From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #108 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Wednesday, July 23 2003 Volume 02 : Number 108 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 00:58:29 GMT From: "Jeffrey Needle" Subject: [AML] TUCKER, DENISE _Hand to Hand_ (review) Review Title: Hand to Hand Author: Denise Tucker Publisher: Hatrack River Year Published: 1996 Number of Pages: 222 Binding: Quality Paperback ISBN: 1-887473-00-9 Price: $8.95 Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle As sometimes happens when reading books from Hatrack River, Orson Scott Card's publishing house, I found "Hand to Hand" to be a curiously uneven and sometimes frustrating read. I don't know how any books, other than Kathryn H. Kidd's, end up at Hatrack River. Perhaps they were submitted, and had been rejected by, the likes of Deseret Book and Bookcraft. Hatrack River's stated purpose is, according to the back cover, to bring to our attention the "best new writers in the Church." The story contained in "Hand to Hand" spans nearly a century -- from 1902 to 1988. It follows the several branches of a family touched early on by Mormon missionaries who lay hands on a dying child, bringing about an immediate healing and, as you might guess, leaving a lasting impression upon the mother. As the years pass, the memory of the missionaries fades except as it is resurrected by events that involve the family. The child who was healed grows and prospers, and ultimately finds some happiness in her family and friends, but it would be her granddaughter who would finally come to the Church and become a member. The book is separated into three sections, each named after the main protagonist. The second section, titled "Lily," is by far the most interesting and enjoyable. The Lily character, having spent a summer away from her home, and dreary job, in Virginia, has an opportunity to spend a summer at Bryn Mawr on a scholarship program. This time away, this exposure to higher education, opens her mind and energizes her to further adventures. When the opportunity arises to transfer to Salt Lake City, she jumps at the opportunity. There she boards with an LDS family, falls in love with the nephew of the two aunts who run the establishment (they were actually sister wives, the husband having passed away years ago). The elder aunt, named Lizzy, is delightfully eccentric and wonderfully funny. She and Lily become close friends. There are some memorable scenes, in particular Aunt Lizzy bringing Lily to Eliza Snow's gravesite and introducing Lily to Eliza. What an education Lily receives! I read the book in two settings; this is not great literature, nor is it particularly thought-provoking. And there are so many aspects that made me wince, the worst of them being one of the characters falling in love with Donny Osmond, going to an Osmond concert with a friend, and feeling the witness of the spirit, at the concert, that the Osmonds have something she really wants When she recalls that they're Mormons, she knows right then that this is something she needs to examine. It would have helped my reading considerably had I read the single page "Afterword" that appears at the close of the book. Turns out that the story is loosely based on the experience, and family history knowledge, of the author. No mention of the Donny Osmond incident, but Tucker assures us that the broad outlines are accurate. Why would this have helped? As you might imagine, trying to tell a story spanning nearly a century in 222 pages will naturally involve some omissions -- lack of detail, etc. But Tucker literally leapfrogs over entire decades, bringing us into family situations and generational changes that are sometimes jarring and even difficult to follow. I came to understand that her knowledge of her ancestors is fragmentary, and this may account for the gaps. But when you're fictionalizing a history anyway, why not fill in some of those gaps to help the reader span the years? Where Tucker pays attention to detail, she does well. Her characters are well fleshed out, and most are eminently believable. And where the storyline is self-contained, that is, where the situation has a clear beginning and end, she follows through nicely. In particular, the "Lily" section is just delightful. I wish the entire book rose to that level of competence. Oh, remember the healing described above? The missionaries left a Book of Mormon with the mother. She passes it along, unread, to her daughter, who is visited by missionaries years later. When one of the Elders sees that this is a second edition BOM, he offers to trade a new edition for the rare old one. His companion is appalled, and insists the trade not be made. But the daughter okays the swap. Years later, when one of *her* daughters discovers what the Elder did, she consigns him to hell in rather harsh words. And this is the daughter who becomes a member of the Church! I'm not sure that Hatrack River can be described as a "vanity publisher" - -- they must maintain some editorial control over their writers. I wonder why they didn't insist she fill out the book a little more. "Hand to Hand" is acceptably entertaining. Some may enjoy it. I would have enjoyed more of Lily. And I'm reasonably certain that this is not a book I will re-read. - ----------------------------------- Jeff Needle jeff.needle@general.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 08:33:42 -0700 From: "Walt Curtis" Subject: Re: [AML] GLBT The "I" stands for "intersex." Go to any search engine and enter "GLBTI". Altavista returned 1,188 hits. The first one links to the University of Western Australia. Walt Curtis - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 17:19:27 -0700 (PDT) From: "R.W. Rasband" Subject: [AML] Deseret Morning News: KRAKAUER, JON _Under The Banner of Heaven_ (review) To: aml-list@lists.xmission.com Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list deseretnews.com Deseret News, Monday, July 21, 2003 Krakauer's writing is one-sided By Lee Benson Deseret Morning News =20 To me, the most amazing part of Jon Krakauer's much-discussed new book "Under the Banner of Heaven" isn't that Krakauer is a skilled writer able to bring life to the most pedestrian of topics, or that his encore to his runaway best-seller "Into Thin Air" might be even more controversial, or that his uncanny timing from being a climber on the most notorious tragedy in Mount Everest's history to writing a book about fanatical disenchanted ex-Mormons in the aftermath of the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping--continues. Most amazing of all is that "Under the Banner of Heaven" chronicles the history of the LDS Church and manages to completely ignore the other side. Krakauer writes askance about the roots of Utah's dominant religion while blithely failing to acknowledge that there is a point-of-view that is both favorable and sympathetic to the church's existence--one that legitimizes the faith as opposed to making it look like the nutty uncle in the corner. Krakauer's book is History With All the Parts That Don't Support My Thesis Left out. "I am not a scholar, I am a journalist," Krakauer told Brandon Griggs of the Salt Lake Tribune. But who could the one-sided journalist write for? The Taliban Times? So add the LDS Church to the list of people who wouldn't mind seeing Krakauer having to write P-E-R-S-P-E-C-T-I-V-E a thousand times on the blackboard. People like Sandy Hill Pittman, Anatoli Boukreev and others from the Everest expedition who read Krakauer's prose and gasp, "Hey, wait a minute!" Boukreev went so far as to write his own book, "The Climb" (with Weston DeWalt), in part to refute Krakauer's version of history on the fateful '96 Everest climb. Krakauer has that Pat Conroy ("The Lords of Disclipine," "My Losing Season") knack of emerging from an experience and making pretty much everyone involved look bad. Like author-cum-journalist Simon Worrall in "The Poet and the Murderer"--Worrall's book about Mark Hofmann's forgeries and murders that was published last year--Krakauer almost exclusively cites sources that make the LDS Church and its founders look as phony as a Rolex knockoff. Also like Worrall, who obliquely justifies Hofmann's crimes due to the wacky religion he was brought up in (one fraud deserves another), Krakauer gives a measure of victim status to his chief source, convicted double-murderer Dan Lafferty, who believes that any day now the walls of the Utah State prison are going to tumble down so he can announce the Second Coming of the Lord. The shame is that "Under the Banner of Heaven" is riveting stuff particularly as penned by such a gifted writer as Krakauer without having to bash the LDS Church or any other law-abiding, faith-based people or organizations trying to coexist peacefully and live squarely on the up side of good and evil. Throughout history, perfectly respectable religions have been used as the jumping-off spot for hundreds and thousands of people aiming for an orbit outside what's right. From Henry VIII when he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn to Osama bin Laden when he wanted to topple the Twin Towers to Cain killing Abel, it is a practice as old as mankind itself. Blaming religions for these unauthorized, self-serving spinoffs is like blaming Philo Farnsworth for MTV. Even more unfair is not telling both sides of the story. - --------------------------------- Lee Benson's column runs Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please send e-mail to benson@desnews.com and faxes to 801-237-2527. - --------------------------------- © 2003 Deseret News Publishing Company - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 20:33:50 -0600 From: Ivan Angus Wolfe Subject: RE: [AML] Black/African > To start with, there is no accepted term "African-Australian". I've=20 > lived here my whole life, and I've never heard it. In fact, there is=20 > little use > in Australia of compound tags (such as "African-American" or > "Italian-American"), even though there are sizable populations of > persons of > Italian, Greek and other non-Anglo origins. =20 > Jason Covell This reminds me of one of the best headlines I saw in connection with the 2002 Winter Olympics. I can't recall the event but the headline went soemthing like this: "First African-American from Australia wins Gold Medal in ...." I guess they must have African-Americans in Ethiopia and Niger as well. - --ivan wolfe - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 22:31:55 -0500 From: Ronn! Blankenship Subject: RE: [AML] Black/African > >This reminds me of one of the best headlines I saw in connection with=20 >the 2002 Winter Olympics. I can't recall the event but the headline=20 >went soemthing like this: "First African-American from Australia wins=20 >Gold Medal in ...." > >I guess they must have African-Americans in Ethiopia and Niger as well. Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list Wouldn't those be American-Africans? And anyway, was the medalist from Australia of African descent or an aborigine? - --Ronn! :) I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon. I never dreamed that I would see the last. --Dr. Jerry Pournelle - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #108 ******************************