Without an audience, art cannot be art, IMHO. Art is a communion of souls. Ergo, art that drives others away (or simply fails to draw them in) is a failure.

I’m not arguing for bland populism or trying to please all people all the time, but art that never moves beyond the artist ultimately has no worth.

Interesting question. In #27, I was implicitly taking publication to be . . . not the definition of success, but a useful benchmark in the quest for reaching an audience.

If you don’t care about reaching an audience, then I suppose you can do whatever you like in your artistic development. If you do, however, want to reach an audience, then there are additional, outside factors which come into play and which must shape your work.

Katya—if you keep bringing up good yet difficult points I may have to stop talking to you.

Generally, I don’t believe in choosing. I think all four of your options are fitting and appropriate and to be pursued. I personally lean to a melding of the first three.

A side issue I haven’t dealt with is this: How do we define success? One this question I don’t really have any good answers. Primarily because I think it’s foolish because futile to plot personal success in the arts. But some notion of a definition for success might help up determine which of your 4 options may be most fruitful.

1. Write to a mainstream audience without addressing specifically Mormon topics.

This seems to be Orson Scott Card’s tactic in works such as Ender’s Game, which touches ever so briefly on Mormonism (Ender’s mother is or was Mormon), but otherwise doesn’t really treat traditional Mormon issues at all.

The upside of this is that it shouldn’t present any additional challenges to getting your work published, because there’s nothing in the subject matter that should limit it to a Mormon audience.

The downside of this is that the work itself doesn’t do much to promote an understanding of Mormon culture or values. (Caveat: If one writes for a variety of audiences or on a variety of themes, as Card does, it’s possible that the success of one mainstream work may spill over into other works, as well.)

2. Write to a Mormon audience, but write well enough that others will want to read it your work, too.

I can’t think of any Mormon authors who have done this, but this is basically the “Antigone” effect, where an author writes for a particular culture and is later read by members of a completely different culture.

Pros: You get to say what you want to say about your own culture, without having to worry about how to explain yourself to those outside the culture.

Cons: Readers outside the culture will have to read an edited or annotated edition of your work, or risk missing out on key references and themes.

3. Write on Mormon themes, but pick themes that are broad enough that others will still identify with the story.

I’m specifically thinking of the movie “Saints and Soldiers,” here, because it’s easy for members of various Christian denominations to identify with Cpl. Greer. (Granted, I don’t know how many denominations were sending missionaries to first world countries just prior to WWII.) Now that I think about it, Card’s books based on the BoM and the life of Joseph Smith may also fit here.

Pros: You get to tell a compelling story with strong cultural resonance to a large audience.

Cons: Not every type of story lends itself to this treatment. Plus, there may be a backlash from anti-Mormon groups if it seems that the creators have been coy about the story’s Mormon roots. (See, for example, the reaction of evangelical Christians against Glenn Beck’s interview with James Dobson, although Beck doesn’t write fiction.)

4. Naturally introduce Mormon themes in the course of the story, and explain references as they come up.

“New York Doll” and Lee Martin’s Deb Ralston series both fit into this category, because they feature a person / character who converts to Mormonism, and so they can naturally present Mormon culture and beliefs through their words, without seeming artificial or stilted.

Pros: Probably one of the most natural ways of presenting Mormon culture to non-Mormons, since it parallels the audience’s own journey of discovery and understanding.

Cons: It’s great to tell stories about Mormon converts, but there are other stories out there, too. Also, these stories risk turning into insubstantially didactic Home Lit, if the conversion is portrayed as the solution to all problems.

Jonathan:

I think your comments regarding communities are right on. I do want to add one caveat though.

I think a well written book for one community can be loved and enjoyed by members of a disconnected community as well. Otherwise no one would read Antigone. I have nothing against writing to our own community. Frankly, it’s hard not to. But I do think it’s a mistake to think that such writing is so insular that it can never appeal outside the community.

Maybe it is an issue of writing as a representative of more than one community. I don’t know. But I am loathe to close doors. I feel my job as an artist is to open doors.

Benson Parkinson talked about the Deseret School and the Missionary School in the very first issue of Irreantum. It’s an excellent essay that, unfortunately, appears to no longer be on the AML website (or perhaps never was — maybe it was only the three kinds of appropriateness, which was also excellent).

Not necessarily. I think what you were getting at in your earlier post is part of what Theric was writing about.

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I’m under the impression that the classic definition of “home literature” is not just literature written by and for Mormons, but also written for a retrenchment-type purpose: that is, to reinforce our devotion to the standards of Mormonism, as opposed to those of the encroaching world. Assuming that this is the case, it explains why home literature isn’t likely to get much play in the broader literary world–issues of quality aside

I’m going to spew for a while here…

It occurred to me, as I was writing this response, that home literature can be thought of as literature that perfects the saints, while the kind of literature that Theric is arguing for is literature that preaches the gospel. Both legitimate, worthwhile aims–and this way of considering them frees us from either a critical hierarchy (home literature = literature that isn’t good) or a temporal hierarchy (home literature = the literature we write before embarking on the heroic journey: that is to say, before we grow up).

And literature that redeems the dead would be–what? Literature that shows the world to us? That makes familiar to us those from other backgrounds aside from our own? Literature that shows us the other and helps us expand our understanding of the gospel to encompass him/her?

It’s noteworthy, in this connection, that redeeming the dead is the one part of the threefold mission of the Church that has been taken up in large part by non-members. Similarly, it doesn’t take a particularly Mormon author to show Mormon readers the divinity within those who live lives different from ours. Indeed, that’s a big part of the goal of literature in general.

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Back in graduate school, I fell under the influence of rhetorical critics and went through a period when I believed that creative writers compose with one eye (at least) firmly on their audience.

It took some time, and several experiences on AML-List, to persuade me that this wasn’t the case. The fact is that far too many actual writers talk about being absorbed in the story itself and viewing writing as an expressive act for me to think of it as primarily an act of audience-driven communication.

What I decided was true instead was that people speak out of, to, and within communities that help define themselves. In many cases, they may not even be aware of “audience” as such–but writing is not simply constrained by also motivated, generated, and shaped according to forms and reasons learned and shared within communities.

What sparked this whole post was reading Theric’s latest comment: “My feeling is that being specifically ourselves does not negate our potential within or obligation to the world. I really don’t see the two as being separate arts, but separate attitudes toward audience.” I guess that the way I see it, the process is a little messier than that. Writing *from* a Mormon perspective *to* a non-Mormon perspective is always going to come across as a bit artificial–because it’s writing that seeks to cross community boundaries, rather than communicating within a community.

This doesn’t mean that Mormons can’t write (and write effectively) for non-Mormons. But I think it does mean that in order to write effectively for non-Mormons, we have to stop writing (for the moment) as Mormons. Instead, we have to be writing as members of some other community which we share with those to whom we’re writing, Mormon or not.

Case in point: Orson Scott Card. Some of his stories are written for Mormons. Some are written for science fiction and fantasy readers. But Card is both: a Mormon and a science fiction and fantasy reader/fan. When he’s writing to Mormons, he writes as a Mormon–with that part of himself that belongs to the Mormon community. When he’s writing sf&f, he writes as Card-the-sf&f-fan. Both types of writing arise out of a sense of identity–out of who he is–but different aspects of that identity that are shared with different communities. (Or so I postulate for the purpose of this post.)

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Like most of the rest of you, I suppose, I’ve sat in ward and stake meetings feeling guilty about not doing more missionary work. For me at least, one of the challenges is simply that I don’t *have* that many friends who aren’t Mormons.

And so for me as a missionary, the first step to sharing the gospel has to be to get out there and join other groups. Other communities.

And so, I postulate, it must be for myself as a writer. I can’t write effectively to/from a community unless I’m a member of that community.

All of which involves–and here we come back to Theric’s idea–going out into the world. Risking myself with people who might not understand me. Trying things out in the world.

So yeah, I guess I kind of agree with Theric after all. Even if I disagree too.

(Sorry. Done for now…)

My feeling is that being specifically ourselves does not negate our potential within or obligation to the world. I really don’t see the two as being separate arts, but separate attitudes toward audience.