From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #858 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 Saturday, October 12 2002 Volume 01 : Number 858 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 02:18:49 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Lost Mormon Literary Classics "J. Scott Bronson" wrote: > I would like to see all of Marvin Payne's early albums like: > > Ships of Dust > Utah > Houses and Towns > Grasshopper > > on cd because it's great stuff and ought not to disappear. Ditto that. I once tried to buy some of the older albums from Marvin himself, and they were unavailable. They need to be available again. - -- 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 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 07:38:49 -0600 (MDT) From: Ivan Angus Wolfe Subject: RE: [AML] _Charly_ (Film) (Review) > What objective, rational principles are used to evelaute literature? As a > philosophic objectivist I am part of that tiny minority of readers who > consider both "Finnegan's Wake" and "Ulysses" to be literary frauds--virtual > attacks on language and ratonal thought. They've become "classics" because > certain people have said they are such and that anyone who doesn't share > their opinion just "doesn't get it." In short, they are the literary > equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes. > > ROB. LAUER Here's a Dave Barry article I find to be extremely relevant to our discussion of art and what it really is: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/4213398.htm Check it out. It actually expresses how I feel about what critics tell me is art and what I really think art should be. - --ivan wolfe - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 01:50:20 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: [AML] Difficult Art (was: _Charly_ Film Review) On Wed, 09 Oct 2002 10:01:17 -0600 margaret young writes: > Can I just be brutally honest here? It's not the Mormon culture that=20 > doesn't want art, it's the whole dang world. Flip, Margaret, I don't know if we can stand such fetchin' brutally honest language. (Or should that be, Fetch, Margaret, I don't know if we can stand such flippin' brutally honest language? Dagwoodnabit, I'm not sure about the syntax (about 30 cents/gallon) for those two words.) > The truth is, I really wish good literature would sell better than=20 > it does. I know the truth of American culture, however (and=20 > of many other cultures I've participated in), and recognize=20 > that most folks want an easy escape and simply have not=20 > cultivated the taste for the finer fare available to them. =20 And yet. I spent a good portion of Sunday morning waiting for someone to die in the electric chair. I had to be there. I don't remember why, but I had to be there. It was a two-round execution. Pass some electricity through, then wait, then pass some more through, but we couldn't seem to get to round two, and I just sat there in the chamber, all this tension building in me until I escaped from it by waking myself and realizing the unspeakable cruelty of half-executing someone, then waiting to finish the killing. Sometimes the dream takes different form, like hanging people from the railings in the stairway next to the tunnel in BYU's Fine Arts Center.=20 Here's the opening to my essay "Lucid Dreaming." >>>>> _September 14, 1998 I had the execution dream last night. I had been convicted in a game show or a show trial. The judge assured us we would be revived, but I didn=92t like the whole thing. Someone asked the judge how the executions would be carried out. He picked up a pistol, pointed it, and said, "I=92ll just shoot you from the bench." I didn=92t like that. "Now wait a minute, I don=92t want to do this, I was roped into this, I did it as a favor for someone else." The judge just laughed indulgently at me. I woke up, had to use the bathroom._ Interpreting dreams is ancient business. Was ancient business when Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon threatened to cut in pieces his magicians, astrologers and sorcerers and make dungheaps of their houses if they could not tell him his dream then tell him the meaning. And ancient generations earlier when an Egyptian baker asked young Joseph the meaning of his execution dream, interpreting dreams was already ancient business. Business ancient, surely, as telling stories, as rolling around in our mouths the words and sounds that taste sweet to us. Homo loquens, Walker Percy once suggested we call our species. Loquacious, eloquent, elocution, electronic elocution. I write these words with light, fingers sending electric impulses to a central processor which sends them to a monitor, which sends them to my eyes. I publish my words, many of them, through telephone lines, electronic mail, which draws responding words through other telephone lines: electronic eloquence, electronic elocution, electro-cution. _The first time I dreamed about execution was in elementary school. My father was put in the electric chair and they threw the switch and nothing happened. At the time I thought my preventing the execution meant I was a coward, couldn=92t bear to see the story play itself out, wasn=92t brave enough to hear that story. I thought this in the dream and in waking life._ <<<<< And from later in the essay: >>>>> It seems far-fetched to suggest that people in 1940's Utah might have interpreted The Giant Joshua as attack because they were somehow aware of the destructive power in modern literature Trilling was then experiencing and preparing to write about. There were certainly more immediate causes, people still living who had experienced the Raid, some as adults, more as children, and there were the grandchildren and children of those not alive--who could still feel the wound of their parents, the pain of even tender touch. So the idea that literary currents could have affected their thinking about the book is indeed far-fetched. Almost as far-fetched as the idea that a child in grade school, perhaps not yet ten, understood that if he heard a story of dread, such as his father being killed, courage demanded he see the story through rather than alter it. Almost as far-fetched as the idea that such a child would understand that the people whose life's work it was to interpret stories felt that to be a worthy reader one had to face the devastation of literature, no flinching, no turning away. How I understood that I don=92t know. How I gave so much authority to a concept I could not have expounded I don=92t know. My father no more discussed literary theory around the kitchen table than my research accountant friend peppers dinner table conversation with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (another student research paper). Somehow I became one of those whose life=92s work is to interpret stories. Or rather, to tell and retell stories, to hear and cherish other people=92s stories, to exult in story, delight in thinking about story and stories, relish entering fictional worlds and engaging those worlds, revel in the words of those worlds and the worlds of words I am wont to wander in=97happily assonantly alliterating, cheerfully ending clauses and sentences in prepositions. <<<<< [GREEN MILE SPOILER ALERT] I think Sunday's version of this dream came from watching _The Green Mile_ on TV a couple weeks ago. One review I glanced at called the movie dishonest, and I kept wondering why. At the end, if it hasn't been obvious, it becomes obvious as they're kneeling at John Coffey's feet, bathing them with their tears, that this is the story of the Crucifixion from the crucifiers' POV. The scene was so blatantly symbolic I could understand why someone would call it dishonest. After everything Coffey has done for the warden, no one even pretends to search for a way out of the situation? Come on. Crap! The only reason that movie ends that way is so the narrator can play Ancient Mariner. The film makers (and maybe Stephen King) have wrenched the story into an allegory with a nice Ancient Mariner twist, but they're telling it in a realistic idiom, and what happens is not realistic. (Of course, I'm inviting contradiction here.) [End Spoiler Alert] The point is, I don't like stories about execution, but they keep finding their way into my writing. Even the RMMLA paper I'm revising has execution sneak its way in. I also find stories about miscarriages of justice upsetting, and stories about parents bereft of living children, or families torn apart. Which is why it took me a while to get around to=20 _Holes_ by Louis Sachar, and why I would have been apprehensive about Sharlee Glenn's _Circle Dance_ if I'd known the subject matter, and why there was added tension for me in Laurel Brady's _Say You Are My Sister_. And then there's that upsetting chapter in _Bound for Canaan_ about Sam Joe Harvey's lynching I read yesterday on the bus. I suspect that sometimes people avoid difficult works of art not because they "want an easy escape and simply have not cultivated the taste for the finer fare available to them," but because, like those people who stayed home the day Jacob preached about the unchastity of some men in the community, they simply don't want their souls harrowed up. Certain things resonate at a visceral level, independent of whether they're well-done or not. My wife can't stand to watch _Brigham City_ because there's so much tension in the film. She doesn't deny it's a well-made film. My niece's husband doesn't like it because it has a cereal killer (first it was Cap'n Crunch smashed to flour, then Frankeberry fizzled into froth) performing priesthood ordinances. It doesn't matter for him that the film hardly condones that (what sane film _would_ want people eating Cap'n Crunch, after all?), the film simply touches something visceral that he doesn't want touched. The film affects me in a different way, touching something I want touched, filling a hunger and a thirst for me. So the film resonates viscerally for me too. I know we can develop a taste for challenging and complex art, but I'm not sure we choose what touches or nourishes us, what sets our internal catgut vibrating. I do know there are some things I'm not quite ready to read. More than 25 years ago Mike Lyon was teaching our Sunny Schoodle class (I was in high school) and he told us about Jerzy Kozinski's _The Painted Bird_. I saw a copy on BYU bookstore's remainder table and bought it, but it's moved around Provo in various apartments, up to Seattle, back to Provo and out to PG without being read. Someday. Someday, too I'll read Tadeusz Borowski's _This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen_, and get past the first line of Jakov Lind's "Soul of Wood": "Those who had no papers entitling them to live lined up to die." Harlow S. Clark In literature, as in our dreams, death does not exist. - --Isaac Bashevis Singer ________________________________________________________________ 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: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 10:17:26 -0400 From: lwilkins@fas.harvard.edu Subject: Re: [AML] Doug Thayer Interview Questions? Ask him abouthis mission experience and how it shows up in his writing. I'm thinking in particular of his story "Opening Day." Laraine Wilkins - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 09:57:05 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Reviews and Critics (was: Charly Review) Bill Willson misread my post: >"my opinion is absolutely correct in every =3D >particular," is, in my opinion, just a little over the top.=20 My opinion was that I didn't care for the novel. On that single, limited = issue, I'm completely right. I reserve the right to declare myself an = expert on what I don't like. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 10:24:24 -0700 From: "Kim Madsen" Subject: RE: [AML] Best/Favorite Film Polls Regarding the poll on Deseret Book's website and the audience favorite for best LDS film, isn't it interesting that in a marketing driven site, the run away leader is a film for which Deseret Book produced the book and holds the rights? Yup, like we've discussed earlier...it's all about marketing. Also interesting...it's very easy to vote multiple times in that poll...I voted five times for BRIGHAM CITY. Don't think too badly of me for "cheating". I have five people in my household and we all felt BRIGHAM CITY was far and away the leader of the pack. But the question is raised: how much faith can you have in an easily skewed poll? Maybe Deseret Book employees account for five hundred of the votes on the website. Kim Madsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:08:55 -0600 From: Jennifer Vaughn Subject: RE: [AML] Narratives from LDS Medical Practitioners I'm a psychotherapist working with adults with mental illnesses and/or who have been terribly abused. I count it a bad day when I don't feel the Spirit. But I, too, am a bit reluctant to share my experiences without knowing how they'll be treated (i.e., is the publishing company professional, etc.). - --Jennifer Vaughn Breinholt - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 13:17:50 -0600 From: margaret young Subject: Re: [AML] Doug Thayer Interview Questions? I've heard Doug complain that much of modern fiction is nothing more than vignettes. Garrison Keillor says much the same thing. I'd like to hear what Doug thinks is missing from modern fiction--not just Mormon fiction. Which writers would he recommend? [Margaret Young] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:19:21 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: [AML] Movie Death Wish Scenes I'm so grateful to Preston for keeping us abreast of the latest development= s in Mormon filmmaking, and I really thought his poll was interesting. =20 I've been thinking a bit about Mormon filmmaking, and have found myself = noticing something that appears in some of the recent releases. They are = what i call, Death wish scenes, scenes that all by themselves completely = wreck the movies in which they appear.=20 In The Other Side of Heaven, the death wish scene is what I call the Pimp = scene. Sailors come to the island from this rich guy's boat, to see if = they can use booze and money to entice island girls into going with them = back out to the boat, for obviously salacious purposes. The old minister = guy stands up to the boat pimps. So does the bishop. Our Hero, Groberg, = does nothing, even after the boat pimps rough the bishop up. This scene is just completely nuts. First of all, it's not in the book, = so you can't blame the source. It makes the movie's hero look like a = complete wimp. It shows behavior that no actual moral human being would = ever ever engage in. After that moment, we have no reason to like or = trust our protagonist at all. Casual movie-goers responses to OSOH tended = to be "I just didn't find the main character very exciting." I maintain = that that scene is the main reason why, though folks may not have = articulated it. In Singles Ward there's another death wish scene. Our main character, = Jon, a stand-up comic, has been coming back to church because he's got = this thing for a girl, Cammie. They start dating, and it's getting = serious. On the day she gets her mission call, she comes to see his act, = which she has seen before. Only, he's bombing. He's telling not-very-funn= y jokes about cigarettes and how bad they are for you, and no one's = laughing. So he moves to his A material, Mormon jokes, and they're a lot = funnier. These jokes aren't offensive or vulgar; they're mild polygamy = jokes and stuff. ("I was in a musical at BYU. Seven Brides for Seven = Brothers. Only in this version, it was Seven Brides for One Brother." = Rimshot.) Only Cammie gets tremendously offended, leaves the show early, = and dumps him in the parking lot afterwards, weeping copiously, with this = tight, nasty, self-righteous expression on her face. =20 It's the scene that wrecks the movie. It's the death wish scene. Number = one rule of romantic comedy, you have to root for the couple to get = together. But if she's such a humorless drip that she gets that offended = at jokes that mild, well, who could like someone like that? From that = moment on, everyone in the audience is thinking 'good riddance, dude.' = And so when he gives up stand-up (why do characters in Mormon movies, when = repenting, always end up giving up something they're good at like this?) = and marries Cammie and becomes a screenwriter, it feels tragic. I kept = wondering, with a wife who gets offended like that at practically = everything, what kinds of screenplays is he going to write? =20 Singles Ward is a fairly engaging romantic comedy, for about an hour. The = Mormon jokes would go over the heads of anyone not in the culture, but it = still might be fairly amusing. But the movie does two things that, = frankly, made me, on watching it, not want to be a Mormon anymore. First = of all, it trashes some aspects of Mormon culture that are actually pretty = wonderful, like imaginative and thoughtful reactivation efforts. Second, = it affirms other aspects of Mormon culture that, in my opinion, are things = we need to get over and done with. Like our major league case of = self-righteousness. =20 Case in point, in Singles Ward, EVIL is always indicated the same way, as = a can of beer. It becomes this repeated signifier for corruption and = moral rot; someone being offered a brewski. Tell me if I've got my = theology wrong, but IMHO, beer drinking has NO moral significance for = folks who aren't LDS. (Obviously, inebriation might have moral significanc= e; I don't want to suggest that drinking is always morally neutral.) And = of course, Singles Ward consistently hammers us over the head with the = idea that LDS is best, and nowhere in any of these films is there the = slightest suggestion that someone who isn't LDS might not have valid and = genuine reasons to not want Mormonism in their lives. I don't think Charly has a death wish scene, not per se. I loathe the = fact that all non-LDS people in it (especially Charly's parents and = ex-boyfriend) are shown as venal, selfish, unspiritual and shallow. And = morally dubious. The one exception is Charly's grandmother, but even her = explanation for why she doesn't want to be a Mormon rings false. =20 When Sam tells Charly that he doesn't want "used merchandise," that had = the potential to be a death wish scene, but in the next scene, Sam's Mom = slaps him down for it, which redeems it. We can watch characters doing = idiotic things, as long as the movie doesn't agree with them. Sam's a = self-righteous jerk, but the movie thinks he is one too, so that's okay. = And he gets over it. =20 Bear in mind, my definition of death wish scenes is not that they're = scenes that sort of don't work very well. I'm talking about scenes that = wreck the movie. I'm talking about scenes where you wonder if the = screenwriters are completely insane. I'm reading a lot of them in some of = the screenplays that folks have sent me, scene where people do things that = Mormon culture doesn't think twice about, but that are actually awful, us = vs. them scenes, we actually really are better than you scenes. Really, = y'all, we've got to start looking at this culture of ours a lot more = critically. =20 Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #858 ******************************