Review
Title: A Craving for Beauty: The Collected Writings of Maurine Whipple
Editors: Veda Hale, Andrew Hall, Lynne Larson
Publisher: BCC Press
Genre: Documentary History/Literature Collection
Year Published: 2020
Number of Pages: 496
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-1948218368
Price: 15.95
Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association of Mormon Letters
Before A Craving for Beauty I had never heard of, let alone read anything by, Maurine Whipple (don’t worry, I’m working on repenting and getting my hands on The Joshua Tree to read). I am thrilled that this collection exists and hope that it can help ensure fewer people having the experience that I did of not knowing about Whipple until much too late in life. I have family that were part of the settling of Pine Valley, who I had been doing some reading about as I dug into this collection of Whipple’s work, which gave a closer sort of kinship to the stories that Whipple tells here.
The organization of Craving is helpful and guides the reader through the different phases and parts of Whipple’s career, which incidentally allows readers to focus on the sorts of work that they are most interested in (though I would suggest taking a look at some of the selections in each category, since I found myself pleasantly surprised by some that I would have otherwise been inclined to skip).
Whipple’s writing is deeply human and reflects an attention to detail and human psychology that enriches her work. My life is and has been quite different from the lives that Whipple focuses on, but I could feel the humanity of her characters and loved the way that she tells the stories of these small-town Utah folks with grace and intention.
One of the clear strengths of Whipple’s writing is her sense of place. She clearly loves Southern Utah and the surrounding landscape, offering brilliant, insightful, stunning descriptions of it and how it colors the lives of the people that live there. Her stories and articles strike me as deeply rooted in this sense of place (a legacy that Steven Peck picks up some with his books The Scholar of Moab and The Tragedy of King Leere, the Goatherd of the la Sals, though the genre of Peck’s work could not be farther from Whipple’s).
I found Whipple’s writings on War quite interesting (and useful for charting the history of Mormon thought on war! Particularly from average members). And I thought the way that she dealt with faith in the “Narratives of Faith” section was quite provocative and fascinating. I loved all of those stories, but especially “They Did Go Forth” and “Miracle of the Spillway” (I am also fascinated by “Mormon Saga” and the way it ends, which strikes me as ripe for a wide range of competing interpretations).
It is fun to read the way that Whipple plays with folklore and local history to craft these stories and I am thrilled for what possibilities are opened up by bringing Whipple’s work in that vein to more people. There’s much for Mormon Literature to learn from these existing, for some forgotten, past writers and I think that this volume (and the series that it’s a part of with BCC Press*) begins to make that learning a bit easier.
The stories and articles in A Craving for Beauty are not my usual cup of postum, but I found myself engrossed by Whipple’s characterization and sense of place. I’m excited to revisit the work here and to finally dig into The Giant Joshua. I am very grateful for this collection.
NOTE
As touched on near the end of this review, A Craving For Beauty is the first book in the new BCC Press “Classics in Mormon Literature” Series. See this post for more details.