From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #571 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, January 14 2002 Volume 01 : Number 571 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 22:38:13 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Acceptance of Christian Lit On Tue, 18 Dec 2001 17:15:17 -0700 "Todd Petersen" writes: > Harlow's list, I imagine is supposed to make one say, wait there are > tons of religious writers out there.=20 There _are_ tons of religious writers out there, though I only mentioned Christian writers. If I had included writers from other traditions I might have added Sholem Asch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Israel Joshua Singer, Phillip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Kamala Markandaya and Sahar Tawfiq (who I haven't read, but may be religious writers--certainly write about religious cultures), Nagib Mahfouz (don't hold me to the spelling, haven't read him either, except a statement about his Islamic beliefs), Louis Owens, and Ray Carver--who didn't consider himself a believer,=20 but has a religious vision compatible with St. James' definition of "pure religion and undefiled." And the names I listed are only from my fiction collection. I haven't even drawn from Philosophy, History, Poetry, or General Religion. Not only are there tons of religious writers, there are a lot of religious publishers. One of the writers I mentioned, Wilfred Sheed, is the son of=20 Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, who started a Catholic(?) publishing company. > He's mentioned about 50 drawn from the last 150 years or so. =20 Mostly drawn from people who have published in the last 20 years and still have books in print. > My point is this: march up to WW Norton and > say, I'm a Christian writer and see what happens. Well, if your name is Brady Udall they might just publish your book, two of them. I doubt that many people march up to WW Norton or any publisher and say, "I'm a Marxist, or feminist, or Darwinian." I suspect that they send stories in to editors and see what happens. Do you know anyone who _has_ marched in to WW Norton and said, "I'm a Christian writer?"=20 What happened? > Many of the writers Harlow mentioned were writers first, and their > Christianity followed them into the room through the back door. Give me some examples, please. Show me fifty or so religious writers who have had trouble getting past the evil Albert Ross. I'm not saying this rhetorically. I'm a scholar of writer-editor relations, particularly of the unequal power relationship between writers and editors. I interviewed Mormon writers for my essay, "Feeding Stories to the Lion," including Margaret Young and John Bennion, who told me how hard it is to publish culturally Mormon fiction in the national market. I also have stories from Phyllis Barber and Dean Hughes to the same effect. Hughes said a couple of years ago at AML gathering that he had a story where a father misses his son's baptism, and the publishers weren't comfortable with that, so he changed it to a baseball game. "That's the same thing, really," Tim Slover quipped. But I asked Judith Freeman if she had had any grief about the Mormon elements in her fiction and she said not at all. When we interviewed Levi Peterson for Irreantum, he told about his inability to get _The Backslider_ published by a NY house: >>>>> When I first began writing stories seriously, around 1976, I bought the current Writer's Market and used its brief descriptions to help me decide where to submit my stories. It was there I found notice of the University of Illinois Press's short fiction series and sent a single story with a letter of inquiry. That of course eventually led to the publication of The Canyons of Grace. I was luckier than I had any idea. There were brief reviews of my collection in newspapers and magazines in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. I am sure that is why WW Norton=20 invited me to submit my next work to them. In late 1983 I sent the first chapter of The Backslider. They liked it so I sent the completed chapters, about half the novel. They said it wouldn't sell in their market. I submitted a complete draft to Houghton Mifflin in the fall of 1983. I don't remember how I picked them out. They said complimentary things about the novel but said it wouldn't sell in their market. I submitted another complete draft, revised and shortened, to Doubleday in early 1985. Again I can't remember why I thought they would be a good bet. They said nice things about it but said it wouldn't sell in their market. I asked two or three published authors for names of agents in New York. I sent the manuscript to at least one agent. I have a memory of sending it to two agents, but I can't find documentation for that in my letters. That agent said the novel wouldn't sell in his market and refused to take it on. In general the eastern publishers and agent who looked at my manuscript liked it as long as Frank was a true backslider. But when he got serious about his Mormonism=96too serious, of course, since his monk-like practice of his religion is one of the novel's major issues=96the eastern press lost interest. I recall that the brief Kirkus review said that the fictional interest of the stories in The Canyons of Grace barely "mumbled through the thunder of the message." I decided that the reviewer hadn't really read the stories. I think it is true that people who write book reviews on a schedule become scan readers; at best they read hurriedly. So maybe the editors and agent who read my draft of The Backslider simply weren't willing to grant the premises of the conflict. That would have required them to accept the legitimacy of Mormonism as a world view. <<<<< Since the U of Illinois' Short Fiction series, about as secular and Li-Fi as you get, I suspect a great deal depends on which editor reads the ms. I asked about Judith Freeman's comment that she had had no grief about the Mormon elements in her novels, and Levi said,=20 >>>>> There are many variables in the public's taste in books. It is possible that it is not my Mormon subject matter but my incompetent writing that has kept me from a success like Freeman's. If Mormon subject matter has something to do with it, I would explain it in this way. Freeman's Mormon protagonist in The Chinchilla Farm is on her way out of Mormonism. As I said, the New York publishers who looked at The Backslider liked it as long as Frank was a confirmed backslider. They stopped liking it when he got serious about his religion. Why can't readers accord the same dignity to Mormonism that they do to Judaism? It is not bigotry but covert fear. Mormonism is one of the most aggressive religions in the world and it is getting bigger and bigger. You cannot give a fair reading to literature which you think in its deepest intent aims to subvert your spiritual bearings. The irony for me is that I have never thought of my writing as subverting the faith of someone who is not Mormon. I have never thought of it as faith promoting. It surprised me to learn that many Mormon readers consider it so. <<<<<=20 So I'm prepared to believe that there is some strong resistance to writers writing openly about Mormonism in the national press, but when perhaps the hottest publishing phenomenon in years (30 million copies according to Gideon Burton ([AML] Gideon Burton on _Left Behind_ (pt 1) & (pt 2) 10/16/01, which # would surely be a large percentage of total sales by all LDS publishers in a year--indeed 1/10 of 1% of such sales could support an author for a year) is a series of Evangelical Christian last days novels, any unqualified claim that the evil Albert Ross hangs around the neck of Christian writers strains my credulity. Harlow Clark (who refuses to cluck with the hollow cluck of an Albert Ross strangling the windpipe) ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 00:56:17 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Peter JACKSON, _Fellowship of the Ring_ (Review) Annette Lyon wrote: > Okay, D. Michael, help me! I recognized the voice during the movie, and was > going nuts because with all the makeup, I couldn't place the actor. Now I > recognize the name [John Rhys-Davies], but I still can't place the face. What else has he been > in? I first saw him in the miniseries "Shogun" as Rodriguez. He played Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies. And he was the professor in the TV series "Sliders." He shows up here and there often, but I think those are his most well-known roles. - -- 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 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 01:03:40 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Life in Mormon Culture BroHam000@aol.com wrote: > > So if what some of you guys are saying is correct, it sounds as if our kids > would be better off being raised some other way than "in the Church?" > Somehow the course the Church is taking today misses the mark? Hmm. I'm not saying kids would be better off being raised outside the church. But I am saying that they would be better off being raised inside the church of a couple or three decades ago than today. Or maybe what I'm really saying is that they'd be better off raised outside of Utah than in. I've been in Utah so long now than I don't know how much of the goofiness I see is Utah-based or time-based. I do know that the church of my youth offered me much more than the church of my children's youth is offering them. - -- 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 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 04:13:10 -0800 From: jltyner@postoffice.pacbell.net Subject: [AML] Voices and Stories in Our Heads Well, here I am with another bout of insomnia, the voices and stories in my head refusing to go away unless I at least write down an idea or outline. Does this happen to other people? I got to bed late, slept for a short time and then kept coming to with dialogue and story ideas popping into my head and refusing to go away. The characters wouldn't stop talking. I finally got up and wrote some of it down in an idea book I have. I hope it will make some sense when I look at it in daylight. Again, I ask, in my zombie-like state, does this happen to other people? Or am I insane? Wait, don't reply to that last part. Kathy Tyner, Orange County, CA - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #571 ******************************