From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #83 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 Tuesday, June 27 2000 Volume 01 : Number 083 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 12:33:04 -0600 From: "J. Scott Bronson" Subject: Re: [AML] Where's our LDS Pulitzer prize winner? I said: > > National attention certainly doesn't equate with talent or > > superior skills as a writer. Terry Jeffress said: > Perhaps I did blend the concepts of popular ("best-selling") with > award-winning ... Now do you consider "national attention" > to mean only popular works? Or, does that also include the > various national awards? Nope. I was going off your earlier comment that went like this: "I theorize that most writers of high quality material know that they write well and thus submit their work to the national markets. Those who get published in the niche markets, although the best in their field, usually do not write with the same quality (or genius) as those at the national level." What I'm saying is that that theory is rather superficial. Margaret Young is clearly a better writer than Betty Eadie and Richard Paul Evans (who are Mormons publishing in the "national" arena), and John Grisham and Nicholas Sparks (who are not-Mormons publishing in the "national" arena). The fact that she is not publishing in a "national" arena has nothing to do with her quality or genius as a writer; it has everything to do with who she writes to. Sparks, Grisham, Eadie and Evans may all be good storytellers to a certain degree, but that doesn't mean they're great writers. The reading masses are willing to forgive certain technical deficiencies for a "ripping yarn." Now, I happen to think that Margaret Young is a fabulous writer AND storyteller, but her stories simply don't have a "national" appeal: They're Mormon Stories. This is a simple truth in the world of publishing, that Mormon stories are not bestselling stories. Card's _Lost Boys_ would never have been published if it had been his first novel. That Mormon story was put into the "national" arena based on his reputation as a bestselling author of not-Mormon stories. ("Hey, it's by Scott Card. His audience will buy anything he writes.") Saying that the reason Margaret Young publishes in a niche market is because her writing lacks true quality or genius is tantamount to saying that the audience she's writing to in that niche is not sophisticated enough to appreciate writing of true quality or genius. That's simply not true ... even though the major publishers in that particular niche market still believe that it is. J. Scott Bronson--The Scotted Line "World peace begins in my home" - -------------------------------------------------------- We are not the acolytes of an abstruse god. We are here to entertain--Keith Lockhart - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:24:56 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] _The Real World_ On Thu, 22 Jun 2000 00:36:03 Gae Lyn Henderson writes: > For example, there is much to be learned from the intimacy, the bonding, > between mother and infant. That's part of what my story "Marginalia" is about, but it's twisted a bit because the main character's ideas of appropriate bonding have been influenced by sexual abuse, and the sense that a child can bond with only one parent. > And Mormon women practice that > relationship more than many other people do! Bela Petsco told me once that he was planning a story about a woman who would marry and have children then divorce, repeatedly. She wanted to be a mother in Zion, but not a wife in Zion. Bela had such wonderful ideas for stories that whenever he tells me, "I'm dead, Harlow, leave me be," I can't. > I had written about a childhood conflict between my desire to > while away the summer days reading and my mother's imperative that > her daughters work in the garden, picking peas, beans, raspberries, and > then spend the remainder of the day canning and preserving those > foods. To me it was the most ordinary of topics. Linda Brodky > commented, though, on the possibilities such writing has to > discuss traditional women's work, to figure out what value it has, > to help women (and men) reconfigure roles. This is one of the powers of art. It's also one reason people find art dangerous. Imagine a story about the conflict between a RS president and a bishop who makes several raids on RS to staff other organizations. She fights him when he calls her counselor into YW. A few months later he calls her secretary into cub scouts, and wounds her when he says, "This time let's do it the Lord's way." She thinks, but doesn't say, "Don't my prayers count for anything?" The task in writing such a story is to show the bishop as a humane loving steward of his ward, just as the RS president is of the women, and of showing him as insensitive to the RS president's inspiration in her calling. One story that does something similar very well is Eileen Gibbons Kump's "Sayso or Sense." A woman whose husband keeps redesigning her dream home has a dream one night about the pre-existence, where the men got to choose sayso, or sense, but not both. But she doesn't pursue the dream. She forgives her husband's use of his sayso. My mother told my father she ought to read the story to Josie, her brother's wife, whose dream home suffered a like fate. My father thought the story might be too painful for her. > And so I suddenly saw my Utah upbringing as the richest of mines to > explore. Indeed it is. A lot of my own writing has been moving me towards finding ways and developing skills to value and mine the riches of my culture. The husband in "Marginalia" is a man who takes copious notes at church. He wants to be a writer (is there anything more boring than stories about writers?:)). His wife thinks he's just exploiting the people at church, but my stories about him are partly about his gradual discovery of how much he loves the culture he writes from and about. > Moreover, I argue it is vital that we (LDS women) cultural-insiders > also notice and value our precipitous discovery of authority. How > easy it is to lapse into temporary weakness, to forget our strength. Reading the beginning of Susie Orbach's _Hunger Strike_ one day in the Seattle Public Library, set me thinking a bit about anorexia and authority. I found a copy at DI recently. ("That's you," Donna said, but it's not. I'm just thin.) I keep thinking how I would put together a story about a male anorexic, probably with some title like, "He Ate and Drank the Precious Words." I love the irony of such a title, because while Dickinson's poem says, "His spirit grew robust," his wife notes that without losing any weight he has lost two belt sizes. I also like the bulimic implications of the title: a man spewing forth torrents of words. I can imagine a scene where a woman sees his anorexia and feels anger at this man appropriating a woman's disease. I'm not sure whether the story would be a comedy or tragedy. Both perhaps. > If many of us have been told we don't fit into the preconceived > image that people hold of women or men > in our culture, then remember: those images must be enriched, > complicated, deepened. We can do it. Indeed we can. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 14:17:15 -0600 From: Neal Kramer Subject: [AML] Re: SORENSON, "The Ghost" Here's the passage Kristi Bell mentioned from Virginia Sorensen with its subtle reference to the KKK: "When it floated through the door alone, we were not even sure whether it was man or woman. There were almost no eyes cut in the hood, only the merest slits through which one caught a glimpse of eye-shine now and then." "It was a terrible costume, actually, was it not, the one in which we had heard people did unmentionable things to the poor colored people of the South?" _Where Nothing is Long Ago_, "The Ghost," p. 127. Neal Kramer - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 13:18:51 PDT From: "Jason Steed" Subject: Re: [AML] Revealing Ourselves in Writing > > In what ways do we as LDS writers reveal > > ourselves in our writing? > >It's not just LDS writers. All writers, I believe, reveal their deepest >feelings about Life, the Universe, and Everything in their writing. >Scott Card calls it their "world view." I agree with Card's contention >that writers can't help but reveal their deepest rooted understandings in >their writings. How these things are revealed would take more time and >brain power than I've got right now. However, I think it would be a >fascinating project to explicate someone's world view through an >intricate analysis of their writing. > >scott This, of course, is often what is being done in literary criticism, in literature departments and classes around the world. And of course, each bit of criticism is a piece of writing itself--so that, as the critic explicates and analyzes the world view of the author, the critic, too reveals her/his own world view... Jason ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 16:45:18 -0400 From: Richard Johnson Subject: [AML] Re: Nudity At 01:43 PM 6/21/2000 -0600, you wrote: >Linda Adams wrote: >No frontal nudity in "Monty." I forget the rating, but it was >definitely not NC-17. > >NC-17 is reserved for films of explicit sexual scenes, not just nudity >per se. > >-- >Thom Duncan Old subject, new post, but I was away at Puppet festival last week and couldn't answere on time. While there I saw _The Full Monty_ for the first time, and indeed there was NO "full" frontal nudity. (And the movie was a hoot) Richard B. Johnson Husband, Father, Grandfather, Puppeteer, Playwright, Writer, Director, Actor, Thingmaker, Mormon, Person, Fool I sometimes think that the last persona is the most important http://www2.gasou.edu/commarts/puppet/ Georgia Southern University Puppet Theatre - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 17:45:55 EDT From: AEParshall@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] Where's our LDS Pulitzer prize winner? > But these people do have an affect on the market. In my ward, the young > women's president told the youth (both boys and girls) that reading fiction > is a sin because they should be reading the scriptures, and that writing > fiction attempts to take over God's role as a creator. I still have to deal > with my kids telling me how sinful I am for reading fiction. I'm still trying to figure this one out. Growing up in our family was probably not all that different from growing up in most list members' families. We three kids saw our parents reading a lot, fiction, nonfiction, and the scriptures. They read stories to us when we were too little read; they listened to us read our own stories while we were learning to read; we read books aloud as a family long after we became experienced readers. We all had library cards, and weekly visits to the public library were part of our routine. We were surrounded by books in the home, and books were favored Christmas gifts. Dad recited poetry, Mom wrote poetry. We read The Children's Friend (filled with fiction) and heard hundreds of Primary lessons illustrated by obviously fictional stories about little Johnny and Mary exploring nature and learning to obey and taking their places in a happy family. With all those countless and continuing examples of the enjoyment and utility of literature surrounding us, I know exactly how we would have reacted to an anti-fiction speech or lesson by one unenlightened ward Young Women president - -- some phrase from the talk would have become an instant private joke used within the family as shorthand for bizarre gospel hobbyhorses. The Young Women president's talk completely overrode the lifelong example you have been setting for your children? Really? Ardis Parshall AEParshall@aol.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 15:49:08 -0700 From: "Kenny Kemp" Subject: [AML] re: Movie Ratings Hello, everyone: I've listened to the discussion of movie ratings with great interest, both as a filmmaker and an audience member. Here's a little background on the rating system courtesy of the Dove Foundation, a Christian media-watch organization: http://www.dove.org/fyi/articles/Rating_the_Ratings.htm KENNY KEMP President and CEO ALTA FILMS & PRESS "films and books that entertain, enlighten and inspire." www.alta-films.com Address: Box 71395 Salt Lake City, UT 84171 Tel: 801.943.0321 Fax: 801.943.0321 Email: kenny@alta-films.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 15:55:38 -0600 From: Jacob Proffitt Subject: Re: [AML] _The Real World_ On Sun, 25 Jun 2000 12:50:13 -0700, Craig Rossiter wrote: >My contributions to this list over the last year or so have been next to >nothing. But the discussion on the Real World has really got my = attention. >Last Sunday I was in a motel room in San Marcos, CA, bored out of my = mind, >to the point of actually surfing through channels like MTV. I ran = across >the interview with Julie, and that was immediately followed by the first >episode. I was hooked. To me, Julie is the typical Mormon young woman = that >we all want our sons to take to the temple. I find her very fresh and >alive, and not so much na=3DEFve as sheltered. After just two episodes,= I am >seeing her widen her view of humanity, and look past some of the = behaviors >she doesn't condone to the person underneath. I was moved by her = comment >that she was too quick to judge her gay housemate, and maybe she has = been >too quick to judge others as a matter of course. I can't wait for = Tuesday >night to see the next episode. In my opinion, it would do a lot of the = BYU >student body good to cycle through this type of experience. I saw the first two episodes as well this Saturday (the kids had gone to = bed and I couldn't sleep and I was curious). The Julie story was about as = you'd expect. She's not really a stereotypical Mormon girl--which is good. = She has a hint of rebellion and comments that she doesn't want to follow the standard plan and marry an RM as soon as she can. It's a minor comment = and one I hope doesn't represent the wedge in the tree or chink in the armor.= I prefer to see it as a healthy introspection that all real people should = be prone to. But more than anything else, I remember vividly wishing that all parents would watch the show, if only to catch those brief moments of stark = honesty as the roommates discuss parents. It shook me up and reaffirmed my dedication to my kids. Jacob Proffitt - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 15:31:56 -0700 From: Jeff Needle Subject: [AML] _Secrets_ (was: Marion SMITH, _Riptide_) Nope, it was a Deseret Book title. When I find the book, I'll post about it. Thanks. At 11:32 AM 6/26/00 -0600, you wrote: >Are you thinking of Linda Sillitoe's book published by Signature? I don't >recall the title, but it might've been _Secrets_. I would be REALLY >surprised if Deseret Book published a book about an out-of-touch Bishop. > >Jeff Needle wrote: > >> I really appreciated this review. >> >> Some years ago there was a book titled, I think, "Secrets." It was from >> Deseret Book and dealt with the issue of abuse from the standpoint of a >> totally out-of-touch bishop. >> >> Has anyone else read this book? >> - --------------- Jeff Needle jeff.needle@general.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 16:57:08 -0600 From: "Terry L Jeffress" Subject: Re: [AML] Where's our LDS Pulitzer prize winner? From: "J. Scott Bronson": > Saying that the reason Margaret Young publishes in a niche market is > because her writing lacks true quality or genius is tantamount to saying > that the audience she's writing to in that niche is not sophisticated > enough to appreciate writing of true quality or genius. That's simply > not true ... even though the major publishers in that particular niche > market still believe that it is. I probably should have thrown in a "generally" here and there in my statement of theory. I still maintain that good writers recognize that they produce good writing, and thus generally submit that writing to the larger markets. That does not preclude a good writer from submitting to the niche markets, but most writers I have known motivated themselves through dreams of fame and riches (in spite of their talk about being artists). Larger markets bring more fame and riches. As an interesting corollary, bad writers cannot tell the difference between bad writing and good writing. Thus, bad writers believe that they produce good writing because they don't have the skill to recognize the shameful prose in their manuscript. This is the only explanation for some of the slush I have read. (Then there's the rest of us stuck somewhere between the geniuses and the 1 million monkeys.) Now to the subject of audience. (And to add more fuel to the fire for those of you forming opinions about Terry's literary elitism.) I content that most audiences only recognize "a ripping good yarn" and couldn't tell, except peripherally, that the book was written well or poorly. For the majority, if a book tells a story sufficiently well to create vivid pictures and sufficient tension and none of the really big words get in the way, they like the book. Books that one must appreciate for its writing and not its pace will never do as well because the audience that wants to appreciate that book is much smaller. I think the audience that _could_ appreciate the book is actually quite large. But since, I believe, most people read as an escape, they don't want to have to extend the mental energy needed to appreciate "artistic" works. For example, I read on the train while commuting. I love to read Umberto Eco, but I cannot read it on the train. The surrounding noise and bustle distracts me from the meaning in his page-long paragraphs. But I can easily read some simple thriller (King and Koontz come to mind). I have to actually create a time when I can read Eco, an effort that keeps _The Island of the Day Before_ still unread, although I have owned it for 2 years. I didn't mean to insult Ms. Young with my theory, but I still think the story will sell over the writing. - -- Terry Jeffress - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 19:36:08 EDT From: ViKimball@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] Re: Writing About Religion In a message dated 6/26/00 2:17:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time, jpsteed@hotmail.com writes: << As for others who have written about religion without being "bitter"--I think Flannery O'Connor, John Updike, Allegra Goodman, James Baldwin, G.M. Hopkins, John Donne, George Herbert, Emily Dickinson, and many others have done it and done it well. >> Don't forget John Milton. Violet Kimball - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 18:40:28 -0600 From: Katie Parker Subject: [AML] ADAMS, _Prodigal Journey_ (Review) Adams, Linda Paulson. _Prodigal Journey_; volume one of _Thy Kingdom Come_ trilogy. Cornerstone, 2000, 517 pp. Softcover, $14.95. Reviewed by Katie Parker _Prodigal Journey_ is set in the second half or so of the 21st century and follows the story of Alyssa Stark, who is not religious, and to a lesser extent two of her LDS friends, as they negotiate life through increasingly troubled times. To my understanding, the Second Coming is to occur at a later point in the trilogy. But the story is not about moving toward the Second Coming, but rather is about how a few characters live their lives while the world as a whole moves in that direction, for the most part unaware. Adams first sets forth a brief history of the events we have missed between now and the time of the book. While I have no way of judging if any of it would actually happen this way, the setting seems fairly plausible and opens the door for some interesting storylines. Without going into much detail here, some of the conditions of the American society of _Prodigal Journey_ include legalized drug use and prostitution, while outward discussion of one=92s religion unless specifically asked is strictly prohibited. (You have to read the book if you want more background on how these laws came about. :-)) With this backdrop, the actual story begins relatively calmly on a farm in eastern Iowa. Alyssa=92s family has been friends with the Richardsons for a number of years, and the two families have often celebrated holidays together. But on this particular occasion, at about the same moment that fourteen-year-old Alyssa and sixteen-year-old Peter Richardson are sharing their first kiss, Peter=92s mother breaks the news to Alyssa=92s mother that the Richardsons (Peter=92s family) are going to= be baptized into the LDS faith. Mrs. Stark (Alyssa=92s mom; an unstable individual) flies into a rage and forbids her family to have further contact with the Richardsons. This would be a traumatic way for any fourteen-year-old to lose her first love, but Peter and the Richardsons have been some of the only stabilizing forces in Alyssa=92s life, and to face life without them is no easy task. Alyssa=92s mother is verbally an= d physically abusive; her father does little to intervene and eventually becomes an alcoholic. Alyssa=92s turbulent family life throughout her high school years is depicted in Part One of the book. Throughout it there is a recurring theme of Alyssa longing to escape from her chaotic life and find the steadiness that Peter and his family would offer, were they available to her. The story here is interesting, and I found Alyssa=92s father a pretty convincing character, but the real story begins after Part One. Alyssa then goes on to college and to a long but riveting journey to maturity, relative safety, and peace. There are plot twists at every corner that are unexpected but spin naturally from the established setting and characters. I found the book difficult to put down and usually ended up reading more at one sitting than I=92d intended. There is a lot that I like about this book. For one thing, it comes closer to the middle ground between fluffy-but-faithful and thoughtful-but-on-the-fringe LDS fiction than most other works that I=92v= e read. It=92s generally well-written, very intriguing, and it=92s true to = the faith. Granted, it is speculative, but the author covers her bases well and I myself found nothing that couldn=92t be possible given the context. I also found nothing that would cause me to question my beliefs or standards. There are a few very moving scenes that reminded me, forcefully, that the Savior knows us and loves us each and is very involved in our lives. Many of the characters, particularly some of the non-LDS ones, are vividly drawn; a few of them seemed to me as if they could walk off the page. One haunting character in the slum area is Bert, who had been an outward Christian until he was forced into =93therapy=94 by the governmen= t. As a result, he spends his days counting meaninglessly, and he communicates cryptically by numbers. Another is Margret, a woman who has a pretty rough background that includes two children by two different men. But she loves these children and is fiercely protective of them and walks three miles every night to work the graveyard shift in a factory to provide for them. Not all of the characters are so vivid. I found a couple of the =93bad guys=94, including Alyssa=92s mother, somewhat two-dimensional. They are unlike some of the better characters who seem more fully developed with flaws and consciences and human spirits. I would have liked to see a complex story such as this one go into more depth on a couple of these villains, showing that they are indeed feeling humans and yet how they can still do the things that they do. But this is a minor complaint, and these characters still perform their functions in the story very well. _Prodigal Journey_ does contain drug use and a few references to sex. But most characters do not actually go beyond LDS standards of behavior, and if they do they eventually experience logical consequences. I thought that the drug usage was handled well, with the consequences ultimately being rather dire but natural, and never pointed out in a preachy way. It=92s an intricate situation, though; it=92s not black and white. Unchaste behavior is also handled well, in an interesting way: a nonmember couple considers it (mostly in passing; it=92s not a major issue for them) in a way that is natural for these characters (i.e., having no reason to think that such an encounter is immoral, and having every reason to think that it=92s normal), while in seemingly unrelated scenes, an LDS couple through their discussions and experiences leave the reader no room for doubt as to the LDS position on this matter. This book is difficult for me to describe in detail because there is so much that happens along the way, and I honestly don=92t want to spoil the story for anyone. I greatly enjoyed following Alyssa and her friends through all 517 pages of the book, and quite literally having no idea where the story would take me. The territory is uncharted, and there are no promises of easy answers by the book=92s end. I thought that the ending was just about perfect, though; enough was resolved to satisfy me as a reader, but there are multitudes of problems and situations left to continue on. Linda Adams has successfully created something that is not just a story with a few conflicts to deal with, but a whole world that at times seems to take off on its own. There is much left to explore. And as this world approaches the Second Coming, the only aspect of the story that I can feel sure about is that situations in their society will get worse. This may not be good in real life, but it=92s great for fiction. I will be eagerly awaiting Volumes 2 and 3 of the trilogy. Furthermore, I=92m really excited to see Cornerstone coming out with interesting, well-written and faithful books like this. I hope to see many more in the future. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:08:03 -0600 From: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Subject: [none] [38.31.170.131]) by snipe.prod.itd.earthlink.net (8.9.3-EL_1_3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA17630 for ; Mon, 26 Jun 2000 10:43:30 -0700 (PDT) User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.01 (1630) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 11:40:14 -0600 Subject: [AML] SLOVER, _Hancock County_ From: Steve Perry To: aml-list Message-ID: Mime-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-aml-list@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: aml-list BYU Theater Dept. announced its new season, including the following play by LDS playwright Tim Slover: HANCOCK COUNTY Feb 7 - 24 Margetts Theatre (smaller experimental theater) "In June 1844, in a small jail in Carthage, Illinois, a mob murdered Mormon prophet and presidential candidate Joseph Smith and his older brother Hyrum while they were detained to face a charge of treason; another Mormon leader, apostle, and future church president, John Taylor, was grievously wounded. Eleven months later, in May 1845, five prominent citizens went on trial for the murders. _Hancock County_ chronicles the trial's twelve eventful days, as well as dramatizing the story of the incidents leading up to the trial, and the terrible aftermath. A compelling new play commissioned by the Department of Theatre & Media Arts through the generosity of Don and Shirley Oscarson." [Steve Perry] - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2000 12:28:42 JST From: "Hall Andrew" Subject: [AML] _Secrets_ Linda Sillitoe's book was _Secrets Keep_ (Signature, 1995). _Secrets_ was by one of the Yorgansons and Sunny Oaks. >From: Margaret Young >Reply-To: aml-list@lists.xmission.com >To: aml-list@lists.xmission.com >Subject: Re: [AML] Marion SMITH, _Riptide_ (review) >Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 11:32:38 -0600 > >Are you thinking of Linda Sillitoe's book published by Signature? I don't >recall the title, but it might've been _Secrets_. I would be REALLY >surprised if Deseret Book published a book about an out-of-touch Bishop. > - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 21:56:19 -0600 From: Kathleen Woodbury Subject: Re: [AML] Where's our LDS Pulitzer prize winner? At 04:39 PM 6/22/00 -0600, Terry L Jeffress wrote: >But these people do have an affect on the market. In my ward, the young >women's president told the youth (both boys and girls) that reading fiction >is a sin because they should be reading the scriptures, and that writing >fiction attempts to take over God's role as a creator. I still have to deal >with my kids telling me how sinful I am for reading fiction. Adding my two-cents worth (or whatever it comes out to be in email) here: Terry, I wouldn't worry about that YW president. You can't argue with that kind of conviction. I'd take all those great quotes people have given you and show them to your children. The words of the prophets of God should have more clout with them. And then I'd tell them that not everyone who is a member of the church is guided by inspiration. They should pray about everything they are told by anyone and get a confirmation from the Holy Ghost that what they have been told is according to Heavenly Father's will. That's one of the reasons we are given the gift of the Holy Ghost. (That's also something I have heard recommended by the president of the church at the ends of many general conferences.) Sometimes, the values expressed in the media aren't the only ones we need to talk with our children about. It's too bad when we have to talk to them that way about values expressed in church.... Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury workshop@burgoyne.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 21:37:47 -0600 From: Kathleen Woodbury Subject: [AML] _Secrets_ At 07:33 PM 6/23/00 -0700, Jeff Needle wrote: >I really appreciated this review. > >Some years ago there was a book titled, I think, "Secrets." It was from >Deseret Book and dealt with the issue of abuse from the standpoint of a >totally out-of-touch bishop. > >Has anyone else read this book? I did. I found the bishop very believable, for whatever that's worth. One thing I thought was interesting about the book was that it showed a really painful repentance process in one of the characters. Repentance doesn't come so hard in most of the other LDS fiction I've read. Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury workshop@burgoyne.com [MOD: Thanks to everyone who's contributed to this discussion, and especially to Andrew Hall for his recent post clarifying that there are two different but similarly-titled books that we're talking about here. At this point, I can't distinguish which comment goes with which book. From this point on, if anyone has comments on one of these books, I'd request that you make it clear (if you can) which of the two books you're talking about.] - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 22:41:26 MDT From: "Samuel Brunson" Subject: [AML] Re: [AML-Mag] Writing About Religion I've been thinking about how to respond to this post all weekend. By way of introduction, I'm Sam Brunson, a BYU senior and aspiring author and musician and lawyer and politician and anything else I can get involved in. Kristen Randle's post was so interesting because it was so well reasoned, and because I disagreed with it so fundamentally. And that was what was so hard to think of in writing a response--exactly where our opinions split. One point is that there can be an African American lit, but the LDS and Jewish experiences are so disparate ("piebald") that they cannot produce a unified lit. Which is true, but the African American experience is equally piebald. Black literature embraces everything from Ishmael Reed to Maya Angelou to a whole bunch of other stuff. But that's not it, because that wasn't central to her thesis. I think it's when she writes: >I think it is never easy to write about religion. And I'm not sure people >should. I know they should not write about it at all if their motivation >outstrips the spontaneity of their story, because the inevitable result of >such an imbalance is didacticism, or worse, putting words into the mouth of >God. I agree that the didacticism can be there whenever we write incapably out of an ideology, including religion. I was reminded of that today, when I read _The San Diego Writer's Monthly_'s (where I work as a college intern) slush pile. One gentleman wrote a clever story in which the ideologically leftist parents are more repressive and racist than their adopted Republican son. The problem was not in the ideology (I disagree with what I perceive about his central thesis, but it didn't get in the way of my enjoying the story). The problem was that he was so enthralled with his ideological message that he stereotyped his characters poorly, he wrote unconvincing prose, and he couldn't convince me it was worth suspending my disbelief. It reminded me of Richard Wright's _Native Son_. The book is spectacular, reads powerfully and convincingly. Then, almost at the end, the communist lawyer delivers a speech in court explaining the repressive state apparatus that created Bigger and made him a remorseless killer. And the sixty or so pages of his plea ticked me off. Wright was no longer writing a character he cared about or I cared about. He was pushing his ideology on me. It was still remarkably well written, and still incredible thoughts, but aesthetically he had given up on letting me figure out his book and he told me what to think. > I suspect that the strongest writing we will ever get that can be said to >be "about" religion will be either expository or, if fiction, bitter. > As I read her, I wondered if I could write my own God as passionately, as >concretely as she writes her own bitterness and disappointment. I don't >think I can. I'm not sure I should. People who hate the LDS church write >and speak about it, making their accusations plainly. I'm tempted here just to write "Flannery O'Connor" and be done with it. She wrote deeply Christian fiction about a Christian Savior she passionately believed in. And not only did it occur powerfully to her--she communicated it. Kurt Vonnegut, a decidedly non-Christian author, called her the greatest writer of his generation (in his intro to his new volume of short stories which I don't have handy). The thing was, she didn't equivocate. She didn't preach. She let her characters do the talking, but she trusted in the world they lived in. She trusted that the grace would be so central to her stories' world that she didn't need to write "P.S.--Believe in Christ." And stories written out of ideological bitterness--unless the author has a stunning reason to be bitter AND the writing ability to pull it off (try Jamaica Kincaid's _A Small Place_)--rarely work. Like O'Connor, like Vonnegut, and like most enjoyable authors, an author needs to have some sort of affection for her subject to pull off the story. An ideology that gets in the way of people feels imposed. My last example: I'm reading Kurt Andersen's _Turn of the Century_ right now, based on the horrible review it got in George Will's column. It's a spectacular book (it's remarkably worth reading, but chock-full of bad language, so consider yourself warned), and the basic impression I got from Mr. Will's column was he didn't like it because it has a leftist agenda. Except that it doesn't--the main characters are Republicans who feel guilty about not being Democrats. But Mr. Andersen isn't writing an ideologically leftist tract--he's created characters, put them in a world that doesn't quite mesh with what people need, and trusted them to work it out. I believe that we can, and perhaps should, write fiction about our most sacred beliefs. We don't need to be bitter to do it, nor do we need to be didactic. Instead, I think, we need to trust our worldview (NOT have faith; faith is essential, but good members of the LDS church can be bad writers and it shouldn't reflect on their testimonies) to work. Like O'Connor, we need to trust the Plan of Salvation to be a part of the landscape that we don't need to call explicit attention to, but a part that can motivate and affect what happens in the world. Our stories don't have to be trial-of-faith stories; they just have to ring true. Sam Brunson ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #83 *****************************