From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #215 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 Monday, November 3 2003 Volume 02 : Number 215 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 12:32:46 +0000 From: "Elizabeth Petty Bentley" Subject: Re: [AML] Marilyn Brown Novel Award The follow-up question is Where? For those of us who have to make travel arrangements. Beth Bentley > >Thanks Darvell for asking, "When is the next Marilyn Brown Novel Award=3D > going >to be presented?" > We will present a thousand dollars to the next Marilyn Brown Novel Award winner on February 23, 2004, or whenever the AML luncheon meeting is held. Cheers! Marilyn [Brown] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:26:50 -0900 From: Stephen Carter Subject: RE: [AML] Story vs words >=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Original Message From "Susan Malmrose" = , that's tricky stuff. > >I haven't read it, but I've heard Stephen King wrote a book about=3D > bookwriting. Anyone >read it? Any good? It's called _On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft_. I thought everyone in the whole world had read it. I used it in a sophormore writing class I'm teaching right now, and so far it's the book my class has enjoyed the most (despite having the inestimable= privlege of reading The Things They Carried and The Hours). The book offers= all kinds of ways to talk about writing with budding writers. It's also a= gas to read. Probably my favorite Stephen King work. One of the things I like best about it is that you get to see a warm, human= side to King. Even if his voice might be a flattering representation of King= in real life, it was a pleasure to read. Another interesting thing is to see= how some of King's books are metaphors for his particular writing process -= _Misery_ being the most interesting example. Stephen Carter Fairbanks, Alaska - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 14:40:19 -0900 From: Stephen Carter Subject: RE: [AML] another book query >=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Original Message From "Elizabeth Petty Bentley"= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D >One of my favorite translations is The Five Books of Moses (The Schocken >Bible, Volume 1) by Everett Fox. It can make even Leviticus sing And may I recommend _The Poet's Bible_ by David Rosenberg (who did the translations in _The Book of J_ with Harold Bloom). It's really a fantastic poetic read. His main purpose with the book was to regain the passion and currency of the Bible's poetry. So you'll find things= like car radios and highways in Isaiah and nuclear bomb references in Job. I= can't recommend this book highly enough. Makes me with there were more= poetry in the Book of Mormon. Stephen Carter Fairbanks, Alaska - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 16:33:04 -0700 From: "Quinn Warnick" Subject: [AML] New Edition of the BoM (Was: "another book query") Richard Johnson wrote: | My son, Ryan (a former member of the list who got into management and | doesn't - he says- have time to read his work Email , let alone the | list) who is a Librarian at Washington State University told me that, | last month, his library received a really beautiful new version of the | Book of Mormon, published by the University of Illinois. It was, he | says, edited from a nineteenth century edition and given a really nice | treatment by the publisher. I found this book on the site for the U of Illinois Press. Here's the link: http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s03/hardy.html It does indeed look like it's been nicely done. Thanks for the tip,= Richard. Now I have another book to put on my Christmas wishlist. I don't remember any discussion on the list about this new edition, either. Has anyone out there read and/or seen this? Is it as nice as the website makes it sound? - -Quinn Warnick - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 18:44:50 -0500 From: "Richard Johnson" Subject: RE: [AML] List Archive Well, I don't have all of it but I have a lot of it. It was fun, when Ed Snow's book was published, to read through the book and read through the posts and compare them. (some he edited a lot, but a lot of it was just as it was on the list.) Richard B. Johnson, Husband, Father, Grandfather, Actor, Director, Puppeteer, Playwright, Writer, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool. I sometimes think that the last persona is the most important- and most valuable. Http://www.PuppenRich.com I sure wish there was a way to make the archive include the first five years of AML-List. We had some great conversations. Not only that, there was a period when we had AML-Mag up and running as a full-fledged online magazine, with one or two columists running columns every weekday. We'd coordinate our topics, and when it went well, two or three of the columns would each spawn a related thread, and those would twine around each other and finally braid and merge toward Friday. It was just plain artful and taught me a lot about what you could achieve with an online publiation. I'd love to see an archive of columns we sponsored also. At least two went on to be published books, but I thought the others were excellent too. Ben Parkinson ben@parkinsonfamily.org Former AML-List Moderator Speaking for myself, and I hope others on the list! - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 01:19:02 -0700 From: "Kim Madsen" Subject: RE: [AML] L'Engle YA fiction Rose Green said, of L'Engle "Aside from her YA science fiction, I particularly enjoyed her autobiography of her marriage (Two-Part Invention). Not YA, but a very good book on the family life of two artists." I too have loved L'Engle's CROSSWICKS JOURNALS, especially books One and Two, A CIRCLE OF QUIET and THE SUMMER OF THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHER. TWO-PART INVENTION is the fifth book in that series. Talk about being allowed into a person's soul. L'Engle is generous and honest. She had many things to say that enlightened me. For instance: "When we are SELF-conscious, we cannot be wholly aware; we must throw ourselves out first. This throwing ourselves away is the act of creativity. So, when we wholly concentrate, like child in play, or an artist at work, then we share in the act of creating. We not only escape time, we also escape our self-conscious self." I think of that each time I write and re-read my words and find myself wondering what so-and-so would think, or if it's worthy of publication. "The Greeks had a word for ultimate self-consciousness," L'Engle goes on, "hubris: pride: pride in the sense of putting oneself in the center of the universe..." Then she analyzes her response to sharing her thoughts: "I was timid about putting forth most of these thoughts, but this kind of timidity is itself a form of pride. The moment that humility becomes self-conscious, it becomes hubris. One cannot be humble and aware of oneself at the same time. Therefore, the act of creating--painting a picture, singing a song, writing a story--is a humble act? This thought was new to me. Humility is throwing oneself away in complete concentration on something or someone else." (A CIRCLE OF QUIET, pg. 11) That's when a story really works for me--when there is no authorial intrusion, no sense of being led to someone's morale agenda, just a world opening where I experience someone else's life. I've never gotten that sense reading anything by Richard Paul Evans. His SELF is all over every page. His desire to be liked, to be noticed for his cleverness or tenderness or whatever. On the other hand, I get lost in every Louise Plummer book I've read, and they could be classified as simple plots or stories, written to a YA audience. A world opened for me in HOLES by Louis Sachar. In FALLING TOWARD HEAVEN by John Bennion. In THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES by Sue Monk Kidd, HERESIES OF NATURE by Margaret Young, BREAKING CLEAN by Judy Blunt, A DANCE FOR THREE by Louis Plummer, DARK ANGEL by Robert Kirby, ...I could go on. (Are you thinking "you've gone on too much already?) Then there were some books that tried to open worlds, who partially succeeded, but whose clever author, whose author with a mission, was too sensed: MORMONVILLE by Jeff Call, The JOSHUA books by Joseph Girzone, any of the LEFT BEHIND books by Tim LaHayne and Jerry Jenkins, LE DIVORCE by Diane Johnson...THE WORK AND THE GLORY series (blah, blah, blah she keeps going on...). These titles (and I'll be you could add others) had self-conscious authors standing behind them inserting themselves and weakening the story. (I purposely scanned my shelves looking for a mix of Mormon and non-Mormon writers. People are self-conscious on both sides of that fence.) How does one learn to be humble enough to let go of self? It's a true act of faith in the face of something very scary--exposing your imagination, your thoughts, (your SELF? Yikes am I getting metaphysical here?) to be judged by others. I wouldn't make a very good critic, I'm afraid. I have too much respect for those that even try putting a story on paper. I can close a book and say "well that didn't do it for me", but it's hard for me to tell the world that this book is worth reading and that one isn't. I fall too much on the authorial side of the author/critic divide. Yet, then I read opinions here on the list that we'll never produce great writers in our LDS culture until we produce a body of critical examinations and great critics to whom we learn to listen. I feel like an innocent, a babe, among minds that can deconstruct, analyze, hypothesize. Oops, but now that's me being self-conscious and worrying about what people will think of what I have to say. So just say it and write. Let go. Or go to bed. At 1:00 in the morning one tends to ramble. And I just came to check my email to see what time the conference start in the morning... Kim Madsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 04:08:53 -0800 (PST) From: Mary Aagard Subject: Re: [AML] The envious critic Annette Lyon wrote: I just reread Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and this thread keeps reminding me about the concept of Quality in that book. *Zen* insists that Quality is exists outside of opinion, and that we all can recognize= it. But then why do we all disagree so much about it? I have found many of the posts defending Rowling interesting, but I can't agree. I may be way off base, but I don't think she wrote book five as deliberately and carefully as her others. This list is the only place I= have heard anyone say they thought the last book was as good as the rest--and like almost everyone on the planet, I know lots of Harry Potter fans (and= am one myself). The consensus among those I've talked to is that Rowling doesn't have to be as careful crafting her work anymore; she'll sell millions of copies no matter what and we who already love her stories, her world, and her characters, will forgive any sloppiness and read it anyway (my criticisms of the book won't prevent me from preordering the next two= in the series. I love Harry Potter). That it's still a good book, but it= wasn't GREAT. I know I presonally felt let down by it; book five simply didn't= live up to the others. Mary says: Another source/review of Order of the Phoenix that claims it is better than= the others, etc. (So it's not just this list...) = http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2003/06/23/harry_potter/index.html I'm not a fan of the reviewer (Laura Miller) but her review of the book= supports the "better than the last ones" claim. Mary Aagard - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:48:26 -0500 From: Sam Brown Subject: [AML] story and passion Hello, I appreciated Margaret's thoughtful response. I agree with what I think is her main point that false ardor regarding something we simply aren't interested in is not constructive. I'm not saying that we should pillory things we have no interest in. That's why I don't post on Potter. I just don't care. I've glanced at the books but never found them particularly compelling; I've found the films vaguely entertaining and have no specific concerns or reservations. I would never buy them or see them again, but I have nothing against them. So, aside from being envious of someone selling tens of millions of books, I have no passion about Rowling's oeuvre. So I don't talk about it. The same goes for the musician that Margaret's husband loves. Unless my neighbors at the concert were indulging in some cannabis, I doubt I would be much stimulated by the concert. There's another side to this, though. There are a couple of advantages to speaking passionately about even something you don't know well. First, it gives you a chance to feel and express yourself. Most agree that responses to art are individual and often express as much or more about the critic as about the art. But that's okay. We should know how to express ourselves; we learn about ourselves as we get serious about something, even (perhaps especially) art. I agree there's a downside to this, a misuse of art to stratify social classes (Juliet Schor writes poignantly about studies that show that the best way to guess a person's income is to browse their music collection and conversely that an easy way to predict a person's artistic tastes is to know their actual or anticipated income/social class), but I believe that even in htis case part of learning about social classes is getting passionate about the variations in art. Second, it's good to feel about topics. Diatribes against a work of art can activate others to discuss them with equal passion and can lead to illumination, the moment of conversion, the exposure to a true partisan. I read in the Atlantic Monthly a few months ago a recommendation to change agnosticism to "apatheism," a movement that just doesn't care what your religious beliefs are, and it's that kind of smugly indifferent irrelevance that I'm responding to. Of course, we always have to maintain the axiom that people are not to be demeaned, derided, or distrusted as a function of their taste in art. It's tempting (for me) to look down my urbane nose at people who read romance novels, Mormon or otherwise, and in my weaker moments I have been known to do so. It's not something to be proud of, though even aggressively negative literary criticism of the works of art themselves I believe--if I cared about the topic, which I have to admit I don't--would be okay. And I believe (hypocritically at times) that we ought not to stratify our communities as a function of our tastes, whether high-, mid-, or low(en)brow (pardon the beer pun; I couldn't resist). - -- Yours, Samuel Brown, MD Massachusetts General Hospital sam@vecna.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 22:21:02 -0500 From: Sam Brown Subject: [AML] forsberg book Hello, Equal Rites: The Book of Mormon, Masonry, Gender, and American Culture Authors: Clyde R. Forsberg Jr columbia press, 2003 anybody read this? is it worth buying? - -- Yours, Samuel Brown, MD Massachusetts General Hospital sam@vecna.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 11:15:04 -0500 From: Sam Brown Subject: [AML] Carnage (Review) Carnages (2002) Director/Writer: Delphine Gleize Unrated (would be "R" is US) From the buzz it appears that this is a debut for Gleize, who has done= simply a fantastic job. I give about a movie per year (max) an A, and this one= garners an A- in my book, probably the best I've seen all year. The basic= story-line is that a bull is slaughtered after an eventful encounter with a toreador in= Spain, and portions of his body are distributed across Europe. We come to= know the people through the "carnage" of the bull. His eyes are sent to a= neurotic veterinarian in France whose wife is pregnant with quintuplets (she has been= taking infertility therapy without telling him). The femur is sent to a huge dog, "Fred," the reason that Winnie, an epileptic, starry-eyed French= girl believes that the world is filled with animals larger than humans, via an= out- of-work Italian actress who is finding herself in nude regression bathing therapy at the local pool. (This is some of the most refreshing, merrily= non- erotic nudity I've seen since _Room with a View_. This is where the film= would garner an "R" rating unless the male pudenda qualify for an NC-17; I would= take my daughter once she was 15 or so). The horns are stolen by one of the most= endearing babushki with a lazy eye (paralleling the blind eye of the bull),= who gives them to her son, a reclusive aspiring taxidermist who is splaying the= innards (incorrectly) of their five Guinea pigs. The movie is filled with death and scars, and it does it in a way that is ultimately affirming. There is clear celebration of the cycles of life and= a sense of prying into our scars (there are several shots of bandaids), as our= scars sometimes pry into us (as in the actress who is afraid to remove the= mole that invades her chest "halfway between my nipples," just as her mother's= mole does). In this sense, there seems to be play with the themes of Hawthorne's= "Birthmark". It is also filled with love and kindness, particularly the relationship between the babushka and her taxidermist son, the accidental romance of the actress and the ersatz figure skater, and the tragic relationship of Winnie's schoolteacher with her own troubled mother. There= is a sense here (tying it to AML) that the complex net (like the tapestry of= the Fates) of relationships and coincidences is a postmodern reflection of the presence of God, a contemporary expression of the security that the Hebrews= felt in knowing that history was higher and more complex than any of them= could fathom and that there was a pattern in it. I have to say that of the frenetic comedies that explore life in a somewhat= existential way, this is by far the most compelling and pleasant I've seen in recent memory (better, even, than _Igby Goes Down_). My wife and I loved the film and felt refreshed by it. I wish I had written it. We had= to see it at the arthouse cinema, so I suspect it will need to be viewed on DVD (if the web is right, it's only showing in San Francisco and Boston). Happy viewing. sam - -- Yours, Samuel Brown, MD Massachusetts General Hospital sam@vecna.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 11:06:01 -0500 From: Sam Brown Subject: [AML] Thomas MCCARTHY "The Station Agent" (Review) The Station Agent Thomas McCarthy 2003 http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0340377/ This brilliant Indie won several prizes at Sundance and is now showing in arthouse cinemas around the country. It's a spirited meditation on loneliness, belonging, and friendship, that revolves around the accidental exile of Fin (played with luminous understatement by Peter Dinklage) to a train depot in white trash New Jersey ("Newfoundland") where he meets/is befriend by a) a tranquilizer-addicted woman whose son died in a playground accident, b) a good-hearted Latino from Manhatten named Joe, c) a pregnant librarian who is just legal and fighting with the redneck rube who impregnated her, and d) a chubby elementary school girl who plays house in an abandoned train. They are brought together in some sense by Fin's trials as a dwarf (he is a handsome thirty-something who stands just under four-and-a-half feet tall), but by much more than that. A theme throughout the film is the pursuit of trains, a topic that the director toys with before giving himself into it. I'm not interested in plot spoilers, but I will say that trains are a vibrant, interactive background on which the story takes place. I particularly appreciated the study of how friendships evolve with deviants. How long can a new friend wait to learn about a scar, a missing limb, a physical disability, socially deviant behavior? Joe is almost Christ-like in his lack of concern for Fin's dwarfism, a fact that the director plays with and highlights in two drawn-out= conversations of near misapprehension. Late in the film, though, even loving Joe has to notice that fact when he wonders whether Fin has lost his virginity, and if so, was it to a woman with dwarfism. We feel, with Fin, the betrayal of the unconditional affection of their friendship and recognize our shared culpability in focusing on his dwarfism ourselves. In a metafictive pang, I realize as I write this that I was so impressed with Dinklage's acting that I want to see him in other films, but I don't know how he would be incorporated without the film being about his dwarfism. A wonderful film that I would recommend to anyone college-age and above. I think (but can't remember) that there may be some language that would seem vulgar on Temple Square. There are no special effects or gore, and though there are intimate moments, there is no sex. I'd give it an A-. - -- Yours, Samuel Brown, MD Massachusetts General Hospital sam@vecna.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 09:20:11 -0700 From: "Eugene Woodbury" Subject: Re: [AML] Story vs words > I haven't read it, but I've heard Stephen King wrote a book about writing. On Writing by Stephen King Highly recommended. The first half of the book is a memoir, "How I grew up to become a writer." The second half could be called, "What being a best-selling author has taught Stephen King about writing." It's less technically prescriptive than many "how to" writing books, but every bit of advice he dispenses carries the weight of there being a lot of money where the mouth is. I consider it a must-read for anybody serious about writing at any level. Stick it on the shelf next to your Strunk & White. While I'm at it, I'll plug another one of my favorite "how to" writing books, The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them), by Jack M. Bickham. Like On Writing, it has the added advantage of brevity, the point being, I think, that one should spend less time reading books about writing and more time writing. Eugene Woodbury - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:14:33 -0700 From: "Eugene Woodbury" Subject: Re: [AML] Stylistic choices Clark Goble [On the other hand I loved Tom Swift books as a kid . . . . ] I couldn't agree more. There are books that I absolutely loved growing up that I now can't get through a dozen pages without groaning. But that does not diminish the wonderful, transfixing, transforming effect those books had on me. This is best captured in the excerpt below where Sullivan notes, "Keats's magic casements are often tawdry, fairground things." It's like going back to the school playground of your youth. There's always something . . . missing. Part of growing up is recognizing that the things we love are not perfect. True, some adults then spend the rest of their lives focusing only on the faults. But if we don't recognize the faults, we can't improve on them. Nostalgia about the past (even the immediate past) should not blind us to the essential human conviction that we can always do better. The lesson, then, is not, as Francis Fukuyama might put it, that children's lit has somehow arrived at the "end of history," from whence there can be no more progression. Rather, as Philip Pullman observed, that "We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them." In other words, better to write the good books, with the good stories, in the first place. And as Sullivan points out, J.K. Rowling IS better, more compelling, than many popular children's authors fifty, or a hundred years ago. K.A. Applegate is certainly better than The Hardy Boys. Lemony Snicket stands in a category all of his own. Part of hoping the upward trend continues is not settling when settling isn't called for. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/01/1059480540717.html Harry Potter and the ardour of the critiques by Jane Sullivan I was utterly enthralled by Blyton's Adventure series of books, in which four children and a parrot called Kiki . . . braved all sorts of dangers, from crooks to natural disasters. . . . They were no doubt badly written, they were full of outdated assumptions about what girls and boys do . . . and the most interesting character was the parrot. The Harry Potter books, by comparison, are brilliant literature. Byatt makes a distinction between "real magic" (the numinous, found in children's books that are also great literature) and "ersatz magic" (found in Rowling's work, television cartoons and soapies, and so on). But what Enid Blyton did for me is precisely what Byatt claims that badly written popular books can never do: they gave me the shiver of awe we feel looking through Keats's "magic casements, opening on the foam/Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn." Time enough to discover real magic in literature when readers are older. But perhaps with all her adult learning and experience, Byatt has forgotten that for children in particular, Keats's magic casements are often tawdry, fairground things: it's where you get to beyond and what you take with you that counts, and that experience is entirely in the mind of the young reader. To provide the context, here's the Byatt review: http://www.iht.com/articles/101985.html Magic for a generation that hasn't known mystery by A.S. Byatt If we regress, we regress to a lost sense of significance we mourn for. Ursula K. Le Guin's wizards inhabit an anthropologically coherent world where magic really does act as a force. Rowling's magic wood has nothing in common with these lost worlds. It is small, and on the school grounds, and dangerous only because she says it is. In this regard, it is magic for our time. Rowling speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild. They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had. [Eugene Woodbury] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 16:32:45 -0500 From: "Thom Duncan" Subject: Re: [AML] Story vs words - --- Original Message --- From: "Susan Malmrose" >I haven't read it, but I've heard Stephen King wrote a book about=3D > bookwriting. Anyone >read it? Any good? It's called On Writing. It's great. He talks a lot about not using adverbs. Amazon.com has it. You can search now on Amazon so you can see what it contains. - -- Thom Duncan - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:06:10 -0500 From: "Thom Duncan" Subject: [AML] The King (was: Stylistic choices) In my opinion, the only book of King's that justified the length was The Stand. His other longer works smell of the occasional plot thickener for its own sake. I never felt as though I'd fallen out of the Stand's universe, wondering, "Why did he do that." _Insomnia_ is an example of a King book where practically a third of its length could have been shortened because it kept going on and on and on before it finally got back to the main point. - -- Thom Duncan - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 13:18:00 +0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] Michael McLean profile (DN) Sunday, November 2, 2003 Deseret Morning News Michael McLean: Dreaming big Like a Don Quixote, he strives to uplift By Doug Robinson HEBER CITY - A large wooden statue of Don Quixote stares down at visitors from its perch on a ledge high above the family room in Michael McLean's spacious log house. As with everything else in McLean's world, there is a story behind it. Newcomers quickly learn that McLean --= storyteller, songwriter, pianist, author, moviemaker, singer, producer -- finds meaning= and epiphany everywhere. The story goes that at the age of 15 he saw a performance of "Man of La Mancha" in Chicago. When the show was finished and the audience was filing out of the theater, McLean remained seated, moved to tears but too stunned to move. "I was transformed," he recalls, eyes tearing up again at the= recollection. "I identified with Don Quixote. He saw the greatness in people. Dulcinea= says to him, 'Why don't you see me for who I am?' And he says, 'I do.' "I decided I wanted to be like Don Quixote, and I wanted to be like= those guys who told the story about him. I thought if I could uplift somebody= else the way this uplifted me, I will have used up my space here meaningfully." Now 51, McLean has made a career of trying to do just that. He has written lyrics and music for an exhausting 25 albums. He has written books (with accompanying music CDs), theatrical productions, oratorios, music videos, films for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, radio= and TV commercials, jingles and TV movies. Among his most famous creations are "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" (starring Jimmy Stewart) and "Nora's= Christmas Gift" (starring Celeste Holm), both TV films, and "The Forgotten Carols." McLean also does live shows, which consist of him telling stories and then singing songs he has written that fit the story or idea, accompanying himself on piano. "Garrison Keillor meets Billy Joel" is how he describes himself. He has played everywhere from cruise ships to Mormon firesides to Disneyland to a dental conference at Abravanel Hall to dozens of other largely LDS audiences around the country. Not bad for a guy who says he can't sing or act and isn't "good= looking like Kurt Bestor." (What would Don Quixote think?) The irony is that for many years McLean couldn't see his own worth until he discovered therapy and medicine, but more on that later. "Michael is one of a kind, truly," says Sheri Dew, CEO of Deseret= Book, which distributes much of McLean's work. "There has been no one else in the LDS culture who has been as prolific and as diversified in his talents.= . . . It would simply be impossible to measure or quantify the good this man has done." McLean believes his mission in life is to move people the way he was moved in that Chicago theater, and he lives for such moments as this: Once a young girl called him and explained that she was pregnant and unmarried and planned to put her baby up for adoption. She asked McLean if he would write a song that would help her baby understand someday that she was given away for the right reasons. When McLean finished writing "From God's Arms to My Arms to Yours," he played it for the girl over the phone. The girl cried and asked, "How did you know? That's exactly what I am feeling." McLean says he still gets 20 requests a month from people who want permission to use the song. Marie Osmond read the song's lyrics on "Larry King Live" and shared it on TV with Rosie O'Donnell. Afterward, adoption agencies around the country called to gain access to it, and Dave Thomas, the late Wendy's restaurant founder, used the song as part of a campaign to encourage adoption. "He has his finger on the pulse of how men and women really feel-- which is why so many of his songs connect with so many people," says Dew. Once a young woman approached him after one of his "Forgotten Carols" concerts in Texas during the Christmas season. Looking at her feet, she mumbled, "I think I can like Christmas now," and then turned and walked away. Moments later, another woman approached him and explained, "That was my best friend. She was raped on Christmas Eve and has refused to participate in Christmas. I begged her to come tonight because I saw it= last year. How can I thank the man who gave my best friend Christmas back again?" Well, if McLean's life sounds like a Hallmark commercial or a= Christmas special, so be it. McLean is unapologetically sentimental. "I think I was sent here to help," he says. "It's something in the= way I'm wired. I'm painfully sensitive to what other people are going through.= I know it sounds pretentious. But there's this sense of wearing out my life doing something for someone else." Not that McLean hasn't helped himself. He quit his day job with Bonneville Productions a dozen years ago after writing "The Forgotten= Carols," which began as a book/CD combination and morphed into a one-man live show and then into a full-blown two-hour theatrical production that makes a= 16-city tour each Christmas. That has afforded him independence and a 20-acre estate near Heber, surrounded by alfalfa fields and mountain vistas, not= far from trout streams in which to indulge his fly fishing passion. "My life is so cool because I don't have to put in my 40 hours and= then figure out how I'm going to write and do these other things," says McLean. Passionate, animated and driven, McLean burns as many calories by= talking as most people do jogging. He seems to have a dozen projects going at once, and twice that many ideas. That keeps him on the road. There is an upcoming trip to Italy to seek funding for a movie project. There is his annual= nationwide tour during the Christmas season. There is a gig at Disneyland. There is a= trip to L.A. to promote his new book. He has never lacked ambition or determination. After all, we're= talking about a man who began making a list of goals when he was 8 years old. He wrote his first song at 11 -- about the mashed potatoes and gravy on his Sunday dinner plate, which he still plays for laughs at his concerts. As a= teen, he made a list of things he needed to improve about himself. When he was finished it was six pages long. As a high school student in the Chicago area, he was student body president, the lead role in the "Music Man," an Eagle Scout, an A student (second in his graduating class), state qualifier for the varsity tennis= team and runner-up in the state speech contest for original monologue -- and that= was just his junior year. Even then, he was sensitive enough for others' needs that he arranged for football players and "cool" kids in the school to devote the first hour= of school dances to making sure every girl was danced with before they could dance with their dates. As the lone Mormon in his school, he made a conscious effort to build goodwill for his church and win a few converts, handing out copies of the Book of Mormon and holding monthly firesides at his house. McLean's father, Hugh, was a business consultant whose job required frequent moves. His mother, Marty, was a homemaker who probably contributed to her son's penchant for telling stories. After watching= movies at the local theater, she would act out the entire show the next morning for her two children, performing all the parts and even singing the songs= if there were any. "When I saw the movie itself, I'd think, 'Gee, it was better when Mom did it,' " recalls McLean. McLean began studying classical piano when he was 10. His role model became his piano instructor, a strong, masculine paratrooper with the= National Guard who played piano like a master, at least in the boy's eyes. "He wasn't= a wimp in the rest of his life," recalls McLean. At their first lesson, he= made his mark on McLean with a series of rhetorical questions. "Do you know what= it's like to feel really mad? Really happy? Sad?" he would ask him, and after each question he would play a song that matched the emotion. "He was like Yoda," says McLean. "He looked at me and said, 'Michael, you've got all that stuff in you, but you can't get it out of your fingers.= It's stuck in your heart and brain. You've got the music in you the same as I= do. The reason we practice is so we can let it out.' " They started with Rachmaninoff. They spent six weeks just working on the left hand of the first page, then six more weeks on the right hand, and then three more weeks putting them together. It was eight months before he could play the entire three-minute piece from memory. The next song took almost a year. By the end of his second year of lessons, he had learned a grand total of three songs. His teacher created another significant moment for McLean when he= took him to a classical piano concert. McLean was moved by the performance, but then his 11-year-old mind was struck with a thought on the drive home: The memory of the musician's performance would fade over the years, but the song itself would go on and affect people forever. If he wanted to have a lasting impact, he would have to write songs. He wrote songs for his Boy Scout troop. He wrote them for trick-or- treating. ("It increased my candy take 400 percent.") He wrote songs for school assemblies and church skits and for girls. He wrote about= loneliness, anger, unrequited teen crushes. He liked to lock the downstairs bathroom and sing his songs in front of the mirror. "It was the way I coped with life," he recalls. "It expressed what I= was feeling. What my teacher had said was true. I could get these emotions out now." The real trick, he discovered, was earning a living with it. He served= an LDS Church mission in South Africa, where, as part of his missionary work, McLean and his companions formed a musical group as a way to reach people and promote families. After their missions were completed, the band regrouped and began playing the Utah music scene, which was mostly bars, clubs and dances. Their biggest payday came when they wrote the score for the movie "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams," which netted them $1,000 to be divided among six band members for six days of work, no royalties. McLean dropped out of school to pursue his music, but the band= couldn't get a record deal, and the clubs they played frequently stiffed them for= their fee. Eventually the band disbanded. McLean's music ambitions were getting little encouragement. He had taken a music theory class at BYU "to see if= my passion for music might be worth pursuing professionally." The professor= gave him a C and told him to enjoy music as a hobby and keep his day job. He took the advice and transferred to the University of Utah to study business with plans to work with his father. In a last-ditch attempt to see= if he had what it took, he drove to BYU weekly to take a music composition class from the highly respected Merrill Bradshaw. The other students were producing symphonies; McLean was writing pop songs about the death of a friend's baby and a humor piece about applause. Bradshaw gave him little feedback, and at the end of the term McLean asked him if he should continue his musical pursuits. After a long pause, Bradshaw said he didn't know what to make of his talents, "but if you quit I would consider it a personal loss. Whatever it= is that you do affects me." By now, McLean was married and had a daughter. His wife Lynne worked as a nurse, and McLean sold shoes at ZCMI and continued to do free-lance music work. Noting their empty bank account, Lynne suggested that he try writing commercial jingles. McLean became a one-man ad agency, writing countless jingles, some of which won Clio Awards. (Years later he was watching the news, surfing the three local TV news programs, when he realized he had written every local commercial on the air that night.) Many of the commercials still get played. His work includes: Deseret Book ("When you open a book from Deseret Book, you open a wonderful door"); Zions Bank ("People really do mean everything at Zions"); milk ("Cola darkness covered me til the Refresher set me free"); Motorsportsland ("Let Motorsportsland help you get away"); Gibsons= ("Gibsons gives you more, because we are a very extraordinary discount store"); R.C. Willey ("There's a house of things for your home"); and Major League= Baseball ("Who will be the real hero?"). When Lynne got in a bad automobile accident, McLean dropped out of school to take care of her and their daughter and never went back to finish his degree. "I wonder now why my father let me marry him," says Lynne. "He had no education and no prospects. He was a rock and roll singer. But I= believed he could do it. It didn't dawn on me that he wouldn't be successful. He= always found a way to support us. After we had Meagan, I told him we needed to talk about our budget. He was very uncomfortable. He didn't want to talk about it. Finally, he said, 'How much more do we need?' I told him $100= more a month. He said, 'I'll get it.' So he wrote another jingle. He was a good provider." After seeing LDS Church commercials that encouraged parents to love and understand their children, Lynne told her husband he should write= similar commercials for rock stations that encouraged kids to love and listen to= their parents. Bonneville Productions liked the idea, and McLean created a number of ads for the LDS Church's Homefront campaign. They offered him a job as producer of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He was 24. He worked there for the next 17 years. McLean's job was to produce the choir's radio and TV show and also expand its audience. And so he wrote "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" -- the story= of a lonely old man who daydreams about conducting the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and being present at the birth of the Christ child. McLean spent the next four years trying to convince the church to= make it into a TV special. Just as his mother did years before, he stood in front= of various LDS leaders, including the First Presidency, and acted out each= part for 35 minutes, running back and forth between the piano and his floor act. After killing the project several times, the church finally gave it its= blessing and then asked him who would produce the movie. "Me," he said. He had to do some fast talking. He had no experience making movies -- all he had done was commercials and how would he sign a star for the show? After pretending to be a deliveryman to deliver the contract to Jimmy Stewart's agent, he signed the legendary movie star for a fraction of his normal fee. The film has reportedly been seen by more than 300 million people and has become a TV Christmas tradition. In the years since then, McLean has been nothing if not prolific.= Besides "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" and "Nora's Christmas Gift" (which was inspired= by his grandmother), plus his 25 albums, he has: =95 Produced theatrical presentations; =95 Written "The Forgotten Carols" and "Celebrating the Light" (which= made a five-year run at Promised Valley Playhouse); =95 Co-written "The Ark"; =95 Written three books, "The Forgotten Carols," "Distant Serenade"= (one of McLean's personal favorites) and the autobiographical "Hold On (The= Light Will Come)," which evolved into a theatrical production; =95 Co-written a 75-minute oratorio about the Garden of Gethsemane,= which premiered in Israel and employs a 200-voice choir, a 60-piece orchestra and seven soloists; =95 And co-written and produced several films that have become staples= for the LDS Church, including "Prodigal Son," "Together Forever," "What Is= Real?" and "Our Heavenly Father's Plan." "He is as purely creative as anyone I have ever met," says Dew. "There= is no end -- at least none that I have seen =97 to the new ideas he can= generate. He's a big thinker. He's a dreamer. He's visionary." Kurt Dahl, the creative director of Bonneville Communications who= worked with McLean for 12 years, tells this story about a commercial he wrote= called "The Waterfight," which went on to win a medal at the Cannes Film Festival= and was included on a list of the top 100 TV commercials of all time: "We were in the scripting stage, and I had a tagline for the= commercial: 'It's often life's small moments that bring the great memories; don't let= the magic pass you by.' I took it to Mike and I told him about this line and= this spot. I said it needed a song to go with it that would make it enjoyable and fun, something to set the tone. Twenty minutes later he comes back and says,= 'I've got it. Come listen.' I thought, are you kidding? He played it on the piano= for me and it was perfect. "He always has ideas. Where his strength lies is that he can distill= an array of emotions into one small lyric. . . . Whenever we wanted music and lyrics, he= was the first guy we called. He is brilliant." None of this is by accident. McLean has worked hard at his craft.= Early in his career, he decided that if he was going to make a career of songwriting,= then he had better discipline himself to write them whether the inspiration was= there or not. So he wrote a song every day for one year. "I wrote a lot of really bad songs, trust me," he says. "But I learned= how to get to the core, and how to find a good hook. It really paid off. I wanted= to discipline myself so that if someone said, 'Mike, I need a song,' I could do= it without waiting for a time when I was feeling great inspiration." Once an idea strikes, he works and reworks it, sometimes sitting at= the piano at home in the middle of the night, playing it over and over again. Then he= looks for an audience, and anyone in the house is fair game. Lacking that, he has= even been known to sing his latest creation over the phone to get a critique. "What he does best is tell stories that reach the heart and connect= with people," says Lynne. "It helps them find hope in their own lives." "I love what I do," says McLean. "If I could have chosen what I would= do, it would be what I'm doing." There have been hard times, though. He battled depression for years, suffering a handful of collapses. He finally sought therapy and two years= ago he began taking medication -- "magic pills," he calls them, which he considers= a new lease on life. And there have been battles with his own insecurities --= namely his voice, which is adequate but not strong, and his stage presence -- all= of which were no doubt were at least partially abetted by his depression. For years he wrote songs for other people to sing. When he began performing live, fans would say they wanted to hear the same on his albums= that they heard at his concert. Lynne finally convinced him to make an album on which he sings his own songs, "Michael Sings McLean." "I talked him into it," says Lynne. "I said I need something for my grandchildren." His insecurities and depression notwithstanding, McLean would= certainly seem to be a man who has fashioned a good life. He lives in the countryside near Heber, with a view that could be straight out of the Swiss Alps. And= he speaks passionately about his love for his wife of 29 years. They met on a blind date. "The first time I met him I was thinking, 'Is this guy real?' " says= Lynne. "He was really energetic. He was playing every song he knew and telling= every story and poem he knew. It was hysterical. I found out that's the way he is.= He's a lot of fun." In 1983, during a particularly down period of time in his career,= McLean used to drive to Heber every day for a year just to hang out in the valley. Sensing McLean's melancholy over the phone, a friend named Keith Ross flew out from New York to offer support. They drove to Heber together and wound up standing in the middle of an alfalfa field. Ross called a real estate= agent and wrote a check for the property on the spot. When McLean protested that he couldn't afford it, Ross replied, "This= is where you need to be to do what you need to do. Pay me back when you can." McLean has done almost all of his writing in a home office here. With= success came money, and he and Ross split the property and built two homes here.= They named the place "Scotshaven." Over the years, it has served as home for extended family and friends. "Ross' words came true," says McLean. "Almost everything I've written= has been here." The McLeans have raised their three children at Scotshaven. Meagan,= 28, a law school graduate, is director of a mediation firm in Seattle. Scott, 25,= who graduated from a prestigious acting conservatory in New York, is an actor= and dabbles with songwriting with his father. Jeff, 24, who studied singing in California, teaches voice and is working on a record deal and has= collaborated with his father. This time of year McLean is preparing for the annual "Forgotten= Carols" tour during the Christmas season. There are arrangements to be made and promotions to do and a diet to weather. ("So I can get into my skinny pants.") He will play largely to LDS crowds, which are his niche, although= he hopes to broaden his audience. "I never thought of the stuff as being just for Mormons," he says. "I thought I was writing for everybody. I got labeled as the Mormon= songwriter. I would hate for someone to shut off the power of the songs because they thought it was just for LDS people. I would like to reach everyone." McLean is still dreaming big. Don Quixote would. Copyright 2003 Deseret News Publishing Company - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #215 ******************************