From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #375 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 Thursday, June 28 2001 Volume 01 : Number 375 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 22:39:21 -0600 From: "mjames_laurel" Subject: Re: [AML] Mormon Mag for Kids > By the way, for what it's worth, I would whole-heartedly support an all- (or > even mostly-) LDS fiction magazine. It's a brilliant idea. Someone with some > money (i.e., not me) should start one. > > Eric D. Snider I'm way behind reading posts, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but a few years ago (1993 or 94 I believe) there were at least two magazines, Latter-day Digest and Cameo, published by Larry Barkdull, funded by a grant through the Latter-day Foundation for the Arts. As I recall, there was some fiction, poetry, and a variety of articles and interviews with LDS personalities. I remember my delight at finding them, and my dismay when they disappeared. They were, at least in my opinion, well balanced with mass appeal and exactly what I imagine many LDS readers are looking for - a variety of short pieces that were not exactly fluff, but also not as highbrow as a "literary" magazine might seem. A tad pricey, something like $4 or $5, but they were sturdily constructed and had the feel of an actual book. I find parting with cash painful, but I was happy to pay the price and felt I got my money's worth from them. I seem to remember another very short-lived effort to launch an LDS fiction magazine, but the details escape me. It seems like there was exactly one issue of whatever it was, and I remember being fairly irked by that as the main feature was a 'to be continued' story I got involved in. Isn't that always the way it goes. I'd certainly welcome a resurrection of this type of thing, both for adults and youth. But I think it would be a tough sell to the masses for a variety of reasons, all the same reasons that keep the big LDS publishers cranking out the same old same old. Someone would have to have a lot of patience (and the money to be patient) to tackle this, because I bet it would take a minimum of three years before word got around that it was safe to have such an unsanctioned publication on your coff--er, postum table when the hometeachers drop by. Laurel Brady - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 02:24:48 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: [AML] Institutional Art (was: _The Testaments..._) Terry L Jeffress wrote: > The interesting question, for me, becomes: if the makers of > _Testaments_ had deliberately made a film that would appeal to > Michael, would it still have power for other viewers, or would a lot > of people left the theater asking, "What just happened?" Yes, it would have power for others. They may not come out sniffing and say, "Wasn't that nice?" They'd come out with deer-in-the-headlight eyes and say, "Wow!" That's how it plays out in my fantasy anyway. I'm no literary snob. I'm on the AML board, and I'm considered by my colleagues there to represent the populist approach to art. If I were in London right now, I'd be letting Andrew Lloyd Webber vacuum the money out of my pocket for _Les Mis_ and _My Fair Lady_ because I think they are two of the greatest musicals of all time, and to heck with the twenty-seat theaters. I like to merge populist material with artistic quality and produce something that appeals to the masses, but challenges them. I believe that's entirely possible to do, and if it's possible, it ought to be done. Even a light comedy ought to attempt to be the greatest light comedy the filmmaker can produce. A film projected onto the Legacy Theater screen certainly ought to strive for excellence, because the purpose of its very existence is to affect lives. _And_ it represents the church, which represents Christ. Why do we think representing Christ with mediocrity is a good thing? > Because of the position the Church has created for itself as the > correlating monitor of educational entertainment suitable for its > saints, I don't think the Church can make the movie you want to see. > Richard could make the film, but the Church has created so many > self-limiting rules for what can and cannot appear under the official > name of the Church, that it cannot produce anything interesting. Now I think we're getting to the crux of the issue. Has the church dug itself into a pit so deep it cannot escape? If you were around for the latest discussion on nudity, you know my position there. I don't want to resurrect that discussion; I merely want to use a point from it as an illustration... One of the reasons people give for having such rabidly anti-nudity legistation in America is because nudity would be shocking to many people. Yet the laws themselves are what keep nudity shocking, because they force everyone to never see it except in shocking situations. The law _causes_ what it's supposedly protecting us from. I think the same effect is going on with the church's overall efforts to "protect" the members. This can easily expand into a criticism of the church generally (NOT the Gospel), so I will try hard to circumscribe my comments entirely within the realm of art. Because the church has been so careful not to offend or cause misunderstanding when it comes to art and literature, many members of the church have come to believe that art and literature must always avoid offensive or misunderstanding--they think it's an eternal principle. So when someone like Richard Dutcher (or even Neil LaBute) comes along and tells a story, these members of the church don't say "I didn't like it," or "There were things in it I personally wouldn't want to watch." They say, "What's wrong with Richard Dutcher? Why is he doing these PG-13 things in a Mormon film? Bad, bad Richard." I won't even try to imagine what they say about LaBute. But why does it have to be that way? Why do the members of the church have to be trained to need bland art or they freak? Make no mistake, they are being trained that way--by default. These days, if the church doesn't actively endorse something, many members assume they actively condemn it. I don't want the General Authorities publicly endorsing Richard Dutcher films, but it would be nice if they made it clear that viewing challenging films "told from a faithful point of view" can be a positive thing and is okay. I believe the church, artistically speaking, is raising a bunch of children who don't know how to think for themselves. I'll never forget the day I was hawking my opera to some retail stores and one guy asked me, "Is it approved by the church?" Where on earth did this fellow get the idea the church _ever_ endorses art? The rules are in place because the church put them there. The church can remove them. The rules are there because the lowest common denominator complained or misunderstood something once upon a time. Now we have a bunch of rules to protect them from themselves. And the rules have become a breeding ground for lowest-common-denominator. We're no longer catering to the LCD, we're creating it. Why, instead of catering to the lowest common denominator, can't the church _educate_ the lowest common denominator and raise it to a higher level? We've been warned to death about avoiding "immoral" art to the point where no one knows how to deal with any kind of art anymore. One time a president of the church counsels (not commands) youth to avoid R-rated movies, and now the whole church thinks the Prophet told everyone never to see R-rated movies--even grown adults who ought to be able to make responsible moral decisions on their own. We all cower in the corner, paranoid we might catch a glimpse of a sinful act on the screen, afraid to taint ourselves with anything but Disney movies. This is eternal progression? I don't believe the leaders of the church wanted this to happen, or are actively encouraging it to happen. But I believe they are facilitating its occurrence by remaining silent on the positive aspects of art, and by giving in to the expectation that everything they do needs to be "lowest common denominator." No, it doesn't. > I think the Church looked at the bell curve of saints, and tried to > make a film that would pass correlation and communicate with all > saints within two standard deviations of the mean. Art by committee. Yeah, that'll change lives. By the way, wasn't "correlation" supposed to organize things in the church and give direction to it? When did correlation come to mean "water everything down to the lowest common denominator"? The English word "correlation" doesn't even mean that. > I believe that the > very nature of the participants on AML-List puts most of us outside > the Church's target audience. I'm nothing special. I didn't get any kind of literary degree in college. I don't belong to any English faculty anywhere. I think Bennion's _Falling Toward Heaven_ was too literary, even though it's not all _that_ literary. I don't get into discussions like Scott Parkin had with several people over what Mitchell's _Angel of the Danube_ really meant. I just thought it was funny. When people wax scholarly about literature and criticism on this list, I don't even know what they're talking about half the time. I'm still trying to decipher the term "post-modern." (Mostly I don't care enough to research it.) I'm not all _that_ far away from the masses. I'm just not afraid to think new thoughts. And if we're going to participate in eternal progression, we're all going to need to think new thoughts. Is the church's approach toward art teaching its members to think new thoughts? > Because of its size and continued > growth, the Church's attempts at communication will probably only move > away from the direction that we would like -- toward a more general, > least-common-denominator message. I fear you are right, but I fear it is also a mistake. How did a church which encourages the "pursuit of excellence" get into the business of incubating mediocrity like a festering disease in a Petri dish? (How's that for an image?) I also can't help but wonder if, as the church becomes more and more international, cultural backlash will reverse the trend, as other nationalities object to having a watered-down, correlated American culture overlaid onto their own. And I wonder if the whole phenomenon isn't mostly a Utah thing. It seems like, the further you get away from the incestuous culture of the mega-Mormon mountain west, the more members of the church are willing to think new thoughts--without having their testimonies fall on the floor and roll away. > So let's hope that independent > artists can fill that void. They could a whole lot easier if the Brethren would show even a rudimentary approval of independent art. It wouldn't have to be much. Just a "Relax, it's okay," kind of attitude. Or as Bart Simpson puts it in the poster hanging on my wall: "Don't have a cow, man!" - -- 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: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 03:39:50 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Literary LCD "J. Scott Bronson" wrote: > > Would it work? > > No. > Why not? > > It took me awhile to get them to boil it down to a single reason, but > what it turns out to be is: We expect more from Mormons. We don't want > them to be like the rest of the world. > This wasn't the attitude of all the women in the group, just the most > vocal women in the group. And that's the way things go out in the > market. The most vocal minority gets their way. > > So, D. Mike, I like your idea, but I don't think it will work ... yet. The "yet" changes by someone taking the chance and doing it. William Morris called it a "mythical market." I suspect he doesn't mean the colloquial meaning of mythical: nonexistent with a hint of derision behind it. I suspect he means something more along the line of "hypothesized." I hypothesize it exists. Some of these readers know they exist--like me. Some are part of the market and don't know it yet because it never occurred to them it could exist. These are the people we'd be targeting, and I feel confident they exist. The only question is, are there enough of them, and how can we reach them? The vocal minority matters to the established publishers who make conservative decisions. A new publisher targeting a new market won't care about them. - -- 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: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 07:54:28 -0600 From: "J. Scott Bronson" Subject: Re: [AML] DUTCHER, _Brigham City_ On Mon, 25 Jun 2001 13:21:47 -0600 Barbara Hume writes: > That FBI chick was pretty smirky at the beginning of the movie, > but not at the end. (I do wonder, though, why the last shot was > one of her going out the door of the chapel. People less > literal-minded than I am probably grasped the significance of > that.) She knew that she didn't belong there. This is one of the reasons the first sacarment scene HAD to be in the film. She stayed for that one. She observed the culture of the indigenous folk and got the information - -- ah, the mormon version of communion, interesting, very interesting. At the end, she was there -- not for any detached, sterile reason -- but because she actually had some kind of affection for the sheriff and wanted to see how he was going to move on with his life. As the scene progresses she realizes that there can be no cool observation of this event, that something profound and very private is happening, and that she simply doesn't belong. Following in my mother's footsteps, who creates scenes in her head to fill out the movies she likes that don't quite end the way she hoped they would, it's kind of nice to imagine that perhaps the "FBI chick" just waited in the foyer until the meeting was over and met with the sheriff again to give him a little hug ... or something encouraging like that. :-) J. Scott Bronson Member of Playwrights Circle "An Organization of Professionals" www.playwrightscircle.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 08:29:58 -0600 From: "J. Scott Bronson" Subject: [AML] Re: Institutional Art (was: _The Testaments..._) On Mon, 25 Jun 2001 14:41:33 -0600 Terry L Jeffress writes: > Because of the position the Church has created for itself as the > correlating monitor of educational entertainment suitable for its > saints, I don't think the Church can make the movie you want to see. > Richard could make the film, but the Church has created so many > self-limiting rules for what can and cannot appear under the > official name of the Church, that it cannot produce anything interesting. > > I think the Church looked at the bell curve of saints, and tried to > make a film that would pass correlation and communicate with all > saints within two standard deviations of the mean. [snip] > Because of its size and continued growth, the Church's attempts > at communication will probably only move away from the > direction that we would like -- toward a more general, > least-common-denominator message. So let's hope that > independent artists can fill that void. I'm sure that you're right about this and it baffles me. Since when does the Church try to NOT offend people. Doctrinally, the Church doesn't give a fig if you like the Church's postion. In fact, the Church has seemed to make a habit out of sending Elder Packer out with the express purpose of offending people. And if people are complaining to them on doctrinal matters, their position (and rightly so) is: Well, the doctrine is not going to change. We're not going to get in line with you; you'll have to get in line with the doctrine. Get educated and get a testimony of it. But with Church sponsored art, the policy seems to be the exact opposite: Most of you seem to be too stupid to get anything from masterful works of art so we will produce stuff as bland as possible so that you can be mildly entertained while you think you're learning great lessons of a spiritual nature when in fact you're not being made to think, you're just being made to cry because Beautiful Scenery + Swelling Violins + Any Depiction of Jesus = True Emotion. Is it truly beyond the scope of imagination to expect that a church authority can say: This is good for you. It may hurt you a little, but it will change you if you will open yourself to the spirit. Some of you anyway. We can't really expect that all works of art will be as effective on all people, and that's okay. If this doesn't work for you maybe ... this will. Or this. Or this. How would that damage the mission of the church? J. Scott Bronson Member of Playwrights Circle "An Organization of Professionals" www.playwrightscircle.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 12:09:33 EDT From: ViKimball@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] Literary LCD In a message dated 6/25/01 11:00:07 AM Central Daylight Time, dmichael@wwno.com writes: << Language tends to be right behind sex as a no-no, and one of our members who has sold a book told about his experience with the editor who insisted the word "pee" be changed to "go to the bathroom." I declared that the LDS publishers are trying to do just what Margaret decries above: publishing to the lowest common denominator so any LDS can walk into a Deseret Book store and pick up anything and, without knowing fact one about it, feel "safe" letting it sit out in their living room where the kids have access to it. (In other words, let Deseret Book make his moral decisions for him.) >> I have a comment from a young Mormon pioneer in my book on young pioneers which describes a little Indian with a "red ribbon tied around his peepee." I also talk about pioneer men who shot young men "for making too free with their daughters." I know these would not have passed the censors at Deseret Book. I find it amusing that they will not publish things with even a hint of sex, yet they will carry these books in their stores. If young people in the church are watching ANY television, they are seeing sex everywhere, even on the news, and in commercials. Violet Kimball - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 11:26:48 -0700 (PDT) From: William Morris Subject: Re: [AML] Literary LCD - --- "J. Scott Bronson" wrote: > > It took me awhile to get them to boil it down to a > single reason, but > what it turns out to be is: We expect more from > Mormons. We don't want > them to be like the rest of the world. > > So, you're telling me that it's okay for you to > identify with non-mormon > sinners, but not mormon sinners? > > That's not what we're saying. > > It was what they were saying, but they couldn't see > it. They don't see > the hypocrisy in their thinking, so there is no way > to get around it. > This double standard is something I've encountered as well. I think it stems from something that Linda Adams mentioned in a post a while back about people thinking the author has to experience everything that is portrayed in their works because otherwise the portrayal wouldn't be so effective. Oh yeah, it must have been in the thread that was started in response to Excel Entertainment's request for a female writer to do a _God's Army_ novel spin-off. At any rate, even if LDS readers don't think that the author has actually experienced whatever it is they're objecting too, they still seem supsicious of where that knowledge comes from---somehow evil or sin in a text reflects a dark shadow onto its author, implicates him or her. Tom J. might bring up Brian Evenson at this point ;). However, despite this obstacle (which Scott and I both seem to believe exists), I think that what D. Michael has in mind could possibly work. Here's one reason why: I periodically check the fiction top 10 on the Deseret Book site. A recent romance title had a user review (Amazon.com style, or whatever they call it) attached to it. It was brief and informal like they usually are, but in it, the reader said that that particular romance title was okay, but if people were really interested in that kind of book, they should read Rachel Nunes or [can't remember other author's name]. What was evocative for me about the review was that this reader clearly was interested in and aware of a field of literature we could call 'Mormon romance' and this reader was developing a critical sense of what makes for a good 'Mormon romance' novel. Some of us in the world of Mormon art talk about educating our audience and we go back and forth about it---trying to figure out how to do that without being elitist and alienating but at the same time not comprimising a certain level of quality---but I don't know that we know how well it can work because we don't really have all the trappings that go with educating an audience. All audiences have to be educated. I don't know my literary history too well, but there are certain things (institutions and discourses) that lead to audience acceptance. These include: the concept of a founding genius, popular reviews, marketing of authors and editors as representatives of a community, a steady stream of works being published in that genre, some breakout bestsellers that attract new eyes and legitimize that genre, official histories and studies, awards and events, anthologies (canon formation), and finally representative works being taught in school. Now I'm drawing my examples from the creation of 'national' literatures and/or the strong literary movements inside of 'national' literatures, but it seems to me that somewhere in that mess (including our own literary history) are models for success and failure that could help in the development of a midstream publishing house. But I don't think it can happen just by publishing a few works of fiction, or at least not in the long run. I think that any publisher entering the scene is going to need a serious multi-dimensional, across several media branding/marketing plan in order to break down initial barriers and reach the 'untapped' mainstream Mormon audience. If that could be combined with one or two breakout hits (rare but possible), followed by a rise of authors who are closely identified with the scene, then it could just work. I think that the double-standard falls away if people think something is a must-read, big event kind of book. ~~William Morris __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:05:08 -0700 From: "Frank Maxwell" Subject: Re: [AML] Play the New Game: "All Movies Have Happy Endings!" Thom, where are you? Is the game still on? I think it's your turn. Is this thread going to have a happy ending? Frank Maxwell - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 12:02:41 -0700 From: "Jeffrey Savage" Subject: RE: [AML] Midstream Mormon Publisher >My sense >of things is that the kind of Mormons who might be >attracted to works offered by a mid-stream publishing >house doesn't read much Mormon literature. These are >folks who generally buy doctrinal titles from the LDS >booksellers---people who may go and see _God's Army_ >and may just read _The Work and the Glory_, but on the >whole read 'gentile' fiction---either li-fi lite (Ann >Tyler, Jane Austen, C.S. Lewis, John Irving) and/or >quality genre stuff (Stephen King, Michael Crichton?). > In other words, they are only going to get interested >in a work of Mormon art if it is of sufficient quality >and enough of an event in the Mormon world that it >hits their radar screen. I sense two directions here. One that I can get fully behind, and one that really concerns me. I love the idea of seeing more high-quality LDS fiction. I also would like to see other genres break out from LDS publishers. Imagine an LDS SF series that sold as well TWATG. Or how would it be to discover an LDS Stephen King? And I also think that an important part of making that happen is finding ways to get LDS fiction on the radar screen that William talks about. When an LDS publisher is happy to have a book sell 20k copies, (which at a 8.5% commission and a selling price of $20, translates to a royalty of $34k for a book that sold very well) it is going to be tough to make that happen. Why did Richard D. go to Hollywood first? Because that's where he felt it was possible to make a living making movies. Now you could say that there just aren't enough Mormon readers to make that happen. But we know that isn't true. God's Army, TWATG, Heimerdinger's Tennis Shoes books, some of Weyland's books prove that the audience is there. We just have to figure out how to get to them. I think that every time a book or a movie sells extremely well, we get closer to that goal. A publisher is willing to spend a little more on promotion if the book can gross more. More press gets more people into the LDS bookstores. If a reader really enjoyed TWATG, maybe they will try another piece of LDS fiction. I also agree completely with many of the comments on raising the bar for LDS literature. When I finished my book, I gave it to many Mormon readers to get their opinions. One of the things that I heard often was comments like, "You need to send this out to LDS publishers right away. So much of the LDS fiction I read is so poorly done, you'll get published right away." Now, I hope that what they were really saying was that they felt that my book was an improvement over some of what they had been reading, and not that they felt that my book was just as poorly done. I do think that over the past ten years we have seen some big improvements in the quality and breadth of LDS fiction (DBs decrease in Bookcraft's fiction aside.), but I would still love to get to the point where we had dozens of the best LDS writers able to pursue their craft as a full time career, without living in a trailer on the salt flats. The direction that concerns me, is that somehow allowing more profanity and sex in LDS fiction is an improvement. I think it was Bronson that talked about the reading group who loved the "Oprah" type of book with lots of sex and swearing, but who expected more from their Mormon writers. (Or less in this case.) I can completely identify with that. I absolutely love Stephen King's writing. I think that he is one of the best of our popular story tellers. Do I buy all of his books? Yes. Do his books have profanity and sex? Yes. But do I buy them FOR the profanity and sex? NO! In fact I often find myself thinking how unfortunate it is that he feels that he needs to put that in there. It is obvious that he has the skill to write without those, but it is equally obvious that he has no intention of doing that. It can certainly be done. There are many great novels and movies that manage to tell amazing stories without any of that, but the popular trend is to add extra sex and profanity, just as tobacco companies add extra nicotine to their cigarettes. I really hope that as LDS artists, we focus on showing that outstanding art can be created without profanity and sex. I cheer every time I see a movie like The Truman Show, blow out amazing box office receipts. And like a lot of Mormons outside of Utah, I was amazed and delighted when God's Army showed up in a local movie theater. It may not be the majority, but I really feel like it is a signal to the people who say that you can't make money with morally clean media. Instead, it sounds like we are focused on seeing how much of that we can get into LDS novels. To me that sounds an awful lot like lowering the bar. Jeffrey Savage CEO, Smartshop P 408-778-8331 F 408-782-0761 - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 13:08:42 -0700 From: "Frank Maxwell" Subject: Re: [AML] Literary LCD D. Michael Martindale wrote: > Is there a market out there for books > that are faithful to the Gospel, but depict the gamut of human > degradation? The gamut of human degradation? Don't you mean the gamut of human experience? It's one thing to hope for a Mormon Shakespeare. It's something else to hope for a Mormon Marquis De Sade. Regards, Frank Maxwell - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 14:19:34 -0700 From: "Christopher Bigelow" Subject: RE: [AML] Humor-Themed _Irreantum_ The issue's emphasis is on humor, but certainly not all its material is = humorous. - -----Original Message----- From: "Sharlee Glenn" =20 Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 7:57 PM To: aml-list@lists.xmission.com; glennsj@inet-1.com Subject: Re: [AML] Humor-Themed _Irreantum_ Chris Bigelow wrote: > With a special emphasis on Mormon humor, the spring 2001 issue of IRREANTUM, > the literary quarterly published by the Association for Mormon Letters > (AML), is now available > POETRY: > Missionary's Lament, Richard Johnson > Untitled, Tony A. Markham > Don't Say It, Beth Hatch > A Father's Love, Paul W. Sexton > Resurrected Spring, Linda P. Adams > Wrong Way, Katie Parker > An Argument, Katie Parker > Educated Woman, Laraine Wilkins > Mimesis Upended: A Reluctant Nod to Mr. Wilde, Sharlee Mullins = Glenn > Raison D'Etre, Sharlee Mullins Glenn Oh dear. My poems are not meant to be *funny.* I hope no one tries to = read them that way or they'll think my attempts at humor are pretty pitiful! Sharlee Glenn glennsj@inet-1.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 15:27:26 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] GAs in Church Pubs Merlyn J Clarke wrote: > > What if a GA or two took to writing fiction? Think they'd get published? > After all, a few GAs have written hymns. > My cynical opinion would be, yes, they would get published even if their fiction was dreadful. Does anyone really think, for instance, that "I Believe in Christ" would have ever seen the inside of the LDS hymnbook if it hadn't been written by Bruce R. McConkie? Thom (waiting for people to respond by saying they love the hymn. That isn't the point. It's still maudlin verse) Duncan - - 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 #375 ******************************