler. "Benediction." Dialogue 18.2 (1985): 152-166. "The Only Divinely Authorized Plan for Financial Success in this Life or the Next." Dialogue 18.3 (1985): 130-137. (Collected in Benediction.) 1988: Award in Fiction--Short Story Darrel Spencer. A Woman Packing a Pistol. Port Townsend, WA: Dragon Gate, 1987. 1989: Award in Fiction--Short Story Pauline Mortensen. Back Before the World Turned Nasty. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1989. 1990: Award in Fiction--Short Story Walter Kirn. My Hard Bargain. New York: Knopf, 1990. 1991 Award in Fiction--Short Story Michael Fillerup. "Lost and Found." Christmas for the World: A Gift for the Children. Salt Lake City: Aspen Books, 1991. 1993: Short story Washed by a Wave of the Wind: Stories from the Corridor. ed. by M. Shayne Bell, Signature, 1993. 1994: Award in Fiction--Short Story Wayne Jorgensen. "Who Tarzan, Who Jane." High Plains Literary Review 9:1 (Spring, 1994): 6-30. 1995: Short Story Anderson, Tory, "Epiphany" Dialogue, Fall 1995. 1997: Short Story Rawlins, Paul. No Lie Like Love University of Georgia Press, 1996. (Also won the Flannery O'Conner award). 1998: Short Story Jones, Helen Walker. "The Six-Buck Fortune". in In Our Lovely Deseret, 1998. 1999: Short Story Clyde, Mary. Survival Rates. University of Georgia, 1999. (Also won the Flannery O'Conner award). Andrew Hall ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #104 ******************************