From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #763 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 Tuesday, July 9 2002 Volume 01 : Number 763 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 6 Jul 2002 11:22:12 -0600 From: "Scott Parkin" Subject: [AML] Unbiased Presentation (was: S.L. Newspaper Wars) [MOD: Note Scott's broader literary tie-in later in this post, which is my reason for retitling this thread. If you want to continue to respond to the specific SL newspaper issue, feel free to do so, but that should probably go under the old thread title.] Christopher Bigelow wrote: > If anyone's concerned about the Salt Lake newspaper situation, here's an > interesting Trib editorial with a call to action at the end. This situation > makes me both mad and scared. I would hate to see us lose the Trib as a > fully independent voice. I guess the question that leaps to mind is to wonder whether anyone is fully independent, least of all a newspaper. What are they independent of? Bias? Slant? The American press has a storied history of outrageous slant by one newspaper against another, and neither Deseret New nor the Salt Lake Tribune are free of that kind of slant, nor have they ever been. Nor should they be. As long as we don't conflate independence with fairness or even factual accuracy, I'm with you. We need a variety of voices and slants and finely honed axes if we want to have any chance of understanding a viewpoint that's not our own. But to suggest that one paper is slanted because it's owned by the Church and the other is not slanted because it's not owned by the Church doesn't seem to match up--at least not to me. If one newspaper's slant happens to match my own bias then from my perspective it appears straight up, but that doesn't make it so to a truly unbiased observer. I had an interesting argument with a friend of mine over this several years ago. He was a reporter with a proudly and aggressively liberal slant. When I expressed my frustration at what I saw as slant in the news media and wished for a news source that provided only facts, not interpretation he got very, very angry with me and accused me of everything from unAmericanism to mindless conservatism. When I reminded him that the conservative press drove me just as crazy as the liberal press (and the "alternative" press, the libertarian, the Christian, etc. etc. etc.) and that my wish was for truly unbiased reporting of fact with no political or social slant, he thought for a moment then shook his head and said something to the effect of "What's interesting about that? How do you sell that?" Is there any such thing as unbiased presentation, as unslanted storytelling? I know that many historians reach for that level of accuracy but I'm not sure it's really possible. My question is: Is it desirable, and why? Isn't it in the slant that we see others' perspectives, and isn't that the best purpose of telling a story? Scott Parkin - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2002 16:03:33 -0600 From: "Scott Parkin" Subject: Re: [AML] Satan Figures Linda Adams wrote: > Without going into too much depth outside temple walls, I have another > theory which makes more practical sense. What if Satan, by tempting Adam > and Eve, thought he could usurp Christ's role? Except that I think this is exactly what he didn't want to do in the first place. He wanted the glory that would be accorded to the Savior but he wasn't interested in the actual suffering and atonement part. If he could curtail agency so there would be no fall, there would be no need for an atoning sacrifice and he could get the reward without the paying the price of sin. By the time he worked with Adam and Eve, the choices had all been made and he had already been cast out. In his effort to subvert Christ's plan he may well be trying to replace faith in Christ with faith in himself--conceptually usurping Christ's role in our philosophies, but well aware that he had no power to actually take that role. I think Satan understood the consequences of his actions far more completely than we sometimes give him credit for. But that's a completely different discussion that falls well outside AML-List guidelines as I understand them. Of course if we take the story of Adam and Eve as metaphor and put ourselves in their place, then the core question becomes which voice we will follow with our individual choices--Christ or Satan. A different kind of food for thought. Which is at least part of why I would like to see more stories told that work from different sets of assumptions and present those same core questions in different contexts--not because those contexts might be more accurate or "true" than the common view, but because those new contexts force us to think in different terms about old problems. Unfortunately, Mormons have shown relatively little resiliency to presentations of these core questions in any but the most "orthodox" settings. Or at least they have been up to this point. So the question is, can Mormons read and enjoy a story that addresses basic question in unusual ways. Could one write a last days novel, for example, that didn't feature an oppressive government or a literal gathering to Jackson County? Could the persecution of the Saints be shown as social rather than political? Scott Parkin - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2002 16:14:56 -0600 From: "Scott Parkin" Subject: [AML] VAN WAGONER, _Dancing Naked_ (Review) Van Wagoner, Robert Hodgson. Dancing Naked. Signature Books (Salt Lake City), 1999. Hardcover: 364 pages; $20.95. ISBN: 1-56085-130-9 This book generated a fairly substantial buzz the year it was published, and many thought it was the best book of 1999. But in the six months between reading the last words of _Dancing Naked_ and writing the first words of this review I discovered that I wasn't really sure what I thought of the book. I read the reviews from Terry Jeffress and Cathy Wilson in the AML review archives and found that they both quite liked the book and had nothing but the highest recommendations for it. That made me think that perhaps I should write a less positive review so that there would be some opposition in this thing to help pique readers to discover their own answers. Of course readers should do that anyway, and giving a negative review isn't quite how I feel about this book, either. So here it is, my ambivalent review of _Dancing Naked._ This a very well written book. It has vivid, focused scenes that are as good as anything I've read in the broad Mormon market. The characters are distinct and interesting, and the settings, situations, and conflicts are extremely well realized. This book has style, flair, and something to say, and does so with exceptional skill. In many ways it's all you can ask of a book, especially a book apparently oriented toward the Mormon market. It is direct and unflinching in its approach--something most Mormon writers could learn to do better, whatever audience they're writing for. In fact, that very unflinching quality is what will put this book outside the comfort zone of many Mormon readers. It goes straight at a series of issues--social prejudice, homophobia, eroticism, self-determination, suicide, grief, parental expectation, judmentalism, the quest for safety, and personal acceptance. This is an angry book that attempts to lay bare its subjects, and that uses graphic, explicit language to expose the full impact of its situations. The very violence of its presentation is likely to offend a great many conservative Mormon readers. And I think that's okay with Van Wagoner. This novel is written for a relatively small audience and never apologizes for that fact. It condemns with vigor and it allows for no excuses. If you don't want that aggressive a story, this novel will not work for you. In exposing the foundations of its characters this novel gives all the details and reasons. Which is, I think, part of why I ended up feeling quite ambivalent toward it in the end. The novel may have been too self-aware for my tastes, may have provided too rigid a set of explanations. For my tastes. Early on I became very aware of the author pulling the strings and interpretting the events of the story in psychological terms for the reader. For example, in chapter two we have five-year old Terry offering a fairly complete Freudian interpretation of his own response to his father coming home from the war and replacing him both in daily life and in his mother's bed. Young Terry is quite specific in knowing exactly why he does everything and what personal emotional need he's fulfilling. I understand that Terry's personality is to analyze, but the analyses were so complete in every case that I couldn't help but see the man behind the curtain. For me, the illusion of the story had been violated by too intrusive a storyteller that I think was unncessary. The events were powerful enough to stand on their own without the added interpretations. As an individual reader I hate to be pushed toward one and only one interpretation, so my natural tendency throughout the book was to rebel against the orthodox presentation and seek other answers. But this book didn't seem willing to allow me that personal interpretation, that application of my own experience in deciding what the events of the story meant. Because that orthodox message was so clearly drawn, it pushed me further and further to the edge of the circle of readers the book seemed targeted to as my own ideas conflicted with the book's, eventually making it clear to me that I was not one of the people this book was written for. That's an emotional response, but it's the overwhelming feeling I had as an individual reader when I was done. I felt like I had been told how the world was, and if my interpretation was different I was simply wrong. There was no room for another worldview, no chance to interpret differently but with equal validity. Perhaps that's what the author intended--Terry as the POV character is prone to exactly that kind of narrow acceptance and intepretation, and it's only through difficult experience that he begins to relax and allow for the messy realities of living. But the result of it was that I felt forced to accept the orthodox interpretation or be declared wrong, unacceptable. That pushed me outside the target readership for this novel, and left me feeling rejected by the novel itself. Thus my ambivalence despite how well written and realized this novel is. There is much to admire about _Dancing Naked._ It is quite arguably the best written novel of 1999, and holds its own against all comers in terms of vivid presentation, use of language, and clear voice. It's unflinching in presenting a difficult, messy story with no pat answers. It is unapologetic in how it presents and undermines different mindsets and worldviews. It is a difficult, challenging novel that is very much worth reading--if you can tolerate the levels of detail and brutality that it offers. I wanted to like _Dancing Naked_ better than I did. The fact that I came away feeling ambivalent in no way suggests a flaw in the novel, but rather illustrates how one reader fell outside the target audience for an otherwise excellent book. I recommend it to anyone who appreciates a well-written, aggressive novel that addresses difficult issues and will force you to decide what you believe. I hope more writers in the Mormon market will take lessons from this novel; it has much to offer. Scott Parkin - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 07 Jul 2002 14:46:54 -0600 (MDT) From: Fred C Pinnegar Subject: Re: [AML] S.L. Newspaper Wars In response to Christopher Bigelow's concern about the loss of the Trib as a "fully independent voice:" In my opinion, the Trib is just as biased as the Deseret News. I don't subscribe to either one. Give me the Provo Daily Herald any day for my daily fix of "Snide Remarks." The term "fully independent" is a current buzz word from the Left in fesponse to the accusation from Conservatives that the mainstream media is a vehicle for Liberalism. Fred Pinnegar - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #763 ******************************