I was just skimming through these comments again and came across this from Jonathan:

So when it comes down to it, I don’t think we need a distinctively LDS culture, poetics, or criticism. Rather, what we need is consecrated individuals who will bring Mormonism into whatever culture, poetics, and criticism they find cause and occasion to embrace. In a way, I see this as the equivalent of the Church’s counsel to build Zion where we are, rather than moving to a single physical gathering place.

As I reflect, I realize that this is precisely how I feel about it. There are times in the week when I am sequestered with the Saints and I can certainly write for that audience, but most of the time I am in the world, presumably building Zion where I stand. And so if most of my work is projected into that gentile wilderness, is that not just? Is that not appropriate? Is that not precisely what I ought to be doing?

It reminds me of Elder Ballard’s recent advice: get your words out before the world.

Comes back to the old placing-your-candle-under-a-bushel metaphor.

Let me be clear: I do NOT denigrate those who write for an LDS audience only, but as a people, our responsibilities are greater than that.

I don’t think it’s a copout, though, for an individual writer to decide that the story he/she wants to tell is a story for his/her own people.

I agree. I’m worried mostly about myself. These days I often think of my Mormon-themed work in terms of giving it to, say, Irreantum or Dialogue. The question is why? Is it because I think my odds might be better or because Mormons are really the audience I intended for this work?

Of course, as long as that stuff isn’t the stuff I’m actually finishing, the question is wholly academic.

I hope you’re right. Indeed, I believe that you’re right, to some extent at least.

I’ll agree with you that it’s a copout to say that it can’t be done and we should’t try. I don’t think it’s a copout, though, for an individual writer to decide that the story he/she wants to tell is a story for his/her own people. Plenty of room for both.

Anyway, thanks for your comment. I was starting to worry that I might have managed to simply stop the conversation on this thread with my long posts…

Very true, Jonathan. Speculating on others’ levels of consecration does no good, only bad.

I do like your consecration metaphor — the idea of being like but more is, I think, very much to heart of being Mormon. And, yes, sometimes we are alone in that striving for more, even among Saints. Especially as teenagers where we’re prone to feeling exceptional anyway.

Your arguments re: why LDS romance exists and the likely national response to your pending book are sound, but I cannot fully agree with them either. Good fiction brings us into temporary alignment with people we cannot usually understand. The reason I find Joyce Carol Oates’s Zombie to be the most frightening book I’ve ever read is because I felt I truly understood what it was like to be a serial killer. If we can do it for Jeffrey Dahmer, can’t we do it for Brother Smith?

I think it’s something of a copout to say it can’t be done and we shouldn’t try. I grant you that selling your book (to a publisher and then to readers) might be crazy difficult. But a book that’s sufficiently excellent will instruct readers in What It Is to Be Mormon for the time they read. It can potentially be a hit too. A good book of any foreignness can (can) sell well or be beloved if it is truly excellent.

I’ve never been Japanese. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
I’ve never been a slave. Uncle Tom’s Cabin
I’ve never been an Indian immigrant. Interpreter of Maladies
I’ve never been in my seventies.Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man
I’ve never been an evangelical Christian teen. Blankets

“Who gets to decide who is consecrated and who is not?”

I’d say that we’re consecrated when we’re internally dedicated to bringing about God’s purposes, whatever they may be. I think the only people who can possibly have a relevant opinion on that are ourselves and God.

While I think that’s true in the way that Scott meant it, still I have to wonder…

What about, say, the much-maligned genre of LDS romances? Are they not in some sense dealing with the question of “what it means to be a Mormon-flavored human”? Of course, the “existential” part may be somewhat lacking, if by “existential” we mean not simply existence but some kind of depth to considering what it means to be Mormon.

And yet… Don’t we have LDS romances largely because of the sense of difference that Mormons feel–the sense that what they have to deal with, between LDS standards and commitments and the desire to marry within the Church, sets us apart from other groups in that very fundamental question of who we get to spend our life with?

I think that for many LDS youth, the core existential problem of being Mormon is loneliness–often including a loneliness within their own Sunday School classes and Aaronic Priesthood quorums and Young Women’s classes, for those who choose to take LDS standards seriously.

I’m not sure exactly how this relates to the larger questions Scott raises. Looking at the quote from Edelstein, it looked to me like what he was saying was that Mormons are good at writing things about twisted sexuality because we’re so repressed in our personal lives and in our culture.

LDS romances, I suspect, exist precisely because the romantic standards and problems faced by LDS youth come across as strange, immature, and/or silly to the non-LDS world around them.

One of the problems with any kind of ethically driven literature is that if the reader isn’t sympathetic to the ethos that helps to create the protagonist’s dilemma, then it’s very hard to relate to the protagonist’s story. To choose an example not at all at random: I expect that members of the gay community will find the story I’m currently writing (about a same-sex attracted boy who chooses to stay in the Church rather than pursue an alternative lifestyle) immensely frustrating, since in their view my protagonist is choosing a life of unnecessary misery. That’s a story I don’t expect has much if any potential in a national market, for that very reason–particularly since I’m not writing it as a tragedy.

what we need is consecrated individuals

Who gets to decide who is consecrated and who is not?

Several various points, which I’ll respond to now before reading everyone’s comments. Maybe part 2 to come later.

I think the difference Laura is getting at in memoir versus fiction is the difference between realism and reality. Fiction must conform to realism. Nonfiction must comform to reality. That allows more freedom to be particular (as opposed to typical) in nonfiction–sometimes. (Keep in mind, though, that Coke Newell’s memoir was rejected by national publishers precisely on the grounds that it was a Mormon conversion story, and therefore–int the publishers’ views–inherently uninteresting to a national audience. At least, as I interpret Newell’s comments that were forwarded to AML-List.)

As regards Laura’s comment: “sometimes forget that our religion is like no other and, in my mind, to be authentic, our literature can be like no other”–well, maybe. On the other hand, maybe authenticity consists in doing all the same (worthwhile) things that other literature does–but doing them in a way that reflects the greater light and knowledge we have. Like the law of consecration: living it (internally, as opposed to socially) involves a life that consists of pretty much all the same elements as a non-consecrated life (work, housekeeping, child care, etc.), but within a more complete context.

This relates to a debate we had on AML-List years ago about whether there should be a distinctively Mormon culture, or if Mormonism instead should be like a fire that burns within us as we partake in whatever our culture happens to be. (Note that this was a debate about what should be, not what is.) I tend to come down on the side of the latter option. The same with LDS criticism: I don’t think that we need a distinctively LDS form of literary criticism, only LDS critics who practice well within their chosen approaches, in a way that (to them) adheres to gospel principles. And a criticism that, whatever its approach, takes Mormon art seriously.

So when it comes down to it, I don’t think we need a distinctively LDS culture, poetics, or criticism. Rather, what we need is consecrated individuals who will bring Mormonism into whatever culture, poetics, and criticism they find cause and occasion to embrace. In a way, I see this as the equivalent of the Church’s counsel to build Zion where we are, rather than moving to a single physical gathering place.