For those AMV readers who haven’t followed your career as it has unfolded over the past several years (and documented on the AML-List), could you briefly explain your journey into creative non-fiction?

I had been working as a news reporter for a few years and having the time of my life, but my wife and I could tell that it was not going to pay the bills. So we made the decision to give our careers a much needed boost by earning MFAs.

I know. Not the smartest way to boost one’s career. But we were young.

So we moved to Alaska with our two young children to go to UAF’s creative writing program. I went in to learn fiction, but the thing that was taking up most of the space between my ears at the time was my relationship with Mormonism. I found myself writing to understand that relationship, going into my past and teasing out the experiences that had brought me to this point.

My first attempts weren’t very good, and my essays turned out to be undisciplined and wandering. Fortunately, my studies in fiction had started to teach me how a story works. Once I learned to use those mechanisms, the essays began to take on a constructive shape and people started to like them. I got rejection letters with handwritten notes attached. And one day, Dialogue decided to print something I had written. Dialogue has always had good taste.

I can’t entirely tell from the Zarahemla Books description — are the essays in What of the Night? focused mainly on Mormonism, and mainly personal rather than topical? What’s the scope of this collection?

The essays document my journey through Mormonism. For much of my life, I had this idea that, being born in the Church, I had been born at the Tree of Life. I felt sorry for the poor schmucks who had to follow the iron rod through the dark swamps of Lehi’s dream in order to find the truth. My life, as I saw it, was not a journey but an orbit. I just had to endure to the end at the tree, resisting the temptations of the Great and Spacious Building, waiting under the branches until I died and went to heaven.

I started to realize in college that, just like the next schmuck, I had to take my own journey. I sometimes say that I had to leave the Tree of Life in order to seek the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—and that required forging into the dark swamps. The book’s cover very much captures that idea.

So you’ll see me getting my first glimpse of the difficulties of my spiritual journey as a Cub Scout, and then heading full force into the tensions of religion and spirituality as a missionary and then as a father. At the end, I try to bring the elements of all the essays together to create—not a stopping place, but the staging area for the next journey.

Anyone writing personal essays that come of the Mormon experience has to account, at least somewhat, for the looming presence of Eugene England — not only as a writer of the form, but also as a theorist. As a critic who claims a special place for the personal essay in Mormon letters. What’s your take on England, his work, his discussion of the personal essay, and your own work and theorizing?

I worked as Gene’s administrative assistant for the last year of his life—an experience I write about in the book—and yes, he influenced me deeply. By far the most important idea he gave me is the overarching importance of giving every side its due. His essays are often uncomfortable to read because he goes very deliberately to places in Mormonism and in his own life and prejudices that are tense and volatile. But he does so not to expose corruption or trumpet the cause of righteousness, but to gain the wisdom that comes from dwelling in the tension of spiritual and religious difficulties.

I’ve taken a different narrative path than he has, though. My essays are very story-based, almost never heading into argument or analysis, as Gene’s do. That’s just my style. Stories are good soil, adding to the richness of person’s moral imagination, enabling more complex thoughts to grow.

I think Gene had a point about the personal essay being a genre especially adapted to Mormon expression. There’s a pragmatic strain in us that makes us value “truth” over novelty. If it really happened, it’s more important because a real person is attached to it, and real people have real souls. We all see ourselves as being the main character in a long story, beginning in the pre-mortal life and—in fact—never ending. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Eternity hangs on our choices. I don’t think that personal essay has a corner on important Mormon literature, but I understand its power. After all, I found my voice as a writer when I went into my own life.

I like the cover. Who created it and what was the thinking that went in to it?

The cover art was painted by Anna Waschke, an artist I was friends with in Alaska. I’ve used her work in many of my projects, such as on the covers of issues 150 and 155 of Sunstone. Another of her paintings also serves as inside art for the book. This cover image comes from a series of “portraits” she made, none of which had anything to do with my essays. I think the image encapsulates the basic tension of the book: the head versus the heart in matters of religion. How those tensions inevitably bring us to dark, chaotic places, but how a strange beauty can arise from that chaos. Interestingly, Anna is an atheist and not into religion, but everything she paints resonates with me on a deeply spiritual level.

Okay I have to ask this, and to be honest this may just be me projecting my own fears, but: you’ve written a fair amount over the years about writing and craft and even championed some specific approaches to thinking about writing. Does putting yourself out there in such a, well, collected way, bring with it any anxiety at all? Like you are a poster boy for an approach and have to live up to it? If so, how do you deal with it?

Well, you have to understand where I’m coming from. Before I started my study of fiction, I was a terrible storyteller. Despite all my reading and my English degree, I could not write a story to save my life. I’m kind of like my son who has Asperger’s syndrome: he had to learn to read emotions by making a study of the human face. He doesn’t possess the mental tools most of us have that allow us to read emotion innately. That’s me with stories: I had to learn the mechanisms that run a story, because otherwise I’d never be able to write. You people who have a natural ability to tell stories, I honor you and would like to throw a maltov cocktail through your window.

My dad, who is a computer scientist and an inventor, tells me that once he understands a program or a system, he can picture it as a working schema in his mind and manipulate it to see how it works, and how to improve it. The same thing now happens to me with stories. I can read a novel or watch a movie and all the pieces of the story will come together in my head. I can see how each part affects the others. I can see what would happen if parts were manipulated. It’s like having a Terminator brain.

This was such an exciting discovery, and I worked so long to gain it, that I wanted to share it around just in case I could save some other people some trouble. But I did a terrible job. Perhaps one or two people will benefit from anything I’ve written. But for the most part, I think the little manifestos I sent into cyberspace were mostly me working out the system that serves me so well.

I do use a set of storytelling principles when I write. It’s impossible not to, they’re hardwired into my brain now. They take the anxiety out of writing and open up creative space. I know my work will stand up the way an architect knows that a building he designed won’t fall. Someone may not like my style or my content or whatever, but I can always demonstrate the soundness of my structures.

Related to the previous question: you are a reader, writer, editor, managing editor, blogger and critic. How do you balance all those roles and where do they help and hinder each other?

It’s true that I’ve done a lot less writing since I became an editor. I find that a great deal of my creative energy goes into bringing out the best in an article or essay. But I get a lot of satisfaction from editing, so I don’t feel cheated at all. I do wish that I had more time to read stuff I don’t have to edit. The New Yorker helps with that. I sometimes get a little teary at how good the writing in that magazine is and how I didn’t have to do one bit of work to get it that way.

What specific works of media/art — Mormon or otherwise — have you consumed recently that you totally dig and would recommend, especially to a radical middle reader/viewer/listener?

It’s either because I’m lame, or because I read soooo much on a day-to-day basis, but my main source of entertainment is movies and television. I’ve become a devotee of the Sopranos, which, in my universe, is far and away the best television show of all time and an epic work of art. I don’t know if I could recommend it to the radical Mormon middle, since every episode would be rated R. But if you want to see what happens when masters of storytelling are given a camera and a budget, watch this show. I always feel more solid after watching an episode.

What’s next for you as a writer? Any projects you can reveal to us at this time? What’s getting you charged up to get to work at this point in time?

I should probably feel silly about this, but I’m not going to. I’m writing comic books, and I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Toward the beginning of my tenure at Sunstone, I put together an issue on Mormonism and Asia and thought, “Hey, I should get some Mormon manga in there, just for kicks.” So I wrote up the arm-hacking story of Ammon, storyboarded it, and sent it to my illustrator, Jett Atwood (who, I must say, did a bang-up job). The response was so positive that I decided to make the Book of Mormon comic a regular staple at Sunstone. (The stories recently won the coveted “Book of Mormon Retranslation Prize” from Salt Lake City Weekly. The competition was fierce!)

The thing that has satisfied me the most about this project is that Book of Mormon characters are finally starting to be interesting to me. My whole life, I’ve been pretty bored by the Book of Mormon. It’s just so danged didactic—every character is a walking sermon. Writing these stories has forced me to dig deep and find out what would motivate these characters to act in the ways they do, and I’ve found some very compelling characters that have really grown on me. When I scripted the martyrdom of Abinadi, I just about broke down and cried.

Sunstone subscribers can follow these stories from issue to issue (we’ve worked our way through Zeniff and Noah, and now we’re heading into Alma). But next year, we’ll likely release a collection of the comics to bookstores, or maybe on an iPhone app. I’m also working with Jett on a graphic novel about Abish, which should be out next year. I’m also working on editing The Mormon Tabernacle Enquirer vol. 2, using material from the Sugar Beet, and the special comics issue of Sunstone, which will rock. Hard.

Thanks Stephen!

For the launch, I’ve decided to highlight Eugene England’s response to Orson Scott Card’s novel Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus ( Amazon ) because it captures well, I think, a specific, fascinating moment in both of these great men of Mormon letters’ careers.

Title: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Orson Scott Card

Author: Eugene England

Publication Info: Mormon Literature Database; text of a paper presented at Life, the Universe, & Everything XV: An Annual Symposium on the Impact of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Provo, Utah, February 28, 1997

Submitted by: Wm Morris

Why?: Wm says, “What fascinates me about this paper is that it represents an attempt by England to convince himself that OSC is back in his corner (so-to-speak). It is as much about the socio-cultural politics of Mormonism as it is about the novel Pastwatch.”

Participate:

Fill out the Critic’s Corner form

Read all the Critic’s Corner posts so far

Look for part two sometime Thursday.

* * * *

Beyond Prescription? Problematizing Mormon Identity and the Future of Mormon Literary Studies

[T]he multiplicity of religious and irreligious practices engaged in [...] by those who lay claim to the nominations “Mormon” and “post-Mormon,” much less “Jack Mormon,” [...] boggles the mind.

-Bryan Waterman

Confluences

These past several months I’ve been wrestling with myself, with the Heavens, trying to gain some hold for my intellectual desires and work in a broader conceptual universe. This struggle has really just been an extension and intensification (due to the academic path I’ve been negotiating recently) of my continuing quest to find what Wayne Booth might call “a plausible harmony” between “my many selves.” Among others, the believing Mormon, who seeks greater communion with God by trying to live by His laws as voiced by His prophets and to serve with faith in what he considers God’s church (no matter the institution’s flaws); the husband, who has obligated himself through what he considers unbreakable promises to honor his bride, her potential as a human being, their combined potential as wife and husband, and the fruits of their eternal marriage; and the poet, teacher, and literary scholar who is compelled by the incessant prodding of vocation to share his rhetorical gifts with the world—you know, the whole don’t-hide-your-light-under-a-bushel deal.

My continued challenge is learning to balance these passions, to engage with each in an honest, quality, pleasing, even—ideally—transformative experience for the parties involved. In short, I yearn to make a positive difference in the world (though I admit the intangibility and the potential “O, that I were an angel” discontent of that desire), to create a space in which I can identify with and influence others, in which I can allow their voices, their stories, their selves, to gather, to mingle, to develop, to expand into and revise the stories I came from.

I stole that last phrase—the stories I came from—from James Goldberg’s recent Mormon Artist interview with Nicole Wilkes. When asked how he came up with a name for the protagonist who wanders through the amalgam of mythologies he’s gathered in “Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg,” Goldberg cites his unique ethnic heritage—his many selves—as inspiration. Says he,

When I decided to write a story in which I was free to use the stories I came from, I came up with the name “Teancum Singh Rosenberg.” It was almost a joke at first: I’m going to create this guy with a first name so Book of Mormon I’ve never actually met anyone with it, the middle name all Sikh men take, and a sort of stereotypical Eastern European Jewish last name.

So Teancum Singh Rosenberg, as his creator, stands at the confluence of at least four overlapping cultural traditions: Mormon, Indian, European, and Jewish. He thus represents a multi-faceted identity constructed from the rhetorical material of Goldberg’s multi-faceted self.

My appropriation of Goldberg’s language seeks to borrow something of this pluralism, even as I subtly—perhaps somewhat radically—recontextualize his phrase, revising its intended meaning in order to suit my own rhetorical need, which at present is twofold: 1) to initiate a critical narrative knit around my many selves and our experience with the varieties of Mormon narrative art; and 2) to problematize the notion of a coherent and prescribed Mormon cultural identity, an assumption around which many Mormon critics have constructed their theoretical paradigms and critiques and upon which much of Mormonism’s critical energy continues to be spent (see the litany of links in my note as a small sample).

Reading through the Stories I Came From: A Critical Autobiography

A number of years ago when I happened upon the Mormon literaturstreit of the 1990’s and began considering the possibilities of and for a Mormon literature and criticism, I started to frame my own theoretical paradigm around what I thought were the essential matters at stake in the world of Mormon letters: the teachings, rites, and ordinances of the Restored Gospel. I think I titled or sub-titled my attempt “The Rites of Mormon Criticism” because it was centered (if I remember correctly) around the sequence of rituals required for entrance into the Heavenly City. The effort was born of my imagined position as the next great Mormon literary critic and, looking back, I see it was meant to suggest that for a critic to rightly judge Mormon literature and for a writer to truthfully create Mormon literature, s/he needs to have been initiated into the literary ministry through the proper gospel rites. Only when dressed in the billowing robes of this priesthood should they be qualified to write by, for, and about the Mormon experience.

I abandoned that effort soon thereafter 1) because I didn’t know where I was going with it, probably because I was still wet behind the ears when it comes to having engaged much—if any—Mormon lit beyond the scriptures and Mormon devotional texts; and 2) because it never quite sat right with me. I see now that one reason for my uneasiness was the exclusivity of the framework: not only does it deny the varieties of Mormon cultural experience that exist outside of Church Headquarters (even those, admittedly, that exist within church headquarters), it also betrays a bias toward a masculine worldview, especially because those invested with priesthood authority and the stewardship to judge in institutionalized Mormonism are men and the framework parallels that investment. Another reason I think I never got on board with myself was because I couldn’t be satisfied critically with such a culturally exclusive, boys’ club mentality. And though I probably couldn’t have articulated this reasoning then, I can trace the roots of my present theoretical narrative to that (inter)textual experience with Richard Cracroft, Bruce Jorgenson, and Gideon Burton.

At around this same time, I met Dialogue, Irreantum, and AMV, each of whom introduced me to writers and critics whose ideas have had a significant impact on the development of my own theories of language and literature. Among others:

Eugene England, father of my intellectual engagement with Mormon culture, whose short poem, “The Firegiver” (which I’ve explored elsewhere), and short essay, “The Possibility of Dialogue,” invited me into the rhetorical space and potential of intra- and inter-cultural discourse—of the possibility that I could profitably “speak with sensitivity to [another’s personal] framework or ability to hear and speak in order to communicate for each other’s welfare, not to justify or exalt [myself] at [their] expense” and that I could “truly listen to other[s], respecting our essential” kinship as part of God’s family “and the courage of those who try to speak, however they may differ from [me] in professional standing or religious belief or moral vision.”

Patricia Karamesines, whose award-winning essay, “The Rhetoric of Stealing God,” persuaded me, not just into AMV’s fold of regular readers, but into the power and authority of responsible and sustainable language use—into rhetoric that “questions itself as thoroughly as it questions Other, and when it finds itself lacking, it takes upon itself the responsibility to find the next best thing, the revelatory metaphor, the liberating paradox, the ever-expanding symbol, thereby crossing boundaries established by less productive, less creative, less pro-active, and less kind words.”

William Morris, whose “In Memoriam: Laraine Wilkins” justified my decision to study literature over sociology:

Wilkins [...] articulated an inclusive, diverse, unabashedly literary view of Mormon letters. To quote from a recent e-mail: “I’m interested in seeing more dialogue happen—*dialogue* in order to have some groundwork for Mormon culture to enjoy more respect, or at least better understanding, from the outside community. Such dialogue requires both insiders and outsiders. I’d like to see AML do more of this. I think literature has great—perhaps even better—potential than history (though history is where most work is being done) or sociology to achieve this. Literature, although an expression of cultural identity in many respects, ultimately addresses individual experience…”

And whose continued insistence that Mormon literary criticism should focus on specific examples from Mormon narrative art has kept me from circling (too far) into theoretical abstraction as I engage the growing body of Mormon letters and try to find my niche in the field of contemporary literature.

And Laura Craner, whose titillatingly short post “If You Can ‘Queer’ a Book Can You ‘Mormon’ a Book?” poses a question (about what it might mean to read as a Mormon) and a correlation (between gender/sexuality studies and Mormon studies—my main research interests) that, eventually, led me to Bryan Waterman and new ways of considering Mormon literature as an expression of diverse cultural and personal identities and experiences.

And what might those new ways be? Tune in Thursday as I lean heavily on Waterman (specifically this article he published in Dialogue 30.1 (1997)) and some others to take up the problem(atizing) of Mormon identity and what that might mean for Mormon literary criticism.

Now, radical is generally not the most welcome term among American Mormons. It smacks to much of the Left and/or of the political fringe. This is why it’s important to confine the term the radical middle to Mormon arts and culture and emphasize that there is room for artists, critics and readers with a multitude of political leanings (assuming, of course, that their politics isn’t the sole thing driving their artistic activity). Indeed, I think by pairing radical and middle and applying it to Mormon arts, England and anyone else who invokes the term is reinscribing its’ meaning, appropriating the adjective for our own use and changing it in the process. I’m a fan of such appropriation by an ethnic group/sub-culture. But what do we really mean by radical and how does it play out in Mormon arts and culture? The short answers are: nobody has really said much, and it doesn’t really. So unlike with the middle where I was able to explore it in depth in a descriptive way, I’m going to have to get speculative and prescriptive with the radical. But first…

Radical history and doctrine

Whatever our position in American society now (that is the tenuous semi-mainstreamed stability achieved through the embrace of the meritocracy and of alliance with conservative politics [allowing, of course, for the few liberals and crunchy cons and libertarians]), it must not be forgotten that we have radical roots. From the restorationist claims of Joseph Smith to the communitarian projects of Brigham Young, and, yes, the scandalousness of polygamy — whether you believe all that to be a concatenation of American (not forgetting the European streams of thought behind them) influences (with a touch of native genius) or the opening of the heavens and streaming of restored truths, the radical, as in the challenge to the status quo, roots of Mormonism run deep. And are the wellspring of latter-day Mormon art.

So radical, in fact, that our literal and/or spiritual forefathers and mothers were cast out from society, pushed from their city on a hill, the city they had in their American spirit had raised out of a swamp, pushed to the edge of the map to leave a trail of graves until they reached their refuge in the desert, their State of Deseret, which was then (before the people could truly become an ethnies) reabsorbed in to the body politic (and economic, which is what fundamentally it’s almost always about). Yes, I know that this is a florid way of putting it and that there was a complex web of motives behind the mobs and that the Saints were not without fault either. But the point is: radical (perhaps even free radicals — and perhaps that was part of the problem). Although the way of life and even prevailing attitudes of most Mormons has now become thoroughly middle class suburban America, and even with the institutionalizing and the correlating, the doctrines and history of Mormonism challenged and sometimes still challenges the status quo. Which means that invoking of the radical in radical middle kinda actual means something and can be claimed a native part of Mormon identity. In fact, in linguistics, radical refers to the root form of a word, and indeed the origins of the word are in a Latin word meaning “having roots.” Roots we have. The radical in the radical middle is a reminder of that.

But yes, of course, much of what we mean by radical is the desire for change, reform and even for pushing to the extreme or to the limits.

Radical forms/modes

When used in connection to the creation and reception of art, then, radical suggests experimentation with forms and modes and genres. It means not settling for the current dominant ways of narrative expression. Or playing with them in such a way to critique or undermine or reconfigure them in a way that resonates with the radical middle audience.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that one blindly follows the avant-garde. Indeed, the avant-garde per se has been thoroughly co-opted by and entrenched with the elite and even more its modes of expression are quickly adopted and deployed the marketers, the cool hunters and brand managers. I mentioned the blog Hilobrow in my section on the middlebrow in the second post in this series. That blog celebrates both the avant-garde and the pop (from Bjork to Britney Spears). It seems to me that’s a peculiarly good way of playing the strengths and weaknesses of those two schools of art off of each other. On the other hand, I’m not calling for the repudiation of the middlebrow. Indeed, I think that it’s clear that certain Mormon values and ways of life are reactionary (although again, let’s not forget our radical roots and become thoroughly bourgeois). Of course, once you get post-post-modern, the reactionary may very well be the avant-garde. I could keep going but at some point it just ends up a circle (one eternal round?) so let me end with this: the radical middle should beg, borrow and steal from (and infect) everybody and be open to every form, mode and genre. We can’t afford to be snooty about anything, to turn away any idea (while, of course, demanding craftsmanship).

Radical energy/authenticity

Pairing radical with middle is, as I mention above, an attempt to bring energy to the middle. So often the energy is on the poles. This is a problem any movement haves, the energized are often those on the extreme. There is a danger to radical energy. Thus when finding the energy in the radical, we should find simply movement and activity and passion — not zeal and rabidness.

Another danger of the radical is, the danger of inauthenticity, of radical as vogue, as fashion. See for example radical chic. If you are going to, for example, challenge the status quo with the forms of your art then it has to happen out of genuine passion, out of authenticity, rather than as a pose. Now one man’s pose, is another’s whole life. And in this day and age authenticity is almost a false concept, a pose in and of itself (c.f. The Believer) . I say almost. One of the advantages of Mormonism is we have some touchstones to keep us real (our history, our doctrine, our audiences). We also have commandments about charity and humility and consecration. Realistically, not every move made by the radical middle is going to appear authentic to every member of the middle or the right or the left or what have you. But the beauty of discipleship is that it requires energy and authenticity, and I would argue, it also requires a deep engagement with change (which is why we can’t ignore the radical forms/modes piece of the radical).

Radical organization/authoring

Movements are always organizing. In some cases (in all cases, really), the organization becomes an impediment to the work. Mormonism has a history of radical organization. And I’m not just talking about the attempts at instituting the United Order. I think that the grand failures there often blinds us to all the other very successful cooperative efforts by Mormons. And not just economic activity (ZCMI, Zion’s Bank) — from Brigham Young’s sending members on art missions to Susa Gates Young and the Young Woman’s Journal, the early history of Mormon narrative art is one of cooperative effort and literary cliques.

In general, the activity of Mormon narrative art tends to follow models found elsewhere (from regional literary journals to indie filmmaking to Christian bookstores and publishers) with varying levels of success. I think that’s fine in terms of creating a certain base level of competency. I also think that there’s room for experimentation with more radical attempts at organization and even types of authoring. How do you accomplish something truly radical middle if your modes of production are not only not cutting edge, but generally behind everybody else? Whether its avant garde or retrograde, I think this is an area where’s there room for some experimentation. I may be completely wrong here. But the unique properties of Mormonism holds out some tantalizing possibilities. One of my first posts to the AML-List many years ago was on the possibility for collaborative writing, and this is an area I’ve continued to explore here at AMV. I don’t have any brilliant solutions, but I do want to keep this as an open topic for discussion.

One other comment here: it may seem flip of me to go off on radical organization, when many of the main radical middle entities are struggling just to reach sustainability. But that’s exactly why this is an important component of the radical middle. Indeed, it seems to me that what’s most healthy in the radical middle right now is a network of individuals who believe in the cause. What is most needed is ways of maximizing the energies and collaborations and output of this network and fostering the development of new voices and talent and incorporating them in to the web of radical middle efforts. I’ve told several of my co-bloggers this, but I will kill off the AMV brand (but not the archives — don’t fear in that regard) if we reach a point where it’s just no fun or not worthwhile anymore and/or there’s a project or projects that fill the same space AMV does, but better. Which is simply to say: it’s about the people and what they create and about the optimal use of resources. It’s not about the sales or the number of unique hits or the media mentions or the awards or the literary respectability. Which is not to say that any of those things are bad, per se. I’m still going to submit to the Irreantum fiction contest and talk about the Whitney Awards here at AMV, etc. etc. But for the middle to truly be radical, it needs to resist inertia and chasing after fleeting approbations.

Radical critique/engagement

As I mention above, the radical challenges the status quo. As Eugene England models in the essay that brought this series of posts about, it engages with and critiques the poles. Theoretically, by virtue of its position in the middle, the radical middle should be well-equipped able to provide informed, radical — as in reformist/energetic/thoroughgoing — criticism of all the surrounding discourses. But it can’t really do so without engagement with those discourses, without some knowledge of them. Otherwise it’s the lazy, inflated rhetoric, the tired tropes and stereotypes that Mormons of all stripes know so well.

In addition, I firmly believe that the radical middle is strongly positioned to not only do what England does and point out the danger on the left and the right of Mormon culture, but also to provide unique, trenchant criticism of American culture (and others as well).

The radical middle

The devil is always in the details (and as England reminds us that B.H. Roberts kicked off Mormon literature with the fact that the Devil must be given his due), and no blog post can accurately capture all the issues and activities and creative works involved in the radical middle, faithful realism, broadly appropriate wing of Mormon art. I also don’t intend for this series of posts to be the only or final word on the radical middle. I do hope, however, that some of you have found this exercise helpful. Again: this is no manifesto. I reserve the right to change my opinion and even distance myself from the term. But for now, I think if any label represents what I am trying to do and what I value in Mormon art, this is it. This radical middle.

Between the poles

If we take our cues from England’s essay “Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left!,” the middle is the place between two poles of Mormon narrative art. In most specific terms, it is the works that fall between the two 1990s Mormon short story anthologies Turning Hearts: Short Stories on Family Life (Bookcraft) and In Our Lovely Deseret: Mormon Fictions (Signature). It is represented by the works England selected for his own, earlier anthology Bright Angels & Familiars: Contemporary Mormon Stories (Signature). Now England does make some larger philosophical claims for what this middle is, in particular linking it to the idea of ethical fiction, but in terms of defining the middle, well, the middle is in between these two poles — between the right and the left.

However, England does remind us that being between these two poles doesn’t mean simply sitting there between them. Rather, there is an ideological power that comes with taking both of those poles on. Early on in the essay, he cites a phrase from Joseph Smith — “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest” — and then goes on to explain that:

By “prove” he did not mean to provide a final proof of one or the other contrary, but to test, to try out, to examine both alternatives, or all, in the light of each other; he meant that truth is not found in extremes, in choosing one polar opposite over another, but in seeing what emerges from careful, tolerant study of the dialectic between the two. Ethical fiction brings the great contraries into juxtaposition and moves us to new visions of truth greater than any of the poles. [end block quote]

Agreed. But whether those new visions happen or not (and sometimes they do and when they do, it is quite lovely), the middle remains between, and that between-ness brings with it a whole host of complicating circumstances.

Not the center

One of those circumstances is that, for all its between-ness, when it comes to Mormon narrative art, the middle is not the center. It is not the locus of institutional attention and support from either native LDS sources or from the major national supporters of narrative art (for example, neither Deseret Book, BYU nor the LDS Church proper have done much to support “broadly appropriate” works; attempts made to publish such works with national publishers have mostly failed). Nor is it a center of much economic activity or even of cultural awareness. LDS genre fiction and populist national market works by LDS authors (Stephenie Meyer and Orson Scott Card) hold that ground.

Now, of course, the middle is not without its own resources, and it often claims works from the centers of power for its own, although such appropriations are not always without controversy — both from those in the middle and those without (c.f. Meyer, in particular). And there may be times when the centers may throw a few bones to the middle, and some in the middle may have some hopes of gaining institutional support and power, but as with most radical middle movements, any attempt to infiltrate, infect or co-opt centers of power/activity is bound to have limited success or in turn be co-opted. This is particularly true when it comes to the LDS/Mormon world because of the unique position of Mormon art in relation to LDS ideologies. We are awash in the “shockingly appropriate” and the “completely appropriate” and the “broadly appropriate” is ignored because there is more at stake than simply literary positions. Mormon art is bound up in the whole struggle between the supporters and detractors (both provincial and national) of the LDS Church; no wonder that such a struggle has produced an abundance of didactic work. And, of course, Mormon art is complicated further by the fact that many of the radical middle are active in these other centers. This is the strength and weakness of Mormon artists, that their institutional allegiances aren’t confined to their own little literary or artistic school/movement.

Certainly, the great hope of the middle is that it will produce some work which crosses over, which hits one of the centers with such power and craft that it is widely embraced, perhaps even winning new converts to the middle and thus becoming its own center of power. I have no idea whether such a thing is possible when it comes to Mormon narrative art. And I certainly don’t mean to diminish the centers of activity that are currently operating in the middle. I’m part of all that. But in defining the middle, it’s important to recognize that there are centers of power who are at best mildly supportive, for the most part impassive, and at the worst hostile to the middle.

Encompasses as much as possible

But even as it is not a center, the middle in Mormon narrative art has traditionally sought to encompass as much as possible. Radical middle authors have written for and worked for LDS Church publications and have published with Signature Books. During Chris Bigelow’s tenure, Irreantum published news and reviews of LDS genre fiction and even interviews with and stories by LDS fiction authors, and the AML-List has always been willing to run reviews of such works. The recent inclusion Anette Lyon and Rachel Ann Nunes in the new AML blog is another nod in the direction of LDS fiction. And, of course, many of those in the middle have been willingly to consume (if not entirely embrace) work by such “shockingly appropriate” artists as Brian Evenson, Neil LaBute and Matthew Barney (which, of course, is met with suspicion by those in the “completely appropriate” school).

But casting a wide net is not without controversy and a major feature of the middle has been vigorous debate about exactly how much to encompass — the Mormon literarturstreit of the ’90s, which can be found in the Jorgensen, Cracroft and Burton essays on the Mormon Literature Website, being a good example (as well as countless conversations on the AML-List). And Irreantum, the AML Awards, and A Motley Vision all tend to focus the large majority of their attention on works that fall solidly in the middle.

But when forced to draw boundaries, even when such boundaries are contested, the middle tends to encompass as much as possible. For more on this, see my AMV post LDS fiction; Mormon fiction (part two), which includes an extended metaphor that I think captures well the uneasy yet broad way in which the middle tries to take a broad approach.

May or may not be middlebrow (but pretty much is)

The middle may or may not be middlebrow. For the most part, it is totally middlebrow and classically middlebrow authors (such as Jane Austen) and works are quite popular among American Mormons generally and the radical middle, in particular. In addition, I think that at this point in American literary history, literary realism is totally middlebrow and Mormon faithful realism very much so. For all that there may be a bit of radicality to the use of some Mormon materials in how the faithful realism plays out in some stories, for the most part, Irreantum publishes middlebrow work, and with its turn to journal status a few years ago, and continued attempts at literary respectability, I think it’s safe to say that the middlebrow is the dominant strain of Mormon narrative art in the middle. The emphasis on “broadly appropriate” is also a mark of the middlebrow. And in fact the one recent middle work that has had the most success in receiving attention across several strata of Mormon readers is Angela Hallstrom’s Bound on Earth, which is as about as middlebrow as you can get (whereas the un-middlebrow Angel Falling Softly had some problems in the market).

Now this is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I have thrown out the term middlebrow pride in the past. But there is a danger to focusing too much on the middlebrow, especially if we are serious about this radical middle term. One immediate one is that it has traditionally meant that radical middle players have ignored the LDS genre fiction market  and as a result have lost potential participants and power (the Whitneys, the LDStorymakers Writers Conference — although again the inclusion mentioned above in AML blog is a good sign)

More on all this in the next post, which focuses on the radical. For now, let me quote from the tag line of the blog Hilobrow: “Middlebrow is not the solution.” I don’t know if it is or not, but I do know that anything that calls itself the radical middle is going to need to account for the hilobrow in some way.

The middle as ethical and esthetic

Because his use of the term radical middle comes at the very end of the essay, England doesn’t really provide much direction on what he means by middle and radical, but the analysis of stories that leads up to the conclusion bring in two concepts that I think illustrate what he means by the middle — creative work in the middle is ethical and esthetic; whereas work that’s not in the middle is unethical and un- or even anti-esthetic. For example, he write that ethical teachings are “reinforced powerfully by ethical fiction, both through honest and thorough examination, of difference and the gaps in our thought structures and institutions that reveal our efforts to suppress it and also in visions of new and healing possibilities” (page 15). He then late links esthetics to activity of ethical authors and identifies an esthetics that creates stories that “have characters who seem independent from their authors, capable of making decisions the authors would disapprove of and still love them” (page 18).

Certainly there can be disagreement on what is ethical and aesthetic, but based on my experience the middle takes a similar view and has a similar concern with ethics and aesthetics that England outlines in his essay. In particular, the appeal to these two concepts, which goes back to Horace and the idea that narrative art should both delight and instruct, seems a particularly middle stance between the purely didactic and the purely aesthetic.

The middle as middle

I end this post with the idea of the middle as, well, middle. There are definitely advantages in being able to situate and negotiate between two poles — in absorbing ideas, works, authors, tricks from both sides. The middle can be (but isn’t automatically so) a place from which engagement can happen with everything that defines itself as LDS/Mormon art/culture. In addition, because the middle often takes a rather ecumenical role, it is often better equipped to create space for sub-groups to form and experiment. Since the middle is squishy, there’s less chance that a voice will be squelched if it doesn’t conform to the often rigid expectations of those on the poles.

But the middle can also feel hemmed in, squeezed, always pushing to defend its space. And, as any middle child knows, even worse — it can also feel lonely and ignored. This is why the idea of being not just the middle, but the radical middle seems so attractive, and that’s what awaits in the next post.

It all starts with Eugene England

As far as I know, the first use of the term radical middle in relation to Mormon narrative art is in Eugene England’s Dialogue essay/review “Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction,” which was published in Fall 1999.

In the essay, England challenges two anthologies of short Mormon fiction that had been published in the late ’90s (and, of course, champions his own anthology that had been published in the early ’90s). On page 30 he laments the fact Doug Thayer was not included in either the “right” or “left” anthology even though in England’s opinion his work would be a comfortable fit with both. He writes: “We are suffering, I fear, from a version of the old logical fallacy of the excluded middle, ripping Mormon literature apart to the remarkably similar extremes of right-wing and left-wing piety and cultural correctness and mutual exclusion.” Further down the page he adds: “…too many writers in what might be called the radical middle, who have no simplistic pro-Mormon or anti-Mormon agenda, but try to practice their craft with careful esthetic* skill and ethical insight, can’t seem to get themselves published to a Mormon audience. It’s a shame. I might even say, if I were an extremist, it’s a damn shame.”

An appropriation of a political term

I think it’s clear that England’s use of the term is meant to bring its political meaning in to the realm of Mormon letters — his use of right-wing and left-wing in the essay reinforces this. I don’t know if he further developed what he meant by using this term, although I think the essay itself as well as much of the rest of his oeuvre wonderfully illustrate (more or less) what it means to be in the middle in a radical way when it comes to Mormonism. I believe he also had radical center/radical middle political leanings as well. The radical middle (see the link to the Wikipedia in the previous sentence for a quick summary) has an interesting history in U.S. politics. It’s not necessarily something I subscribe to (although the term is squishy enough that it probably captures some of my admittedly waffling political beliefs), but I think that it’s important to understand not so much what it means, or what policies and political philosophies it encompasses, as why it is specifically deployed in order to understand it’s appeal to Eugene England and his descendants in Mormon letters.

Ross Perot’s Reform Party (at least its early years) and 1996 presidential run is an example of an eruption of the radical middle in to mainstream electoral politics. This is not to say that Ross Perot’s presidential platform equates the radical center in U.S. politics. It can be a difficult thing to define — see for example this list of political thinkers grappling with the idea of centrism/radical center/radical middle. But at its core is a sense of being in between, but in a way that’s energetic.

The radical middle, then, is most often an expression of frustration with two dominant parties/ways/philosophies. It is reactive (which brings with it the weaknesses of reactivity); it is amorphous; it is rather self-conscious and self-important. It is in flux and changes in relation to the two parties that it reacts against. It is always in danger of crystallizing its own orthodoxies and pieties. It is an often uneasy mix of populism and elitism and self-righteousness. It is accused of being wishy-washy and over-optimistic and idealistic by the left- and right-wing. It is anti-authoritarian and anti-Utopian.

All this may or may not transfer over when used in relation to the field of Mormon letters, but I think it’s important to acknowledge the political roots of the term. And as a sidenote, a sector of British Islam uses the term — see The Radical Middle Way — to articulate a fascinating form of modern-day cultural, theological and intellectual form of moderate Islam. The adjectives used on the page I link to — revolutionary, dynamic, proactive, relevant, young, open, creative, positive, inclusive — show, I think, the appeal of this way of defining a movement (we’ll get more in to this with my next two posts).

Irreantum and appropriateness

I can’t find any use of the term “radical middle” since England’s essay until the AMVers took it up, but I do want to point out another attempt to articulate that middle way that has been influential. When Chris Bigelow and Benson Parkinson first launched Irreantum in 2001, Parkinson posted an essay to the AML Website that he had previously written for the AML-List back in 1997 (which predates England’s radical middle essay). Titled the “Three Kinds of Appropriateness,” it briefly defines the qualities of over-safe, didactic fiction and angry, anti-institutional Church and pushing-the-content-envelope fiction (and labels them respectively as “completely appropriate” and “shockingly appropriate”) and charts a course between those two that without much exception defines fairly well the course that Irreantum (Ben is a co-founder of the magazine and influenced its original tone and parameters) has taken over its history as well as radical middle publishers like Zarahemla Books and Parables Publishing. It also influences the approach we take here at A Motley Vision and works that navigate it well are those that are most celebrated here (and by the Association for Mormon Letters). There are, of course, exceptions, but anything that gets too didactic (on either side of the spectrum) and that either elides reality too much or on the other hand gets too explicit or touches certain taboos (e.g. offensive stuff about the temple or general authorities) tends to be spurned or simply ignored.

As with any ideological space there are fluctuations in the boundaries over time and differences in opinion among individuals, but, generally, when it comes to the world of Mormon letters this middle way — which Ben Parkinson terms the the broadly appropriate — has been the aim of those working to legitimize Mormon narrative art.

The radical middle at present

I can’t speak for why Boyd chose to invoke the term radical middle in his post kicking off the new AML blog, but it also has had some currency here at AMV, and while I think it’s somewhat obvious why that’s the case, I’m going to explore the middle and the radical of the radical middle in the next two posts in the hopes that forcing me to articulate it and you all to discuss it will further the concept. More tomorrow.

* I’m not sure why England prefers esthetic over aesthetic.

Title: Danger on the Right! Danger on the Left! The Ethics of Recent Mormon Fiction

Author: Eugene England

Publication Info: Fall 1999 — Dialogue, Volume 32, Number 3

Submitted by: William Morris

Why?: 1. Because it’s the most significant piece of Mormon criticism published so far that focuses on short stories. 2. Because I think it gets at what I mean by the radical middle (but not entirely) 3. Because it has an hilarious title. 4. Because it’s criticism that actually dares to not only examine ethics but use specific examples! 5. Because it’s Eugene England.

Participate:

Submit to Short Story Friday

Possible online sources of stories and link to spreadsheet with current submissions

All Short Story Friday posts so far

Impressed that the best place to start something is usually (though not always) the beginning, I linked to “Volume 01, Number 1, Spring 1966,” then to “Contents.” Having embraced Eugene and his piercing insights and rhetoric after finding “Mormon Literature: Progress and Prospects” on the Mormon Literature Database a few months earlier, I was especially drawn to his short essay, “The Possibility of Dialogue,” and to his poem, “The Firegiver.” Deciding it best to begin at the end this time, I’d linked to the poem, read it, and laughed, first off, at the interplay it illustrates between a curious and gifted child and the all-knowing, merciful, and just Parent, Muse, and Mentor he seeks to please; then at how perfectly his language captured (and still captures) the subtle tugs and pulls of my own nascent intellectual discipleship.

From line one in this psalm, Eugene leaves no doubt as to whom he’s speaking and why: “God,” he says, “forgive my pen its trespass, / And I forgive thee the sweet burning / That drives it on through thy dominion.” Approaching his Creator through this playfully candid revision of Christ’s statement that “if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Matt. 6:14), he highlights not just the often transgressive efforts we exert in our yearning for an eternal Parent’s approval, but the desire we all feel compelled towards at times to faithfully bargain with God while following the path of duty, talent, and love into the depths of consecration. Abraham exercised this entitlement when he negotiated with Jehovah for the sake of any saints left in Sodom, as did Jacob when he wrestled God’s messenger for a blessing and was afterwards renamed Israel because, in the messenger’s words, “as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed” (Gen. 32:28). Jacob’s strength and persistence thus became the ecclesiastical and political might of Israel, God’s covenant nation.

Likewise, when Mahonri Moriancumer approached God with the “sixteen small stones[,] […] white and clear” (Ether 3:1), that he’d crafted from a rock, he acknowledged at once his weakness and God’s power while very specifically and persuasively laying his case as to why these stones were needed for the Jaredites’ journey across the sea. Then there’s Joseph Smith who, after several dark months in Liberty Jail, recapitulated his desperate pleas for grace in a direct and influential prayer for God’s power to be extended in favor of his afflicted saints. And finally we have Christ, the Great Mediator who begged for the weight of our collective burdens to be lifted from his soul before ultimately submitting his will to the Father’s, earning himself the power and the right to save this round of Creation from the demands of justice. Only through his submission and his determined pleading in our behalf is it even possible for us to come to Elohim with our desires in hand.

Elsewhere Eugene borrows from this prophetic legacy when he relates how he, as the president of a sprawling branch of Saints, had laid his hands on his family’s unresponsive Chevrolet and, in his words, while “explaining to the Lord that I was about his work, that my branch needed me, and I needed some extraordinary help to get there,” blessed that it would perform so he could, too. Drawing from these experiences when he’d been able to petition God for help in the seemingly minute details of mortality (why should God, after all, really care about a dying Chevy?), he concludes that such opportunities—the times when our needs can only be met by a miracle—“come often, and the Lord’s response forms a bright thread in the texture of gospel living.” Eugene turns this thread through his poetry and prose as a subtle witness that God can be found in the details of a life and that, even without “fully understand[ing] why or how” God does what he does, as we “continue to ask” and then “acknowledge the Lord’s hand in all things,” he rewards our question with an increased measure of faith and a greater understanding of his infinite character and the intimate touch of his love.

He conceives this petitioner’s heritage further in “The Firegiver” with his obvious allusion to Prometheus, that crafty Greek titan who took fire from Zeus’ hollow reed to share with the mortals. Though he doomed himself to eternal punishment with this defiant act of compassion, his agency ultimately saved humankind from destruction at the gods’ hands, giving them, by Aeschylus’ account, a “measureless resource” of life and inspiration, the infinitely (re)generative muse “of all arts,” a mediatory presence through and with which they might discern and embrace the wonder of their created and creative universe and beyond.

Reading thus, I can’t help but connect Prometheus and his gift with the cherubim given a flaming sword and commissioned “to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. 3:24). Wielding an instrument representative of the purifying, illuminating, and separating power of God’s Word, these sentinels guard the tree against the filthiness of sin; they protect those who would approach the tree in ignorance or willful disregard of the rules governing such a celestial road lest these should partake of the fruit and stay forever cursed by sin; and they maintain the path for those ready with “the key words, the signs and tokens” (Journal of Discourses 2:31) required for admittance into the fullness of God’s glory, teaching and testing such individuals before allowing them to advance to the throne of Deity. However tenuous this association and however opposite its characters might seem—Prometheus challenged the gods by offering their power to humanity while the cherubim retain the tool and power given them by God as they act under His direction—each culturally distinct fire-bearer gives more than just heat and illumination to their patrons. They transmit, sustain, and protect the glory of the heavens in and through the living conduit of language, as typified by the pen, which, in this case, is not mightier than but analogous with the sword.

Such a correlation suggests that the guardians and conveyors of God’s holiness are not just the divinely-placed cherubs, but ultimately all those given charge over the word and the Word, either through the laying on of hands or through the incessant and undeniable call of vocation: the prophets and seers, priests and teachers, poets and critics, storytellers and storymakers, soothsayers and truthsayers of Zion. Affiliated thus with the Holy Order of God, either through an official setting apart or an act of self ordination, these wordsmiths essentially come to us “in a manner that thereby [we] […] might know in what manner to look […] to [the] […] Son for redemption” (Alma 13:2). In other words, their mediatory deeds function to one degree or another as types for the Atonement and presence of Christ, ultimately serving to draw people from the comfort of established ideas into new psychological, philosophical, and spiritual trajectories and marrying Self to Other (especially to God) through the mind- and soul-expanding acts of language.

Through his poetic entreaty and elsewhere in his writings on Mormon culture and theology, Eugene assumes this role of prophet and creator, mediator and seer, uniting elements from his literary and religious traditions in ways that illuminate the saving principles of a life lived “to serve […] [God] wittily, in the tangle” of one’s mind and that breathe life into the Mormon scholar’s struggle to engage the gospel with both heart and mind, to be faithful to both God and their intellectual facility. Eugene once described this intellectual gift as something that comes

from the Lord [and] that makes you delight in ideas, alive to the life that goes on in your mind as well as outside it, that makes you question set forms and conventional wisdom to see if they really are truth or only habit, whether they endure because right or merely because of fear or sloth; […] the gift […] that makes you curious about why as well as how, anxious to serve him by being creative as well as obedient.

In “The Firegiver” he acknowledges this divinely-ordained burden, recognizing that, as a self-ordained artist endowed with a keen intellect, an affinity for words, and an insatiable drive to explore and understand the range of God’s “dominion” in his personal quest for enduring knowledge, he has the obligation and the opportunity to develop and employ his talents in service to others and knows that God is bound, as an omniscient and eternally just Being and the ultimate Source of the artist’s passion, to hold him to as well as to help him carry that yoke. Firm in this awareness, he can confidently ask God to “Indulge the hand that reaches into flame,” exercising faith that the Creator will somehow gratify and make a place for the mind (of which the pen is merely an instrument of expression) that probes the creative yet potentially destructive “burning” of the soul even as it moves to synthesize “shapes of love, […] [God’s] face, or being / itself […] in its [avaricious] question.”

From what I’m able to know of Eugene through our limited textual interaction, I’m convinced he understood that such risk—both to reach and to ask—is necessary as the fully-engaged disciple seeks to explore and express the depths of their unique and independent selfhood and, in so doing, to commune with God, the Eternal Self whose agency propagates and grooms to potential other eternal selves. Through this risk, the artist and the man seems to have weighed and counterweighed the essential paradoxes of existence against his own being: of love—its sources, shapes, and possibilities; of life, as lived in a community and in the marrow of one’s soul; of the breadth and depth of God’s character and his relation to his universe, especially with us personally and as comes through his institutionalized Priesthood. Moving to prove these contraries in the deeply personal and at times mischievous dialogue that inhabits and informs his work (including “The Firegiver”) and the tragic depths of his (for us) too short venture through mortality, he prompts us to read God, his kingdom, and his saints through the lens of reasoned faith. He moves us to progress into that dialogue with our deepest selves and with God that will ultimately lead us through the principles and ordinances of his gospel into at-one-ment with him and into the fullness of our being as potential heirs to Eternal life, a dynamic condition, as Joseph Smith taught, that we “have got to learn […] the same as all Gods have done before [us] […], namely by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.”

And so, compelled in part by a passion for language and some prodding from those who’ve come before me (like Eugene), I move from one small fire to another, hoping not to get burned. And if I do, hoping that God will “suffer my searching” because I’m doing it in my stumbling effort to become more like him. And what Parent can deny such adoration?

(This is an ever-so-slightly revised version of this.)

As Motley Vision’s newest Official Contributor, I feel an obligation to have my first post explain something of my experience within and attitude towards the Mormon arts.

Several months ago, I plotted out a post called “Hero’s Journey of the Mormon Artist” which I had intended to submit to William. I’m glad I never finished it however as further reflection has suggested to me that I was implying that that my proposed version of the hero’s journey was a necessary part of being a good Mormon artist. As if being an Orson Scott Card or a Dean Hughes is more admirable than being a Heather Moore or an Anita Stansfield (no sexism intended). And so I continued refining the idea and now I feel that it is not Mormon artists who are on a hero’s journey, but the Mormon arts entire. I will not be going into all seventeen stages of the monomyth, but I will deal with the three major groupings and hit on the secondary levels when they seem helpful.

*

We call upon all members, those in the arts and those seeking to appreciate the message of good art, to expand their vision of what can be done. If we are going to fill the world with goodness and truth, then we must be worthy to receive inspiration so we can bless the lives of our Heavenly Father’s children.

But last week I finished reading William’s graduate school paper (available in his July 31st post, Slowly Flowering: My grad school paper on Mormon literature), and I realized that I’m uncomfortable with the way that England has presented this history. I’m not sure it tells the whole story. And I’m not even completely sure that most literary histories tell the whole story.

Again, I’m not an expert in any area of English, I just dabble in studying Mormon literature. I know more about Portuguese and Brazilian literature than anything else in literature, and I’m no expert there either.

Before I address my doubts about the classification of Mormon Literature, let me first give a bit of an overview of England’s history. He divides Mormon Literature into four periods:

The first period, Foundations (1830-1880), England characterizes as “largely unsophisticated writing, expressive of the new converts’ dramatic symbolic as well as literal journeys to Zion and their fierce rejection of Babylon, and often intended to meet the immediate and practical needs of the church for hymns, sermons, and tracts.”

The second period, Home Literature, 1880-1930, begins with Orson F. Whitney’s call for a “home literature” in Utah, which England calls “highly didactic fiction and poetry designed to defend and improve the Saints but of little lasting worth–-and also the refining of Mormon theological and historical writing, especially in James E. Talmage and B. H. Roberts, into excellent and lasting forms.”

England calls the next period The Lost Generation, 1930-70, which he says was “a period of reaction, by third- and fourth-generation Mormons, usually well educated for their time, to what they saw as the loss of the heroic pioneer vision and a decline into provincial materialism, which impelled an outpouring of excellent but generally critical works, published and praised nationally but largely rejected by or unknown to Mormons. Most of them wrote from “exile”–out of Utah, hence the comparison with American literature’s “lost” generation of Hemingway, Stein, and other expatriates.”

The last period, Faithful Realism, (1960-present), England calls a “slow growth and then flowering from the 1960s to the present of good work in all genres, combining the best qualities and avoiding the limitations of most past work, so that it is both faithful and critical, appreciated by a growing Mormon audience and also increasingly published and honored nationally.”

I’m with England for the first two periods. They fit my own observations. But when I get to the third period, I see a problem. Specifically, I wonder how it is possible for a reactionary group that wrote from exile to characterize most of what was happening in Mormon Literature at the time! Surely there were a substantial number (and probably the majority of authors) that were NOT outsiders. I suspect that not only the majority of works created during that time, but also the majority of copies of works sold in those years don’t fit the label of “The Lost Generation.”

I see a similar problem when I look at the final period in England’s divisions of Mormon literary history. I’m not sure that all (or even most of) the works we now see really fit this characterization. I have doubts about characterizing many of these works as both “faithful” and exhibiting “realism.” For example, I have a hard time characterizing Orson Scott Card’s work (or even Stephanie Meyer’s work) as “realism,” and I think many of members of the Church would not call works by critically noted but extreme Mormon authors like Brian Evenson, Walter Kirn or perhaps Brady Udall particularly faithful.

There is a possible solution to my views — I may simply misunderstand what is going on when academics divide literary history into different periods. Are periods meant to represent the majority of what is going on among all works published during that period? Or do these divisions represent the avant garde of the time — those works that are paving new ground or are of interest and lasting value.

If so, then I guess I have a bit of a problem with literary histories in general. Surely it is of more value to give a larger picture of literature than just what is academically interesting, isn’t it?

For example, I suspect, from the little bit of reading I’ve done of Mormon works published in the middle of the 20th century, the period of England’s “Lost Generation,” that Home Literature continued during most of that time, parallel to what was written by the expatriate authors, who perhaps represent the works of lasting value.

More recently, Mormon literature, like American literature, seems to have fractured into several genres, each with different styles and even their own divisions into periods. I don’t believe that some genres really have less value than others. Wouldn’t a more complete picture look at histories in all genres, or find some way of looking at styles across genres (if such a thing is even possible).

Of course, this all probably demonstrates my ignorance of literary criticism. If so, well, I warned you.