From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #634 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 Wednesday, March 6 2002 Volume 01 : Number 634 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 11:02:22 -0700 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Lime Jello and Cultural Imperialism My personal fave rave Jello add-in, very popular in my old ward, was = sliced bologna which was further chopped up, and Fruit Loops. In Lime or = Raspberry Jello. Sometimes that particular good sister would add fruit = cocktail. It was always the first cassarole dish emptied at our ward = functions. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 14:49:56 -0700 From: "Nan McCulloch" Subject: [AML] Angels in America Thom Duncan sees Angels in America as a play about homosexuality. Some = see it as a play about agency and religion. I see it as a play about = hypocrisy and politics. Kushner skillfully uses homosexuality and = Mormonism to this end. He uses Mormonism as a metaphor. He may be = good-natured about our religion, but he is very condescending. = Politically he scorns conservatism and feels it is the enemy of = enlightenment. At the end of Part II: Perestroika, Hannah, Joe's = mother, becomes enlightened and thus turns her back on her religion. I = gave up on the other Mormon characters early on, but I had such hopes = for Hannah. I still feel sadness when I think about it.=20 Nan McCulloch - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 17:10:58 -0500 From: "robert lauer" Subject: Re: [AML] _Angels in America_ on HBO? Regarding ANGELS IN AMERICA, Thom Duncan wrote: >It is not fair to read into Kushner's work any attempt by him to >downgrade Mormons as a whole or the Church as an institution. > I read and saw the play(s) when they first opened in NYC--several years before I rejoined the Church. My disagreement with Thom's statement above has some conditions. Kushner is NOT anti-Mormon. He is a self-proclaimed Marxist who is anti-individualist and anti-Capitalist. (Shortly after he won awards for the first installment of ANGELS, he wrote a piece for the New York Times decrying the American idea of the individual and praising Karl Marx's ridiculous, mystical statement that the smallest division possible among humans is not one person but two. He went on about how he did not create his play alone, but that the many people in his life were also the creators of the piece. At least one reader of the Times saw the blatant, self-serving nature of Kushner's "humility." This fellow wrote into the paper, saying that Kushner should then share the awards and split his royalties with these other co-creators.) Kushner has latched on to the fact that Mormonism is the ONLY true American religion. Joseph Smith's teachings concerning the eternal, uncreated nature of the individual and the material universe; his declaration that God was once human and that humans are potential Gods; his rejection of the Christian doctrines of Original Sin, Salvation by Grace and Faith without works---all of these make Mormonisn the ONLY theological system currently in existence that presents a non-contradictory spiritual basis for individualism, democracy and the free market. Having made these connections, Kushner's plays are extremely anti-Mormon because they are anti-Capitalist and anti-American. Even before I came back to the Church, I despised the plays on a philosophical/ethical basis. It should be noted that despite all the spiritual liberality in Kushner's plays, the only unredeemable character is the young Mormon man struggling with his sexuality. Friends who saw the second part of the play, related very strongly to this characters and were somewhat mystified that Kushner unleashes the play's harshest condemnation upon him. Many of these friends thought that the young Mormon man was actually the most rational character in the play, and the character with the most integrity in the end. I agreed with them. I think that Kushner, if he was honest, would also agree with them; these are the very reasons that he so damns the character. At the time the second play opened on Broadway I had a dear friend, a fellow-playwriting student from my BYU days, dying from AIDS in southern Utah. This friend had been excommunicated from the Church fifteen years earlier and was very bitter about his Mormon upbringing, Mormon culture and the Mormon Church. He wanted very badly to see Kushner's plays, but was too sick to travel to NYC. I sent him the published scripts and he eagerly read them. His response was surprising given his eagerness to see the plays, his personal history as a formerly closeted gay man raised in Mormon Utah and his bitterness towards the Church and all that it represents: he hated the plays. He said that he wished he had never wasted the time--so precious during those final days of his life--to read the scripts. "How could anyone write something so full of bitterness about life itself?" he asked me. Though our politics and spiritual inclinations were polar opposites, I agree whole-heartedly with my friend's appraisal of Kushner's works. From his scripts and the various feature he has written,I'm firmly convinced that Kushner's world view is based upon nothing but bitterness, envy and mysticism. As such, I consider his philosophy evil. I see absolutely no value in his plays. ROB. LAUER _________________________________________________________________ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 15:20:58 -0700 From: "Clark Goble" Subject: RE: [AML] Lime Jello and Cultural Imperialism ___ Susan ___ | Not being all that familiar with Mormon culture, are you | telling me that people make Jello with vegetables in it? | And this is/was common? ___ Yup. Lime green jello with shredded carrots on top. Jello of various flavors mixed with fruit cocktail. Jello mixed with whipped cream. Jello with sliced pinapple. Back about 10 years ago it was very common. Even growing up in the not very Utah province of Nova Scotia it was pretty common (along with kool-aid at activities). If it has, as some say, disappeared from our culture, I will miss it. I think we need some unique foods to bring to our culture. Then we can go force it on everyone else and say it was part of the gospel. Deconstructing Jello I'll call the tendency. We can come up with jello allegories that relate to the Atonement and share them in Sunday School. The Nephites and Jews had their olive trees, we have (or had) our jello. - -- Clark Goble --- clark@lextek.com ----------------------------- - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 17:10:36 -0600 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: [AML] 2001 AML Awards Thanks to Scott Parkin, AML awards coordinator, who forwarded to AML-List the text of the various awards from the AML conference last Saturday. I notice that one of the awards (for review) is to our very own Jeff Needle for his reviews on the List! And other AML-List members appear in this list too. We're doing good! (Also doing well.) Jonathan Langford AML-List Moderator Award for Children's Literature--Don H. Staheli and Robert T. Barrett The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Children's Literature for 2001 to Don H. Staheli and Robert T. Barrett for _The Story of the Walnut Tree_ (Bookcraft, 2000). In the first session of the April 2000 General Conference, President Gordon B. Hinckley told a story about a black walnut tree he had planted many years ago. When the tree died, rather than having it destroyed, he asked experts whether its wood might still be useful. That walnut tree became the pulpit that stands at the front of the new Conference Center, the pulpit from which President Hinckley spoke. "It is an emotional thing for me," he said. "I offer my profound thanks for making it possible to have a small touch of mine in this great hall where the voices of prophets will go out to all the world in testimony of the Redeemer of mankind." In _The Story of the Walnut Tree_, Don Staheli has transformed President Hinckley's simple, heartfelt story into a modern fable about unexpected beauty. The walnut tree, planted on a whim, seems to lack all the qualities that make the other trees special; it is not as tall as the maple, not as beautiful as the quaking aspen, not as full and richly scented as the evergreen. But, as the "kind man" of the story reminds us, sometimes things we discount as unworthy turn out to be the best of all. Though this statement, and other morals, are stated explicitly in the story, the parallel to Christ's life is more powerful for never being overtly stated. Robert Barrett's rich illustrations, with their predominance of trees and foliage, suggest vitality and strength, a fitting complement to the simple yet beautiful text. While Mormon children's literature has many stories about Church history, and many stories of powerful metaphor, it has very few that are both at once. _The Story of the Walnut Tree_ combines deep gospel principles with an engaging story, simply told. It depicts a true story from contemporary Church history without resorting to hagiography or saccharine perfection. This is an exceptional book. Award for Criticism--Dian Saderup Monson The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Criticism for 2001 to Dian Saderup Monson for "Believing in the Word," published in _First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life_. In "Believing in the Word" Dian Saderup Monson brings a Mormon sensibility to a larger national audience, challenging the skepticism of contemporary literary theory and boldly claiming that language and literature, reading and writing are inherently acts of faith. The indeterminacy of language does not make true communication impossible, but any communication miraculous. The inaccessibility of an author's intention does not make an absolute gulf between reader and writer, but an opportunity for unusual and compelling communion. And the ease with which critics can dissipate literary meanings by reference to political or cultural conditions may simply be sophisticated dodges from the spirit of a text. This is the case with a critic Monson describes who, in reading a short story by Catholic author Andre Dubus, looks so narrowly at gender issues that the protagonist's experiences of crisis and grace are lost to her. Just as the protagonist in Dubus's story must learn to submit to God's grace, so must we readers, according to Monson, be willing to surrender ourselves and our convenient interpretive lenses to the mystery and manners of an author's work. It is only on the basis of such trust that language and literature become mediating and not maddening. "As I read fiction and teach it," Monson concludes, " I will seek to maintain a certain faith, not only in the precarious reliability of words, but in the notion that authors use words with purpose that readers may, by a combination of wit and grace, divine." Award for Drama--J. Scott Bronson The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Drama for 2001 to J. Scott Bronson for _Stones_ (produced at the Little Brown Theater 2001). _Stones_ is a perfect example of the three keys to playwriting: Story, Character, and Dialogue. Both acts, thousands of years apart in real time, appear outwardly to tell two different stories. But the similarities in the themes of faith and family reach across the years to bind the play into one coherent story that is relevant today and will always be as long as humans walk the earth. Playwrights of lesser ability would have seen the task of putting thoughts into the mind and words into the mouth of the Savior of Mankind as somewhat daunting, if not downright sacrilegious; yet Bronson's Christ speaks words that are simultaneously human in their pain and divine in their solace. No less expertly delineated are the characters of Abraham and, especially Mary. The scene where she becomes aware of her Son's eventual sacrifice on the cross is one of great dramatic and spiritual power. Bronson's dialogue successfully and seamlessly bridges two worlds. His characters speak plainly in the modern syntax and vernacular and yet slip effortlessly into lyrical soliloquies of great poetic force. _Stones_ sets a new standard for Mormon drama in the universality of its theme, the depth of its characterization, and the poignant beauty of its words. Award for Middle Grade Literature--Carol Lynch Williams The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in the Novel for 2001 to Carol Lynch Williams for _My Angelica_ (Delacorte: 1999), _Carolina Autumn_ (Delacorte 2000), _Christmas In Heaven_ (Putnam: 2000), _Tish_ (Cornerstone: 2001) In the past three years, Carol Lynch Williams published four middle-grade books--three in the national market and one for Mormon readers. Her humor, storytelling ability, facility with language, and courage to consider difficult issues place her at the top of her field. Her protagonists are generally young women who face a web of serious challenges. Through the course of her experiences the protagonist discovers the power to resist the trouble confronting her. _Christmas in Heaven_ explores the tension between family and friends as the protagonist's brother is drawn away from himself by an emotionally disturbed girl. _Carolina Autumn_ shows a young woman facing adolescence after losing her father and sister through death and her mother through emotional isolation. _My Angelica_, lighter than most of her books, has a male protagonist and deals with the issues of first love and distorted self-concept. _Tish_, shows a pioneer girl struggling with her grandparent's anger about Mormonism. Her books embrace the values of the best Mormon literature--respecting each person as a child of God, building solid relationships with friends and family, and progressing toward maturity. Award for the Novel--Brady Udall The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in the Novel for 2001 to Brady Udall for _The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint_ (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001). In _The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint_ Brady Udall writes of a world where miracles happen and religion has the power to change people. The title character, Edgar, has enormous physical, social, and cultural hardships, but he maintains a natural innocence and morality that enable him to persevere. Through Edgar's experience in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Udall draws an easily recognizable portrait of everyday Mormons--people who still have struggles in spite of their belief in Christ and membership in His Church. In this novel, the Church exists as part of the relevant cultural setting and not as a religion that needs explanation, justification, or additional proselyting tools. Throughout _Edgar Mint_ Udall employs vivid, evocative descriptions that conjure the visual images, sounds, smells, and moods of the situations that make up Edgar's miracle life. Udall doesn't shrink back from describing the horrors of Edgar's life, but he also never takes on the tabloid and voyeuristic view prevalent in much of today's entertainment. _The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint_ extends the possibilities of Mormon literature into new arenas and does so with quality storytelling and unforgettable characters. Award for Review--Jeffrey Needle The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Review for 2001 to Jeffrey Needle for his collected book reviews appearing on AML-List: An Email List of Mormon Literature (reviews available through the AML-List Archives at http://www.aml-online.org/reviews). "How then shall they read the books of which they have not heard?" Reviewers play an important, and largely unsung, role in the life of a literary community. This is true not only of those who voice judgments of new works, but equally of those who reach back into the past, bringing to our remembrance a knowledge of what has gone before. In so doing, they serve as our collective memory, allowing us to build bridges across time to our half-forgotten literary forebears. Jeff Needle provides an outstanding example of just such service. Over the past five years, this self-described Jewish Protestant with a sympathetic interest in "all things Mormon" has published over 70 reviews for AML-List--23 in 2001 alone. His choices have spanned the range from doctrinal works to Mormon history, historical fiction, detective novels with Mormon settings, biography, and more. New and old, well-known and obscure; all have come under his roving reading and reviewing eye. Jeff brings to his reviews a careful concern for accuracy, clear sense of plot, and finely tuned sensitivity to authorial style. He consistently, and charitably, recounts authors' successes, while with soft-spoken insight noting areas for improvement. It is part of his understated skill that we come away from each review feeling that we have learned about--and from--an author's work, through Jeff's mediation. Award for Young Adult Literature--Louise Plummer The Association for Mormon Letters presents an Award in Young Adult Literature for 2001 to Louise Plummer for _A Dance for Three_ (Delacorte, 2001). As my two daughters became teenagers and their relationships with boys became more complicated, they struggled to decode the confusing cultural signs of romance. Reading Louise Plummer's modern-day novels of manners helped my daughters walk through the forest of adolescence. Her voice is like that of a friendly aunt who knows plenty of stories about love. The latest in this line of novels is _A Dance for Three_, the story of a young woman who is nearly destroyed by her illusions about the boy she loves. Pregnant and physically abused by him, she experiences a psychotic break. The narration in three voices is as sophisticated as Virginia Sorensen's best work; the prose has the grace and power of poetry. As Hannah, the protagonist, puzzles over the memory of her own seduction, readers puzzle with her. By the end of the book the meaning of the scene is transformed and our ethical outrage is focused. Like classic writers since the invention of the novel, Plummer unmasks illusion in the form of dishonesty, exaggeration, and self-deceit. Her voice is certain and steady, telling young women that they can trust their heads, trust their ability to judge. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 17:44:12 -0700 From: Steve Subject: Re: [AML] _Angels in America_ on HBO? on 3/4/02 3:39 PM, Christopher Bigelow at Chris.Bigelow@UnicityNetwork.com wrote: > I'm an active LDS, and I find that description extremely accurate. Yeah, > there's more melatonin coming into the church, but the prevailing culture is > still definitely "staggeringly conservative" in stunted, boring ways. I think you meant "melanin," as in skin pigment, but I liked the implication of the other word as well. ;-) Steve - -- skperry@mac.com http://stevenkappperry.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 15:02:30 -0800 (PST) From: William Morris Subject: [AML] Mormon Literary Criticism (was: Cultural Imperialism) - --- Jonathan Langford wrote: >Personally, I've decided that there's no one > right > way to read, interpret, and teach literature, but that there are many > different approaches, each of which (so far as I can tell) embeds some > fundamental assumptions that are at odds with what we as Mormons believe > to > be true (based, of course, on my understanding of what that truth is), > but > with significant areas of agreement as well. I see no reason why > Mormons > can't be good members of the Church and at the same time engage in > Marxist > criticism, feminist criticism, deconstructionism, archetypal criticism, > textual criticism, composition theory, structuralist criticism, or any > other brand to which I've been exposed or which that individual might > come up with on his or her own--so long as we remember that (as I think > Elder Holland once put it, back before he was "Elder" Holland) our > membership is in the Kingdom and our passport is to the realm of > academic study, not the reverse. I'd like to pick back up with Jonathan's rant. I agree with the above pronouncement. In my experience, the best criticism is: 1. Primarily driven and shaped by the text itself. 2. Is the result of exhaustive study, fine, focused writing (and by fine, I mean it can vary widely in the tone and structure) and a strong point of view on the part of the critic. 3. Allows itself to make some intuitive leaps that can be supported by the text but still goes a little beyond a straight-up reading. 4. Allows its premises and structure to be altered, undermined or reinscribed by the text itself. Any first year graduate student can do a cookie-cutter 'Marxist' or 'feminist' or 'Frye's archetypes' critique of a text (and nothing is more annoying than sitting in a class listening to some ideological blowhard do just that), but successful criticism is ultimately not a product of a school of criticism, of a particular 'approach' but of a sophisticated, engaged reader. Which brings me to another section of Jonathan's post (just after he has discussed the splits in the BYU English department): > Which is a tremendous shame, because I think the result has been that at > BYU, which should be a center of talking about what the gospel means in > literary terms--with an openness to a variety of different approaches > and > the insights they can offer--what I see is more a matter of armed camps, > with little cross-conversation, and not even that much discussion of how > the gospel relates to literature within any of those camps. How the gospel relates to literature is exactly the sort of concern that a Mormon criticism should have. Jonathan argues that this can happen within or in conversation with other schools of literary criticism. I think it can. I think the gospel (which is a world view, just like Marxism or even deconstructionism) can provide a fruitful triangulating effect, helping the critic negotiating between the text and the mode of criticism. [And just to be clear, I consider formalism, i.e. an emphasis on what the text is saying and how (grammatically, symbolically, stylistically, etc.) it is saying it, to be a mode of criticism] The question, for me at least, is how. If Mormon criticism is deployed by simply applying gospel ideals to literary texts, then it won't be successful. It would be the equivalent of what those grad students I mention above do. It would be a Mormon criticism that simply subjects literary characters to a litmus test of how well they live the gospel. Not that any critics are doing this, but it seems to me like that is a way that some Mormon readers approach texts. I see a few ways to use a grounding in Mormon culture and theology to help inform criticism both of texts that are about Mormons and those that aren't (I admit that some of these things aren't proprietary to Mormons): 1. The use of Mormon structures/patterns: the 'pride cycle' found in the Book of Mormon, the process of conversion as outlined in Alma 32, the idea of opposition in all things, etc. 2. Mormon ideas about language: the discourse of testimony, the ability to translate (gift of tongues), the Word as creative, the idea that the Lord speaks to us after our own weakness (D&C ), the gift of prophecy, an ideal language (Adamic), imporatance of journal keeping, etc. 3. Mormon ideas and practices related to kinship structures: polygamy, ties to ancestors and descendents, courtship practices, eternal relationships, etc. I'm sure we could come up with more. How we relate these things to actual texts is the problem. I've been thinking about this because I recently read _Anna Karenina_ for the first time, and I continue to be haunted by _The Master and Margarita_ (Bulgakov). Something tells me that a 'Mormon' reading of these texts could generate some insights into them as well as, in return, into Mormon culture and theology. Jonathan's earlier post on moral/ethical criticism (11/12/01) suggests that moral criticism is valid and even necessary. That since the artist presents his view of the world in his work, so should the critic in his discussion of that work. I think the reason I want to approach the two Russian texts above (although in translation, sadly) is that I strongly feel the challenge of their world view. The question is: how do I respond? What tools can I use? What does Mormonism have to offer me as a reader? ~~William Morris __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Try FREE Yahoo! Mail - the world's greatest free email! http://mail.yahoo.com/ - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2002 11:33:42 -0600 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: Re: [AML] Lime Jello... (Comp 1) [MOD: This is a compilation post.] >From parisander@freeport.com Tue Mar 05 20:33:33 2002 I, personally, like Jello because you can hold it--all the way to your mouth. If you put carrot shreds in it--it breaks. Whipped cream makes it messy. Paris Anderson - ----------------------------------------- >From lajackson@juno.com Tue Mar 05 21:41:56 2002 First, the literary connection: My apologies for the missing parenthesis in my previous post. Here it is. ) Next, anyone who knows anything about Jello knows that the cottage cheese goes in the orange Jello, not the lemon Jello, hence Jana's yucky experience. Finally, for the record, I can't stand plain Jello at all, no matter how solidly it is set. I was introduced to it in a high school cafeteria in Salt Lake and found its most useful purpose to be the one for which we most often got in trouble -- defying gravity at high rates of speed. Marilyn Brown invites one last literary note: I have really wanted to ask this question for a LONG time. What is the official spelling of jello, Jell-O, jell-O, jell-o? Please, will someone smart help me? And Larry grabs the nearest box from the cupboard (note that this flavor, Strawberry Kiwi, was probably unheard of in the days of the lime and carrot variety). The official spelling according to the box is JELL-O Gelatin. There. Good deed done for the day. And remember, "do not use fresh or frozen pineapple, kiwi, papaya, or guava juice. Gelatin will not set." Watch out, though. My mother could make it set with pineapple in it, so the box isn't always right. Or was that because she drained it really well? I'm outta here before someone tries to find out if JELL-O will set with me in it. Larry Jackson - ---------------------------------------- >From eric@ericdsnider.com Tue Mar 05 22:27:28 2002 Official spelling: Jell-O. It is a trademark for a specific gelatin dessert company. Eric D. Snider - ---------------------------------------- >From djdick@gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu Tue Mar 05 23:50:14 2002 I terms of Jello esoterica, one of my favorites was with drained chicken noodle soup. I never could figure out which flavor the Jello was. I assumed lemon, because it was light colored. I think I'll go ask my wife if she has the recipe. Richard B. Johnson Husband, Father, Grandfather, Puppeteer, Playwright, Writer, Teacher, Director, Actor, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool I sometimes think that the last persona is the most important http://www.PuppenRich.com - ------------------------------------------- X-From_: leeallred@rmi.net Tue Mar 05 19:00:01 2002 Actually, according to Kraft's webpage (www.jell-o.com), the official spelling seems to be all caps, hypenated, and registered trademarked: JELL-O(R) - --Lee Lee Allred leea@sff.net www.leeallred.com - ----------------------------------------- >From OmahaMom@aol.com Wed Mar 06 06:56:47 2002 Sorry folks, have to interject here. Carrots (with crushed pineapple, of course) truly belong in orange jello, but the carrots must be grated very fine. I think it's delicious. Another one I like is shredded beets & crushed pineapple in red jello, with a dollop of half sour cream/half mayo on top as a garnish. Even my husband who doesn't like beets enjoys that one. And while I enjoy reading cookbooks, and am writing my own for personal use, there are some things that don't appeal when dunked in jello. However, a ring of lime jello with cottage cheese & a dash of horseradish was very tasty served with shrimp salad heaped in the middle...so don't completely discard ideas until trying a few. Karen [Tippets] - ------------------------------------------------ - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 13:36:24 -0700 From: "Bill Willson" Subject: Re: [AML] Sugar Beet in SL City Weekly I have no doubts whatsoever that God has a sense of humor. How could a creator who made one species of baboon with a red, white and blue butt and another species of baboon with a red, white and blue face, be humorless? I also have a sense of humor. I enjoy a good joke as well as the next person. Where I draw the line is the humor that is very subtly disguised as truthful and makes the subject matter, in this case the church and the members of the church, seem stupid or less than intelligent. Then to cover the writer's hind-parts puts a disclaimer where no one is likely to read it. So, when non-members read it they think it could be true. There are so many who are eager to find something to ridicule about the church, I don't think we need to fuel the fire of anti-Mormonism. [Bill Willson] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 13:29:29 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Agendas in Lit Classes [This is the first of a three-part post. It was originally one post but kept growing and growing, so I've broken it down. I was going to cut out the five paragraphs where Jacob quotes my lists of authors, but figured I've taken so long at this that everyone might have forgot the point of the questions Jacob asks about the lists. My thanks to Jacob for his thought-provoking questions.] [MOD: Sorry--I'm cutting the paragraphs anyway. Something I sometimes do with quoted material.] On Thu, 21 Feb 2002 13:45:55 -0700 Jacob Proffitt writes: > I'm not entirely certain I understand what you are saying with the > points above, Harlow. Do you mean that you can put together a > representative literature class for a period and still have it > concentrate on a specific sub-grouping of authors? Yes. And thank you for asking. One of my favorite readings from Hazard Adams' _Critical Theory Since Plato_ is Wm. Blake's _Annotations to Reynolds' _Discourses__, where Blake conducts a debate in the margins with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and repeatedly states his belief that the general can be best known through the particular, as opposed to Reynolds' argument that the particular can be best known through the general. It's an old debate. A personal example of the general being known through the particular: While we were packing to leave Skedaddle I got a letter from Denise Levertov, an essay she had written and read in NY exploring the difference between the way east coast American writers and west coast / western writers write about their spiritual lives. She had seen a poem of mine in Image, the Seattle Arts Council's annual (got $100 for it, first poem I had published since high school), and included it in the essay, and now that she was going to publish a book of essays she wanted permission to include it. (It's in the archives, twice, but I'll quote it anyway) The Olive This Tree is light to the world. The fruit of its fruit light to the mind Fire to the lamp, calm to troubled waters. The fruit bears its fruit by being crushed: Salt well in a stone box Add purgatives--vinegar is good Let sit. Crush between two grinding stones driven by a mule Kissed by a whip Till the skins break Repeat to the lees, then burn the mash on a torch. If the oil enlightens your soul You will see the beaten traveller There, by the side of the road, as you head down to Jericho Pour it on his broken skin. This man, light of endless worlds, Praying near the trunk Feels the branches enfolding him, Folding him in--kneading, pressing Till the skin breaks and it is not oil Which will spill on ground that will shake tomorrow Like waves tossing the boat His nearby friends dream they are sleeping in--unaware A friend will whip him with a kiss Enemies whip nails through his palms and wrists And spear him up a sponge of vinegar through his ribs. After the healing has all flowed out Layer him in linen Salt him away in a stone room Post sentinels to guard the rock that guards the room That guards the shroud that keeps the dead Dead--till the earth rolls the death stone like a boat Tossed in stormy dreams and the empty cloths fold themselves And Mary hears her name spoken Not by the gardner. But first, now, the tree draws him closer, tighter Glowing in the approaching torchlight As if dripping oil. So, is it a good poem? Is it good enough to stand for a whole bunch of writers, and with a bunch of other writers? It does, whether it is or not. Levertov could just as easily (had she been aware of them) have used Linda Sillitoe's lovely poem "Killer," or Susan Elizabeth Howe's "Arch Angel," or Dennis Clark's "Sand Barite Rosette," but she chose "The Olive," and I'm glad she did. > Or is it more of a case of finding values and concerns that > represent a period in any works from that period regardless > of sub-grouping? Precisely. Also I mean that one way minor writers emerge as major writers is through the work of critics and teachers. > Or do you mean that there is value in exploring sub-cultures of > a period for the increased perspective it might give you? Yes, but not only that. The people counted as the major writers of the period are not the only people in the period who write as well as they do. Eugene England is every bit the prose stylist Reynolds Price is. I would happily set "Easter Morning" or "Enduring" beside Price's Gospel (in _Three Gospels_) or some of his other essay; I would happily set some of Gene's scholarly essays (or Bruce Jorgensen's) beside Price's "A Single Meaning: Notes on the Origin and Life of Narrative" (in _A Palpable God_), or his commentaries on Mark and John (in _Three Gospels_) and it would be fascinating to explore how each man's disease manifested itself in his writings. It might also help introduce Gene's work to an audience that could well appreciate it. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2002 13:31:05 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Agendas in Lit Classes Continuing my Reply to Jacob Proffitt's Thu, 21 Feb. reply to my post of alternate curricula in Lit classes. Jacob writes: > Further, survey courses should include the very best there > is to offer in English literature for the topic of that survey course > and should not be skewed to emphasize a particular sub-grouping. Problem is, who decides what the very best is? Back in the days when I had access to any academic library in the state (they all recognize each other's cards) I managed to check out Terry Eagleton's _Literary Theory_ a couple of times when it wasn't on reserve at BYU. Didn't have time to read the whole thing, but I love the first chapter, "The Rise of English," where Eagleton explains how English was introduced as an academic discipline in the 19th century. Seems the men who controlled England's universities needed some way to let women into the academy--needed a sufficiently non-taxing subject for women's delicate minds to handle. Women certainly didn't have the capacity for real, rigorous academic work in Greek or Latin or Physics or Mathematics, but perhaps English literature, whatever that was, would allow them to exercise their feeble intellectual faculties. Enlightening essay. Helped answer a question I'd been thinking about for years. The last class I took at BYZ was John Tanner's Shaxbeard class, and for my term paper I decided to tackle a problem I'd been thinking about for a couple of years, since reading Othello in Allie Howe and Bob Nelson's Shaxbeard reading and performance class. Allie explained one day how she would stage the scene when Desdemona and Othello reunite in Cyprus after the storm. She said that rather having Desdemona run to Othello and embrace him passionately (as a newlywed would do) she would have Desdemona show great restraint--that is, she would portray Desdemona in non-sexual ways to emphasize her innocence of the things Othello later accuses her of. I struggled with this because it seemed that every time I read Othello the classroom discussion focused on how to extenuate Othello's guilt rather than on how deeply guilty he is. We really don't believe him when he says, "nothing extenuate" (I can hear Larry Oliver's voice (as my HS girlfriend used to call him) saying those words, or is it James Earl Jones (have I seen them both in that role?)), we don't even focus on how he loved not wisely, instead we focus on how he loved too well, forgetting that people who love other people don't kill them, and especially don't try to ensure that they'll go to hell by killing them without letting them pray or confess their sins. The play is absolutely clear that Desdemona is a chaste, virtuous woman--and I mean chaste in the LDS sense, a sexual being capable of both desiring and causing sexual response, who makes a covenant to have sex only with in the bonds of marriage. So why did a reader as perceptive, as brilliant, as Allie Howe feel the need to portray Desdemona as non-sexual, lest the audience have some reason to question her chastity? When I wrote the paper for John's class I didn't mention Allie, but I asked in different ways why I had never heard a discussion of the play that focused on Othello's evil behavior, how he breaks his marriage vows by performing a marriage ceremony with Iago (I don't think I used the word 'homoerotic' but there are very definite homoerotic overtones to that friendship--though that's a highly ironic term for what happens between Othello and Iago). Nothing extenuating I meticulously showed how Othello betrays his vows to Desdemona with Iago, how relentless he is once he's decided to kill her, and how his final words "loved not wisely but too well" are almost a direct quote of the words Iago uses in III:iii to convince Othello that he's telling the truth. So why wasn't this a common reading, I asked. Why, instead, when I've read Othello in the classroom do people say things like, "The people in Othello's culture believed it was acceptable to kill a woman who had betrayed her marriage vows"? There's no support for that view in the play. If there were, the men who come to arrest Othello at the end would say so, instead of saying things like, "Her marriage was mortal to her father. If not this would have killed him." I didn't know how to answer the question I posed. I used a quote from another student's paper, "Of One That Loved Not Wisely . . .", by Diana Stewart, to suggest one answer: "Often we allow literary and dramatic characters to dwell in a realm different from our own. We judge actions and interpret character not by the standards we would apply to our friends and associates, but by some myopic perception . . . , We make heros of bumblers and tyrants simply because they are not our brothers or bedfellows." But this raises another question, why do "we allow literary and dramatic characters to dwell" in a different moral realm, accepting in them behaviours we would not accept in ourselves or each other? So for a more complex answer I coupled Diana's quote with a quote from Hans-Georg Gadamer: "That truth is experienced through a work of art that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all reasoning." _Truth and Method_, p. xii-xiii. In other words, art is an experience, not a moral argument, essentially a restatement of Coleridge's(?) dictum, There is always an appeal from theory to life. (I don't think those are the exact words. I'm going to have to reread the Coleridge section of Crit Theory Since Play Dough and see if I can find it.) But that answer didn't satisfy me, because there's a strong thread in literary theory about the moral aims of literature, the ways literature asks us to behave. This thread sees literature as not simply experience, but also exhortation. Eagleton gave me a different answer. He says that the men who designed the literature curriculum for women's feeble minds didn't want to take the chance that the power of literature would awaken women to their own oppression, so they taught as a precept of criticism that literature isn't about us, it's about lofty concepts and ideals. Which is why, writing my paper for John Tanner, I sensed that the literary establishment (votever dot meinz) would see my reading of Othello as trivial. One implication of Eagleton's argument is that the canon was chosen, and canons of criticism developed, to divert the attention of literature students from the issues that literary writers like Ibsen and Hardy and Dickens and Strindberg, and later Woolf were raising. > In the cases you brought up, it may be possible to teach a > course on 20th Century American Lit. with all LDS authors (or > American-Indian or African-American) by generalizing the > specifics to encompass the particulars of the period. But doing > so means that the students must rely entirely upon the experience > conveyed by the professor to know what is general to the time > and what is specific to the sub-culture. Excellent point. Because it applies to any survey course, or any period course. Unless they do their own research, students are exercising trust just by attending class. If I say "Paterson" what comes to mind? For me it brings back a hot May or June evening on the veranda of a rundown Catskills resort hotel turned apartments in Liberty New York listening to some inactive branch members talking about how crummy life was in their New Jersey hometown. The town gave its name to Wm. Carlos Wms' masterpiece, or so Marden Clark said in our 20th century AmLit class. But how do I know _Paterson_ is his masterpiece? BYU library has a copy of the reprint edition of _Pagany_, a 30's lit mag, and a book about _Pagany_ by one of the editors, which includes a letter from Williams telling him not to buy a copy of _The White Mule_, Wms' novel serialized in Pagany, because WCW was sending him a copy. How do I know _The White Mule_ isn't equal to _Paterson_? Without reading both I simply have to trust the professor. > Such an emphasis puts even more power than usual in the > professor and his/her "objective" pronouncements of the > covered topic. I'm not sure I understand how. If a survey course is well-designed it gives students the tools to research and understand the tensions, influences, ideas and writers of a period. But no matter how well designed the course will leave out significant writers. There are just too many good writers, and too much good writing, in any period to represent them all in one course. > The students would have to trust the professor to inform them > which themes, influences, and cultural tensions are representative > of the subject of the survey course. That's the point of a survey course, to give students an introduction and strategies to research the period themselves. One common approach is to have students research ideas or authors and present the research to the class. This helps the students realize there's a lot the course can't cover. > If the professor is at all politically agendized then you run a very > real risk that the survey course can be subverted to the cause of > a specific agenda at the expense of the intent of the survey. See the discussion of Eagleton above. > So to me, I would much prefer that survey courses concentrate > on the best that survey subject has to offer and avoid the added > complication of an arbitrary sub-grouping. > How interesting would it be to read *an* LDS (or American-Indian or > African-American) novel in the context of 20th Century American > Lit.? Very! But I think that only belongs in a survey course as a > single intrusion and not as a pervasive emphasis. But what if the sub-groups are the very best the century has to offer? Suppose the most significant American novels of the 20th century turned out to be _Moses, Man of the Mountains_ by Zorah Neale Hurston, _Home to Harlem_ by Claude McKay, _Garden in the Dunes_ by Leslie Marmon Silko, _Bone Game_ (and _The Sharpest Sight_) by Louis Owens, _Sideways to the Sun_ by Linda Sillitoe, _Dancing Naked_ by Robert Hodgson Van Wagoner, and _Standing on the Promises_ by Margaret Young and Darius Gray (close enough to the 20th century). (I'm not trying to pick the most significant--I haven't even read them all--but they are fine novels and have been on my mind.) If these were the most American significant novels of the 20th century would it serve a survey course well to constipate on them and ignore a whole slew of other American writers? If the answer is no, invert the question. Suppose these are exceptionally good novels. Is it right to ignore them simply because they're from minority cultures--or not recognized as being among the first rank? > That isn't to say that the courses you describe aren't valuable. I > *loved* my class on Victorian Women's Lit. It was one of the best > classes I had. But it wasn't a survey course. And frankly, that class > had a lot more meaning to me because I had already taken a survey > that included Victorian literature in general. But how many of those Victorian women were in the Victorian Lit. survey? If all or most of the writers you read in that class were new to you how do you escape the implication that Victorian women writers were inferior, not worth being in a survey of the real literature of the period? That kind of implication is difficult to escape, even for people trying to introduce new writers into the canon. When I first picked up Tillie Olsen's _Silences_ in the early 80's I stopped reading after the first two essays because the third is her afterword to the 1972 Feminist Press reprint of Rebecca Harding Davis' _Life in the Iron Mills; or, The Korl Woman_ which Olsen found published anonymously in an old copy (April 1861) of _The Atlantic Monthly_, and I wanted to read the novel before reading the afterword--which I finally did in 1995, UVSC's copy. A fine, tragic novel--especially its descriptions industrial society’s brutality, perhaps the only American writer at the time showing in America the kind of social and working conditions Blake and Dickens showed in England. Olsen's afterword is a wonderful piece of literary detective work, biography, reportage, with a disappointing ending that in some ways undercuts the whole argument of _Silences_, which is about unnatural literary silences, authors driven into silence by their culture, by persecution or suppression. Rebecca Harding Davis was a prolific writer over a long career, but Olsen says that nothing else ever matched the "near-classic quality," of _Life in the Iron Mills._ She tells of finding "an undated presentation card" in one of Davis’s books in Harvard’s Widener Library: >>>>> For Mr. C. E. Norton from R. H. D. Judge me--not by what I have done, But by what I have hoped to do. Poor Rebecca. The cry of every artist (of every human). But Proust is right. There are no excuses in art. Including having been born female in the wrong time/place (p. 138 paperback ed. of _Silences_). <<<<< I keep thinking of William Faulkner’s comment that literary greatness comes from how much a writer is willing to attempt, so that Thomas Wolfe, in his failure, is the greatest writer of his and Faulkner’s generation because he had the grandest conception (Brooks, Lewis & Warren, _American Literature: The Makers and the Making II:1979-80). Olsen’s evaluation of Davis lacks this generosity, but I also found her comment disappointing because it seemed like a capitulation to male literary norms and standards (she quotes Proust as her authority, not, say, Virginia Woolf) in a book that frequently protests against the canonical exclusion of women writers because their work is female. Olsen’s comment feels like she is apologizing for Davis, and, perhaps for herself, as it echoes her earlier reaction to H. H. Richardson’s explanation of why she had no children. But anyone who can write the opening paragraph of "Tell Me a Riddle" >>>>> For forty-seven years they had been married. How deep back the stubborn, gnarled roots of the quarrel reached, no one could say--but only now, when tending to the needs of others no longer shackled them together, the roots swelled up visible, split the earth between them, and the tearing shook even to the children, long since grown (67). <<<<< has scant need to apologize, especially for bearing and rearing children. Mourn perhaps, rage perhaps, at living in a culture that can’t accommodate the needs of creative people (how many cultures can?). Apologize no. (This section on RHD was taken from an essay I did on Ray Carver as a religious writer (not a believer, but according to St. James' definition of "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father," and according to Walker Percy's comment about American literature as intensely religious because it deals with fundamental existential questions.) If you'd like me to e-mail a copy, drop me a line.) > Similarly, I *loved* Richard Cracroft's LDS Lit. class. But again, > my experience with American Lit. was an important backdrop > for my participation in that class and added substantially to my > ability to relate the LDS works with what was going on around > those works. Grammatically these three sentences say that LDS lit is not part of American lit. Surely Margaret Young and Darius Gray, Dean Hughes, Linda Sillitoe, Dennis Clark, Emma Lou Thayne, Eugene England and many others are every bit as American as Ray Carver, Tess Gallagher, Gina Berriault, Reynolds Price, Walker Percy, Toni Morrison and Ntozake Shange. Why shouldn't they be represented in a survey? Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #634 ******************************