From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #836 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, September 23 2002 Volume 01 : Number 836 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 19:20:58 -0600 (MDT) From: Fred C Pinnegar Subject: [AML] Destroying Art (was: BYU Education Week Event) D. Michael Martindale said: I'm saying the only examples you gave of art that should be destroyed was pornography. But I don't know of anyone involved into his discussion who categorizes pornorgaphy as art. Therefore the point you were making in that message was not relevant. REPLY: Just a sec... On Sept 4th I responded to Eric Samuelsen's assertion, that decent people don't ever destroy art, by citing four historical cases in which decent people actually did destroy art, and noe of the cases involved pornography. They were 1. Golden Calf: religious art 2. Groves and idols: sacred religious sites and art 3. records of Gadianton robbers: religious manuscripts 4. Nauvoo Expositor: identifyied and destroyed as a public nuisance under existing laws. Michael responded on September 7 by asserting that Old Testament cases no longer apply and that Joseph Smith Blundered in the Expositor case. I clarified my response on Sep 10, adding at that time the pornography example. My hyperbole is in response to Eric's original and unsupportable categorical statement about decent people destroying art. Clark Goble respooned further on September 13 that he has actually claimed on the AML list that pornography is art. In addition, all I am saying about the pornography example anyway is that if a CD depicting pornography came into the hands of a decent person, the only acceptable course of action would seem to be destruction. I don't really want to get into a discussion of pornography either, so if it is a sticking point I will withdraw the case and simply reassert the fact that decent people have in the past and should today remove and destroy those parts of their personal art collection which they find offensive to the spiritual climate they want in their life and in their home. Arthur Henry King has a great poem about a man converted to the Quakers who buried his cello because he could not sell or give away something which he felt offended the spirit. Fred Pinnegar - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 09:51:51 -0600 From: "Marianne Hales Harding" Subject: [AML] Newsweek & Mormons Hey, all, I was reading my Newsweek this morning and came across this little blurb that I thought you'd all be interested in. (pg 10 of the Sept 23, 2002 issue) --Marianne Hales Harding Mormons: They're a Laugh Riot Mormons, known for their seriousness and sobriety, are letting loose on the silver screen with a spate of small-budget comedies. HaleStorm Entertainment, started by two Brigham Young University grads, started the trend with "The Singles Ward," a campy jab at the Mormon singles scene that was made for $400,000 (A line about divorce: "Our ancestors were able to handle four or five wives. You can't even keep one?") The movie--PG for "automotive mayhem"--has spawned eight other "Mormon comedies." (Eight!) A few are about the perils of missionary work, and one's about church basketball leagues. All this has prompted Mormon filmmaker Nathan Smith Jones to make a mockumentary about the quest to become the Mormon Spielberg. (Think "Spinal Tap" with Mormons.) "This market will be really competitive," Jones says, "I'm mocking it before it gets out of hand." _________________________________________________________________ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 22:33:52 -0600 From: "Scott Parkin" Subject: [AML] Truth & Responsibility in Writing (was: Not All Bad in Mormontown) Travis Manning wrote: >>> Telling "true, honest" stories with as many sides to it as is possible, is important in many instances; though, "truth" is somewhat in the eye of the presenter--facts can be spun and twisted with various interpretations. <<< It looks like I opened a can of worms I hadn't considered when writing my little mood piece. I was thinking fiction, and specifically of not being afraid to tell of our successes as people (and Mormons) in addition to offering our cultural critiques, introspective maunders, and institutional shreds. Frankly, non-fiction hadn't even occured to me. I'm a fiction writer, not a journalist. But you raise a difficult issue--what responsibility does an author have to expose (or not expose) other peoples' warts while telling their own true stories? I think it's an impossible question to answer. At the risk of oversimplification, though, I think in fiction the line is between exposing "their" sins and exposing "ours." While fiction may clearly depict actual events part of the conceit of fiction is that we change the names to protect the innocent (and the guilty). The thing I wrote on Monday was fiction, though it was based entirely on real events, and I included no names because in that case it wasn't the specific people I was trying to reveal so much as the general attitude of giving. How is that handled differently in journalism and history--or even fiction based on historical characters and events? I don't know, and that's why I haven't worked (and don't plan on working) in those forms. I think the lines are drawn differently for each person. I do know that I handle things quite differently in my general communication versus my private communication. I work fairly hard to avoid attacking the motives or value of individuals, though I will question their acts. But as I said, I don't approach subjects that ask me to judge those kinds of things in others. The closest I'm likely to come to that sort of thing is the occasional personal essay that features some real people. Even then, the question is where the focus of the work is--interior or exterior. I'm working on a personal essay right now that deals with my mother's death a few years ago and the fact that she was the only stable bridge between me and my father. It mentions the broad strokes of some things my father did that I don't consider to be right, and how those acts impacted me. In choosing the details of my narrative I left certain things vague and other things unsaid because they had little to do with the story of my own struggle, but had great power to injure my father--and his new wife. Perhaps that makes me weak; perhaps I fail to live up to my own call to be unafraid in telling our true stories. But I choose to tell the story in a way that is true to my experience while being at the same time as careful as I can be not to injure others. I'm lucky. I can always recast the story as fiction, change a few names, and create a layer of abstraction between my characters and the people they're based on that gives me perfect clearness of conscience. I've already written the first draft of the fictional version of the key events that changes the names and places, because that gives me freedom to include details that I would never dream of offering about my interactions with another real person in a non-fiction narrative. I don't believe we should focus on the errors, sins, or foibles of others in our non-fiction narratives except as they relate to our own struggles. But I also believe that the consequences of our errors often travel far away from us and hurt more than just ourselves. Still, in telling a story I think there's a clear difference between honestly revealing the key elements of true events and gleefully tattling (or angrily denouncing) the sins of others in the guise of "telling the truth." One intends to explain; the other intends to injure. I don't really like works intended to injure the people its characters are fashioned after. Because "the truth" is more than the accurate recounting of events. My mother died over seven years ago, but I've only now reached the point where I feel like I've gained enough distance to tell the story without making my father the villain. My character struggles with the perception of my father as villain, but I had to gain enough clarity as the narrator to keep that perception in character monologue rather than narrative statement. Instead of being an attack on my father, that changes the narrative into an exploration of how perceptions lead my character to struggle with his (sometimes unfair, sometimes justified) feelings about his father. Two completely different things. (Does that make any sense? What the character says or believes or does and what the narrative reveals about the whole situation are often different. The characters can be confused, manipulative, or deluded, but the implied storyteller should exist above the interpretations of the individual characters and allow the reader to see a larger world than the characters can. Or at least in the fiction I most like to read; fiction that allows my interpretations as a reader to be quite different than the interpretations of either the characters or the storyteller.) FWIW. >>> It does seem to me that isolated facts about a church member's life, for example, dragged out into the public view, with little or no context surrounding a situation may not be journalistically researchable, nor reported and written about in a balanced and fair manner. <<< Absolutely. But then it's not a true story; it's a polemic or an attack. We seem to want to believe that only our own motives are pure (or at least well-intentioned), that only our own motives are sometimes conflicted or confused. But others...oh, they do it *on purpose.* They do it with full knowledge of the pain they're causing. They had power to injure, where my only power was to be injured. So I'm going to expose them, show the true failures of their hearts and the corruptions of their souls. But none of us knows the inside of another person's head, and none of us is responsible to expose anyone else's sins to the world in general. It's why I get nervous about speculations on Kurt Bestor or Neil LaBute or anyone else's struggles to understand and integrate their experience with their beliefs. They can tell their own stories, because they know the thoughts of their own heads. But we can only speculate on what they think (or report on what they say), and they can likewise only speculate on what others were thinking or feeling during the events that injured their own souls. >>> If Christ forgets--or chooses not to bring up--our dirty little secrets, past mistakes, when is it feasible, plausible for us, non-Deity, to discuss, quibble over the transgressions of another soul? When should Christ forget sins and man still remember them? I think it's a good question for Mormon writers to consider. <<< Absolutely! We should ask ourselves that question every time we tell a story that has the power to injure the real people that narrative characters are based on (even journalism and history are populated by narrative characters rather than real people, I think). We should always check our own motives, then double check them and pray we're being honest to ourselves. Here's the problem. If an abused child tells the story of their abuse, the parent is revealed as a sinner. But the parent gave the child permission to tell that story when they abused the child. Yes, the parent may have repented, and Christ no longer looks upon that person as a sinner--the sin is forgotten. But the ongoing consequence of sin is not erased because the sinner's heart has changed. The scars--both physical and emotional--do not necessarily vanish because an abuser repents. From my own experience I can suggest that sometimes the wounds are reopened and the pain made more poignant by the sinner's repentence. And that story is worth telling--as long as it is told truthfully. Even if it reinjures the repented sinner. I think that's part of what it means for the sins of the fathers to be visited on the heads of the children--sometimes for several generations. The sin has consequences; those consequences are no longer part of the sinner's private experience and are no longer his alone to suffer. It may not be fair for the repentent sinner to be harrowed up again in his sin, but it wasn't fair for the sinner to harrow up the souls of others in the first place. It seems to me that true repentence must allow for the rage of its victims as well. Yes, it would be better if the victims of sin were better than the sinner that injured them and showed pure love and charity and compassion. But most of us aren't that good, or at least not all the time. And if we demand our pound of flesh we sin as much as the one who injured us. Which is why we ought be careful about *why* we tell our true stories, and make careful consideration about *how* we tell our true stories. But I still think we need to tell our true stories. And we should be honest enough with ourselves to tell the story as an exploration of truth (or at least current understanding)--and be honest enough with ourselves to know that some true stories are completely opposed to our own understanding, but are still true. It's not all light, but it's not all darkness, either. I would love to see each storyteller work both sides of the fence and tell both stories of success and of failure, of frustration and of grace, of pain and of peace. Too many of our storytellers seem to pick a pet concept or methodology and explore it to the exclusion of all other truths. Some say that the only way to explore real truth is in either the ecstatic or the grotesque, and I think both writers sin equally in exploring only the one direction while excluding all other methods as valid. Do some writers hide behind the mask of "telling it like it is" when in fact they're just trying to exploit? Of course they do. If we are like that we have need of repentence. In the mean time, we should not let either end of the spectrum make us ashamed to tell our own stories, because if they succeed then we become slave to the nuggets of truth they bestow and lose the conceptual oppositions that test our own understanding and eventually lead us to understanding--and perhaps even a little honest truth. FWIW. Scott Parkin - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 10:14:51 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] "Religious Educator" Article on Creative Arts Okay, so what I do for a living is teach young LDS people who want careers = in the creative arts. So here's this helpful list designed to help me do = that. And a lot of it is nice, vague, warm fuzzy stuff about teaching = students some fundamental gospel principles, which, of course, we all = could use a refresher course in. =20 But here's what such a list seems to be missing. 1) Teach students to overcome the handicaps their culture imposes on them, = to work actively to purge from their minds parochialism, i.e. cultural = practices likely to hold them back. 2) Teach students that inspiration is well and good, but that dogged = determination, hard work, and an utter willingness to rethink projects win = out in the long run. 3) Teach students to look at the world clearly, unsentimentally, frankly, = with as few preconceptions as possible, and to be unafraid of darkness and = misery and despair as subjects for art. 4) Teach students that they are children of a culture that's frankly = pretty hostile to art and that will hold them back if they let it. 5) Teach students to be careful what contracts they sign and to stay on = top of their finances. This is especially true if they work in a Mormon = cultural setting, where crooks abound. 6) Remind students that the principle of opposition in all things is the = founding principle of art, and that art without conflict does not and = cannot move anyone to do anything. 7) Teach students to be unafraid, to take chances, to not worry about what = the neighbors or bishop or their parents will think, but express as = honestly as possible their own perceptions regarding life. 8) Teach students to read voraciously, to experience vicariously what they = can't experience personally. 9) Encourage students to grow a thick skin, to discount criticism from = those unqualified to give it, but to value deeply the most scathing = criticism from peers. 10) Teach students to learn their art form thoroughly, front and back, to = see and hear and experience the best work by the best artists in their = field, and especially to actively seek out the avant-garde. 11) Teach students to find inspiration not in abstractions, but in the = careful and attentive observation of the world. 12) Teach students to how to find the balance between doing what you need = to for money, and doing what you have to for love. Eric Samuelsen - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 15:42:55 -0600 From: "Nan McCulloch" Subject: [AML] Sept. 11 Tape [MOD: It's been a good thread, but I think we're mostly past this. So I'll keep this thread open through Monday, and then close it down, unless someone breathes new life into it in some way that explores literary connections.] Of course these lyrics by David Wilcox are more beautiful sung, but for = you who didn't have time to access the website I'll print them off. SHOW THE WAY You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason We should dream that the world would ever change You"re saying love is foolish to believe 'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an Army or a Knife To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life... Look, if someone wrote a play just to glorify What's stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage To look as if the hero came too late he's almost in defeat It's looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins It is... Chorus: Love who makes the mortar And it's love who stacked these stones And it's love who made the stage here Although it looks like we're alone In this scene set in shadows Like the night is here to stay There is evil cast around us But it's love that wrote the play... For in this darkness love can show the way. So now the stage is set. Feel your own heart beating In your chest. This life's not over yet So we get up on our feet and do our best. We play against the Fear. We play against the reasons not to try We're playing for the tears burning in the happy angel's eyes For it's.... Nan McCulloch Draper, Utah - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 15:47:49 -0600 From: Christopher Bigelow Subject: [AML] Rachel Ann NUNES New Book I notice Rachel Nunes's new book is published by Cedar Fort instead of Covenant--and it's the conclusion to the Ariana series she started at Covenant. Here's the info: http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555176267.html There's got to be a story behind this . . . . Rachel, are you still online with us and able to elaborate? [Chris Bigelow] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 19:37:11 -0700 From: Jeff Needle Subject: [AML] Robert REMINI, _Joseph Smith_ (Review) Review ====== Title: Joseph Smith Author: Robert V. Remini Publisher: Viking Year Published: 2002 Number of Pages: 190 Binding: Hardback ISBN: 0-670-03083-X Price: $19.95 Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle Of the making of books about Joseph Smith, there seems to be no end. I counted my own personal library -- 32 books about the Mormon prophet. Not a very large collection, but probably good enough for a non-member! And now I have 33. "Joseph Smith" is the latest volume in a series published by Penguin and titled "Penguin Lives." Previous volumes in the series include studies of Herman Melville, Simone Weil, Pope John XXIII, Winston Churchill and Joan of Arc, among others. Its vision is to provide brief, objective views of the lives and accomplishments of these famous people. Remini, professor emeritus of history and the humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has written previously about Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian period of American history. Research into this period exposed him to the person and the religion of Joseph Smith. This volume represents his interest in the American phenomenon known as Mormonism, and the Mormon prophet, in particular. The founder of this Church, the Prophet, Joseph Smith Jr., is unquestionably the most important reformer and innovator in American religious history, and he needs to be understood if we want to have a clearer idea about what this country was like in the Jacksonian era, just prior to the Civil War. Because he made such an enduring contribution to American life and culture and because he was influenced by the intellectual milieu and events of his time, I have made a special effort in this book to show the extent to which he and his work reflect the unique characteristics of this extraordinary age. (page ix) This is a very important note, and informs the balance of his book. As a historian, Remini has taken the remarkable position that 1) Joseph Smith is the "most important reformer and innovator in American religious history" -- a claim that may be disputed by Christian Scientists and Seventh-day Adventists, for example; and 2) we can understand our history better if we understand Joseph Smith. This latter argument is somewhat other than what I'm accustomed to reading. Mostly, we read that we can understand Joseph Smith by understanding history. Here we have the opposite, and it makes for a fascinating thesis. The nine chapters of this book are: 1. The Second Great Awakening 2. First Vision 3. Moroni 4. The Book of Mormon 5. Organizing the Church of Christ 6. Kirtland 7. Far West 8. Nauvoo 9. Assassination If the chapter headings give the impression of a sterile, almost clinical approach to the subject, this is hardly the case. Remini offers a very readable, and entertaining, overview of the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith, placing it firmly in the environment of early America. Indeed, if one is to see a common theme running through this book, it is that Joseph Smith was at the very least a product of his times. Remini takes a middle road between faith and doubt, between faithful acceptance of the prophetic role of Joseph and dismissal of the supernatural nature of the Prophet and the Church. This middle road is quite pronounced in some places. While faithful histories often dismiss naturalistic explanations for the early Church narratives, Remini places the faithful and the faithless side by side, allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind. And, to his credit, it's usually difficult to tell which side Remini takes. He plays the neutral broker fairly well. Sometimes, though, he lapses into the role of non-believer, as in the following: In the midst of this turmoil, on Sunday, September 21, 1823, at the age of seventeen, he went to bed and prayed that God would forgive all his "sins and follies" and make him worthy of salvation. He worked himself into an ecstatic state of longing and desire. (p. 43) By describing Joseph's "ecstatic state" as self-induced, rather than supernatural, Remini betrays his bias toward naturalistic explanations. And, for the record, I don't fault him for this. Non-Mormons, in particular professional historians, will address issues of faith and the miraculous from the point of view of the enlightened skeptic. Once a historian embraces the faith, he automatically becomes suspect as a dispassionate reporter. This is not to say that believing Mormons don't produce good history. It is only to say that we should not be surprised when even the fairest observer retreats to a rational, rather than a supernatural, explanation for phenomena under study. A word, if I may, about research and completeness. Of course, at fewer than 200 pages, this is hardly a complete biography, and was not intended to be so. In some places, Remini displays either a lack of understanding, or a decision to short-cut an explanation. For example: His revelations instituting these additions [explained earlier in the paragraph], along with others -- a total of 138 revelations, were finally published in 1835 as "Doctrine and Covenants." (p. 102) You can easily spot the errors here -- viewing the current state of the D&C as its state at the time of its publication in 1835. Similarly, Remini recites the Articles of Faith in such a way as to suggest that they emerged, intact, as they appear today, with no changes. History tells us differently. And Remini fails to factor into his thesis the various accounts of the First Vision. This seemed to me an odd omission, given his thesis -- Joseph Smith as a product of his times. If he wishes to demonstrate the degree to which Joseph was affected by his surroundings, and in fact mirrored the social, political and theological developments in early 19th century America, this would have been a helpful item in his study. Such errors do not, in my view, detract sufficiently from the book to earn it a bad review. In fact, such slips as these are few and far between, and do not take away from the central theme of the work. Pages 71-74 explore the Book of Mormon as a literary work. Here Remini echoes both the praises and the concerns of Book of Mormon critics over the years. "The Book of Mormon is an extraordinary work in several particulars," he says (p. 71). He cites the complex story line, the rapidity with which the translation was produced, etc. But he questions whether it is really an ancient document: But the Book of Mormon is also an American work of the early nineteenth century. It has a distinctly American character. It is a story about people who crossed an ocean and settled in a wilderness. It is a story of bringing the Gospel to the Americas. It is a story that people of the Jacksonian era could easily relate to and understand because it is a part of a very American tradition. Moreover, it radiates revivalist passion, frontier culture and folklore, popular concepts about Indians, and the democratic impulses and political movements of its time. (p. 72) And herein we see a good example of Remini's approach. Faithful believers have plenty of "evidence" to support their belief. But detractors also have their evidence. Arguments are presented from both sides; the reader must finally decide as to the claims made by the Church. Remini presents Joseph Smith as an enigmatic prophet. His contemporaries, and, indeed, many today, have a hard time reconciling some of his actions with the common understanding of the role of a prophet. After Joseph had been awarded the rank of lieutenant general of the Nauvoo Legion: Delighted with his rank, Joseph immediately outfitted himself with a resplendent costume modeled after the U.S. army dress uniform. He wore a blue coat with gold epaulets, a hat crowned with ostrich feathers, boots reaching up to his knees, and a handsome sword...It may seem contradictory that a spiritual leader would delight in wearing a gaudy military uniform, but this is another example of Joseph's striking human qualities, qualities that endeared him to his people. As his many disciples repeatedly insisted, Joseph did not act or behave as one might expect of a prophet of God. He seemed as ordinary as any American. He rather enjoyed simple pleasures, they claimed, "just like most folks." (p. 149-150) And, Remini concludes, it may very well have been those "just like most folks" qualities that led to the imprisonment and assassination of the Prophet. He views such events as Joseph's flight from Nauvoo when it was clear he was about to be arrested as typical of Joseph's human side, a side we all share. Stylistically, "Joseph Smith" contains precious few footnotes, and these are mostly explanatory. Sources are cited without footnotes; references to each chapter are offered at the end of the book. Given the variety of source materials used, I would have enjoyed more precise noting. However, considering the intended audience, his method may be more appealing. And a minor quibble -- the binding of the book split after being opened only twice. It was shipped in a sturdy envelope, so I can't blame U.P.S. But it doesn't bode well for those who keep their books forever, as I do. I found Remini's book both refreshing and a very nice read. Seasoned Mormon scholars are not likely to learn much from this volume. It isn't designed for the professional historian. Instead, the non-Mormon reader will find here a comprehensive, and fair, treatment of the Joseph Smith story. And Mormons will find herein a nicely executed study of the cultural, religious and historical context of the beginnings of Mormonism. If, as Remini insists, Joseph Smith was "unquestionably the most important reformer and innovator in American religious history," then it behooves members to spare no effort to better understand the Prophet, to move beyond the standard discussions, and learn for themselves just how remarkable, and how human, the Prophet Joseph Smith really was. "Joseph Smith" earns high marks, and is highly recommended. - ---------------- Jeff Needle jeff.needle@general.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #836 ******************************