From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V2 #11 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Tuesday, April 8 2003 Volume 02 : Number 011 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 08 Apr 2003 13:23:02 -0600 From: "Eric R. Samuelsen" Subject: Re: [AML] Conservative Literary Theory? [MOD: Please see my note at the end of this post before writing any responses.] Sorry, Laird, but we need to chat. First of all, I was pretty careful to distinguish between literary = criticism based on philosophical conservatism, and what I called 'fundament= alist reactionary criticism,' a la Bill Bennett. For most folks interested= in literary criticism, when you say 'conservative literary criticism,' = they think of someone like Bennett. That's a public relations issue, = primarily, which I believe that those interested in a more nuanced = conservative (or what you call classical) criticism need to address. =20 You referred to the 'absolutely close-minded=20 way you describe conservatives in your post.' and continued in the same = vein. >Supposedly liberals are open-minded and free-thinking. At least every = >one I've ever met claimed to be, while simultaneously being as narrow->min= ded and=20 >reflexive as it is possible to be. Your picture comes right out of = the=20 >liberal (even Democratic Party) stereotype, without any deviation at=20 >all. =20 Precisely so. I was describing the more or less mainstream way in which = the term 'conservative literary criticism' is likely to be viewed. I = wasn't endorsing it; on the contrary, I was saying that it would interestin= g to read more nuanced conservative criticism. I'd appreciate it if you'd = read my posts a little more carefully before launching this sort of ad = hominem attack. >I could never be a liberal because I could never be so=20 >uncritical. You're perfectly right that most liberals (by which I = mean=20 >illiberal leftists) see conservative anything as prefixed by=20 >"reactionary fundamentalist" but that proves nothing except their own=20 >bigotry. I don't think you are such a bigot. Well, I hope I'm not. I'm trying very hard not to be. =20 What I think is that there are some dogmatic and foolish ways to read = texts (right or left) and that there are more illuminating ways to read = texts, and that neither side has a monopoly on either foolishness or = wisdom. I've read P. J. O'Rourke, and I think he's a brilliant travel = essayist, a very interesting social critic, an extremely funny popular = entertainer, and a pretty boring dogmatist. I've read David Horowitz, and = I think he's a ranter and a raver, and no more interesting than other = ranters and ravers. =20 It's very nice to be told that, as a liberal, I support the mass murders = of Marxism. Thanks for that. Wouldn't it be more accurate to acknowledge = that Hitler was a monster of the right, Stalin a monster of the left, and = that you and I are both agreeably anti-monster? =20 You've written at some length in your posts about 'classicism.' What = exactly do you mean by that? A literary criticism derived from, say, = Plato's Republic, Aristotle's The Poetics and Horace's Ars Poetica, with a = smattering of Plutarch and Cicero, an immersion in Stoicism and Epicurianis= m and neo-Platonism, a grounding in Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, a nod to = the Tractatus Coislinianus, seasoned by readings of Aeschylus-Terence = (incl.). Or do you mean neo-classical criticism, including Robortello, = Scaliger, Guarini, Castelvetro, Sir Phllip Sidney and the whole Corneille/A= cademy nexus? Personally, I find the unities rather tiresome, but if = that's what you're accessing, let's have at it. =20 >It's been around for an awful long time and was never=20 >intellectually defeated. =20 And it's still taught in the academy, is still the focus of major academic = conferences, and remains viable and relevant to the study of classical = texts. I know, because I've attended those conferences.=20 >As in so many other areas, most leftists never=20 >engaged Classicism intellectually, they merely engaged in ad hominem=20 >attacks, slandered the motives of Classicism's proponents, and then=20 >ignored any counter-arguments. =20 Wow. Sounds like quite the struggle there. What on earth are you talking = about? >Classicism deals in universals, while=20 >all post-modern and leftist criticism deals with relatives and denies=20 >the existence of universals. =20 What's a 'universal?' Sophocles was a fifth century (BCE) Greek, writing = about local concerns, accessing the myths of his culture. His work = (Antigone, say) can still be performed, and an audience today can and does = respond to it. Not all audiences, obviously, get it, and not all = performances are successful, but it's still regarded as rather a good = play. Is it 'universal?' Certainly not. My own religious beliefs and = practices do not require me to bury a relative in a certain way, with a = certain ceremony, to allow his soul to pass over to Hades. I do not = believe in Zeus or Athena. Politically, the play has some resonance. I'm = a liberal, and I like this particular play. It hasn't a universal appeal, = nothing can have, but it does still resonate with some cultures today, and = that's saying a great deal. If I also point out that Antigone's rebellion = is in part an expansion on 5th century Greek constructions of gender, that = doesn't make me a moral relativist; it makes me a scholar trying to = understand a difficult and richly nuanced text. =20 >A philosophical conservative may know=20 >nothing of Classicism and may yet use many of its tenets to criticize=20 >literature. The versions of literary theory listed above (ie feminist,=20= >Marxist, or ecological) all attempt to read between the lines and lay=20 >current thought at the feet of ancient peoples. =20 Nonsense. I cannot approach any text from any perspective other than that = of a 21st century white American male. What I can do is access the = insights of a variety of philosophical perspectives. They will not allow = me to read any text purely; they will instead give me the multiple = perspectives of a series of misreadings. But then, all readings are, at = some level, misreadings. Criticism isn't a straight line to a single, = discernable, point; it's a series of circlings, towards an ever-moving = target, dimly illumined. >Classicism tends to be=20 >more literal--when I write "I was born in the city of Pergamon at the=20 >feet of Mount Parnassus" what I mean is "I was born in the city of=20 >Pergamon at the feet of Mount Parnassus." It doesn't mean that I am=20 >crushed by the patriarchy, exploited by the merchant class of Pergamon=20 >or aghast at the rape of beautiful Parnassus by my vile city. =20 "I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught = somewhat in all the learning of my father." What that does not mean is = 'gosh, I sure had a swell Dad.' What it means is, I was born into a = wealthy family, sufficiently wealthy that I was able to receive an = education, unilke other residents of Jerusalem in my time period. The = sentence has class implications and it has gender implications (no mention = of Mom's education.) Knowing that that text has class and gender = implications enriches my understanding of that particular text. That's = all that criticism is trying to do. =20 >The fact that women are more equal today than=20 >ever before in human history is not a function of societal evolution. =20 >It is a result of technology. =20 Certainly. Good for technology. And since we have the benefit of both = that technology and that equality, we cannot help but look at texts from = the past from the perspective of our day. >But when attempting to=20 >boil away the fat and see the core, one has to be very careful about=20 >what gets tossed and what gets kept. =20 Is this really how you see reading? As an exercise in tossing stuff? >In addition, Classicism does not attempt to find a particular belief = system >in anything.=20 So it's contentless? What about all those universals? >It is not fractured the way=20 >leftist theory is fractured because it does not insist on seeing all=20 >things through a single prism. The world doesn't boil down to feminist=20= >and patriarchy, class struggle is a red herring, and environmentalism=20 >is camoflage for neo-pagan socialism. =20 Those would be several prisms, would they not? Each of which offers a = different perspective on texts, providing more, not less, insight? > It doesn't bother me that the Crusaders killed everybody in Jerusalem. = =20 It rather does bother me, I'm afraid. >That was perfectly just according to the rules of war that the knew. = >Jerusalem didn't surrender when it was perfectly obvious that it was = lost. >That is an insult of the first degree, and every man who died = trying to >take the city after it was already lost was a superfluous = casualty. >Therefore there was no mercy for those who murdered those men. = It's >strange to see things that way now, but instead of harshly judging = them >by my own standards I look at things through their perspective and = do >not=20 >condemn. They were wrong, but they were ignorant. They had been=20 >deluded by their own tradition and a corrupt church, but in their own=20 >context they were justified. It's only after the fact that it's=20 >obvious that the Church was corrupt. =20 Okay, so leftists are moral relativists, who do not believe in universals; = if we did believe in universals we'd understand and not condemn an act of = historical genocide. These universals require us to look tolerantly at = the horrors of history. See classicism requires us to look at the = Crusaders from their own perspective. =20 Only? That's it? I can't bring any insight from my day into a study of = the Crusades? No, see, I can't, because as a leftist, I can only bring a = single prism into my study of the Crusades. A single Marxist/feminist/envi= ronmentalist prism. That's not three prisms, it's one, without body parts = or passions, one presumes. I'm not capable ideologically to look at = something like medieval rules of combat engagement from a medieval = perspective. No, I'm blinded by gender studies, or something. =20 Let me just say as your common, or garden, medievalist, that this is utter = balderdash. Tell David Bevington that he can't understand the Crusades = because he's too post-modern or something. But be prepared to duck. >There were some who were=20 >appalled, but these few priests were well-educated and cultured,=20 >despite the fact that they denied these things to so many others. =20 >Their crocodile tears were not very impressive, however, since they're=20 >the ones who unleashed the beast. The idea that the Crusaders=20 >themselves should have known better is ridiculous, because atrocities=20 >as great were performed in several well-educated and highly civilized=20 >societies in the last 50 years. =20 Okay, so some medieval writers were appalled by the Crusades, but we = shouldn't judge those who weren't, because after all we had Hitler and = Stalin.=20 >And all this because they abandoned classical critical thinking to = indulge >in fantasy ideologies like marxism, nazism, and their modern = philosophical=20 >derivative radical environmentalism. =20 I'll agree with you this far; 'good critical thinking skills, widely = practiced, might have prevented the rise of power of Lenin or Hitler. = Which would have been, in both instances, a moral good.' =20 >Even today more than a hundred thousand people, most of them >children, = die every year because of environmentalism. The banning of >DDT has = caused these deaths, and no two months ago starving people in >Africa = either refused or were denied food because it was "GM >>frankenfood." =20 Welcome to modern conservatism, a fact free zone. =20 >Classicism has been undergoing an underground revival. =20 Glad to hear it. It's actually been pretty mainstream all along, but = there you go. =20 >Critical thinking is making its way back into the world slowly but = surely,=20 >because the body-count of the fantasy-dreamers grows ever larger as >its = fingers destroy whatever it touches. =20 I haven't the faintest idea what this last sentence means, unless you're = saying that bad literary criticism leads to Hitler or something. Which, = come to think of it, isn't far off. A good close reading, by Neville = Chamberlain, of Mein Kampf, might have had some salutary results. >Dead White Men ought to be judged on the merits, not on their gender >or = skin color. =20 I rather think that all Dead White Men are rather unpalatably skeletal = right now, and are mostly of merit nutritionally, for earthworms. >All literature should be judged in the same way--how does it relate to = the >world as it really is. Writing is the one medium by which one human = >being can come to understand another,=20 There you go. I agree with that wholeheartedly. We're not so different, = you and I. >which is psychology enough without attempting to=20 >use unproven fantasies, that are falsely ennobled by the title=20 >theories, to psychoanalyze the writers. Perhaps most writers really = do=20 >mean what they say, even when they're lying. Well, it was nice to throw psycho-analytic criticism into the prism. = We're really refracting some light here, aren't we? =20 Look, I'm a liberal, sort of, and you're a conservative, sort of. I think = politically the facts are on my side and you think politically the facts = are on your side. We don't agree politically. We both read the same = classical texts, and we both respond to them, though probably differently. = I read a lot of literary criticism, and I think a lot of it is awful and = a lot of it is really valuable, and a lot is in-between. Either way, the = goal is to illuminate the text, and when criticism doesn't, I don't care = for it. But this whole-sale bashing of the academy is just silly. You = don't know what you're talking about. Neither does George Will, or Ann = Coulter, or David Horowitz, or whoever it is you're reading regarding this = stuff. I attend a lot of academic conferences and when really loopy = papers are read, the reaction from everyone is a lot of muffled chuckles, = and rolled eyes, and gossip afterwards. That's just the way it works. I don't want to make enemies, and I am interested in any good literary = criticism, from whatever source. Who's good? I respond to your passion, and to your obvious love of literature. Let's = make a deal. You stop bashing me and I'll stop bashing you. Okay? Eric Samuelsen [MOD: This has been a pretty rough exchange. I let Jim get pretty intense in his post, which I might have ruled out of order on another day or another thread, because it seemed to me to be expressing one particular view of what a conservative literary theory might be or the ideas it might rest on. I'm allowing Eric here to respond pretty much in kind--on the grounds that this thread is pretty central to AML-List topics. At this point, however, I must sound a note of warning: We need to focus on the literary. A discussion of the political, as political, is off-topic for this list. And we need to be careful not to put words in each other's mouths, and not to describe each other's positions in ways that are disrespectful. I sense the potential for this discussion to go downhill, so I'm asking that everyone exercise care in where we go and how we talk about this stuff, from this point on out.] - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2003 12:36:49 -0800 From: Stephen Carter Subject: RE: [AML] _Kadosh_ (Movie Review) >===== Original Message From RichardDutcher@aol.com ===== >Personally, I find "Kadosh" and it's director's (unconfirmed) plight >frighteningly relevant. Well, I gotta fess up. I trusted my friend too far. He had told me that Gitai was from the ultra-orthodox community represented in the film, but I looked into his history a few days ago and found out that Gitai was raised as a secular Jew. So he is not in the position I thought he was in. But even though this story is not true literally, I think it's a story that happens often enough to be of concern to the Mormon artist. What happens when you are an unwilling apostate? I think Jacob Proffit made a good point that there is a difference between being ostracized by your community, and actually being rejected by God. It would be interesting to hear the stories of people who still love the Church, but have been forced out because of their art. What do they think of the condition of their souls? What does the Church think? As I read through some interviews with Gitai, I saw that one the points of his film is to criticize what he sees as the fundamental mistreatment of women in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. So he was making a comment on us too. But that makes me ask another question, related to the one I've already asked. Gitai took it upon himself to critique a culture that he was only peripherally a part of, but his efforts still produced (in my opinion) great art. How much a part of a culture do you have to be to deal with it ethically and well? It seems that the greatest art should be produced by people within the culture that the art is using as its backdrop. Stephen Carter Fairbanks, Alaska - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2003 23:19:47 -0800 From: Robert Slaven Subject: [AML] Re: BofM in Mormon Lit From: "D. Michael Martindale" > Kathy and Jerry Tyner wrote: > > Although I love reading much > > of Nephi's writings, personally if I had had to deal with him in real life > > I'd bet I'd find him irritating. Of course, since there was condensation > > of the BOM, all we tend to get from him is repent, study, repent, study, > > be perfect, repent, study......he always came off as pushy to me, sort > > of super-Elder if you will. > > Now that's a Book of Mormon novel or movie I'd love to see. Maybe Orson > Scott Card will write it. He sure made Isaac irritating in _Rebekah_. > OSC did write it. See books 1-3 of his 'Homecoming' series, namely _The Memory of Earth_, _The Call of Earth_, and _The Ships of Earth_. And yes, Nephi ('Nafai' in the books) was an irritating little twit many times. In fact, I don't know where I read it, but OSC explicitly said once that one of the key thoughts he had in mind when writing the Homecoming series was that he figured Nephi *must* have been a major source of irritation to Laman and Lemuel, and he tried to capture that in the books. (For the uninitiated, these books are about a planet where a 'family' [family relationships are, uhh, not 'usual' in the society they grew up in] leaves the big city after the patriarchal character has a vision. They end up at a place where some spaceships have been mothballed, and they're going to fly them back to Earth. But they are explicitly 'based' on the Book of Mormon.) Now I need to read _Rebekah_. I borrowed it from the library a month or two ago, but had absolutely no time to read it. Sigh. Robert - -- Robert & Linn-Marie Slaven www.robertslaven.ca ...with Stuart, Rebecca, Mariann, Kristina, Elizabeth, and Robin too Pope Gregory VII wrote a letter to the bishop of Rheims in the eleventh century in which he told how the barons of the time were literally destroying Europe in thousands of private wars and feuds and raids on each others' castles and lands and serfs, and how, when he protested what they were doing, they asked him in all seriousness, If we don't do this, what else is there for us to do? - Hugh Nibley, 'Our Glory or Our Condemnation', Approaching Zion - --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.462 / Virus Database: 261 - Release Date: 2003/03/13 - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 01:08:51 -0800 From: Harlow S Clark Subject: Re: [AML] AML List as Epistolary Novel On Tue, 18 Mar 2003 22:46:11 Jongiorgi Enos writes: > And this was part of my point. Who are we but who we say we are? And > how are some vultures and parasites in our society able to use this fact > to create characters which they then use to prey on the innocent in > chat rooms? I have occasionally thought of creating a new character and subscribing him to the List. I could call him, say, O. Turner Bachmann. I'm master of several different styles, and I could create a character who uses no puns, no euphuism, doesn't ransacke art and nature for the most heterogeneous of ideas to yoke by violence together, and has a completely different e-mail address than myself. Indeed, maybe I've already done that. Ever notice how theric jepson just suddenly started posting one day, and then recently asked, "How can you tell if Theric Jepson is even a real person? Have you met me?" Now, of course, I expect theric to reply to this defending his identity, but if I created him I could create his defense of identity as well. We could have an enormous row over who was real and who invented. It would be fascinating to have a flame war with myself--indeed, I've thought of my newly invented character as an on-list nemesis, a character who would savage me, or at least be a foil--though my Jacob Proffitt and Laird Jim personae do that quite nicely. (Too bad I didn't have time to maintain the Jim Picht persona. That guy turned out some great travelogues. Speaking of travelogues, that Lynn Gardner persona should be getting back from the mission field soon.) > [MOD: Jongiorgi is crediting me with too much intelligence here... > By the way, do you all notice that I'm the one character in this > ongoing epistolary novel who's allowed to interrupt other people?] Another of my great successes in creating a persona. > Who has created whom? The writer or the written? > > Anyway, I love your postmodernist leanings, o mysterious = > theric-of-the-lower-case name! thank you. hollow cluck, who, under his ee cummings persona wrote an epistolary novel about aml-list called the enormous cyber-room. aka h. soderborg clark ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 00:05:53 -0800 From: "Jongiorgi Enos" Subject: Re: [AML] Video Rights & The Mona Lisa Alan Rex Mitchell asks: > Okay Jongiorgi, where will you draw the line? > > We have the right to watch a video in our home. > Do we have the right to get up in the middle and visit the bathroom? > Do we have the right to shut our eyes in certain places? > Do we have the right to fast forward over certain parts? > Do we have the right to skip a scene in the DVD version? > Do we have the right to destroy our copy of the movie? > Do we have the right to cut an offending portion from the movie ourselves? > (Do we have the right to cut those tags off our matresses?) > Do we have the right to let someone do if for us? > Do we have the right to pay someone minimum wage to do it for us? > > Just tell me where you draw the line. Mattress police. Answer: You CAN cut those tags off of the mattress... but if you get CAUGHT, you will go to hell. Jongiorgi - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 00:56:32 -0800 From: Harlow S Clark Subject: Re: [AML] AML-List Moderator Practices On Tue, 25 Mar 2003 19:01:02 -0800 Robert Slaven writes: > "All art is propaganda." [My hero George Orwell again, from his > essay 'Charles Dickens'.] Thanks for the attribution, Robert. We've discussed this before but I didn't have time to say much. I still don't have time to say much, except that "All x is y" statements are generally meaningless for the same reason that D. Michael Martindale pointed out the statement "Everything is art" is meaningless. Statements that include everything in one category remove the distinctions that make the category useful. But I'm going to talk about this in my usual roundabout shawmy way. Towards the end of my mission, in a used bookstore in New Haven CT (the place where the people from The City (and there is only one The City, everywhere else is something else) come to spend a day in the country and the people from everywhere else in the area come to spend a day in the big city) I found a book called _An American Dialogue_ by Robert McAfee Brown and Gustave Weigel, S.J. Very interesting book, though I haven't read all of it. Rev. Brown says Protestants tend to get upset when Catholics say the Pope is only infallible in matters of faith and morals, because the Protestants recognize that any social issue can be defined as a matter of faith and morals, which means the Pope can make pronouncements on all kinds of political issues, which is dangerous in a country based on separation of church and state. The book is an attempt to get past the rhetoric about Great and Abominable Snowman of the Devil and tunnels filled with baby bones running between convents and monestaries and actually talk to each other. > To apply it specifically to AML-List, "all writing has > some kind of political message". It's just as accurate to say all art is religious as it is to say all art is political, and it's also, if you define religion in political terms, quite accurate to say all religion is political or all politics is religious. But there's a very important difference between politics and religion, at least in LDS culture. If someone doesn't like the decisions a politician makes, that person can sit down and work out a plan to depose the politician, even to take the politician's place. And there is not the slightest lack of patriotism in this replacing one ruler with another, even if that politician is a president, even in time of war. Freely contested, open mudslinging elections are The American Way. But if that same person doesn't like the decisions a bishop or stake president or other church leader makes and works to have that leader removed from office and replaced that action is almost always a sign of apostasy. (An exception might be if a leader were involved in some serious transgression, such as embezzling tithing. And even then, a ward clerk who suspected such and mounted a campaign among the ward members to replace the bishop--rather than, say, talking to the SP--would probably not be acting in a manner consistent with sustaining the leaders of the Church.) > (If you don't believe me, send me something to read and I'll tell > you what political message it may have.) Ok, here's a news story, a report of a political meeting. Tell me what political message it contains, and I'll almost guarantee that at least one reader got the opposite message from it: >>>> Lindon has recently installed a traffic circle at the intersection of 4th East and 4th North that has some residents upset and some pleased. Carol Lloyd, who lives on 400 North and 7th East, spoke to the city council on behalf of herself and neighbors who feel the circle is "an accident waiting to happen." She said, "I've been halfway into the roundabout several times and someone's coming in the other direction and not even hesitated." Later she told a reporter, "Roundabouts back East, and where I've traveled usually will have two lanes, one where you yield and another where you execute the roundabout." She reiterated her belief that there will be an accident. "The person who wanted it, and that's the person with the little farm there on the southwest corner, is going to be able to sit on his porch and watch someone get killed." Jim Dain, who lives in the house Lloyd described, told other city council members on August 1st that they would get complaints and they have. Toby Bath told the other council members on August 15th, "I've had some flack recently and it's upset me, but I don't think a two week trial period is long enough." He noted that the police department has not had any calls about the traffic circle, though Dain has. "I understand someone put a sign on his lawn saying, ‘Traffic roundabouts suck.'" Other residents aren't complaining, though. R. J. Hone, who lives one house south of the circle on the north side of the street says, "It has certainly slowed traffic down." And it needs slowing, says his son Rob, because people coming into the intersection southbound or westbound are coming off hills. He notes that in the past 10 years "there's twenty times as many cars coming off the hill and they still drive just as fast." R. J. Hone says the biggest problem he sees is people not yielding to each other, and the northeast corner is too narrow, about 11 feet, where the other three are about 22 feet. "There's been some screeches, horn honkings and hollering going on," he says, but thinks the circle is much needed. "Before they put that in it wasn't anything to have cars coming down there 60 or 70 miles an hour," Hone said, adding that when he was on the Lindon police force, back when Lindon had a police force, "I'd come home at night, back into the driveway and write six or seven tickets." Hone said he's heard that if the circle becomes permanent the city has some attractive landscaping plans, including a flagpole. <<<<< I have more to say about this, partly because while I lean towards the paw I favor I'm fairly non-political, and what I really want to do is share stories. That's been a big theme in my writing for the last ten years. Yes, I know you can analyze any piece of writing for its political assumptions, but you can also find opposing political assumptions in any piece of writing. One example; at the end of the preface to _Marxism and Literary Criticism_ Terry Eagleton pleads with his readers not to apply marxist theory to Marxism itself, lest Marxism, the scientific theory of human freedom, become just another academic approach to dabble in. That caution/plea is almost identical to the cautions/pleas Ezra Taft Benson, Boyd K. Packer and others were giving Mormon historians in the mid-80s about the need to show God's hand in the Church's history, and Eagleton gave it for precisely the same reason--he doesn't want to see his salvation religion secularized. This was the subject of my first AML paper, "The Necessity of Bearing Personal Testimony" (if anyone wants to read it drop me a note), and while Eagleton may not want to be lumped with very conservative religious folk, I implied in my conclusion that one reason for writing the paper is to suggest that even people we might consider our enemies have fundamental concerns quite similar to our own fundamental concerns. That ought to give us some pause, and what I want to do if I can get people to pause long enough is to tell stories which by their nature ("is you is or is you ain't my baby" just started playing on the radio--hmm, Diana Krall, I thought it was a guy's voice) opt for sharing human experience rather than propagating a viewpoint religious or political. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today Only $9.95 per month! Visit www.juno.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 00:46:37 -0800 From: "Jongiorgi Enos" Subject: Re: [AML] Validity of Memory and Nonfiction Travis K. Manning wrote: "Please substitute the word "straight" with "literary" and you'll have understood my real intentions here, I believe." I knew that had be it! From Travis's reading list on the "bedside table" thread, I see that he reads more of this genre than any of us! So I figured it must have been a thought-switcheroo! I'm sure we agree on all points! I have been playing with this concept of the delineation between fiction, truth, reality, memory, writing, the act of writing itself, etc., in various posts, as these are ideas which have been playing about in my mind lately. Some of these illusive philosophical issues spilled over into my thoughts the other night about "Authorial Omniscience" which Thom questioned, but then talked himself into agreeing with, with qualifications, over the course of his own post. But if I might add some quick tid-bit of thought about this concept of truth, fact, motivations, etc., which are so illusive for all human beings, and even, go figure, for writers, too. There is a classic Buddhist saying that goes something like: "If you meet the Buddha along the path, kill him." And the basic translation of this strange saying is that, "The moment that you think you know everything or understand everything, check again... kill that thought... you are probably still missing something." Yes, there is a certain amount of absolute confidence that we all possess or we would not be artists. I think it was Alex Mitchell who was talking about this recently. (Is this is why we -- read I -- so often come off as arrogant in our own posts?) But we would be completely non-functional if we allowed ourselves to be too wracked with pangs of self-doubt (pangs that, despite our confidence, continue to plague us all from time to time). However, to clarify a tiny bit the Omniscience idea, I think the moment that an author is absolutely convinced in his or her own mind that they have "met the Buddha" so-to-speak, that they know everything about their characters, that is the moment that their writing will begin to be tinged with a certain flavor of those negative qualities I mentioned in my other post. Which is what I was really saying. On the other hand, when an author achieves a kind of "Zen" recognition that he will never "meet that Buddha," when we acknowledge the inherent mystery of understanding each other, a kind of reverse paradox is achieved. Suddenly our writing is liberated into that state of truthful observation which actually reveals more about character motivation, even while inherently acknowledges a lack of a complete understanding of the same. Did I say that the author is the "last to know his own work"? Of course not. But if our work is a reflection of the world, are we the first to say that we know our world so completely? If so, then perhaps we are under the illusion of false Buddha's. By acknowledging that we may not have all of the answers but "This is what she SAID" or "This is what she DID" then, suddenly we create an illusion of a character that is sufficient for the day. But the moment an author thinks, and therefore writes as, if they know this character as omnisciently as God, the moment their writing will begin to smack of... but you know what, I already said all of this once, so forget it. All of this is probably too esoteric to matter worth a hill of beans, anyway. Just write. The rest can dangle. Jongiorgi Enos - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2003 11:53:00 -0700 From: Barbara Hume Subject: RE: [AML] War and International Liberal Mormons At 08:43 PM 4/3/03 -0500, you wrote: >what we need is some simple acceptance. no strings attached. kind of >like the acceptance i find from my god. an acceptance of difference. not >of wrongness. a recognition that a difference of opinion is actually a >good thing, not a bad thing to be stamped out. it is something to be >embraced and fostered so that it will bloom into a fuller understanding of >the world for both parties. I have certainly encountered the mindset here in Happy Valley that there are two kinds of people--those who are safely conventional, "like us," and those who need to be fixed--but I've been pretty successful in ignoring it. I can remember when I had a similar belief myself, back when I was a very different person than I am now, and not someone I would enjoy knowing now. It's embarrassing to remember. I matured and came to my senses (at least about this issue), and chances are that many of those people who so annoy you now will eventually do so as well. It reminds me of a comment of Charlotte Bronte's that I have probably quoted on this list before: "Conventionality is not morality." When my son was growing up, he found his friends among the "rowdy" crowd. He said that they would do anything for you if you needed it, while his churchy friends were busy making judgmental remarks about everybody and feeling superior. What a challenge it is to parents to inculcate high standards in their children and teach them acceptance and lack of judmentalism at the same time! barbara hume - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2003 11:10:59 -0700 From: "Eugene Woodbury" Subject: Re: [AML] Artists' Personal Lives > >-----Original Message----- > >This brings up a subject we've discussed before, but which I > >still don't have a satisfying answer to. Is it necessary to > >suffer greatly, whether from our own sins or from the sins of > >others (usually both), to be a great artist? I don't believe > >suffering is necessary to be a competent artist, but what > >about true greatness? I raise the following objection to the proposition that extraordinary sin or sinning is a prerequisite for "great" art: it rests on the assertion that there are categories of sinning distinct and apart from what the rest of us do. This is a reassuring notion--"At least I'm not that bad," we can tell ourselves. It's a conceit that pops up in every Sunday School lesson about the Sermon on the Mount, when people start ruminating whether about we should forgive thief who breaks into our house, or Saddam Hussein. The real question is whether you can get along with your mother-in-law. But it is easier to philosophize about the abstract than the idiot who poached your parking space yesterday. One attraction of the big-sinner-as-storyteller is its confessional context. The more grotesque the crime (or suffering), the more willing we are to find in the confession evidence of verisimilitude: anybody willing to admit *that,* in other words, surely wouldn't lie about it. But it also leads to a common trap of literary fiction: that the grotesque must be "truer" than the ordinary (the same way that Hollywood has convinced itself that the gorier a war movie is, the more "realistic" it is). So "literary" Mormon fiction must concern itself with cynical doubting Thomases leading angst-ridden lives (yawn). The challenge of the artist of the ordinary life, perhaps, is that because we all live mostly ordinary lives, we can spot the fakes more easily. That's what makes it harder to create. Though I would argue again that the moral distance between all the varieties of sinners and sins is not what it seems to be. As C.S. Lewis observed, "A cold, self-righteous prig who goes regularly to church may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute." (To which he adds, "Of course, it is better to be neither.") The greatness of Shakespeare is that he makes us understand that the MacBeth, or Othello or Richard is not some incomprehensible "other." The bad guy we love to hate is the bad guy whose manner or attitude or boldness we find commendable enough to spend several intimate hours with. Interestingly, the "reality" of the portrayal has little to do with any real world "reality," else no stage play would be "believable." Or fantasy, or romance, or science fiction saga. The sense that Mormon art often falters on this score I think is a recognition that we (as artists) are letting our desires for what wish we were (or ought to be) overcome our knowledge of what we know we are in the most ordinary sense. Eugene Woodbury http://www.eugenewoodbury.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V2 #11 *****************************