From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #8 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, April 4 2003 Volume 02 : Number 008 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 11:23:13 -0700 (MST) From: Subject: Re: [AML] BofM in Mormon Lit Lisa Tait wrote: >>> taitfam@houston.rr.com 03/31/03 11:52AM >>> How do you think the Corianton story would look if one of us novelized it today? What are some other BofM stories that might lend themselves to fictional treatment? >>>>>>>>>> I know of two novelizations: Randall Hall's _Cory Davidson_ and my missionary series. (Only the first two books in the series were published: _The MTC: Set Apart_ and _Into the Field_, so I have still to get my Corry together with Isabella in print.) Ironically, Randall Hall is now my boss in CES. Ben Parkinson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 12:19:36 -0700 From: Barbara Hume Subject: [AML] Re: Books on Tape At 09:37 PM 4/1/03 -0500, you wrote: >I believe what we actually checked out was the book-on-tape read by >Barbara Rosenblat--and that is why I enjoyed listening to it. I love >Barbara Rosenblat (and George Guidel). Rosenblatt is a wonderful reader! She extracts every possible nuance and bit of humor. Elizabeth Peters says she can't wait to hear her own books read by Rosenblatt because she enjoys them so much more! I know everyone has heard me say this, but you've gotta listen to the Amelia Peabody Emerson series! I've heard Rosenblatt read books with English accents, American accents, German accents--she even read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in a Brooklyn accent. Amanda Quick is an old favorite of mine, but I like her earlier books better. She recently has written a few in which the characters--in Regency England, no less--wind up not as husband and wife, but as "business partners" and occasional co-fornicators. Excuse me, but those are not romances! Ewwwww! (OTOH, she does write pretty funny sex scenes.) Other readers I like are Davina Porter, who must have made enough to retire on from reading all the unabridged Diana Gabaldon books, and the guy who reads the Jan Karon books. I forget his name right now, but he sure does sound just right for Father Tim. I've listened to quite a few LDS novels on tape, but I don't usually enjoy the narrator. They usually are not skilled actors like Rosenblatt, who uses different voices and plays all the parts. Barbara R. Hume Provo, Utah - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 13:25:22 -0700 From: "" Subject: RE: [AML] Anita STANSFIELD, _To Love Again_ (Review) Quoting Jeff Needle : > This review is very much appreciated. It gives me something to look for in > her books. > > The comment below was puzzling. If Deseret Book is willing to special order > books, why remove titles from their review archive? These were books sold > by their outlet, and they are still willing to order them. Very curious > indeed. > > ---------------- > Jeffrey Needle > jeff.needle@general.com I don't have any "insider" information. But when I checked their website just before sending the review, the book itself was not available. It had been there only a few days before. I don't know if there are links to reviews for books that DB no longer offers, but these reviews were available as part of the "page" for the book. It was my understanding previous to this that the book would still be available on the web or via special order, just not physically at DB stores. - --Katie Parker - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 13:54:11 -0800 From: "Travis K. Manning" Subject: Re: [AML] Validity of Memory and Nonfiction Jongiorgi Enos has, in a nutshell, defined the growing genre of literary or creative nonfiction! And I would agree with his lengthy comments, and, I would agree with his comment at the end of his post that his disagreement with me is merely "semantic." And ... I messed up. Jongiorgi caught it. Yikes. Please substitute the word "straight" with "literary" and you'll have understood my real intentions here, I believe. Literary nonficiton is indeed the more flexible subgenre; straight nonfiction is the more rigid, with its own set of compositional perameters. As I look back at this statement now, I realize that what was in my head and what is in the actual email response are vastly differing. I would contend ever so slightly, however, with the notion that literary nonfiction doesn't need to be factual. Within the creative peramaters of the literary nonfiction genre, an attempt at truth must still be pursued by the writer--and there is broad interpretation of the writers "attempt at truth." Otherwise it would be fiction, or historical fiction. This attempt at truth with a literary nonfiction text can be portrayed, as Maxine Hong Kingston does in her "Woman Warrior, Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts," utizilizing the fictional elements of myth and dream. Is Kingston's memoir fictional because she uses myth and dream? Or is it nonfictional? I believe it is more nonfictional because of her *attempt* at portraying her own account of growing up female and Chinese-American. The nonfictive elements of her life--the actual, factual, truthful elements--drive this narrative, but artfully so, with many of the conventions of fiction (characterization, story arc, myth, dream, scene, dialogue, etc.). So, I think we largely agree here. I was imprecise with my language defining two types of nonfiction. Travis Manning - ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jongiorgi Enos" To: Sent: Monday, March 31, 2003 10:20 PM Subject: [AML-Mag] Re: [AML] Validity of Memory and Nonfiction > > Travis K. Manning said: > > "There is an unwritten contract that exists between writers and readers of > literary nonfiction (I am distinguishing literary nonfictive genres like > memoir and personal essay, from 'straight' nonfiction like autobiography and > most journalism). This unwritten contract requires the writer of literary > NF to be as exacting and detailed as is possible." > > I believe the exact opposite to be true. > > Travis' comments are correct, but completly reversed, so I have probably > misunderstood him, and I suspect it is I that got confused. But to make > sure, I'll restate it how I see it, and we'll see if there is agreement or > not.... - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 15:04:27 -0800 From: "Travis K. Manning" Subject: Re: [AML] Validity of Memory and Nonfiction - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2003 15:25:11 -0700 From: "th. jepson" Subject: Re: [AML] Validity of Memory and Nonfiction .Mr. Manning's comments regarding my first scriptural example (the people of Benjamin crying as one voice) seems very likely--that King Benjamin had a written covenant the people were asked to accept and that, perhaps, they all spoke it together simultaneously. This is a very reasonable explanation, and I adopt it as my working assumption regarding these verses. As for my second example (the runners sent to investigate the alleged murder of the chief judge), I claimed that the thoughts expressed between these runners as they ran full tilt were probably the truth of their sentiments and not the actual words. If I understand his rebuttal, Mr. Manning agrees with me. What I believe he is actually taking issue with is my word choice, suggesting as I did that Mormon "got away" with something. What I suggested he "got away" with was telling the truth without using a word-for-word transcription of the runners' actual dialogue. Not that he somehow lied and invalidated the Book of Mormon or even 1/10th of that statement. I'm concerned that anyone interpreted me in this way. In fact, the whole purpose of my original post (which I thought I titled "Validity of Memory and the Book of Mormon") was that nonfiction does not mean taperecorded transcription, but actual events, honestly told. This is the contract with the reader Mr Manning spoke of, and I agree with him that Mormon never broke that contract. I don't know of any "discrepancies" in the Book of Mormon that need rectifying, and I certainly don't amuse myself by pretending I would be the one to so rectify. And that's the truth. - - -------------------theric jepson ************************************************* Yes, Theric, I think I misunderstood your intent: "If Mormon can get away with it so can we." My take was different than your intention, it appears. I would agree that nonfiction does not mean "taperecorded transcription, but actual events, honestly told." I agree with this. As I state in my response to Jongiorgi Enos' post to these same comments, the writer attempting literary nonfiction must, however, make an attempt at truth. Literary nonfiction writing allows the nonfiction writer to carry nearly all the tools of the fiction writer in his writing tool box, but the fiction tools must be precisely identified and applied when making such an attempt. Meaning, the reader needs to know if a literary nonfictionist is employing fictional tools. For example, in Eugene England's essay "Gooseberry Creek: a Narrative of Hope," England relays an experience of taking his granddaughter, Charlotte, fishing. But the fishing expedition is a fictional event. The actual event never happened. If the reader is not careful, s/he will not have noticed that at the very beginning of the essay England clues the reader in to what he is doing: "Charlotte is our oldest granddaughter, named for her grandmother. When she was baptized just after she turned eight four years ago, I promised her that the summer after her twelfth birthday I would take her on a day-long trip into the wilderness to teach her to fly-fish. We will go on Monday, August 17, 1998. This is how I imagine the trip, my vision of how I hope she will remember it: "We drive south from Provo on U.S. Highway 89, through Spanish Fork Canyon and the ghost town of Thistle, to Fairview at the head of the San Pitch Valley. As we turn east up Cottonwood Canyon, we are quickly surrounded by stands of scrub oak and mountain maple. Even after we drive into the shadow of the steep range of the Wasatch Mountains ahead of us--the western edge of Utah's high plateau country--the greens of the oak leaves stand out rich and varied, a few branches shading off toward copper and red though it is still summer. We are silent, climbing slowly along the deep cuts the dugway makes in the north side of the canyon and glancing far down to our right at the groves of aspen and darker spruce and fir that gradually increase to fill the south side of the canyon as we climb...." Is this Eugene England personal essay depicting "an actual event, honestly told"? Or, if he is "imagining" this fishing trip, shouldn't it be considered more of a fictional account? My answer: no, this nonfictional personal essay is not fiction, though, it does employ the more often used fictional tool of imagining, or imagination; it's almost a daydream, a calculated daydream. Again my question: Is this essay fiction or nonfiction? Nonfiction, because the author is making an attempt at telling the truth, his own perceived truth, his own imagined truth, based distinctly on a real place, Gooseberry Creek, with which the author is intimately familiar. Gooseberry Creek is a real place, an actual stream, in the setting the author is beginning to unveil in the second paragraph, above. But the author is employing some fictional tools here to "hammer out" his nonfictional narrative. Travis Manning - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 18:47:16 -0500 From: "Tracie Laulusa" Subject: Re: [AML] Elizabeth Smart I could see a lot of parents, even if they didn't actually condemn her, trying to keep their young men from having a serious relationship with her. They might not think it was her fault, but they would still consider her damaged. And to a point, they are right to be concerned. Anyone contemplating a serious relationship with a person, and though she is still young I think that would be their concern, who has been through this kind of trauma, or divorce, or abuse, or depression ......... should approach the relationship with some caution. Caution isn't quite the right word. I mean, they should understand the situation and the possible emotional and physical ramifications and at least have some sort of mental understanding of what they may be facing. No, before anyone sends me hate mail, I am not saying someone shouldn't enter a relationship with a person who has been through trauma. My sister had a kidney failure when she was nineteen. Her husband "couldn't handle it" and they divorced. A few years later she met a wonderful guy, who knowing at least a bit of what life could be life, made an informed decision to marry her. They had a wonderful 15 years together before she died last year. There is a chance in every marriage for unforeseen difficulties. Extended unemployment, trauma of various sorts, infidelity. Obviously you can't know everything you will have to face going in, but you can at least know about the stuff that there is to know. I suppose that is one function of biography and fiction. You can, through someone else's writing, wear someone else's shoes. Tracie Laulusa - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 19:01:29 EST From: OmahaMom@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] Elizabeth Smart For what it's worth, there is in the minds of many this idea that rape victims are somehow soiled goods. I had a friend who was raped, and when she told her fiance that she had been raped several years previously, he broke off the engagement because she was damaged goods. He felt that he deserved someone "pure" because he hadn't ever engaged in the act--willingly or unwillingly. I told him that as far as the Lord was concerned, he was guilty of the larger sin--in condemning her for something she couldn't help. That I for one, wouldn't want her to marry him then because of his attitude making her life miserable, but that he needed to repent of some mighty self-righteous attitudes. She went on to serve a mission and be married in the temple to someone else. But while not everyone blames the victim, there are enough that someone who is already struggling with a sense of self-worth over the rape & perhaps other things may see these few/many (depending on which ward one happens to be in) as proving that they're not worth much. Write the stories, folks, and reveal the pain inflicted on the victim by the self-serving who are searching for ways to make themselves feel better about their own miserable lives (why else would they want to tear down someone else's). Karen Tippets - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 16:19:08 -0800 From: "Jerry Tyner" Subject: RE: [AML] Elizabeth Smart - ---Original Message From: Robert Slaven (from Jacob Proffitt's reply): > Robert Slaven wrote: OTOH, how many parents from her=20 > ward/stake/SLC generally will tell their young men "Stay away=20 > from her, she's tainted" or "after what she's been through,=20 > she'll mess you up" or whatever it is they might say. > I wouldn't be at all surprised if she felt "Well, I'm=20 > 'damaged goods' anyway, so there's no point going home." She=20 > may have thought that on her own thanks to our cultural=20 > hang-ups, her captors may have planted the idea in her head,=20 > or (most likely) both fed off of each other. Wow, I'm really glad I do not live in Robert's Ward (or know a lot of = people like that). The psychological brain washing done by the two people who kidnapped her = may be the ultimate culprit behind the feelings mentioned (if they are = there - being "tainted"). I would hope the Bishop, her family, and a = truly inspired councilor (when the time comes) will be able to help her = change her mind. Will there be comments like this (tainted)? Maybe, but = one would hope these people would realize how severely God will judge = them for these remarks. Hopefully Elizabeth and her family are strong = enough for this kind of bottom dwelling people. > Jacob wrote: I *hope* she didn't get that message from our doctrine. = It'd represent a > serious mis-understanding of what was supposed to be taught. If we're > teaching our teens that rape is always the woman's fault then we're in = some > serious trouble. I fell like Jacob. Anyone who interprets our doctrine in such a way that = child molestation and rape are the fault of the girl or woman needs to = examine this feeling and there understanding. It did not come from any = of the revelations or doctrines taught now or in the past. > Robert Slaven wrote: She's going to have people whispering=20 > behind her back for at least the next decade. If I were her=20 > dad, I'd be seriously looking into home-schooling her through=20 > high school, and then making sure any post-sec takes place outside=20 > of Utah. And I don't even want to think about what she might have to = go=20 > through at church from fellow Young Women over the next few years. I do agree with Robert. There are those girls who will do this because = they feel threatened by Elizabeth and will use anything to get an edge. = Any young priesthood holder who doesn't call them to repentance and = listens to this muck (or passes on this ill conceived gossip) needs to = know God will not hold them guiltless for the soul of this young girl if = she is damaged in any way (mentally or otherwise). > Jacob wrote: Huh? I kind of agree with the leaving Utah for post-sec = because that'll > help even out the reactions and make it easier to concentrate on, you = know, > school. I can't *imagine*, though, a significant portion of our Young = Women > treating her poorly because of the ordeal she endured. One or two = *maybe*, > but they'd be snots to everybody regardless of their circumstances. I'm not sure I agree with the leaving Utah part for post secondary. She = may want to but hopefully it would be for her own educational reasons = and not to "escape" in any form of the word. When she is ready she will = want to be back in high school with her friends. She may want to do home = schooling for a time but this would be a bad thing for the long run = since she needs to confront this "demon" and cope with the = problem/gossipy girls and boys. My general feeling is this young lady = will be massively protected and anyone who says even the smallest hint = of her being tainted will be confronted by her dearest friends and even = reported to local Bishops, Seminary Teachers, and school officials. I = saw a massive show of support for her the day of and following her being = rescued and her abductors arrested. Love can overcome a lot of things. = That is what makes this Gospel and the Church so great is when it works = the way the Lord wants it to and people are healed through love, = prayers, fasting, and Education by the Spirit. Can you imagine the = feeling she would have about herself if the Lord blessed her with a = personal revelation about her worth and how she is not damaged (above = and beyond a Patriarchal Blessing)? What a book that would make. Jerry Tyner Orange County, CA - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 18:14:55 -0700 From: "Thom Duncan" Subject: RE: [AML] Author's Omniscience I hope I'm misunderstanding this post because, if I'm not -- if Jongiorgi is actually saying that the author is the last to know his own work, then why should any of us even try to write motivated characters? Let's just make our serial killer a guy who -- I don't know -- always plays Monopoly after he kills someone. Why? Author: "I don't know. YOU figure it out!" If, otoh, Jon's saying that, despite the author's best efforts to carefully delineate his protagonist, the author *still* can't totally describe a character, then I will agree. I remember when my play "Matters of the Heart" was directed by Thomas Rogers eons ago. I had tried hard to make the play's only female character a real person. Not being a woman (despite what the jocks at my high school said when I took modern dance in my senior year), I was uncertain that I had written the woman's part real enough. But, I HAD tried. Under Tom's expert direction and Betty Joe Smith's wonderful acting, Elizabeth Baines turned out to be a remarkably well-rounded and complete female, thinking the way females think (or so say all the women who've seen the show). This is not to say that Tom and Betty Joe didn't add many things I had never thought off, but I am pretty sure that if I hadn't made the effort to make my character as real as I could, they wouldn't have been able to do such a good job in fleshing her out. Thom - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 03 Apr 2003 20:43:45 -0500 From: "Amelia Parkin" Subject: RE: [AML] War and International Liberal Mormons Gae Lyn Henderson wrote: "I obviously need to read my issues of Dialogue and get a subscription to Sunstone if I want to survive in the church. My family and church friends and my ward members seem to think so differently than I do. I feel more and more isolated and more and more like I don't belong. On-line community can help. But is it enough? I think real face to face conversation and friendship is what I need. . . . Let's face it the sense of community and belonging that the church provides is one of the strongest positive things that people experience from membership. But when you start to feel that you don't belong, it goes in exactly the other way. In other words, I need people and where am I going to find them? More and more the people that think like I do are not LDS. I keep trying to keep a foot in both camps, but it is pulling me apart. So thank you John Williams for giving me a a chance today to feel not completely alone!" Gae Lyn, here's another person feeling glad to be not quite so alone after John Williams's post (and next year I'll be at UCI where John and his wife and the Remy's are; I am counting myself lucky knowing they are there). I wanted to respond here because I can see the posts coming. The somewhat outraged response that of course the church is not as homogenous as you paint it to be. of course you are welcome and there is a place in it for you. of course of course of course. and if you feel otherwise, you are being blind and incapable of appreciating people for who they really are. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe those posts won't come. but i wanted to respond anyway. and the people who may respond in that vein are right in a way. individuals are never as like one another as they appear to be when they are seen in a group. but the group does have a character--there are characteristics of the *group* even if those characteristics do not necessarily belong to every member of the group. that's how i can be the liberal femi-nazi intellectual radical i am and still call myself a mormon (hyperbole, people--that's what my family jokingly calls me, but it's only half-jokingly). unfortunately the mormon "group character" is not very welcoming to those who don't fit it and who are not afraid of showing that they don't fit it. and while there are individuals within the group who will tolerate and befriend and fellowship (i hate that word) the ones who think differently, that's not enough. i want friends. i want people who i can talk to and discuss issues with. i want people who understand me and appreciate me for who and what i am, even when they don't agree. what i feel at church is kind of a behind-my-back head-shaking tolerance. i get it from my family all the time. i am an aberration. my beliefs are aberrations. someday i will realize that my beliefs are wrong and i will then simply agree with mainstream opinions within the church cause they are right. i could list a lot of my beliefs--ethical and political and personal and religious--that 90% of the mormon population would shake their heads at. i don't want to be accepted in spite of my "aberrations". i don't want to be treated like some day i will change and in the mean time i just have to be loved so much. i just want to be loved without a thought given to the time when i will see the "light". and you know what, i've experienced it. in my apartments. in my ward. in my FHE groups. and in my humble opinion, a community that welcomes someone all the while hoping and expecting and waiting for the day when that someone changes is not a community at all. what we need is some simple acceptance. no strings attached. kind of like the acceptance i find from my god. an acceptance of difference. not of wrongness. a recognition that a difference of opinion is actually a good thing, not a bad thing to be stamped out. it is something to be embraced and fostered so that it will bloom into a fuller understanding of the world for both parties. for two years i let the lack of communion with others at church tear me apart, forcing my anxiety so high that i left church angry instead of uplifted. but i've let go of that now. i've realized that the mormon emphasis on community does not have to exsist only within ward and stake boundaries. or within shared identities. since i moved back to utah last may, i have found 2 new friends. they are the people i connect with, the people i share with. i did not meet them at church. i worship at church. i find my community elsewhere. amelia parkin _________________________________________________________________ Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 18:05:26 -0800 From: "Wes Rook" Subject: Re: [AML] Dutcher Article Richard Dutcher wrote: : I just wanted to share an interesting newspaper article. I think it's the : first time a reporter has accurately represented my points of view. : Ironically, the reporter is a student at UVSC. : Thanks for sharing, Richard. Your remarks in the article were very inspiring for someone like myself, who recieved a very nasty letter from Deseret Book questioning my testimony after submitting a novel which was based on my own TRUE missionary experiences. I have a new favorite quote to hang above my computer: "As long as I feel that the Lord accepts me, everyone else can go to hell." -- Richard Dutcher. That's the best quote I've seen in a long time. I'm putting it right next to the Teddy Roosevelt quote you sent me a few weeks ago, Richard. Thanks for the inspiration. Wes Rook Sacramento, CA - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:51:37 EST From: RichardDutcher@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] Artists' Personal Lives In a message dated 4/2/2003 10:42:46 PM Mountain Standard Time, ersamuel@byugate.byu.edu writes: > Point is, you're more or less picking one really good film and honoring it, > and if you're going to do that, I think character counts. I think it > matters...The Pianist was a wonderful film, and it was beautifully > directed. Ten other films were as good, and as well directed. So count > everything, and don't give the Oscar to a convicted pedophile. > I respectfully disagree. Also having seen all the films, in my opinion "The Pianist" was "the best", so beautiful and so powerful. I had several thoughts after I had seen the film that I'd like to share. First of all, I will never again allow myself any sympathy for the "no R-rated movies rule." Not that I had much sympathy before. But this was such a wonderful film. I can't imagine anyone watching this film and not coming away from the experience a better human being, a more caring human being. And, as a result, a little closer to God. Another thing I feel very strongly about is that if awards are going to be given out for "Best Director" or "Best Writer" or "Best Novel" or whatever, the judges should try to be honest and impartial. In my opinion, if a convicted mass-murderer writes a novel that is truly the most accomplished novel published in a given year, then the award should go to the mass-murderer. We shouldn't let him out of prison or excuse him for what he has done, but neither should we deny the work. Frankly, I don't think the author's character has anything to do with it. Only if he's a plagiarist should he be denied the recognition. Otherwise, let's re-title the awards. Maybe "Best Director Who Is Also A Fine Human Being" or "Best Novel Written by a Person Who Has Never Been Caught Doing Something Wrong." Having said that, I think it is interesting that Roman Polanski, who once sexually forced himself on a 13-year-old girl, has crafted the most beautiful, sincere, spiritual, and wrenchingly human film of the year. Perhaps our judgment of his character is flawed. Perhaps Roman Polanski is a basically good man who made a very, very bad mistake. Perhaps a man is more than his sins. For my sake, I certainly hope so. Personally, I don't believe the man who made "The Pianist" can be dismissed as evil. The fruit is too good for the tree to be bad. Let's leave the judgment of Roman Polanski to God and, in the meantime, thank him for a beautiful film. Richard Dutcher - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:35:49 -0700 From: "Alan Rex Mitchell" Subject: Re: [AML] Artists' Personal Lives From: "Thom Duncan" > Some questions to ask yourself if you want to be a great Mormon artist. Okay, I'll bite. Of course I already consider myself such, otherwise I couldn't be writing the great mormon novel at this time. I think creativity requires a certain confidence, which may be the basis of make-believe. > Do you worry that you will offend people with what you right? I'm sure that I will offend by right, But yes, I worry about offending people with what I write. Evidence: I worry that I offended Dutcher by my memoir in Irreantum. He told me that I hadn't offended me, but he didn't say that he liked the piece, or even read it. So how do I know that there isn't latent OFFENCE just waiting to happen if he or his wife or his biship reads it and is offended? I'm worried. I wasn't worried when I wrote it because I didn't know anyone would ever read it. > Do you stress over correct language used by your characters? (profanity, > etc.) Only on the 15th draft. Until then I let it flow. > Do you find yourself saying, "I can't write that. People will think > Mormons are weird?" No. I start with the assumption that people think we're weird. I want to describe it so we are understood. Not that we are normal, but understood. > Must all your Mormon characters always have the right answers? How could they disagree if they did? > Do you wonder if your mother will get embarrassed over the scene you > just wrote? Absolutely. I even had my mother read a near-final draft. She was jealous of my sister who read it before her. She told me that a couple of lines were too strong. She was right--I think. So I rewrote them. Am I a mama's boy? No more than the next guy. Would I have listened to her if she had corrected a solution to a differential equation? No. But if it offends her sensability, why not reconsider? That said, I know when I was younger, I wouldn't dare let my mother read anything I wrote. After a while, the mother/son relationship matures more into and adult/adult relationship. > Do you work hard at making your villains as well-rounded as your > protagonists? I'm not quite sure I have written about villians. I was planning to write a children's adventure story, and different people told me a villian would work nicely against the boys, but I can't do it. > Do you feel compelled to have all loose threads of doubt, sin, etc. > neatly wrapped up at the end of your story? Not all threads. But if you don't have some things wrapped up, how do you know you are at the end of the story? > Do you ever ask yourself, "What would the Brethren say if they read > this?" No. I don't really know any Brethren. As far as I know, they don't know me. As proof, I wrote that review of Elder Eyring's book. (Time to worry about giving offense again). > Your answers to those questions may make the difference between becoming > a great artist and well, just an artist. Thom, do you know these truths because you are a Mormon and have all the answers? (see question above) Can't we allow a few "loose threads of doubt" on the questions. I think someone could fail this litmus test and still do great art. I also think there is no singe road to success or art. You do art and you can write the rules. Did I offend you, Thom, by my answers? Will you click your tongue and think, "Well, HE can't do great art." Alan Mitchell - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:58:13 -0700 From: "Alan Rex Mitchell" Subject: Re: [AML] Video Rights & The Mona Lisa Okay Jongiorgi, where will you draw the line? We have the right to watch a video in our home. Do we have the right to get up in the middle and visit the bathroom? Do we have the right to shut our eyes in certain places? Do we have the right to fast forward over certain parts? Do we have the right to skip a scene in the DVD version? Do we have the right to destroy our copy of the movie? Do we have the right to cut an offending portion from the movie ourselves? (Do we have the right to cut those tags off our matresses?) Do we have the right to let someone do if for us? Do we have the right to pay someone minimum wage to do it for us? Just tell me where you draw the line. Mattress police. Alan Mitchell - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:22:36 -0800 From: "Jeff Needle" Subject: [AML] re: Mormons and Jews On this thread about Mormons and Jews, a few thoughts: 1. It seems to me that the Jews have been around at least a few years longer than the Mormons. My history may be wrong . 2. After you've been through as much as we've been through, you develop something of a sense of humor about the whole thing. And when you've been the butt of as many jokes as we have, even your enemies eventually learn the vocabulary -- they do, after all, need to mock you properly. 3. Jewish humor is often explicitly Jewish. Mormon humor, if it exists outside the Mormon circumference, looks like Donny and Marie, Mormon all the way, but not explicitly Mormon. - ---------------- Jeffrey Needle jeff.needle@general.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 23:07:39 -0700 From: "Nan McCulloch" Subject: Re: [AML] Conservative Literary Theory? P. J. O'Rourke does make good arguments and is funny. Have you read any of Jonah Goldberg's funny stuff? He writes for National Review, as well. Nan McCulloch - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 23:19:17 -0700 From: "David and Dianna Graham" Subject: [AML] RE: Line from Samuelsen... Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2003 13:10:52 -0700 From: Barbara Hume Subject: [AML] Line from Samuelsen. . . . Barbara Hume asked >I've been trying to remember a great line from Eric's play The Way We're >Wired. It goes something like this: "You're single for one of three >reasons: you're divorced, you're widowed, or you never married. In other >words, you're a failure, a pity case, or a loser." How does it go? I don't >think I have it in the most effective order, anyway. >barbara hume I may not be the first to respond to this, but if I may have the pleasure of answering the question (since I had the pleasure of saying it again and again during February), I'd be delighted. The line is "In Mormon culture, there's three ways you become a single adult. You never married, or you were widowed, or you're divorced. In other words, you're either a loser, a pity case, or a failure." One of the great lines in Mormon literature. We love you, Eric!! Dianna Graham - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 01:30:51 -0500 From: Justin Halverson Subject: Re: [AML] Conservative Literary Theory? >Richard Hopkins wrote: >This sounds interesting. However, those of us who do not live in academia do >not quickly translate these buzz words. Could you rewrite this paragraph >with complete translations of all the buzz words so we can all get an idea >of what you're talking about. This might actually lead to some thoughts, >though one never knows around here. :-) Right on, Richard. As Alan Mitchell so aptly put it, "Any tin-pan intellectual can act serious, in fact seriousness is their commodity." Let me repent, then, of my tin-pan intellectualis "seriousness". I'll also warn you that what follows (as the understanding of a grad student just getting started) may be *wildly* inaccurate, and invite any of those better read than I am to please correct me. (I'd rather hear it from you now than my dissertation committee a couple of years from now.) More substantively, what I'm envisioning is an answer (or an approach to an answer) to the question of where literature and literary studies might go, now that one might say it's reached the end of it's ironic rope. Modernism, a literary movement that began (depending on whom you ask) in the very late nineteenth/early twentieth century (and which we arguably are still in, now), has often been characterized by its emphasis on its own self-awareness--its critical awareness of (in other words, its ironic distance from) the problems of using language to talk about the real world. Deconstructionism is what it sounds like--a critical project that advocates the deconstruction of what it would call the myth that a word can have a definite and transmittable meaning. (This ironic worldview is opposed to what a Mexican critic and poet named Octavio Paz, for one, spoke of as the pre-modern(ist) "analogic" mode of art, which operates under the assumption that words have meanings in and of themselves, that they have an inherent connection to the world they describe, or at least that they function as analogies for the concepts they describe, that there's a one-to-one coincidence between word and thing/concept.) So along comes postmodernism, which (again, depending on whom you ask) is either a movement against modernism or simply the inevitable end result of modernism's own path. Postmodernism is characterized generally by an even greater sense of the ironic, of the chasm between words and the world (or, in an interesting flip, the idea that the world _is_ words). I mentioned "the move toward the cyber/post-human in the most extreme branches of cultural studies," by which I meant the move--in a branch of literary/social criticism that focuses on the cultural function of all sorts of artistic (and meaning by this word lots of things more conservative critics would not) production--by some of its more extreme adherents, toward a reconception of the human as both less rational and more and more machinelike (even more and more machine) than it has traditionally been thought. Postmodernism has been around for fifty years, give or take, and people are now wondering what comes next. What comes after post-modernism? Post-post-modernism? My idea, then, is to propose an answer to that question, and suggest that some contemporary art--my singling out of Caribbean and Latina/o border cultures is just a reflection of my own interests and limited knowledge--is beginning to move away from the extreme irony of modernism/postmodernism. It's returning, perhaps, to something pre-ironic, but the return is not innocent, that is, it's not simply a move back in time--it's a return with difference. It's not a return to New Criticism, which is a movement in the early mid-20th century that operated on the assumption that whatever a text had to say could be found in the text--it favored the "close reading" and wasn't interested, say, in the way the politics of the era affected what an author wrote, etc. Nor is it a return to religious essentialism, which would try to argue, maybe, for a word (or, by extension, a poem) having an absolute and inherent meaning. That said, I'm not sure how to characterize where literature might be going, which is why I'd be glad to hear anyone's ideas. (I really don't have a thesis yet!) I'd like to look at family histories (those both implicit and explicit) in literature, and wonder if there might be something there that would argue for an essential humanity. I think there is, however, a place for a more conservative literary theory (alongside, not instead of, a "liberal" one)--a need, even, if the academy is ever going to be useful (in both an instrumental and non-instrumental way) to society. This is probably a reflection of the school I'm at (Penn State, a generally more conservative place, I've been told), but it seems like many of the other grad students I work with are interested in this, too. I was (I'm ashamed to admit, since I have always railed against this attitude about the "mission field") surprised at how many of them are both strongly religious and compelled to champion the validity of some absolute other than radical (and, in its worst incarnations, nihilistic) relativism. I'll quit there. I hope I've explained myself a little better. I'm sorry for the buzzword-arrhea, and I appreciate you calling me on it. (I hope this wasn't worse!) Justin Halverson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #8 ****************************