From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #89 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, July 3 2000 Volume 01 : Number 089 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 19:24:24 PDT From: "Jason Steed" Subject: Re: [AML] Re: Writing About Religion Barbara Hume wrote: >This business of the jargon in religious fiction is interesting. I'm >currently reading the Jan Karon books about an Episcopelian priest, and I >find them quite enjoyable. But the jargon sometimes brings me out of the >story. Just what is a rector? a vicar? a warden? a curate? a vestry? What >does it mean to "sit on the gospel side" during a service, or to "sit on >the >epistle side"? The character, of course, would have no need to explain >them--it would be like defining car or bread or sofa. It's part of his >everyday environment. > >Mormon jargon would have the same effect, I should think. Those of us who >are converts all have our stories about expecting to be fed when we went to >the stake center, or wondering why teenage boys would be called elders. It >can be a strong distraction. One must also consider the natural prejudice >people feel when you use the "wrong" terminology, meaning terminology that >differs from what they're accustomed to. If you're used to thinking of a >bishop as some grand poo-bah in fancy robes, then the term seems strange >when applied to an ordinary man in a business suit. I actually disagree with this, and most of my workshop compadres (back in the days when I had some) felt likewise. The 'jargon', they felt, added to the authenticity of the stories. It was any attempt to explain or define a term that broke the spell of the narrative, not the terms themselves. This has been my experience also. When I read Malamud or Singer or Roth, I enjoy the uses of "rabbi" or "kaddish" or "seder", because it lends to the "Jewishness" of the story--makes it seem true and real, rounds out characters, atmospherizes things (a new verb, I think). I think (and my 'outsider' readers agreed) that to use "ward" or "sacrament" or "active" or "bishop" or "Relief Society" is valid, and validates (I'm on a new verb kick: I want to say 'validifies') the story. As a reader, not knowing a term doesn't distract me, it intrigues me--especially if it's pertaining to a culture I'm less familiar with. As writers, I think we should 'put the culture out there,' so to speak. Don't be afraid that it will seem weird to people; count on it. Literary mags get heaps of submissions, and it's the ones that stand out that have the best shot at getting past that first, grad student/intern reader. Of course, I don't think we should flaunt jargon...just don't be afraid to use it when it's germane to the story...it's a legitimate, even essential part of our world. No? 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: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 22:52:23 -0400 From: Richard Johnson Subject: Re: [AML] Writing About Religion >To the world, we appear as a fairly right-wing conservative Christian >church and, I believe, unwittingly carry the current contempt that group >carries in the larger society. When you've got Jerry Falwell making >news because he says the purple Telletubby is gay, we get some of the >fall out by assocation. This very comment is an illustration of the potential truth of what you say. In fact, of course, Jerry Falwell never said that the purple teletubby is gay. If you have gay friends, and I have, it was a fairly common conclusion around the gay world that tinkywinky(I think that was the name) had been given gay characteristics by one of the writers as sort of an inside joke. This information (rumor) was picked up by a reporter who was writing for a Falwell journal, and reported (as a rumor among gays). Within moments of his report reaching the street, the word was out that Jerry Falwell had reported that ?tinkywinkie? was gay. I watched Falwell, on one of the morning shows, explain what the actual article said, quoted the original source (a gay magazine, I believe), and explained that he never called the character gay, his reported simply posed the question that -if the gay community considered the character gay, does that consideration affect the way children may perceive it. The very next morning I heard the host of that morning program note that Jerry Falwell was a ****** (I can't remember the epithet) for calling ?Tinkywinkie? gay. In other words, we are perceived as the world perceives us, and everything we write is going to be filtered through that perception >I think we are too young as a church to tet be taken seriously by the >rest of the world. This perception may change over the next decade or >so. I hope so. I am not sure it is youth. Many things about the church are taken very seriously, it is more the perception of a hidebound morality and conservative political view that has to change. It may take a decade, or many decades. > 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: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 23:13:22 EDT From: Pup7777@aol.com Subject: Re: [AML] New Mormon Fiction In a message dated 00-06-29 16:40:40 EDT, you write: << On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 12:36:57 JST, Andrew Hall wrote: >1. Louise Plummer, A Dance for Three. Doubleday, 2000. I get Amazon.com's YA newsletter and this book was one of their recommended picks for new teen fiction. I was impressed because so far all the books I've read on their say-so have been very high-quality. Melissa Proffitt >> I'd like to know how I can sign up for the Amazon.com.'s YA newsletter. If you could let me know I'd appreciate it. Thanks! Lisa Peck - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2000 01:04:16 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Re: Writing About Religion "Barbara R. Hume" wrote: > I'm currently reading the Jan Karon books about an Episcopelian priest, and I > find them quite enjoyable. But the jargon sometimes brings me out of the > story. Just what is a rector? a vicar? a warden? a curate? a vestry? What > does it mean to "sit on the gospel side" during a service, or to "sit on the > epistle side"? The character, of course, would have no need to explain > them--it would be like defining car or bread or sofa. It's part of his > everyday environment. > > Mormon jargon would have the same effect, I should think. Have I mentioned that I'm writing a novel? It has the exact problem you're talking about: lots of LDS jargon, even Utah LDS jargon that members outside of Utah might not get. I originally planned for an LDS audience when I started writing it, then a member of my writers group who is not LDS and doesn't know a heck of a lot about the religion said he actually enjoyed the book (what he's read of it so far). He said it was like reading science fiction where you are immersed in an alien culture and have to figure it out gradually. It didn't bother him that he didn't understand each term well, because he could get a vague idea from the context. He was fascinated by the insider's look at a culture that had surrounded him for years, but he didn't understand well. That got me thinking. Perhaps I could handle this problem like other science fiction novels have handled it. _Dune_ comes to mind. Within that book is a rich galactic society with lots of strange jargon, and it isn't explained methodically to simplify things for the reader. But what _is_ available to the reader is a glossary at the end of the book, so you can look up a term anytime you want to. It made me wonder about using that approach to make my book more accessible to non-Mormons. - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com ================================== Check out Worldsmiths, the new online LDS writers group, at http://www.wwno.com/worldsmiths Sponsored by Worlds Without Number http://www.wwno.com ================================== - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 1 Jul 2000 01:11:29 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Writing About Religion On Thu, 29 Jun 2000 20:29:21 Todd Robert Petersen writes: > To Chris [Bigelow] and everyone. Sit down, this is a whopper > > > I wonder how many mainstream readers out there would say, "No > > Mormon stories for me" > > I daresay nearly all of them. When I was taking workshop classes, the > students continually commented that they couldn't comment because of > the Mormon content, which in my most LDS stories, is minimal (i.e. I > use minimal jargon and rely on nearly no assumptions of my audience). > > But the word Mormon gets in there and, pow! Here come the knock-out > drops. I've heard things like this before, but it hasn't been my experience. Non-LDS have consistently shown interest in my stories. I published a short novel in Dialogue about 10 years ago, about a philosophy student at BYU, and when I was workshopping it at the UW, one of the other class members said, "Harlow, are you Mormon?" "Yes." "Are you active?" "Yes." "Well, then disregard what I said on your manuscript. You obviously know better than I do." She told me her father had grown up in the church, and her Idaho Mormon relatives were about the most ignorant people she knew. (In the traditional sense of ignorant, not the Mormon sense.) Of course I ended up marrying a deep-rural Idaho Mormon, and when we were in Challis (where Judith Freeman lived for a time) on July 4th a few years back I bought some heavyweight philosophy and literary theory books at the Friends of the Library sale--the kind you might find kicking around any decent college town, which Challis is not, but they send their kids off to decent college towns. What she had written on her copy was that BYU surely didn't even have a philosophy department. But she didn't write that she couldn't see why anyone would want to read about Mormons, and indeed, even though Seattle is the least-churched-per-capita city in the country, no one treated my choice to write about my culture with hostility. To Chris's question > > It it possible for a writer to be so charming or compelling that > > people will overcome their topic aversion? Todd answers > Yes, but it will take a concerted effort, I think, among our best > and brightest to do a kind of literary "missionary" work. Might I suggest a kind of literary missionary work most of us don't think about, a kind Donald Hall discusses in his essay "Poetry and Ambition." One of the things I noticed in grad school is that university English departments don't particularly like writers. Writers and critics tend to be at war. Hall illustrates this by an anecdote. Someone once asked Roman Jakobson, English chair at Harvard, why he didn't hire Vladimir Nabokov. He replied that although he liked elephants he wouldn't hire one to teach zoology. Hall said that writers are the zoo animals of English departments, and that the outstanding critics of the mid-20th century, the people who established and shaped AmLit as a discipline, like Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Lionel Trilling, became superb critics so that their colleagues would not be able to ignore or shrug off their poetry and fiction. We need superb Mormon critics writing superbly about Mormon literature in critical journals, and in magazines. Someone could examine several months of AML-List and open an interesting window on Mormon culture in Time, Newsweek, Harpers, The Atlantic or any number of magazines, if done with the right touch. Consider John Needham's June 29th reply to Andrew's Poll, in which he argues for Mormon short fiction as "the true breakthrough of the decade." > Levi Peterson's _Night Soil_ (1990) far outstrips _Aspen Marooney_ > (1995) in quirky, lovable characters--the odd-ball Mormon types > whom, whatever his attempts to write "serious," non-farcical > fiction, readers will always seek in his work. > > I cannot think of the debut of any 90s Mormon novel that holds a > candle to Brian Evenson's _Altmann's Tongue_ (1994) for > innovation and gripping narrative voice(s), certainly not his > own _Father of Lies_ (1998). > > Phyllis Barber has been appropriately praised for her heavily > remaindered _And the Deseret Shall Blossom_ (1991), but > her true accomplishment is the stories of _Parting the Veil_ > (1999), the result of a twenty years' imaginative reworkings > of Mormon folk motifs that crackle with Mormon idioms and folk > images. And so on. This is the outline and structure for a good survey of Mormon short fiction, John. Flesh it out and get it published. Being both a critic and a literary writer I have found the split between writers and critics annoying and distressing. I've heard each group discuss the other as parasites (not Left Bank parisites). But if we are parasites we're symbiotic. Surely there is audience and journal space for a body of witty, engaging, passionate, intelligent criticism, and surely such a body can help grow the body of our literature, and the body of our readership. 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: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 21:13:10 EDT From: Larry Jackson Subject: [AML] MN God's Army Opens on the East Coast: Excel Entertainment Press Release From: Excel Entertainment Press Release To: Mormon News Subject: MN God's Army Opens on the East Coast: Excel Entertainment Press Release 29Jun00 A4 Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 09:10:00 -0400 [From Mormon-News] God's Army Opens on the East Coast Excel Entertainment Press Release 29Jun00 A4 Joins List of LDS Attractions in Upstate New York ROCHESTER, NEW YORK -- God's Army, the breakthrough film about Mormon missionaries, will play for a limited run in Rochester, New York. The movie will open on Friday, July 7 at the Henrietta Cinema 18 on 525 Marketplace Drive in Rochester. It is fitting that the first ever major motion picture to provide an insider's look at the life and challenges of a Mormon missionary should make it's East Coast debut in this quiet yet notable corner of America. Steeped in Mormon history, Rochester and the surrounding areas seem demure and unassuming, but like Elder Allen of the movie have a depth and distinction beyond their small stature. During the summer months, upstate New York becomes a mecca for folks curious about the colorful and eventful history of Mormonism. In nearby Palmyra, a pageant depicting major events of the Book of Mormon, including the historical events of its publication is played out under the stars. The annual Hill Cumorah Pageant attracts over 80,000 visitors each summer with its colorful costumes, incredible sound system and incomparable setting. Historical sites significant in LDS Church history abound in the neighborhood. Sites like the family home of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith and the small farmhouse where the LDS Church was officially organized are all within a short drive and receive thousands of visitors each year. Over 400,000 people in 11 Western states have already seen God's Army. The critically acclaimed independent film exceeded expectations by bringing in over $2 million at the box office in limited release at first-run theaters. In some areas God's Army outperformed Hollywood blockbusters like Erin Brockovich and Mission to Mars. National film critic Michael Medved raved about the film, calling it "fascinating, riveting and emotionally satisfying." The L.A. Times called God's Army, "a sensitive and thoughtful probe into questions of faith." God's Army will open in first-run theaters along the rest of the East Coast by the end of summer. For complete information on opening dates and for links to reviews, visit http://www.godsarmythemovie.com. >From Mormon-News: Mormon News and Events Forwarding is permitted as long as this footer is included Mormon News items may not be posted to the World Wide Web sites without permission. Please link to our pages instead. For more information see http://www.MormonsToday.com/ Send join and remove commands to: majordomo@MormonsToday.com Put appropriate commands in body of the message: To join: subscribe mormon-news To leave: unsubscribe mormon-news To join digest: subscribe mormon-news-digest - - 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 #89 *****************************