It’s summer. I’m feeling lazy. There’s been a drop in weekend comments. Therefore, Short Story Friday is going on hiatus until after labor day. BUT… when it comes back, it will have some new friends. It’s been a blast focusing on stories, but it’s time for our weekends to include a broader palette — the [...]

Yesterday I raised the issue of literary critics (especially those who also write fiction) and pride, in the process laying out  how the main ways that critics engage with works and authors sometimes (often?) do so out of pride. The subsequent discussion has been excellent, with several commenters offering some good solutions to the problem [...]

Two years ago I reviewed Stan Bronson’s album Down from the Mountain for AMV.   My family has really enjoyed Bronson’s appealing singing voice and musical take on San Juan County history.   My impression of the album was that anyone interested in Mormon-themed folk music might find Down from the Mountain a fun listen.
The website I linked to went [...]

Pride was the theme of my ward’s sacrament meeting last Sunday. As you might expect Pres. Ezra Taft Benson’s landmark talk on pride was quoted by all four speakers. The talks were quite good and there there was a nice flow to the meeting. In particular, the two adult speakers did a good job of [...]

I’m teaching the Elders’ quorum this Sunday coming and the phrase I keep returning to in my pondering is “watch over, be with, and strengthen” (ref). In context, of course, this phrase refers to the teacher’s duty, as an ordained member of the Aaronic Priesthood, to build and sustain the Church, to help hold the [...]

I took this out for a test run on my blog a couple of weeks ago, but thought it could bear repeating here because I’m interested in your thoughts. And I’ve got some more musings on Mormon rhetoric I’m planning to post tomorrow (due to their time sensitive nature—you’ll see), so stay tuned.
* * [...]

The August issue of Book Business Magazine came this week. It included quite a few interesting tidbits that are of interest.

I’m not doing this on this day to be cute or sentimental — this story demands more than that. And deserves it.
Title: Pioneers
Author: Michael Fillerup
Publication Info: Dialogue, Winter 2007
Submitted by: Andrew Hall
Why?: Andrew says: “I like all of Fillerup’s stories.  Nicely descriptive, strong content. His two novels have not worked as well for me.”
Participate:
Submit [...]

Whether told from the pulpit, the newscast or the ten-year-old kid next door, sports stories are almost always the same. Courts and fields, with their teams and their referees and their spectators, are the stage on which we create our modern morality tales. When the larger-than-life players stride out they become our heroes and their [...]

I recently read The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief by James Wood. I enjoyed it quite a bit even as I disagreed with some of his emphases and tone. In fact I would recommend it over his more recent book How Fiction Works (which I discussed last year).
In particular, I like that he [...]

.
Zoe Murdock owns, with her husband, H.O.T. Press, which for years published tech manuals. When she decided to write fiction–the semi-autobiographical novel Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy–she just went ahead and published it herself. (personal website, twitter)
Moriah Jovan started B10 Mediaworx to publish her novel The Proviso. The novel is the first [...]

.
To Build a Fence
a public service message from
The Institute for Marital Concerns
Brigham Young Chapter

As all you RM gospel scholars know, Brigham Young once said:
I will give each of the young men in Israel, who have arrived at an age to marry, a mission to go straightway and get married to a good sister, fence a city lot, [...]

Because it’s summer, and we are all feeling a little lazy and languid. And because there’s already been a bunch of talk about short stories this week (apologies to non-Irreantum subscribers who don’t get to get in on the action — of course, there is a remedy for that). And because there’s simply a lot [...]

Here is a sweetly cranky seriously-so-reader-response-oriented tallied initial review of the fall 2008 edition of Irreantum, which arrived in the mail two days ago:

OK, you are the Bishop. The Relief Society has decided to have a book club as one if the enrichment groups. Your ward has a normal distribution of both conservative and liberal Church members. What restrictions do you put on the books to be read?

I have been thinking lately about what I’d do if I had more time to engage in Mormon literary criticism. This is, of course, a spectacularly unproductive way of going about things. But it’s all I have time and energy for at the moment. And at the very least, it’s about the only thing I [...]

For today a departure from our normal reading — a piece of criticism rather than a short story. Read it and then go back and read one or two or three of the Short Story Friday stories you haven’t read yet.
Title: Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction
Author: [...]

Introduction to Textual Criticism
Part VI
Somewhere in some book I perused about existentialism is the comment that any philosophical movement that can contain both a devout Christian like Søren Kierkegaard and a devout anti-Christian like Friedrich Nietszche must be very broad indeed. I mentioned that once to Jim Faulconer, from whom I took several philosophy classes, [...]

.
One of the great heroes in my family’s history is Mary Lee. She was a famed Southern Utah midwife, saved my father’s life, had none less than Harold B. Lee wish he was half as sure of his own salvation as he was of hers, etcetcetc. There is no question she was a great woman. [...]

Sunday’s New York Post gossip column, Page Six, contained an item I can identify with, because several of my relatives don’t seem to like New York, where I live.  Elna Baker’s mother worried when her daughter headed to NYU for college instead of BYU, warning her to beware of smoking, drinking, drugs, homosexuality and exotic [...]

Back in Aug. 2004 I wrote a post titled Terry Eagleton is Utah-obsessed which cited two Mormo-centric references in his book After Theory. More recently (just last month) Dave Banack posted on the same references at Times & Seasons. An excellent discussion ensued which referenced Eagleton’s latest book Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the [...]

Harlow explains it so much better  than I can (see below).
Title: And
Author: N. E. Houston
Publication Info: Summer 1990 — Dialogue, Volume 23, Number 2
Submitted by: Harlow Clark
Why?: Harlow writes:
“The author gave this story an unindexable title because he has all these story collections with titles like Nothing Very Important and Other Stories, and The [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about sex lately. (So have Tyler and Theric!) Mostly it’s because my sister recently sent me her copy of the new Mormon sex book, by Laura M. Brotherson, and I’m surprised by what it reveals about Mormon culture.
And They Were Not Ashamed is the “new’ Mormon sex book because [...]

Although I was born and raised a Wasatch Front Latter-day Saint and was baptized early on in the sea of Mormon culture, I didn’t begin to test these deeply ethnic waters until Eugene England’s intellectual specter called me from the comfort of my newly christened craft to join him in the waves. It happened something [...]