From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #362 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, June 18 2001 Volume 01 : Number 362 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 13:42:00 -0500 From: "REWIGHT" Subject: Re: [AML] HULS, _Just Wait_ (Review) > > My desire was to write something a 12 year old could read today that > might get him talking with his parents about things that I fear too many > parents are not addressing. Perhaps choosing the novel format was a > mistake, I haven't read the book. But, I don't think writing a novel is a mistake. Many people prefer to get their information in a novel form. I learned a lot of church history from reading "The Work and the Glory". History that might have been dull reading otherwise. It seems to me your more likely to reach your audience in a novel than if it were a pamphlet that gets handed out and the kid ignores. A novel makes it more personal. Anna Wight - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 19:46:03 -0600 From: LuAnnStaheli Subject: Re: [AML] Plausability Tracy, I've forwarded this strand to John H. Ritter. I always like to get the author's comment on their own text if possible. He may write directly to you or to the listserve. He responded to another email I sent him so we will wait and see if he has a comment about the point of view he decided to use. I didn't find a probl;em with it, but I read the novel at school and didn't really focus on this scene as I read. Thanks for clarifying. I'll try to give that part a reread and think about it more closely. Lu Ann Tracie Laulusa wrote: > I *did* say that probably no one else would think that it was implausible. > And it was such a small passage too. Kind of amazing that it had that > effect on me. > > In the first chapter Tyler tells us the story of his sister's death. It > happened when he was 4 and she is 6. He is at the time of the telling, I > believe, 13. > > Later in the story, when he's made a pretty big mess of everything he says: > > "It was times like these when I really missed Lissie. Missed my older, > smarter sister who always knew what to say and what to do to make me feel > better. Who hugged me--I could still feel her strong arms around me > now--and taught me new words and how to write my own name and taught me a > song about Christopher Robin who went to a palace with a girl named Alice." > > It just hit me as all wrong. I have a four year old son, and a seven year > old daughter. I know that Josh, at four, does not think about his 'older, > smarter sister'. A six year old does not 'always knew what to say and what > to do to make me feel better'. We're talking a four year old and six year > old here! And strong arms around him. Now Josh might consider his 17 year > old sister as strong--in fact the above description fits their relationship > very well, though the perceptions of 'smarter' probably belong to an older > child--but he, Josh, is every bit as strong as his seven year old sister, > and maybe even his nine year old sister. I could see a boy of 13--the age > Tyler is when he's telling the story--having these perceptions if he was > that age when it happened. Maybe even if the accident happened when the boy > was 6 or older, and the sister a bit more than two years old than him. But, > it just didn't ring true for a boy of 13 to remember his sister in this > light--a sister only two years older than himself, when the accident > happened when he was four. > > As you can tell, it really, really bothered me. And it is such a small > thing. And yes, of course I'm reading it from the perspective of my own > experience--but I know kids pretty well. My own and the dozens I've worked > with over the years. It just didn't work for me at all. > > Also, I think the first chapter set up an expectation that the death of the > sister would have more of a role in the story than it did. The character's > 'coming of age', or whatever you call it, did involve his understanding of > his dad and his dad's reaction to his sister's death. But, except for the > above paragraph, little was said about how it effected him personally, other > than it disrupted his family life enough for them to be willing to send him > to NY. The author sets up this elaborate retelling of the accident. All > about how Lissie plays these tricks. All about Tyler watching--part of the > joke. All about her shushing him, and his 'clamping my mouth so I wouldn't > give away our joke to Dad.' And then the truck hitting her and her > screaming, and him yelling to his dad to stop...... He's an angry young > man, has trouble controlling his temper, his family life has been disrupted, > but, except for the above paragraph, the death of his sister has not been a > factor in all that. I mean, it effected his father profoundly, and that > effected Tyler's life, but the death did not seem to affect him directly > except as a loss of comfort in a paragraph that didn't ring true to me. > That death, given the importance it is given in the first chapter, should > have, for my 'enjoyment' of the book, had something more to do with the > story than just as his dad's problem and an excuse for him to be sent to NY. > But then maybe, as a four year old, the death would not effect him that > profoundly. > > Tracie Laulusa > ----- Original Message ----- > > > I've read Over the Wall and I didn't find anything implausible about it. > Just > > wondering what you are referring to. > > Lu Ann Staheli > > > > Tracie Laulusa wrote: > > > > > I finished a book last night that could have been very good. I've been > > > wanting to read it because I heard the author read part of in at a > > > conference. (John Ritter/Over the Wall) I finally found it and started > in. > > > About a third of the way the author wrote something that I found totally > > > improbable--though others might not--and he lost me. > > > I finished the book, but from then on I was reading a book, not living > the > > > story. > > > > > [snip] > > > > > > Tracie Laulusa - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 20:41:52 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: [AML] Manipulative Endings (was: _The Testaments of One Fold and One Shepherd_) Jacob Proffitt wrote: > So my question is: if that is manipulative, then please explain how any > story depicting sacrifice and hardship, that ends with true reward, can > not be manipulative? This is how to tell the difference. Have someone kick a dog on screen. Tears well up in the viewers. That's manipulation. Have someone kick Hitler. If tears well up for the pain Hitler feels, that's not manipulative. Thom - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 21:50:47 -0600 From: Scott and Marny Parkin Subject: Re: [AML] Missionary Stories (pt 1 of 2) These posts are getting awfully long. I promise I'll shut up about this stuff soon. But not today. (That's what being unemployed and having all day to sit at the computer and write does for you.) Tom Johnson wrote: > > Reader response can be infinitely > > varied and all absolutely true, despite opposing conclusions. > >For some reason I despise these kinds of statements. Sorry. I don't think >reader response can be infinitely varied, first of all. Try it. How many >responses can you imagine to Mitchell's work? Suppose I say that I thought >it possessed a striking similarity to Macbeth. Now wouldn't that be a little >odd? A great treatise (non-metaphoric) on elephants. Huh? But this is beside >the main point of our discussion. Infinite variation doesn't require infinite digression from the text. The reader that thought it strikingly similar to Macbeth might have a point if he explains why. The reader who thought it was a treatise on elephants was just plain wrong. Despise to your heart's content. That's your reader response, wrong though I may feel it to be as the author whose text you critiqued with it. But I think it is possible to read Mitchell's work and have completely opposite opinions on the same text. I wouldn't have to work very hard to justify a reading of Danube that showed the author to be a mystic who placed as much value on German folklore as on revealed religion, arguing that the failure to show the missionary program as in any way noble proved the author's disaffection with the organization of the church. I would find such a contention opposite to my reading of the story, but I can see the elements of the story that support it. I was at a tax seminar the other day learning about how to compute sales and use tax in the state of Utah. It turns out there are 7 specific points of distinction that require an evaluation by the preparer and could lead to a different tax rate. That means approximately 5000 potentially different (though not always exclusive) tax rates. I thought there were significantly more than 7 potential points of reader divergence in _Angel of the Danube._ > >I also believe the writer is one of those readers who's allowed to express a > > response to his own work. > >Yes, everyone has their rights of expression, but I wouldn't trust a >writer's reading of his own work. The writer is too steeped in his own >intentions to see more objectively what is actually written. The writer >often desires to see his own intentions succeed--I remember Mitchell's >response just one week ago, "I had thought his desire to 'get through' to >the Austrians was quite pronounced." What if you define art as "the >unintended something that happens between point A and B" (David Plante). If >you accept this curious statement about unintentions, then unless the author >has an incredible sense of distance (or the work is far behind him), it is >difficult for him to see past what he wanted his work to be, and to the >actual art he has produced. Another point of simple disagreement. I think the author's intentions and opinions of their own work matter. I think the narrative intent of a story is instructive in understanding how and why scenes were chosen and specific POVs constructed. I think knowing what the author intended provides an even more interesting context in which to discuss other meanings in the text. It also gives me a whole separate area of analysis where I can argue how well the author reached his own narrative goals. As a would-be author, I like to believe that my choices have something to do with the success of the story, otherwise storytelling becomes little more than shouting out some vague plot outlines and letting all the details be filled in by the individual readers. If Mitchell had just shouted out "Austria is weird! Love is good! Life is hard! Missions are hard to interpret!" and walked away, I would say he had failed to produce even rudimentary art, though I would agree that the author's comments on his own text were at best trivial. And if your narrative goal is to justify why criticism is more important than the work being criticized, then I think you have to take that with a grain of salt as well. >Elizabeth Hardwick once put it like this: Would you trust a pig's advice on >the nutritional value of pork? I wouldn't inherently mistrust it. I would certainly have to put it into a context, since I'm not convinced that being a pig makes one an expert on nutrition. But if I wanted to find out what it's like to be a pig, I would tend to trust a pig's opinion over that of a nutritionist. It depends on what you want to know. Yes, meaning is an individual thing. But intent can be a great clarifier of texts for those of us who want to know why choices were made and what the expected effect of those choices was. >Authors are hesitant to limit the interpretation of their to only their >intentions--they'd rather have them meet those intentions and far exceed >them. They want it to mean many different things to different people, and if >the author steps up and says X means this and Y means that, then he'll no >doubt put off the reader who felt so strongly that X meant other things. >Plus, I just don't see what the author is really going to add to the text. >It's like a car. You can have the mechanic of the engine explain how he >intended it to run, like a racecar, idle quiet as a mouse, accelerate like >lightening (wow, three cliches in a row!), or you can just take it out for a >long spin yourself. Ultimately, what the mechanic intended with the engine >doesn't amount to jack squat. (no offense to jack, btw.) This is, of course, >the intentional fallacy. Again, we just disagree, though I think I see some of the reasons for it. I agree that the author is not qualified to make absolute pronouncements about meaning--meaning is a concept in the mind of the reader--but I still think the author's intent goes a long way to explaining how and why the novel was constructed and presented as it was. The mechanic's intent most certainly does matter in the development of the car. If he intended to create a speedy, powerful touring car and instead produced a slow, underpowered go-cart, then the mechanic failed and I have no appreciation of his skill, understanding, or application of his craft. I will tend to view his future promises with mistrust or open suspicion. If this go-cart is marketed as a competitor to the Ferrari 308 GTS, then I think the mechanic's intention goes a long way to explaining the price tag and the slick ad campaign. That he failed to meet the engineering quality of a Yugo is something he needs to explain to his investors and buyers. I agree that the fact the mechanic claims Ferrari design principles doesn't make his car a Ferarri. But it does help me understand the finished product in a more complete way, and to evaluate more fully how and why choices were made. That I view the finished product as a go-cart is my right, despite the $200K price tag place there by the manufacturer. As a writer, I find wthe riter's intentions quite instructive because I want to be a better writer. Question for everyone-- Would an anthology of short fiction featuring short comments by the authors and short interpretive essays by reviewers or critics be interesting? I know I love to hear authors talk about their fiction, and I would love to see both the author's and a critic's view of the same text. Would any of you find that interesting? Would you pay money to see work by some of the better-known names in Mormon lit handled this way? Just curious. I've been kicking that idea around for quite a while and am interested in the marketability of such a project. >Here's a question, though, that really drives fiction writers crazy. >Richard, Alan, how much of that stuff was autobiography? It drives them crazy because it's hard to answer. I published a story in _Irreantum_ about a cat. Most of the details in the story were real, but the whole central premise was a fictional construct. How do I separate the two? But I think it's a fair question worth both asking and answering. > > I hold only one opinion inviolable--that my opinion is likely to change > > with further discussion. > >very humble. I thought so. That's one of the things I've learned in my nearly six years on this list--that I learn more in discussion that I do alone, and that my opinions change faster as a result. I've reversed myself quite a bit on this list after vigorous discussion, though that personal reversal may not have been obvious to other list members. That's why I comment even though I'm pretty sure most list readers cringe whenever they see my name. It's a selfish response--I learn more if other people present their arguments. > > In the end, I hope that by commenting I can get others to disagree, > > thus creating tension and interest among the Mormon readership and > > spurring sales. To me that's the only good reason to write a review. > >A martyr for disagreement! I too sometimes like to argue a point just to >see if I can sustain it. I don't care a whoop about sales and interest--it's >simply more fun to disagree. I wouldn't say martyr, though I do try to make it a point to support certain viewpoints that I believe are underrepresented (my ongoing support of simple Mormon morality tales and sentimental literature, even though I don't read or like much of it myself). I do care a whoop (and a hoot and a holler, too) about sales and interest. If I can help build a larger, more demanding readership I hope to help create a marketplace in which to sell my own work. Right now the Mormon market is small and limited; I want to build a market that's large and far reaching so my stories of Mormon thought have a place to live. I have a whole concept of Mormon literature that I don't think is particularly well represented, though I have read some great pieces that I think qualify under my ideal. I'm working on starting an online magazine of Mormon literature to support my vision, and I think there is plenty of work out there that would fit. I've already identified the first novel I want to publish if it isn't published elsewhere first. But my little venture will never fly if I can't get the Mormon readership to expand their own ideas of what "Mormon literature" can include. >I don't believe your motives anyway. >Disagreement is the mechanism towards a finer understanding. The antithesis >forces one to reevaluate the thesis with greater clarity. Hegel was all over >this. I already admitted that. I'm selfish--I want to learn and find that disagreement spurs the best presentation viewpoints not currently my own. I learn more that way. But I really do want to create a larger Mormon literary community, as well. The two are not exclusive goals, though, IMO. > > At this point I'm at least as interested in spurring the development > > of more and varied stories as I am in identifying whether a story > > meets some abstract concept of literary quality. > > > >You will spur the development of more stories by disagreeing with them? >Okay. Why not? If I point out that I would like to see a fuel efficient two-seater instead of a minivan, Honda just might build a car like the Insight (a car that I desperately want to own, though I can't come anywhere near affording the 20K price tag). If I don't point out my desire to see something else, why would Honda bother to engineer a solution for which there is no demand? I believe that much of literature is a dialog between the author and the community. If the author receives only positive feedback, the art stagnates and the community suffers. Throw down a challenge and see what comes of it if you want to grow and change the literature. It's not that far out of a concept. >What might be an "abstract concept of a literary quality"? I'm scratching my >head here. Kant's sublime? Keats' negative capability? Too many people disagree about what constitutes value or quality for me to accept that there's a single, universally accepted definition. Again, I don't think the idea is that far out. >If you're interested in the discussion aspect, then I can feel confident >that you won't take offense at my dissentions. Not at all--at least not in the broad sense. But it does sound like you're throwing down a gauntlet. I'll reserve further comment until I see just what this little bon mot means. >What bothers me about her dislike-motive was that she brought the mirror of >her own experience up to someone else's experience, and because they didn't >match up, she rejected the other's experience. Isn't that rather myopic? >It's like saying that I didn't like Aliens III because it didn't match up >with my own experience of outerspace. I'm not sure that she rejected the other experience so much as she rejected the specific presentation as irrelevant to her interests. I talked about this in another post. If you actually have experience with outer space, then I think you have a better basis on which to reject the detail, and I think you have every right to do so. It may be myopic, and may cause readers to exclude themselves from reading stories that they would very much enjoy. But that's not only their right, it's their responsibility. I as a reader have no special responsibility to accept every word an author presents, any more than I as an automobile driver must drive every SUV made by every manufacturer for at least a year each to know that an SUV just doesn't fit into my needs as one individual driver. I can reject an instance without being required to do a full evaluation of either a single instance or of all instances. >Are things only aesthetic for you if they strike a chord of >experience that you've likewise had? I will admit that my answer to that >question is undoubtedly yes, but I wish it weren't so. I wish I didn't like >something only because it was like me. I don't think I require that a story touch on my own experience to be enjoyable, but when it does intersect with my experience I expect to be accurate or else have a good reason for the divergence. I think the movie _LadyHawke_ is a nearly perfect fantasy story, and is the one film I've seen more often than any other (with the possible exception of _The Rocky Horror Picture Show_ which I saw 41 times as a youth). I have no experience with what it's like to be a thief, a former captain of the guard, a disgraced priest, or a beautiful young woman, and I certainly have no direct experience with magic curses that change people into animals for approximately half of each day--or at least not in France in the Middle Ages. But I love nearly every second of that film. In that case, the discovery of different times and places and people is part of what makes the story interesting--but not the only thing. I loved _The Name of the Rose_ even though I have little direct experience with the Inquisition in either time or place. Part of what I enjoyed were the new things and ideas. But if there had not been some comprehensible aspect of character or setting, it would have been much harder to enjoy. One of my favorite short stories was published in a recent issue of _Irreantum_ ("Dead People" by Russell William Asplund) and featured a modern realistic setting populated by ghosts (both figurative and real). That I have no experience with ghosts was not an impediment to my enjoyment of that story, though admittedly it was the POV's commentary on his own life that really drew me into the story. I identified with *much* of what he had to say about the business of living, and the fantastic context provided a vehicle that enabled that expression to be refined into a pointed comment on our expectations. Yes, it was the unreal that made the expression interesting and engaging, but it was the firm grounding in the realistic that made it intimate. I think successful fiction requires both. >I heard somewhere, in a kiersey temperment prediction explanation of sorts, >that marriages worked out best if you shared with your spouse two >similarities of personality [SNIP] >Might the same go for narratives? I think that's >essentially what you're saying. For my Sweden friend, GA was WXYZ while she >was ABCD. Maybe. Sort of. I'm not sure it's that simple. I don't know why she didn't connect; I know I did even though I had few of the non-trivial experiences that Dutcher portrayed in his film (I also failed to have many of the trivial experiences, too; no salt in the cereal, no pictures on the john, no general frolicking, and *no* picnics with sister missionaries--they weren't allowed in Berlin at the time (either picnics or sisters)). Not every image engages every viewer, and not every story engages every reader. How do I explain why I prefer the color blue over eggshell white? I just do. How do I explain that I love the rock band Rush but can't stand Bruce Springsteen? I love Mozart, but Bach just doesn't interest me the same way. I get a kick out of Karl Orff but Philip Glass leaves me cold. I like Enya but not Sinead. This discussion started with my comment that I generally didn't care for stories based on missionary experiences. Despite the massive amounts of comment I heard on _God's Army_ and the fact that it showed longer and in more theaters in Utah than pretty much anywhere else, I still didn't see it on the big screen. It just didn't interest me enough. (Of course I turned out to be wrong; the film ended up interesting me a great deal, but that lack of initial interest stopped me from seeing it for a long time.) I knew I should see it. I knew that to be educated on modern Mormon storytelling I would have to see it some day. But I never got the energy to overcome my own inertia. Even after I presented it an award on behalf of the AML. Then I saw _Brigham City_ (more out of a sense of duty than anything else) and I so enjoyed the film that I stopped at Media Play and bought _God's Army_ on the way home from the theater, because I figured if GA was anywhere near as good as BC, I had to see it. Now. The end result is that I now have a testimony of Richard Dutcher and can unabashedly say that I am a fan and would love to find a way to work with him on something. Your friend may well have found much in _God's Army_ that was familiar and felt right to her. But the overall film may have just left her flat for any of a large number of reasons. Heaven knows, a story told from a male missionary's POV (especially one that gets a good shot in on a sister missionary) leaves a pretty large experiential gap. She may well have felt that Richard Dutcher was trying to portray *the* quintessential missionary story, and when it failed to address her on her terms found it be pale. That's her right, just as it's my right to say that I found much to like about it and was engaged despite the many variances to my own experience. There's a separate discussion here about what people *should* like, and how much of a story they *should* read, and whether anyone has the right to reject any work as uninteresting without having fully experienced the work. I think people do have that right, though they may very well be missing out on something that they would find vital if they had only overcome their own inertia. I know I did with _God's Army_ and I feel properly chastened and at least a little better educated that I was before. Which is not to say that I will now run out and read _Tathea_ from cover to cover--I'm still not interested in reading that novel despite the AML Award I gave it. But I do recognize that I may be missing out on something that would be a powerful experience for me. Oh well. Scott Parkin - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 13:41:49 -0500 From: Linda Adams Subject: RE: [AML] Value of Experience (was: Childbirth) At 03:13 PM 6/15/01, you wrote: >I think that what Anna is talking about repeatedly in her posts is not >whether men can write effectively about childbirth, but a larger issue: >that women have a centuries-long sense of being the second sex, the one's >who are not quite as important, who sit in the background, who have the >lower-paying jobs, who do the back-up work for the big shots. I'm running into similar flack from certain Black persons who tell me I should not even try to write from the Black perspective. For similar reasons. Yet I don't see the world in one color (white); I'm not going to avoid using multicultural characters because the historical injustice and oppression of non-white peoples is something I can't experience because of the pale color of my skin. To me, using an "all-white" cast of characters would be more racist, just like a book with all male or all female characters could be considered sexist. Any thoughts on this angle of the writer's dilemma? (I'm going off-line again after I post this--but will catch up in a week.) Linda Linda Adams adamszoo@sprintmail.com http://home.sprintmail.com/~adamszoo - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 21:07:08 -0600 From: LuAnnStaheli Subject: [AML] Re: RITTER, _Over the Wall_ I'm sending a compilation of several emails between Tracie Laulusa and Lu Ann Staheli from the AML list, including a response from John H. Ritter about his YA novel Over the Wall . I've tried to reconstructe this post into chronological order to make it easier to follow the threads. Lu Ann I finished a book last night that could have been very good. I've been wanting to read it because I heard the author read part of in at a conference. (John Ritter/Over the Wall) I finally found it and started in. About a third of the way the author wrote something that I found totally improbable--though others might not--and he lost me. I finished the book, but from then on I was reading a book, not living the story. Tracie Laulusa I've read Over the Wall and I didn't find anything implausible about it. Just wondering what you are referring to. Lu Ann Staheli I *did* say that probably no one else would think that it was implausible. And it was such a small passage too. Kind of amazing that it had that effect on me. In the first chapter Tyler tells us the story of his sister's death. It happened when he was 4 and she is 6. He is at the time of the telling, I believe, 13. Later in the story, when he's made a pretty big mess of everything he says: "It was times like these when I really missed Lissie. Missed my older, smarter sister who always knew what to say and what to do to make me feel better. Who hugged me--I could still feel her strong arms around me now--and taught me new words and how to write my own name and taught me a song about Christopher Robin who went to a palace with a girl named Alice." It just hit me as all wrong. I have a four year old son, and a seven year old daughter. I know that Josh, at four, does not think about his 'older, smarter sister'. A six year old does not 'always knew what to say and what to do to make me feel better'. We're talking a four year old and six year old here! And strong arms around him. Now Josh might consider his 17 year old sister as strong--in fact the above description fits their relationship very well, though the perceptions of 'smarter' probably belong to an older child--but he, Josh, is every bit as strong as his seven year old sister, and maybe even his nine year old sister. I could see a boy of 13--the age Tyler is when he's telling the story--having these perceptions if he was that age when it happened. Maybe even if the accident happened when the boy was 6 or older, and the sister a bit more than two years old than him. But, it just didn't ring true for a boy of 13 to remember his sister in this light--a sister only two years older than himself, when the accident happened when he was four. As you can tell, it really, really bothered me. And it is such a small thing. And yes, of course I'm reading it from the perspective of my own experience--but I know kids pretty well. My own and the dozens I've worked with over the years. It just didn't work for me at all. Also, I think the first chapter set up an expectation that the death of the sister would have more of a role in the story than it did. The character's 'coming of age', or whatever you call it, did involve his understanding of his dad and his dad's reaction to his sister's death. But, except for the above paragraph, little was said about how it effected him personally, other than it disrupted his family life enough for them to be willing to send him to NY. The author sets up this elaborate retelling of the accident. All about how Lissie plays these tricks. All about Tyler watching--part of the joke. All about her shushing him, and his 'clamping my mouth so I wouldn't give away our joke to Dad.' And then the truck hitting her and her screaming, and him yelling to his dad to stop...... He's an angry young man, has trouble controlling his temper, his family life has been disrupted, but, except for the above paragraph, the death of his sister has not been a factor in all that. I mean, it effected his father profoundly, and that effected Tyler's life, but the death did not seem to affect him directly except as a loss of comfort in a paragraph that didn't ring true to me. That death, given the importance it is given in the first chapter, should have, for my 'enjoyment' of the book, had something more to do with the story than just as his dad's problem and an excuse for him to be sent to NY. But then maybe, as a four year old, the death would not effect him that profoundly. Tracie Laulusa Dear LuAnn, Thanks for sending along the AML comments. It's fun to see Over the Wall being scrutinized so closely. Though I'm responding only to you, please fell free to pass this response along to Tracie or to the listserv itself. I've never participated in a listserv, so I don't quite know the protocol. Thanks. Okay, here goes. I think Tracie's point is well-taken. I can certainly see how she arrived at it. And though I often tell my writing workshop students that "The truth is no defense," when it comes to having broken a reader's "fictional dream" and ruining her enjoyment of the story--I will start from that point in this case. When I was four years old, my mother died of breast cancer after a rather short illness. I never felt the loss. That is, I never cried or felt abandoned. And in later years, sad thoughts of her death never entered my mind--and still don't--though I got an awful lot of pity along the way from well-meaning adults. I credit my peace with Mom's passing to the fact that I was four when it happened and that I believed it when I was told again and again, "Your mother is in heaven, John. She's watching over you." So essentially, I never felt a loss. (I even dedicated Choosing Up Sides to her as if she were still "here.") The death of my mom for my eleven year old sister, however, was completely different, as you might imagine, as was the effect it had on my dad, my three year old brother, and my six year old brother. We all had our unique points of view. And there's my touchstone for this scene. My six year old brother. His strong arms around me when a neighbor boy pushed me down one day while our mom was away, in the hospital. His "knowledge" of the world, his stories about what school was like or how bobcats prowled our backyard (we, as was Tyler in the novel, were country boys, independent and roamers of the nearby hills) or the proper way to eat an ice cream cone. (You have to lick around the back of it before it melts on your fingers.) Oh, yes, at four years old, how I admired my "older, smarter" brother. And I would wager to say that neither our mother nor our father, as outside observers, would ever believe from their adult perspective that I, as a four year old, would think these thoughts about my brother. Shoot, even HE wouldn't know. I don't think I've ever told anybody until now. In fact, I think my parents would KNOW I didn't think this way--as Tracie noted about her own children in her comments--[QUOTE]I know that Josh, at four, does not think about his 'older, smarter sister'. A six year old does not 'always knew what to say and what to do to make me feel better'. We're talking a four year old and six year old here! And strong arms around him.[END QUOTE]. Goodness. Well, maybe I was a weird kid. But I actually suspect that none of us KNOW what our children are really thinking about the world around them. So I based the scene, and Tyler's memories of it, on my own. But as I said above, the truth is no defense for writing something readers won't believe. As an author, I am constantly trying to anticipate the reactions to my fictional scenes. (It's my editor's job to help me do this as well--and he does.) I am constantly going back and "foreshadowing" events as I revise my drafts in order to make some outlandish or pivotal scene more believable. Unfortunately, I can't foresee them all. In this case, I wish I would have alluded to Tyler's thoughts in a more believable manner--as I hope I have done above, sans revision (!!), of my own boyhood memories of the family dynamics in my house. Thank you LuAnn and Tracie for taking my work so much to heart. I will be ever vigilant in the future to scaffold my scenes a bit stronger than I did here. There is nothing worse than breaking a reader's fictional dream--it breaks a writer's heart. Please feel free to contact me if you so desire. I welcome you to view the comments posted on my own Bulletin Board at www.JohnHRitter.com and to add your own to the discussion of my novels. I send all best wishes. Sincerely, John H. Ritter 6.16.2001 - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 21:11:52 -0700 From: Elizabeth Hatch Subject: [AML] Request for Information: Mountain Meadows Massacre I've been wanting to read Marilyn Brown's _Wine-Dark Sea of Grass_, but I don't have it yet, so I went on the internet and did a search for Mountain Meadows Massacre. I found a memoir from John D. Lee (I think that was his name) and a related article that linked from his memoir-site. I read about the massacre, the cover-up, destroying angels, blood atonement and castration, among other things. I am stunned. I've been a member for twenty-six years (I was a teenager when I discovered and joined the church); I lived in Utah for seven years; I graduated from BYU, and I've never heard of these things before. Can any of you recommend books I can read, or give me information, that will help me process these things? I'm so grateful that I can turn to all of you. I honestly don't know who else I could ask about these things. I feel certain that many, or most, of you have already dealt with them. Thank you so much. Beth [MOD: I have always heard that the most reputable place to start is with Juanita Brooks's book, entitled, I believe, _The Mountain Meadows Massacre_. Comments?] - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 20:06:31 -0000 From: "Andrew Hall" Subject: [AML] Richard Dutcher interview (Deseret News) Deseret News, Sunday, June 17, 2001 Richard Dutcher, Mormon moviemaker By Doug Robinson Deseret News senior writer PROVO =97 If Richard Dutcher, the Mormon moviemaker, ever runs out of movie= =20 ideas he could mine material from his own life. He could tell the story of a young boy who fills his long hours at home=20 alone by writing his own novels, and years later, after long days working in oil fields and pizza=20 joints and nursing homes, he writes more stories. He could write the tale of a father who chases women and works behind bars= =20 and a stepfather who chases girls and is locked behind bars. He could tell a Disneyesque story of a scrawny high school kid who lives in his car and looks the part of a rebel with his scraggly hair and black leather jacket except he is a student body officer and editor of the school newspaper and much more. He could tell the classic tale of a starving actor who has to buy his groceries at a gas station because it's the last place that will give him credit, and then after spending five years making a movie he is told he must add nudity and sex scenes =97 so he quits the business and resigns himself to being a schoolteacher. Dutcher, the writer-producer-director-actor for "God's Army" and "Brigham City," could turn his life into a movie, and, for that matter, he already has. Parts of his life were spread among the various characters in "God's Army," his movie about missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The missionary with the pedophile father? That's Dutcher= =20 and his stepfather. The missionary who had the emotional=20 religious-conversion experience? Dutcher again. Maybe he is a devout Mormon, a member of his ward's elders quorum presidency= =20 and a returned missionary and the first Mormon to take Mormon movies to the big screen, but= =20 he didn't exactly grow up in Happy Valley with church on Sunday and Family Home Evening with= =20 Jell-O on Mondays. "I've had some dark, ugly kinds of experiences I'd rather not experience=20 again," he says. By all accounts, Dutcher has emerged from it all remarkably unscathed, an=20 energetic, devout, driven man of 37 years with four children and a talented,= =20 sculptor wife. "He has succeeded through an incredible force of will," says his wife, Gwen= =20 Dutcher. "Like pushing a huge boulder up a hill." Dutcher was a down-and-almost-out filmmaker in California when he stumbled= =20 upon the idea of making movies for an audience he knew, or thought he knew: Mormons. He wrote= =20 "God's Army" based on his own missionary experiences, then moved to Provo to baby-sit the= =20 project. Right from the start, he had decided he didn't care if the movie offended=20 non-Mormons; after all, he reasoned, people had been poking fun at Mormons in films for years. This=20 movie was for Mormons. But by the time the final credits rolled, it was Mormons =97 some= of=20 them anyway =97 who were offended by his movies and bashed him for it in letters to Utah=20 newspapers. "There's a vocal minority who think I'm a child of Satan, and then there's= =20 the non-Mormon community who compare me to Frank Capra," says Dutcher. "You can't be both.= =20 I'm just a normal guy. They see one movie, and they think they know the guy. I've been= =20 called egotistical and blasphemous. It kind of hurt. It felt like I was being judged by my own= =20 people. Suddenly, I was outside the culture to these people. I wasn't one of them. Then it got= =20 very personal. They questioned my honesty; they say I just want to make money off the church.=20 People who don't know me at all. It's hard to read about yourself in the paper and have=20 people describe you as something that you're not. They're writing about this character Richard=20 Dutcher that doesn't feel like me at all." Apparently, it's acceptable to show Catholic Mass or Catholic confessionals= =20 or Jewish bar mitzvahs, but to some it was unthinkable to show a Mormon church meeting or= =20 a sacrament prayer or a healing. Dutcher of course disagrees. "You can't tell Mormon stories without telling specifics of Mormonism," he says. "I had no interest in making Mormon doctrine look just like any other Protestant religion. Why would I do that? Why not make it some other religion, like other Mormon filmmakers. There are tons of Mormon filmmakers who are telling Mormon stories and then take Mormonism out of it. It's cowardly and greedy. They do it because they think they'll make more money at it, but they're doing a disservice to their own people." Though stung by the criticism, Dutcher says the response has been mostly "positive." He says he received "a ton of response" about "God's Army;" many people wrote to say the movie inspired them to serve missions or to be baptized. Dutcher says he even received "positive feedback" from an LDS general authority about "God's Army," "but I don't want to say any more. It's not for public consumption. It was a private conversation. I don't want to use that as a marketing ploy. But it would shut these people up." This new mix of Mormonism and movies has proved touchy. Dutcher was even taken to task by some Mormons for violence in the murder mystery "Brigham City," although the actual violence was not even shown on= =20 camera. Others were offended that he showed missionaries playing practical jokes on one=20 another and acting, well, like 19-year-old boys, never mind that Dutcher served a mission (in=20 Mexico) and wrote the script based on personal experiences. That notwithstanding, Dutcher is just getting warmed up. "I will stick with= =20 the Mormon themes until they stop making money," he says. "And if that happened, I'd move on= =20 to make money, so I could make some more of them. If I had the money, I'd make movies till I= =20 ran out of money." Dutcher has aspired to make movies since he was a young teen, but it has=20 been a long and winding road to reach that point. He spent his early years in Mount Vernon,= =20 Ill. His father, Lyle Hill, was a truck driver, meatpacker and bartender. He also was, in Dutcher's=20 words, an alcoholic and a womanizer who came home "loud and rowdy" after his binges. He remembers=20 visiting his father at his bar, riding his tricycle between the tables and playing=20 pinball while his father worked. "The first seven years were pretty grim," says Dutcher. "We lived in tiny=20 houses, there was no money; Mom worked and Dad was gone all the time. In one of our houses you=20 could see the dirt through the holes in the floor." Dutcher's parents divorced when he was 6. "He went his way, and I didn't see= =20 him again till I was 23," he says. "I tried. I didn't harbor ill feelings. He had problems with= =20 alcoholism, and those were the reasons the marriage fell apart. It was good to meet him and talk to=20 him, but it's hard when you've grown up without a father and learned to do without him. It's hard to= =20 create a relationship. We talk every couple of years, but there's not a lot to talk= =20 about except the Cubs." His mother remarried a man named Harold Dutcher about a year later. He was a= =20 businessman whose knack for failed businesses kept the family on the move in search of a= =20 new start. From Illinois they went to Wisconsin, Kentucky and then Utah, just in time for=20 Dutcher to begin his sophomore year at Hillcrest High. It wasn't until years later that Dutcher learned his stepfather carried a dark secret. He was convicted of molesting a young girl shortly after Dutcher returned from his church mission. Later, other similar cases came to light. Harold is in prison, scheduled to be released in 2007. "I get a phone call every now and then (from his stepfather)," says Dutcher. "He saw 'God's Army.' He liked it." And how did his father react to the pedophile father who is mentioned in the movie? "He never mentioned it. I never mentioned it. I was interested to see how he would react to it, because I was very forthright about it in the movie." Harold's one legacy is his religion. Dutcher and his family converted from the Pentecostal faith to Harold's LDS faith. "The first time I attended an LDS meeting I remember immediately liking it," says Dutcher. It wasn't until he was 14 that Dutcher= =20 says he was truly converted through an experience he would later recount through the=20 African-American missionary in "God's Army." The family was visiting Mormon historical sites in=20 Illinois, and he had been praying for months to know if the church was true. "I had read the Book of Mormon a couple of times, as well as the Bible, and= =20 I had been very active, but I never felt that experience of having personal revelation that= =20 it was true," he says. "I was at a crossroads, if I was going to keep going. I was sitting in the=20 Carthage jail where Joseph Smith was martyred, and I bowed my head and asked if it was real. I began=20 sobbing and I couldn't stop. Everybody was looking at me and wondering what was happening.= =20 It was powerful and wonderful. I was just filled with light. It didn't come from within; it= =20 came from without. I was just a participant. It is still something I draw on and go back to." Just before the start of Dutcher's senior year at Hillcrest High, the family= =20 moved again, this time to Kansas; Dutcher remained behind. He stayed with one family and then=20 another, but it proved uncomfortable for both. He was kicked out of his second home at=20 Christmastime and was on his own. Dutcher spent part of his senior year living out of his beat-up,=20 bumpers-falling-off '71 Mercury Comet. He slept in his car and showered at school or at friends' houses. He= =20 had little money, which was nothing new. He had just two pairs of pants to wear, and he=20 survived on macaroni and cheese and 29-cent hamburgers from Dee's. "I had just enough money to keep gas in the car and eat a little," he=20 recalls. "If there was a choice between seeing a movie or eating, I'd choose the movie. . . . I=20 remember wishing that someday I could buy a can of soda and it would not be a big deal." Despite his meager circumstances, Dutcher earned good grades, edited the=20 school newspaper, acted in school plays, worked various jobs to support himself and served as= =20 student body vice president. He was offered several scholarships, and=20 accepted one to BYU. "He was not a wild guy, but he marched to his own drummer," recalls Shellie= =20 Jorgensen, a Dutcher confidant and former classmate. "He dressed differently than=20 everyone else. Preppy was the fashion, and he wore a black leather jacket, jeans and the same shoes=20 the whole year. He was short and scrawny. Anyone who didn't know him would think he was a nerd,= =20 but he wasn't. Everyone who knew him liked him. He was always very kind and very=20 independent, and he was a hard worker. He didn't ask for anything from anybody." Says Gwen, "He's so free of baggage for someone who went through what he=20 went through. It astounds me. He's got confidence. He had to be independent at an early age.= =20 At 14, if he wanted clothes he bought them, and if he wanted meals he cooked them. I admire him= =20 for how he was able to come out of it without resentment and with a positive outlook on=20 what he can achieve." There was never any doubt what Dutcher would do someday. Not in his mind or= =20 anyone else's. He never made an announcement or a conscious decision; it was= =20 just understood. "I never considered doing anything else," says Dutcher. "It would be either= =20 films or novels." Says Jorgensen, "He always had a real passion for writing and acting. For=20 years my husband and I have been waiting for him to do this. I told my husband when we got=20 married that this guy is going to be famous someday. He has that something about him." His love of writing and storytelling came at least in part from growing up= =20 alone. His mother was working, his father was gone and his older brother (by 2 1/2 years) was off= =20 with his own friends. "I had to make up stories to entertain myself," he says. "I didn't have any= =20 money, so I couldn't go anywhere." He wrote his first novel when he was 11. (Years later he=20 realized it was a rip-off of "Alive.") When he was 13, Dutcher was profoundly moved by an article he read in the=20 Ensign, an LDS Church magazine, in which church President Spencer W. Kimball urged LDS=20 artists to tell the Mormon story. "It was exciting, thrilling," he says. "We had a really big lawn in=20 Kentucky, an acre and a half of grass that I mowed with a push mower. That's how I would occupy my time,=20 thinking about stories or how to make films or novels." His love for telling stories came to include the art in all its various=20 forms =97 writing, theater, movies, acting. It was all the same. He wrote a play in high school =97 "It was terrible," he says =97 and he= began=20 acting in plays. "People loved to see him in our school plays," says Jorgensen. "He'd=20 improvise during the play and have the place roaring with laughter. It would throw the other actors=20 for a loop. It was great. You could see he had an absolute talent for it. He was constantly writing=20 things and acting." Dutcher spent a year at BYU and then took a series of jobs to pay for a=20 church mission. He pumped gas and changed tires in Arizona, and he cooked pizza, worked in a=20 nursing home, pressed apple cider and drilled for oil in Kansas. Through it all, he would= =20 come home at the end of each day, clean up, write his stories, send them to publishers and wait for= =20 the next rejection slip. "I thought the only way to get out of those jobs was to publish a book or=20 sell a script," he says. After serving his church mission, Dutcher returned to BYU and began to=20 audition for locally produced movies. He had small parts in church films, TV movies and=20 independent films. After graduating from BYU in 1988, he moved to Los Angeles to find more movie=20 roles, but they were hard to come by. During his 10 years in L.A., he was a substitute schoolteacher and worked=20 the graveyard shift at 7-Eleven while pursuing a career in movies and supporting his wife and=20 children. For a time, he stayed home with the kids, writing scripts and managing apartments on the=20 side while Gwen worked. An art major at BYU, she was a master sculptor for Disney's=20 collectible porcelain figures =97 Winnie the Pooh, Cinderella, Thumper. "We certainly got to see what it was like to struggle financially, but they= =20 were incredibly happy years," says Gwen. "That's what I expected when I married an actor and=20 filmmaker. We lived paycheck-to-paycheck occasionally. The worst it got was when we maxed all=20 our credit cards. All we had was our gas card, so we'd get our groceries at= =20 the gas station." Dutcher waited for the big break that never came. Nobody was going to=20 discover him, he realized, so he decided the only solution was to make his own movie. He=20 wrote, directed, produced, marketed and raised money for "Girl Crazy," a romantic comedy. He= =20 made the movie with $50,000 and no name actors. "That's where I learned how to make films," he says. "That was my graduate= =20 school." It took five years to complete the project, and Dutcher put every dime he=20 had into it. He sold the movie to HBO, but didn't make enough to cover his costs. When Dutcher met=20 with a distributor about international sales =97 which would have provided him with= significantly=20 increased profits =97 he was told that he must add nudity every seven or eight minutes. Dutcher,= =20 who had become so entrenched in Hollywood and making movies that he was slowly drifting away= =20 from his religion, was at a crossroads. "It was at that moment that I wondered what am I doing here," he says. "I=20 knew I wasn't going to do that. I walked out really in despair. I thought there is no way I can= =20 be LDS and be a successful filmmaker. It was a real turning point. I thought I was going to= =20 have to give it up. I had come to a place where I had to choose. I knew the formula (for a successful= =20 movie) by then. I even had the film in my head that if I made it I would have everything I=20 needed =97 recognition and money. Then suddenly you have a career. I even=20 started shooting the film. "I was lying in bed one night and saw where I was heading and it wasn't a=20 good place. I was really going down the wrong path. I wasn't being true to the kid. These=20 weren't my stories; I was just responding to the market. Mormonism was a big part of it. These films= =20 could have been made by anybody." Dutcher quit the movie business and planned to become a full-time=20 schoolteacher and novelist. Or so he thought. One day he was barbecuing hamburgers in the yard when his= =20 eye fell on the L.A. Times movie section. "There were four new gay-themed films opening in L.A.," he says. "I was so= =20 frustrated. Why do they get to make movies, and I don't? Why can't Mormons do the same thing?= =20 Each film doesn't have to be for the whole world. Just appeal to enough people to get your=20 money back. Even if only LDS liked the films, that's enough. It was so clear. It was as if=20 someone shook me. I sat at the picnic table and started to work it out. Up to that point I was writing= =20 mainstream stuff. I wondered what kind of story can I tell as a Mormon that no one else can=20 tell. It was a totally new place. I began writing. I'd be weeping at the computer. Just going through= =20 these stories that moved me and taught me. I realized I had spent five years on 'Girl Crazy' to= =20 make 90 minutes of fluff. It was cute, but it didn't mean anything. It was totally disposable= =20 entertainment, and it almost drove me to bankruptcy. I decided five years of my life was worth=20 more than that, and at least I was going to make something that matters so I could look back on it= =20 and say it was worth it." He wrote a script for a Mormon Western and even started to raise money for= =20 it when he realized the film would be too expensive for an independent filmmaker to produce.=20 There was no way an investor was going to give him $2 million to $3 million for a movie that=20 targeted an untested market. To make a movie he could afford, Dutcher decided it had to be set in= =20 L.A, it had to be in present day and it had to use young actors (read: cheaper, nonunion). Then= =20 it dawned on him: Missionaries. "What better movie to lead off with?" he says. "I drew on my own=20 experiences. I took two years and condensed them. They tell you to write about what you know. I knew this= =20 was absolutely right." He met plenty of skepticism along the way. It took him four years to raise= =20 $300,000 and produce 'God's Army.' Dutcher played the lead role in part to save money.=20 "It was hard to find the right actor on that budget," he says. "I almost cast someone else. But= =20 at the last minute I thought I'm not going to do all the work and let someone else have all the= =20 fun." "God's Army" was largely a husband-wife production. Gwen, who was a line=20 producer for "Girl Crazy," helped with costumes, marketing, sets and publicity. "She would use= =20 her maiden name so we wouldn't sound like a mom-and-pop outfit," says Dutcher. "It was just= =20 Gwen and I until a couple of weeks before the movie actually opened. I was working constantly.= =20 We were in over our heads." They even booked theaters and hand-delivered prints of the=20 movies to Utah theaters before signing with Excel Entertainment. The movie, of course, took the industry by surprise. "God's Army" played in= =20 240 cities nationwide last year, grossing $2.6 million at the box office=20 before being sold to video. That paved the way for Dutcher's next film, "Brigham City," another film=20 that went mainstream, albeit not as successfully as "God's Army." Now Dutcher has turned his=20 energy to another Mormon-movie project: "The Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith Jr." It will be by far his biggest undertaking, with a production cost of $10=20 million and financial support from Larry H. Miller. Dutcher will use "recognizable actors" this time and= =20 will play only a minor character in the movie. Most of the filming will take place in Canada, New= =20 York and Missouri. Dutcher expects to complete the film in a year and a half. "I feel peaceful about it," he says. "There's something very fitting, going= =20 back to that experience in Carthage jail. It feels right. I'm surprised=20 nobody has beaten me to it." Dutcher has done extensive research on his subject and consulted with=20 Richard Bushman, a Joseph Smith historian, but the movie is likely to rankle= =20 a few Mormons again. "Most of us don't really know that much about Joseph Smith," he says. "I=20 found that out myself. I'm very familiar with the scriptures, but when you go into historical facts= =20 and his story, well, I had no idea. They're not bad things, or good things, just the particulars of= =20 his life. I think it's better when you see him as a man. We have elevated him to Godlike stature.= =20 There's nothing wrong with revering him and honoring him in his divine mission, but there is= =20 something wrong with believing that while he was here he was perfect. It leads us to a false= =20 understanding of the role of prophets. I find it comforting. If the Lord can use flawed people to= =20 do his work, there's hope for all of us." Dutcher, meanwhile, wonders why other Mormons aren't telling Mormon-related= =20 stories when their religion is such a central part of their lives, but then he seems to= =20 answer his own question =97 "Maybe it's because they realize they're not going to get rich." After years= =20 of financing films with personal credit cards and loans and "always living right on the edge" =97 he= =20 was $30,000 in debt when he started "God's Army" =97 he still has never owned a home. He's still= =20 renting a house in Provo but recently purchased an acre of land in the area. He also splurged= =20 and bought himself a second car =97 another first for him. "It feels good to have something," he says of his land purchase. "Hopefully,= =20 with another movie, we can start building a house. I don't want to take out a huge loan from the= =20 bank. I've never had the living that could guarantee a certain salary. . . . I feel better, but= =20 I'm very aware that I might be back there again in a couple of years. Filmmaking is a pretty precarious,= =20 unstable way of living." Not that he's complaining. He is living the boyhood dream of making films=20 and telling stories and loving it. He typically writes in the morning and puts on his producer's hat= =20 in the afternoon and then dotes on his children =97 Lucas, Ethan, Eli and Issac =97 and his wife.= By=20 the way, you can see Gwen in "Girl Crazy," in which she is identified in the credits as "sexy=20 neighbor." And that's Gwen being baptized in the ocean in "God's Army," and that's her again in the=20 picture on the wall of his house and another on his desk in "Brigham City,"= =20 identified as "Wes' sexy wife." Looking back on his two latest films, Dutcher says, "It feels good. It feels= =20 really good. I hope I get better at it =97 better at storytelling. I'm not satisfied with what I've=20 done. Someday I hope to make a film, sit back and say, you know what,=20 there's not one thing I'd change about it." E-mail: drob@desnews.com =A9 2001 Deseret News Publishing Company _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.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 #362 ******************************