Two meetings in 2006: The Annual Meeting (February) and the Writing Conference (November)
Annual Meeting: February 25, 2006. UVSC. “Legacies and Destinies: The Past, Present and Future of Mormon Literature.”
Writing Conference: November 4, 2006.
The Association for Mormon Letters will hold its 2006 Annual Writing Conference on Nov. 4 at the Sorenson Building at Utah Valley State College, Orem. Sponsors will include the UVSC Department of English & Literature and the UVSC Religious Studies Program. The theme is “Legacies and Destinies: the Past, Present and Future of Mormon Literature.”
Dr. Michael R Collings , who is currently a professor of English and director of creative writing at Pepperdine University, will open the conference as he addresses the question “Can Writing Be Taught?”
Other presenters will include authors Kristin Randle, James Dashner, Kenny Kemp, Margaret Blair Young, Tessa Meyer Santiago, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Brandon Sanderson, Lynn Kurland, Eric Samuelsen, Jerry Johnson, J.Scott Bronson and others.
Together these writers cover the gamet from journalism to poetry, essays to fiction and fantasy to screenplays. Their sessions will include everything from the pragmatic (“What Writers Ought to Know about Contracts”) to the creative (“Treasure Hunting: Mining Your Life for Writing Ideas”) to the issues (“Writing: An Act of Responsibility”) to the sublime (“Fact or Fiction: Writing the Spiritual”) and even to the edge (“Preaching to the Choir and other Unpardonable Sins”).
Of special interest are two panels on Hugh Nibley and Wayne Booth. Judy Busk will present an open-to-the-public session on Mormon biography. Judy is the author The Sum of Our Past, a handsome book on the legacy of Mormon women pioneers. Thom Rogers, Boyd Petersen, Bruce Jorgensen, and David Knowlton will also give presentations looking back on the AML’s past and looking forward to its prospects.
Representatives from lesser known LDS Publishers will include Parables Publishing, Spring Creek books, Zarahemla Books and others.
“This conference looks back on 25 years of AML history and forward to where AML and Mormon literature is headed in the future,” said Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury, AML Board Member. “The general public will be interested in the sessions, and AML members, in particular, will want to attend because amendments to the by-laws are going to be considered.”
Report on the conference by Patricia Karmesisnis
The Plenary Session was titled, “Looking Back: Memorable Moments in Mormon Literature.” Presenters included Richard Cracroft, Thomas Rogers, Margaret Blair Young, and Susan Howe. Laraine Wilkins, editor of Irreantum, chaired this spirited discussion of Mormon literature’s roots and founding influences. This session was charged with a lot of energy.
Richard Cracroft spoke first and took the occasion early on to recommend Richard Bushman’s biography of Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling, and Robert Rees’s collection of writing in honor of Eugene England, Proving Contraries. Among other things (many other things), Cracroft reviews Mormon literature in his column in BYU Today. During the session, he went so far as to say that any Mormon who had not read RSR is in dereliction of duty. Also recommended to anyone interested in the development of Mormon literature: England’s essay, “Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects,” published in David Whittaker’s Mormon Americana: A Guide to Sources and Collections in the United States. Cracroft told how his interest in Mormon literature began in 1971 and described his goal of helping to foster a strain of Mormon literature “you can read in the temple on Thursday morning.” He remains very excited about the past, present, and future of Mormon literature and is chock full of personal anecdotes about many founding writers and publications.
In his overview of memorable players on the Mormon drama stage, Tom Rogers mentioned Orson Scott Card for, among other things, Stone Tablets; Douglas Stewart for Saturday’s Warrior; Marvin Payne; Steven Kapp Perry; and Clinton Larson; although his remarks on Clinton’s poetic dramas included an anecdote where he attended a performance of one of Clinton’s plays and watched as the “audience drifted out, and then their eyes glazed over.” Having had the priviledge myself of attending two of Clinton’s plays back when, I know that Rogers’s description of audience reaction during these plays is accurate. Nevertheless, Clinton was, as Rogers put it, “a heavy self-promoter,” and his influence upon the Mormon arts scene and many aspiring writers (yours truly included) is undeniable. Rogers also saluted for their work in theater Charles Metten, Charles Whitman, Richard Cracroft, Eugene England, Scott Bronson, and Tim Slover, among others. Speaking personally on his own experience with his play Huebner, Rogers said he wrote it as a response to a challenge from Alan Keele, staying up all night to complete it. Of theater, he posed a question: Is theater an outdated and antiquated art form? His answer: Yes, but it is an impressively developed form.
In her address, Margaret Blair Young said she has lived through the second Mormon Renaissance. Her reflections on Mormon literature took on personal overtones as she spoke of her awakening to her calling as a writer, triggered in part by her reading of The Brothers Karamazov, a novel that opened her eyes to individual responsibility. She cited Don Marshall’s The Rummage Sale and Doug Thayer’s Under the Cottonwoods as works that influenced her and also said that Tom Rogers influenced her as a teacher and mentor. Her list of mentors further included Bruce Young (her husband), Gene England, and Darius Gray.
In Susan Howe’s presentation, which she was forced to shorten because the session had already run over, she referred to poetry as ” “¦ that other art form for which you can get no money and no fame.” In spite of this, there is, in her opinion, a “fine tradition of Mormon poetry blossoming right now.” As an important source for anyone seeking the roots of Mormon literature, she named the anthology A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints. She credited Clinton Larson with being the father of contemporary Mormon poetry, saying he combined principles of the New Criticism of the 50s, 60s, and 70s with Mormon themes. Howe honored May Swenson’s “original vision.” She also credited Harvest, an anthology of Mormon poetry, with “help[ing] people realize there was a Mormon tradition.” She saluted Emma Lou Thayne and Carol Lynn Pearson for their poetic visions. Howe mentioned three volumes of poems written by her colleagues at BYU: In All Their Animal Brilliance (Lance Larson), Leviathan With A Hook (Kim Johnson), and The Well-Tempered Tantrum (John Talbot), each of which have received, among other honors, the AML Award for Poetry (Larson’s In All Their Animal Brilliancereceived this year’s award). Howe concluded that the “tradition of Mormon poets is alive and well.”
Between the banter among participants, the spontaneous eruption of anecdotes, and the nature of the all-encompassing topic the plenary session ran well overtime and much of it went crashing by like a train that had jumped its tracks. But it was an lively session and I thought that it and other sessions I attended went well along toward re-energizing the AML’s sense of purpose and direction. While the theme of this year’s conference was “Legacies and Destinies: the Past, Present, and Future of Mormon Literature,” clearly the conference provided the AML a healthy chance to contemplate its own roots, current state, and prospects. Attendance seemed lighter than during some years I’ve attended, which is unfortunate, given that IMO this conference had a thorough mix of academics, professionals, and just plain interested folk (like me) that gave it more breadth and texture than some AML conferences have had. And who knew Richard Bushman would be there? It’s surprises like this that keep me going to the conference any time I can manage.
“Wayne Booth Remembered” Panel
The only Wayne Booth I’ve ever read was A Rhetoric of Irony, and that years ago, yet this session honoring his life and his work impressed me deeply. The presenters, Rick Duerden and Neal Kramer, with Bruce Jorgensen chairing the session, brought their love, their respect, and their gratitude for their subject to the table, lending to the meeting an intelligent and gracious atmosphere that IMO elevated the tone of the entire conference. Both Duerden and Kramer had studied with and otherwise associated with Wayne Booth at the University of Chicago; clearly they felt Booth had given them important gifts, intellectually and spiritually (if the two can in truth be split out).
Jorgensen opened the session, describing Booth as one of the “very finest American critics and theorists in the twentieth century.” He said that in 1988 Booth published The Company We Keep, a book Jorgensen said he read “in big gulps.” He chose it for an award for criticism (I thought this was the AML Award for Criticism but couldn’t find record of it on the AML site) and related how Booth told him, “People ask where I got my ethical sense. I always tell them I got it at home, growing up in Mormon country.”
Neal Kramer titled his presentation on Wayne Booth, “Leaving Home and Looking Homeward.” He started by telling how “life weighed heavily on nineteen-year-old Wayne” because he felt that the dogmatic Mormon culture he grew up in “stifled his mind.” BYU satisfied some of Booth’s intellectual hunger but his belief in Mormonism failed to answer to his internal querying and “fell off rapidly.”
On his mission to Illinois Booth discovered the University of Chicago, and rumor had it that instead of throwing heart, mind, and soul into his missionary work Booth began taking classes at the U of C. Richard Cracroft, one of this session’s attendees, broke in here to say that Booth had told him that during his mission he had indeed taken evening classes at the university with permission.
Booth, Kramer said, “thought extremely clearly and well.” During graduate school Booth discovered New Criticism and then the super new critics of the Chicago school. These critics used analytical tools forged in the manner of logical techniques that Plato and Aristotle established. At this time, Booth became immersed in “serious, high-level dialogue among people about important things.” The stimulation such company provided allowed Booth to develop a point of view that “enabled [him] to read literature in a way not done before” among American scholars.
In Booth’s critical stance, Kramer said, pure reason held sway, “but it was the humanity of novels that caused Booth to focus attention on rhetoric.” Such a shift in focus returned the literary conversation to ethical and moral questions. In this way, Booth began to undermine his own enthusiasm for New Criticism.
Ultimately Booth concluded that any literary theory that disallowed inquiry into a work’s ethical stance “went wrong.” Kramer said that as Booth’s thinking evolved, his conversations always turned upon questions of ethics and morals. In The Company We Keep Booth’s goal was to prepare ground where the two groups (I took this to mean critics and communities interested in ethical and moral content and critics and communities disinterested in such) could gather and enter into dialogue. Important to Booth: “friendship, and how to put friendship at the center” of ethical strivings. Booth, Kramer said in winding down his presentation, “gives academics a possibility for how to speak well together.” Given Aristotle’s three categories of friends (friends of utility, friends of pleasure, and friends of virtue or of the good), Booth postulated that critics need to realize that “sometimes friends of utility or pleasure are fine but ought to lead to [the third category of friend, the friend of virtue or the good] where seams are effaced. We seek out conversation for living in friendship.”
Rick Duerden told how in composing his presentation he had felt torn between taking an anecdotal approach and a critical approach. He determined that a mix of both would represent Booth well.
He described Booth as “a powerful intellect combined with an open heart.” Having these qualities made it possible for him to regularly change his thinking and accommodate it to his relationships. Kramer said, “All his life [Booth] searched for what was better and truer.”
All Booth’s changes and growth, Duerden said, marked development in his spiritual growth. Duerden said, “[Booth] loved the ideal of Mormon universality where anybody can be saved or converted.”
By the 1960s, Booth was swinging around to Plato’s ideas. The Company We Keep represents the far end of the spectrum of Booth’s intellectual travels. Booth, Duerden said, moved from “stick in the mud truth to an infinitely spreading relational vision of truth.”
According to Duerden, Booth began finding his way back into dialogue with the Mormon community in the 1980s. Duerden said that Mormons were suspicious of Booth, but the intelligentsia said to the Mormon community, “This guy is the best missionary you’ve got.”
Bruce Jorgensen commented that Booth’s critical stance ultimately rooted itself in love and that the core act in loving one’s neighbor was to ask, “What are you going through?”
Duerden responded saying that Booth “resisted postmodernism and aspired to putting people back in the conversation.”
Richard Cracroft broke in at this point and told how when Booth came to BYU to give a forum address he spoke forthrightly about BYU and the Mormon culture, saying, “We’re Osmondizing BYU.” Cracroft said that the Osmonds had just a few weeks prior either made a donation to BYU or had in some other way manifested their influence. According to Cracroft, Jeffrey Holland went rigid at Booth’s words and his displeasure with Booth’s speech was palpable. At the faculty luncheon held for Booth afterward, Booth asked Cracroft how he thought his talk went over. Cracroft replied he’d never seen President Holland so steamed. “Just watch,” Booth said. “I’ll take care of that.” Cracroft said Booth went over to where President Holland was sitting, said some things that President Holland up, and soon all clouds dispersed. Booth returned to Cracroft and asked, “How’d I do?” Cracroft replied, “I think you did very well.”
Richard Bushman asked what the panel thought the consequences for Booth’s thinking might be for Mormons, especially for Mormon writing.
Both Kramer and Duerden addressed this question, but I think it was Kramer that replied that LDS “tend to feel bitterness over people as successful as Wayne Booth who “˜leave’ the church.” He told how it was not unusual for someone to say to him of Booth, “Your church must think this guy is one of the greatest guys around.” Kramer said he had had to reply, “Well, no we don’t.” But as Kramer put it, we “ought to feel comfortable praising and embracing Booth’s thinking, adding that “Wayne was always interested in helping me develop my testimony.”
This whole conversation was interesting, but here Kramer said something that really snagged my attention: “Conversations we [Mormons] think have ended have only begun.” I think he meant this not only as a comment on Wayne Booth’s critical and spiritual stance but also in general about just how much wonderful narrative and conversational matter is out there that we have not yet begun talking about in Mormon folk and academic circles.
Duerden added that in saying the things he had to session attendees he felt he was preaching to the choir. “But the choir,” he added, “sings to the congregation.” He felt that Wayne Booth’s existence and work “was an indictment of our judgement that he wasn’t LDS enough.” Booth, he said, talked people out of leaving the church.
Kramer added that Wayne Booth was “our best friend in many respects.”
Jorgensen added that he considered Booth to have lived “the kind of life President Hinkley urges us to have.”
Katherine Morris’ notes on the “Youth Literature” panel
The panel included Chris Crowe, John Bennion, Shanna Butler, Dean Hughes, and AnnDee Ellis, with Laura Card moderating.
Laura Card began the discussion by asking the question, “How have you seen LDS young adult literature evolve?” The panelists immediately deferred to Dean Hughes, who started out by mentioning how just thirty years ago Deseret Book didn’t publish fiction. It wasn’t until 1979 that Deseret Book finally published a work of fiction, which was Dean’s book Under the Same Stars, a young adult novel. “It’s significant,” Dean said, “that the first breakthrough in LDS fiction was in youth literature.”
Since Dean published Under the Same Stars, several other authors have successfully broken into the market (Jack Weyland and Chris Heimerdinger, notably). However, Dean noted, no one has made a living publishing children’s books in an exclusively LDS market. One reason the LDS market can’t sustain authors who write for children is that, although adults in the Church tend to be wary of adult best sellers, they don’t show the same hesitancy toward best-selling children’s books. This being the case, Latter-day Saint authors who write for children have to compete with the national market and so usually end up writing for the national market.
Moving on to recent trends in LDS youth literature, Dean said, “Things are picking up. Every few years now, there’s a new sensation” (this said with an accompanying nod to fellow panelist AnnDee Ellis). Latter-day Saint writers are becoming increasingly recognized in the national youth market, and Mormon themes are becoming more acceptable. Just in the last several years, Dean said, he’s not only been allowed to write about LDS themes, but he’s been invited to do so. While this indicates that publishers see the potential for new voices and perspectives in LDS authors, part of the reason publishers are interested in Mormon-themed books is because it’s becoming clear there’s an LDS market. President Hinckley’s books are always on the best seller list. Latter-day Saints might be the only ones buying them, but they certainly are buying them.
Chris Crowe talked mainly about why he believes youth literature appeals to Latter-day Saints. After briefly mentioning that LDS culture is generally quite child-friendly (meaning that we like children and we have a lot of them), Chris waxed theoretical. He said some people have observed that American culture is in its adolescence, and so it’s rather fitting that Americans would be interested in children’s books. He believes there’s a similar sort of phenomenon with LDS culture. We’re coming of age as a people, and so we like coming-of-age stories.
John Bennion said he believes that some of the best LDS literary fiction is youth fiction. He mentioned the Delacorte Press Prize–how several LDS writers have won it or achieved an honorable mention. John said he believes Louise Plummer is the best LDS youth writer.
Shanna Butler is an editor for the New Era, which stopped publishing fiction about five years ago. Dispensing with fiction apparently didn’t increase readership, so recently the New Era has made the decision to reintroduce fiction with a short story by Jack Weyland on pornography. The magazine is currently accepting submissions, but they don’t have many specific guidelines to help authors out. Though now open to publishing fiction, the New Era doesn’t necessarily have any set plans to, so submissions will be looked at on a case-by-case basis. Stories must be on a specific gospel topic and no longer than 2,500 words. Since the stories have to go through several levels of approval, anything sent in now wouldn’t be published for about a year. Shanna says the New Era is the only magazine, as far as she knows, that tries to hit such a large demographic (twelve- to eighteen-year-olds). She said that online magazines created by LDS teens for other LDS teens are filling in places the New Era leaves gaps. You’ll see things about makeup and dressing modestly that you won’t see in the New Era.
AnnDee Ellis is an up-and-coming LDS author who writes for youth. She got a publishing deal by showing her manuscript to an editor while she was volunteering at a “Writers for Young Readers” conference. The book she is currently working on is about a young LDS boy who is trying to make his way through Scouts and jr. high. The book is Mormon-themed but is written for a wider audience than LDS youth. Having overheard AnnDee telling someone the first line of her novel, I would have to say it sounds like her book will be an original addition to the corpus of LDS youth literature.
Wm Morris’ notes on the conference
Captivated and engrossed in following the words of each speaker, I ended up taking very poor notes. I write, then, mostly from memory–apologies if I mischaracterize anything anyone said.
In a session on LDS film, Gideon Burton spoke of “sacramental cinema”. Comparing film to religion, Burton said that film is a vision, and not just a vision, but a moving one that has the power to satisfy spiritual appetites. Cinema, though secular, returns us to the sacramental mode, we are quiet together, laugh together, cry together and are moved together. Both film and religion offer the threat of death and the promise of love. Burton then claimed that the use of film as “sacramental cinema” has been effectively used by Richard Dutcher and pointed out examples of Dutcher’s use of the religious traditions of penance and devotion in film.
Though I fully agree with Burton, I find it interesting that this use of film as a sort of religious experience is, ironically, exactly what makes Mormons uncomfortable about the genre in the first place. We have, somehow, created a cultural barrier between the religious and the secular, and it seems we find any intersection between the two to be sacrilegious. But I think the notion of sacramental cinema that Burton describes is a valuable thing, and possibly the very thing that could bridge some of the many gulfs between the religious Mormon world and the secular one.
In the same session, Randy Astle provided a history of Mormon film and a thorough discussion of the sources for Mormon films, noting that most of them are adaptations of something previously written. He also spoke of the fact that Mormon film is so much more popular than Mormon fiction, something that I think reflects popular culture, but may be even more so among Mormon audiences. Everyone wants to turn their novel into a movie, but not many are getting excited about turning movies into novels. Astle is apparently preparing to write a book on the history of LDS film. Like his presentation, I think it will make a great reference source for all interested in the subject.
Margaret Blair Young showed a short documentary she had written and produced about the African-American experience in the church. Originally intended just as a promo for her historical fiction series on black pioneers, it was lengthened to create the short. Some footage is taken from the stage play about Jane Manning James, but most of the documentary is an uplifting discussion with three African-American young women who discuss having come to terms with being black in the church and their appreciation for the life of Jane Manning. I’d like to see the documentary short turned into a full”“length documentary about the life of Jane Manning James, as those who are not familiar with her life will probably be wondering a bit as to who this woman was that these girls admire so much. Margaret Young later predicted that, within a few decades, Jane Manning James would be the most well-known female pioneer. Thanks largely to Young herself, that very well may be true.
In a session on Mormon studies, I again found myself listening to Gideon Burton. Burton’s argument was that Mormon studies is a bigger and broader field than most of us realize. He mentioned the misconceptions that the study of Mormons is entirely historical and theological and that that Mormon studies were solely the work of Utah schools, pointing to strong collections of primary LDS texts at USC and other major universities. He also read off a substantial list of papers that were being written on subjects relating to Mormonism, subjects that varied from sociological studies to literary studies of The Book of Mormon. And these were all papers that had been published by people outside of Utah.
Finally, he spoke of the need for Mormon insiders and outsiders to value one another and their work instead of with suspicion. I do think we have not yet reached a time when Mormonism can be really studied for its own sake, without the fear or bias of it being produced to either defend or attack the church. Unfortunately, because of this, Mormon studies has the double stigma as being seen with suspicion by non-members as well as by very conservative members. I think blogs may be starting to break this down though. 🙂
Dennis Potter spoke of the image of Mormonism in popular culture, referring heavily to South Park episodes, particularly the episode which was all about the Mormons. Potter claimed that Mormons were portrayed in a hyper-positive manner in the media, as the innocent wholesome idealization of the American family. The claim then was that this representation was actually anti-Mormon because it denied Mormons in their natural state as fallible, normal people.
It was pointed out in comments that not all media depictions of Mormons are positive at all, that many are negative. I tend to agree that focusing on South Park, which has been rather uniquely vocal in its positive depiction of the church, isn’t the best representation for the media as whole. Even still, it’s an interesting situation. We generally like hyper-positive depictions, but there is a sense in which these depictions convey an idea that Mormon are pejoratively abnormal. I think that as Mormons become more public and more mainstream, both extremely positive and negative depictions will start to dwindle.