From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #917 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 Friday, December 6 2002 Volume 01 : Number 917 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 20:30:33 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] New DB Policy Melanie Dahlin wrote: > > I am not entirely certain what books DB is "banning" so my opinion is not > concrete yet, but, from my ignorant perspective, I like what DB is doing. It is > nice to know that I can walk into a bookstore, pick up a book that looks > interesting, and it will contain morally upright material. Although, if the > qualifications for an "evil" book include the same kind of issues addressed in > "Jane Eyre," then something is definitely wrong with the system. The objective > is to morally clean up, not wipe out all good literature. I am interested to > see the standards DB chooses as its measuring stick. Even as you extoll the virtues of the policy, your message identifies the seeds of why it's a bad policy. When does the purge stop being "cleaning up literature" and start being "wipe out good literature"? Where's the line, and who's to draw it? What standards _does_ one use? Every member's standards are different from every other. I assure you that Rebecca Talley's definition of safe is very different from mine. Why is hers superior to mine? I don't consider these faith-affirming, feel-good examples of LDS literature safe at all. They don't help a person grow one jot or tittle. They are the antithesis of eternal progression. They also turn off a great many people to LDS literature, even to LDS culture altogether, and in an environment where people have a hard time differentiating between Gospel and culture, turn many of them off to the church as a whole. What's so safe about literature that helps people stagnate in an "all is well in Zion" quagmire? Why is literature safe that thumbs its nose at the principle of "line upon line, precept upon precept"? Yes, my definition is very different from Rebecca's. But not superior to Rebecca's. Anymore than hers is superior to mine. So there can only be one workable solution to this issue: each person has to draw his own line where he thinks it should be. And those who wish for a haven where they can buy books that someone else has deemed "safe" for them are selling their birthright to search out their own kind of safety, which birthright was won in the war in heaven. - -- 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: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 20:38:57 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Sheri Dew on New DB Policy Jeff Needle wrote: > > The biggest drawback to their selling your book is the idea that spiritual > experience can be so deceitful and a Mormon can be so gullible. This is > not faith-promoting. I guess truthful is not a sufficient virtue. - -- 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: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 07:42:23 -0500 From: "Linda Kimball" Subject: Re: [AML] Film-Adapted Mormon Authors How about Neil LaBute? Linda - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 08:55:46 EST From: Mona214@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] The Role of the Reader Lot did not offer his daughters to the mob to be raped or killed. This is a mistranslation and is clarified through Joseph Smith Translation. Just check a current institute manual for clarification. The reason that is in the bible is to show where the Moabites originated from. It was wrong what they did. An R rated version would have gone into much gorier details. As soon as we begin justifying something we know there is a problem. Ramona Siddoway - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 08:59:32 -0500 From: Richard Johnson Subject: RE: [AML] The Avenging Angel At 10:38 AM 12/4/02 -0700, you wrote: >You realize, Richard, that it is your duty to all Church history fans >out here (okay, maybe just me), to see to it that your relative's >journal is published. > >Thom Duncan > >>-----Original Message----- >>At 11:57 AM 11/28/02 -0700, you wrote: > >>Actually Luman Andros Shurtliff, my maternal grandfather's >>grandfather writes in his journal a rather detailed story of >>his career as a Danite, and how the Danites eventually became >>the Nauvoo Legion, and how frustrating it was that they never >>really accomplished anything except drilling and using what >>eventually became temple dialogue as "passwords and signs". >>Richard B. Johnson, (djdick@PuppenRich.com) Actually it is available in three versions. One is a typescript that is passed around among members of the family and is almost totally unedited, the second (slightly edited, the Danite story is a little truncated for instance)is a typescript that is available from the BYU library, and the third (more edited, the Danite story , for instance, is just a brief reference) is a bound volume, but it doesn't have an ISBN number and I am not sure of the publisher, (I assume that it was self published by the decendent who edited it) but it does have a copyright, and I can't find it right now, so I can't give the name in which it is copyrighted. There are also some parts of it in the volume _The Decendents of Luman Andros Shurtliff_ which was self published, but is in _many_ family history centers. I have been told that the journal is on line in one of the genealogy sites linked to the church site, but I haven't been able to find it. (I enjoy comparing them. I have a xerox of the one at BYU and was given the others by relatives for birthdays or holidays - except "The Decendents" and I would very much like to get my own copy. My mother had one, and I was not the child -out of six- who inherited that one.) Richard B. Johnson, (djdick@PuppenRich.com) Husband, Father, Grandfather, Puppeteer, Playwright, Writer, Director, Actor, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool. I sometimes think that the last persona is the most important http://www.PuppenRich.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 6 Dec 2002 00:45:31 +0900 From: "Kari Heber" Subject: RE: [AML] CHEYENNE, _The Keystone: The Day Alma Died_ (Review) Does anyone else think that A.B. and S.B. are related? And likely = related to the authors? - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 09:20:07 -0700 From: "Paris Anderson" Subject: Re: [AML] New DB Policy Clark Goble wrote: > So why the big worry about Deseret Books? The threat Deseret Book has made with their new policy is not in the availability of books. The threat is to the careers of any LDS authors, if we choose to remain regional writers, meaning, if we choose to use our time and talents to build the Kingdom as we feel uniquely qualified to do. From my experience LDS publishers and distributors will not carry any books that would not be accepted by Deseret Book. Before Deseret Book announced this policy there was always an outside chance a submission to an LDS publisher would be accepted and the author would feel the satisfaction of having contributed to the culture . . . and perhaps having offered a warm embrace to alienated members of the culture (like Levi Petersen has done). But this announced policy kills any chance for serious fiction to be published in our culture. To hell with Milton and Shakespeare. Paris Anderson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 08:43:48 -0800 From: Jeff Needle Subject: Re: [AML] CHEYENNE, _The Keystone: The Day Alma Died_ (Review) And not a one of the people who *liked* the book will give their full=20 names, only initials. No endorsements by credible agencies (like us, ). Not good. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 08:46:48 -0800 From: Jeff Needle Subject: Re: [AML] New DB Policy Well, you can't have my DI store! It's mine!! It's mine!! Of course, no one ever accused DI of thinking things through. You can't get into the store during this high-volume Christmas shopping season -- they chose this week to tear up the floors and put in new tiling. No one in the store, including the store manager, made this decision. It came from Salt Lake. It's yet another hard-to-figure thing going on there. But, the books DO come in. And I can easily pick up very good stuff at a great price. Yes, having the store just a few blocks away is a real blessing. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 08:48:28 -0800 From: Jeff Needle Subject: RE: [AML] New DB Policy At 12:30 PM 12/4/2002 -0700, you wrote: > ___ Jeff ___ >| Outside of Utah, Deseret Book is indeed pretty much >| the *only* outlet for LDS-oriented literature. > ___ > >*cough* Amazon *cough* > Please, please, please. Am I the only one who thinks this isn't book buying at all? I want to handle, nay, fondle, the book, turn the pages. I want to make sure I can read the type size. I want to check the binding. I want to see what the quality of the writing is. And furthermore, I want to browse shelves! Remember them? The things in stores that stack books you didn't *know* you wanted, but now that you're leafing through them, you know you *must* have? Give me a bookstore! Please!!! - ---------------- Jeff Needle jeff.needle@general.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 10:56:00 -0700 From: "Thom Duncan" Subject: RE: [AML] Filling Our Minds (was: New DB Policy) >Rebecca Talley wrote: > >I shall also >take a stand, just as passionately, that there is >enough evil that surrounds us everyday and surrounds >our children, we do not need to purposely fill our >minds with it under the justification and >rationalization that somehow it will make us better >people because of it. > I think the Bible and the Book of Mormon ought to be the prime examples of how we Mormon writers can write about evil. How is it done in Holy Writ? Again, I remind my Gentle Reader of the story of Lot and his daughters. A story of incest but without a moral of any kind. The act is nowhere condemned and is in fact seen as practical in order to perpetuate the family. Judges 19, where a man of god cuts up a woman into twelve parts. And countless other examples where there is no clear moral (despite what Sherry Dew says, the Bible stories are often free of morally clear messages.) The BofM does a better job of showing people getting their just deserts if they do something wrong. But then you have that hard-to-understand story of Nephi being commanded of God to kill a man. That's about as morally ambiguous a story as you can find. Make Nephi a guy named Ron Lafferty and the victim a young mother and her nineteen month old daughter and you have yourself quite the nasty villain. And how graphic should we be? As graphic as the Bible and the Book of Mormon might be a good milestone. So we should be able to desribe without repercussions from our official publishing arm a righteous man looking out his window and seeing a lovely woman sun bathing and then that man sending the woman's husband off to war to die so he can have the woman. Or, we should be able to describe a degenerate race of folks who shave their heads and drink the blood of their dead victims without too much concern that we are not writing the way God wants us to. Do our scriptues have blood and gore? Then our stories ought not to shy away from that. Do our scriptures have sex and violence? Then our stories ought not to shy away them that. Do people who do bad things in the Scriptures ALWAYS get their come uppance. Then we shouldn't worry about our characters getting away with it either. Do our scriptures contain stories that uplift, that show the positive side of human nature? Of course they do, but sometimes we like to pretend that those are the only kinds of stories they have. Thom Duncan - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 21:49:19 -0700 From: Melissa Proffitt Subject: Re: [AML] New DB Policy On Wed, 4 Dec 2002 12:30:58 -0700, Clark Goble wrote: >However the fact of the matter is it is SO easy to buy books from Amazon >or Barnes and Noble. Further they have huge writeups and reviews and >even offer you suggestions on similar books. It is no longer difficult >to get church oriented books outside of Utah. Indeed Amazon offers a >better selection than you can get *in* Utah. It even links to used >bookstores so you can find out of print books. > >So why the big worry about Deseret Books? > That's my thought. Buy from Amazon, get cheap books, save on sales tax, = AND you get packages in the mail! That's my favorite part. =46or out-of-print books, it becomes more difficult, but there are still plenty of options. ABE or Bibliofind have pretty much the same network = of sellers, and you can often find the big stores (i.e. Powell's or The Tattered Cover) online. And Sam Weller's will ship anywhere if you ask nicely. I got my copy of _House Without Walls_ from them. Melissa Proffitt - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 20:43:07 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Filling Our Minds (was: New DB Policy) The Laird Jim wrote: > The biggest problem in most fiction today is that immature, and utterly > dishonest intellectual pose known as cynicism. Since everyone's bad, every > character is bad, and thus the book is bad--the characters are evil, it's > just a matter of degree. The "good" guys are slightly less evil than the > "bad" guys. I rarely meet a person that I can despise completely, but I > read about them all the time. The one I really despise is the writer, > however, because not only is cynicism dishonest, it's also stupid. If one > actually can't come up with a single likeable character in a book then it's > time to try a less difficult art. But what _LDS_ literature fits this description, even the "unsafe" stuff? - -- 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, 05 Dec 2002 11:07:56 -0700 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Filling Our Minds (was: New DB Policy) Jim Willson wrote: >The biggest problem in most fiction today is that immature, and utterly >dishonest intellectual pose known as cynicism. Since everyone's bad, = >every >character is bad, and thus the book is bad--the characters are evil, it's >just a matter of degree.=20 I'm not asking this just to be difficult, but with a genuine desire to = learn. What are you talking about? I read a great deal of contemporary = fiction, and I just flat don't recognize this description of it. This = simply does not describe any book I've read, at least not in recent = memory. =20 >Any story with a pedophile ought to end with a >beheading. Any story with rape ought to end with a hanging. If they >don't then the perpetrators ought not to be treated to sympathetically, = >but >even if they are they ought never to be celebrated. And such things >are >celebrated in some books. =20 What books? By what authors? Again, I haven't the vaguest notion what = you're talking about. Pedophiles and rapists are, of course, favorite bad = guy characters in certain kinds of genre fiction, at the end of which, = with very few exceptions, they do get beheaded or hanged, or suffer some = similar pre-ordained melodramatic calamity. About the only authors I can = think of who does anything like what you're describing would be Thomas = Harris or Bret Easton Ellis. Harris doesn't work, though, because his = books have heros; the focus may be on the psychopath, but at least he = recognizes that there are cops (heroic cops) who are out to catch them. = So he's just a typical genre writer with a flair for really ugly bad guys. = Okay, Ellis fits some of your descriptors. So what you're saying is, = there's this bad writer named Bret Easton Ellis who we should avoid. =20 >I feel no need to read them. I have no respect >for those who write them. Well, I don't like Ellis much either. Who else are you warning us against? = Seriously, Stephen Donaldson? I'll tell you what sticks in my craw. I'm getting tired of blanket = condemnations of contemporary fiction, contemporary music, contemporary = films and television. I think there's some wonderful fiction being = written nowadays. I think there were some great films made recently, and = I'm anticipating, with bated breath, a dozen upcoming films, which I = anticipate will be terrific. I think the writing on television right now = is first rate, some of it. I feel blessed that I'm able to live in a world = and in a time where Jane Smiley, Charles Frazier, David Foster Wallace, = Scott Turow, Jane Hamilton, David Eggers, Anne Lemott, Levi Peterson, = Margaret Young, Alice Walker, Nick Hornby and Toni Morrison are currently = living and writing. That's what I think. I also don't feel particularly surrounded by Evil, except when I contemplat= e my many and varied sins, absolutely none of which I can blame on popular = culture or literature. I just feel like it's churlish of us, living as we = do in a current reader's paradise, to launch into these jeremiads on = Worldiness. I like worldly literature. I read as much of is as I can = cram into a day. Makes me a better home teacher, for one thing. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2002 11:14:09 -0700 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Adam Sandler Movies Oh, man, so we're dissing on Adam Sandler now? He does farce. He does it very well. He's funny, and he's funny in a way = that reveals a great deal about human weakness and human vanity, and the = aggressiveness that lies beneath a nice guy facade. He's a brilliant = farcical actor, and his movies are universally masterpieces of farcical = art. They're crude, and vulgar, and violent, and stupid, just as Plautus = was crude vulgar, stupid and violent. I've seen most of his films, and I = laugh through them all. They're coarse and unrefined, intentionally and = wonderfully. An unpaved path can also lead to Truth. Eric Samuelsen, who apparently sees it as his mission in life to defend = absolutely everyone. =20 - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 11:14:42 -0700 From: "Thom Duncan" Subject: RE: [AML] New DB Policy I realize there are other places to buy books than DB. I know there are other LDS publishers who might publish the kinds of things DB won't. The underlying principle of DBs decision is what continues to bother me. The assumption that we need protection from evil works of literature, implying that we poor benighted unwashed Mormons aren't capable of making our own decisions and that we need big Mommy Deseret to do it for us. I find this idea insulting. It says to me, the customer, that they the publisher, know better what I want to read than I do. Sure, some readers (maybe even most) of DB material may run across passages in books that make them feel bad, that hurt their feelings, or that imply (not show, even, but imply) adultery. I maintain, again, that our own scriptures are full of such stories but is DB going to stop publishing the Standard Works? And though I can't be sure, I'm fairly certain I didn't sign up in the Pre-Existence for a term on earth entirely free of sin, temptation, and bad language. That was part of the Mortality Package. And we were supposed to develop the tools to deal with the carnal, sensual, and devilish, not pretend that it doesn't exist. Thom Duncan - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #917 ******************************