And so begins The Year of the Boar, a lovely and comforting offering in the genre-blending “autobiographical novel” style of Coke Newell’s On the Road to Heaven.

Primarily a missionary tale that follows the author’s own mission in Japan, this novel-in-stories swirls in and out of time–even jumping to the future in a final section– but finds its anchor in the Chinese Zodiac and the soulful Sister Majors, who seems to be the very embodiment of the traits of the zodiac Boar. She is diligent (when it comes to persevering through bad weather she beats the US Postal service) and compassionate (when stuck with a negative companion she tries to love that companion by always finding positives and doing the emotional lifting). She is extremely likable and everything a sister missionary should be.

However, the story seems to shine most in the small moments of transitory characters. My personal favorite was Tetsuo, a man who survived World War II in Japan, helped translate the democratic constitution and later serves a public servant. Tetsuo’s defining moment comes when he finds a crucifix (”the European god nailed to the character for ten like they always depicted him”) in a bombed out Christian church. Majors writes,

“[Tetsuo] thought for a moment about taking it home, showing it to his mother, keeping it as a curio. But as he went to slip it into his sack, he felt a pang of guilt. It wasn’t his to keep, and it should be with someone who would know how to take better care of their god than he. The statue’s face was pitiful, contorted with pain. For so long he had resented this big European church up on the hill, staring down at them all like it deserved to be above them. He had had no regard for the Europeans or their little god, but now, holding it in his hands that way, it looked so frail. He hesitated, wanting to make the right choice. But was leaving it on the ground in the rubble the right choice either? He decided to hold onto it, but only for safekeeping. He would come back when there was someone back to rebuild or take care of the church in some way, and he would return their god to his house, hopefully a house that would be strong and beautiful again.”

Moments like this one, small moments where the characters must negotiate between the ever-shifting political and spiritual forces around them, are what give this book its heart.

Occasionally, the book stumbles. Some characters appear and are lost too quickly in the revolutions of the zodiac calendar, making their backstories hard to hold on to (although a family tree would have been helpful in alleviating some of that). Other times bits of Mormon phraseology creep in where they shouldn’t (at one point a Baptist minister offers to pray over a man’s dying wife and asks, “would you like me to be the voice” in a way that seems a bit too home-teachery). Sisters Majors tends to think in run-on sentences that often take up paragraphs at a time and give the book a rushed feeling. There are even odd moments of over-explaining, like when a fictional Chinese stake is being formed in 2013 and the author stops to explain what a stake means to Mormons.

But overall the book is ambitious and heartfelt. Sister Majors’ love for Asian cultures and peoples, her love for the gospel, and her own personal optimism make The Year of the Boar an enjoyable read. Full of interesting historical tidbits about Japan and China, and small period vignettes in Texas and France and even Algeria, this is an ideal book for book clubs and summer reading. It is, as the author insists, very real. And very good.

*This is the first book review I have written after reading the work on my Kindle. Since there are no page numbers and the “high-light location” numbers are not reliable I have zero idea how to cite quotations. The best source I could find for how to cite a Kindle ebook was this website which said to reference sections. I’m still figuring out how to figure out what section things are in. So for more details about the quotations and references above you’ll just have to read the book yourself!

Photo by Vilo Elisabeth Westwood

Unlike many, I do not believe a text can truly be divorced from its author. Maybe it’s the historian in me, but the more I find out about an author, the more I am fascinated and enlightened by the text. So it’s difficult for me to address a work, when I have met the author, not to bring my experiences with, or knowledge of, the author to the text. So, first, I’ll talk about the author James Goldberg, as well as his relation to New Play Project. Then I’ll address his beautiful, award-winning play, “Prodigal Son.”

JAMES GOLDBERG AND THE COMMUNAL NARRATIVE

Now I wouldn’t call James Goldberg my best friend, although we are friends, and I certainly would love to be even friendlier. Yet there seems to have even been awkward tension during a few moments. We’ve seriously disagreed a couple of occasions. And I could tell that I annoyed him on at least a dozen occurrences..

However, I do think the world of him. And I think he is one of the best and unique writers Mormonism has. We should value him and the wealth of multiculturalism he brings to his Mormon faith and writing.  It’s interesting, the more and more I find truth in other religions, the more and more I believe in Mormonism. Comparing religions and cultures highlights the Gospel tinged truths whispered into the ears of every culture. And I get the sense from James that he believes the same thing.

James Goldberg comes from Jewish and Sikh heritages, while also happening to be a card carrying Mormon. When you talk to him, he isn’t shy about his diverse background and proudly celebrates his cultural past and freely intermingles it with his cultural present, not really distinguishing them. Because he shouldn’t distinguish them. Because Mormonism embraces all truth.  That is, if we should trust Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to be adequate spokesmen for Mormonism.

This idea of intermingling one’s diverse cultural and even religious identities is wonderfully evident in a good deal of Goldberg’s work, perhaps no where I have it seen so clearly so as in his fascinating and moving “Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenburgh.” In Mormon Artist’s first Contest Issue Goldberg mentions in an interview about the story , something that struck me:

Because the stories I was writing were so short, I didn’t have time to explain all the culture in them: the Jewish holidays that were thematically connected, the immigrant groups in each story. I figured in the age of Google, smart people could look up the stuff they didn’t get and discover the extra layers in the story, like mining for gems. Understandably, many of my class members didn’t take the time to look stuff up. What surprised me, though, was that the same people who hadn’t invested their time in the story were telling me to simplify it, to explain it more in terms they could understand. Some said they felt like I wasn’t including them because I wasn’t writing in their culture and explaining anything that came from anywhere else. And I thought, these stories wouldn’t be as beautiful if I explained them. And the best readers would get less out of them.

I also thought, I have unique stories to tell because of my own life heritage. Why should I only tell stories you can already fully understand? Isn’t one purpose of fiction to expand the reader? So I decided to write something next that did even more with mixing cultural traditions. I think when you get suggestions, you should try to respond to them, but responding doesn’t always mean doing what a suggestion says; sometimes you work against it instead, just to see if you can write that direction too.

Goldberg brought these ideas into his approach to New Play Project. From the get go, the writers’ roots in Mormonism was a vital part of NPP, and rather deflect that influence to write more secular work, NPP made their Mormon idiosyncrasies a central core to the organization. They wrote their Mormoness, not worrying whether that would stand in the way of the non-Mormons audiences that may not connect with cultural references or themes. In his preface to Out of the Mount Goldberg wrote:

So. Here we are… in a make shift theater in the Mormon community. Mormonism is technically a religion, but it’s also a tradition and a people–trust me, my last name is Goldberg, I understand how these things work. A religion can form a people. It’s been done before.

This people is a good people. We have a rich heritage that goes far beyond the founding of the Church in 1830. We’ve got unique institutions that have helped us keep a sense of community in an age when many communities are falling apart. And we have wisdom, a gift surprisingly rare in an age so saturated with information and opinion: we know something about how to treat each other, about our relationship to God, about the spiritual power that runs through this world. And along with that, we’ve got online sources with wisdom on food storage and stuff. Profound or practical, inherited wisdom is part of who we are.

This reminded me of a documentary I watched recently about the Old Testament. In it an archaeologist was theorizing, based on some ancient Jewish pottery they found which was astoundingly similar to the surrounding Canaanite pottery, that the Jews had not immigrated from Egypt at all, but rather had always been Canaanite. But that they had been the ostracized Canaanites, the poor, the destitute, the fringe. So they collected stories, created a text, which we now know as the Old Testament. Then they defined themselves by this text, created a whole new race and heritage of people.

Now I’m not sure I believe this (I’m not willing to throw away at least some sense of historicity of Genesis and the five books of Moses because of pottery shards). But I found the idea interesting and related it to what Goldberg is talking about. You can create a people, a culture and, perhaps in this supposed case about the Jews, a whole race by just declaring yourself so. In this case, it had nothing to do with genetic markers… it had everything to do with the creation of a narrative of a people, a story. As Mormons, we inherently understand that. The Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, the Doctrine and Covenants, the temple narrative, the stories of Joseph Smith and our early Church History, they all provide a powerful and potent rallying point.

We can be diverse as the creatures of the sea, of Middle Eastern, Indian, Asian, Polynesian, African, or European descent… and we can bring those heritages with us on our backs, like Goldberg has, and integrate them into a rich tapestry of universal (as far reaching as a world wide Zion), yet individual (as private as the soul), Mormonism. We can be a people (an inclusive people not determined by genetic markers!), not just a religion. We can be God’s people.

In my interactions with New Play Project, Goldberg’s vision-like goals always seemed to be at the center. I heard some members even jokingly call it the “James Play Project.” They were being sarcastic, of course, but there was some truth in it. Goldberg was one of the organizations founding members and seemed to be (at least from my perspective) the most persuasive and vigilant in giving the group a vision, a destination, instilling it with a passionate purpose. He’s a chief reason that the group has lasted this long. The money wasn’t there. The prestige wasn’t either. They were a small band of actors and writers, poor and distracted with the myriad of other concerns that plague college students. But when Goldberg would speak, he spoke as if they mattered, as if they could do something powerful. They spoke as if their common heritage in Mormonism and the theatrical arts could have a spiritual purpose beyond what any of them thought they were capable of.

And I consider it to be a prophecy fulfilled. Is it part of a new Mormon Renaissance? Doubtful. Possible, but doubtful. But by being brave enough to state it in those terms, by performing it as if it were true, by breathing in oracular fumes and letting prophetic uttering be written, they did something which I believe will have consequences which, even if they won’t be immediately obvious or traceable, will be deeply important to Mormon Arts, and perhaps even to Mormonism at large.

Am I waxing hyperbolic? No. No, I believe I am not. I am in complete earnest when I say that, whether New Play Project continues for many years to come (I hope they do) or not, that there was a resonating purpose to these seemingly insignificant students getting together to put on plays for the insular Utah County and BYU communities. And, whatever purpose that ends up being, Goldberg was at the forefront of that, in an unassuming button down short sleeve shirts and jeans, and a mad visionary’s wild growth of beard, sticking his staff in the water, believing to high heaven that the walls of water would rise.

FAITH LOST AND FAITH BORN IN “PRODIGAL SON”

When I read “Prodigal Son” this time, I had a much different experience with it than my previous encounters with the short play. When I had read or seen it performed before, I recognized it as one of the best plays New Play Project had yet produced, and a true triumph for James Goldberg. This time, however, it became much more personal and poignant to me, especially since I have recently seen a number of people I dearly love leave the LDS faith.

The play spins the classic Prodigal Son parable and switches the roles… the father is now the irreligious one, having abandoned his faith in Mormonism when he was younger, while the son disappoints his father by joining the LDS Church, even going so far to forestall his education to serve a mission. The Father’s monologue explaining his loss of faith is powerful and unnerving:

We’re far too casual, I think, in the way we talk about losing. “I’ve lost my keys,” for example, really means you’ve mislaid them….

I wish we wouldn’t dilute the best word we have for when things truly and permanently gone. “Lost cause” is a good phrase. It’s a cold, hard dose of reality. No one goes out to find a lost cause. It’s just lost. That phrase understands the power of the word’s finality….

So when I tell you that a long time ago I lost my faith, I don’t want you to imagine that I’ve misplaced it or that I could be capable of finding it again. Lost faith is like a lost limb… if it’s broken and bleeding, if you try to patch it up and it ends up inflamed and infected … at some point you have to cut it off. And after you’ve lost it the only thing left is the occasional  flash of phantom pain.

I lost my faith. Twenty years later I lost my wife. And now maybe I’m losing my son.

Don’t take away from me the only word I have to cope with all of that.

To those of us who still feel our testimonies vibrantly, this is a chilling moment in the play. It forces us to realize that those we love… who we cherish and have always taken for granted were going to stay in the Church… may not be coming to break the bread of faith with us any more. We still hold out hope that perhaps their paths may eventually lead them back to the beliefs they have now rejected… but what if they don’t? Not in this life. Perhaps not even in the next.

And if that connection to that common community is completely gone… what next? Is there a piece of that relationship that is now completely irretrievable? Is there a distance, a gulf that is now permanent? Or, if there is not hope in retrieving the common faith , does that mean that there aren’t equally valuable aspects of that relationship that can be salvaged, perhaps even strengthened? And what about the reversal that Goldberg explores here… when an atheistic father sees his son abandon what he considers to be rational truth, to stumble into what he considers to be an oppressive superstition, is that not equally traumatic to the man without faith?

I think of Lehi. When in his dream of the Tree of Life he sees in vision his sons turn away from the tree, the fruit, the family, the chance for redemption… and they’re gone, into the mists of darkness. He wakes up the next morning with no sense of hopeful resolution with these two beloved sons. There was no prodigal son returns moment in that dream. They’re just gone. “Lost” in the sense that the father’s faith in “Prodigal Son” is lost. The sense of desolation that would come upon me as a parent at that point would be nigh unbearable. In the Book of Mormon he still tries to encourage them, to save them, but you get the sense that much of the hope is gone. He senses it, realizes it. After grieving this loss, he strives to plant some sort of faith in the children of Laman and Lemuel, hoping that the priesthood blessings he gives them will eventually bless those who come after. But even with those blessings, Lehi seems to understand that this loss is going to have traumatic repercussions for his posterity.

I have thought a lot about my loved ones who left the faith for the past several months. I’ve prayed, pondered, and grieved over them. With some of them, I still hope for some kind of turn around. For some of them, I am starting to understand that they may be “lost” to the faith… forever. I’ve had to try and come with grips with that, try to understand how that should and shouldn’t change the dynamics of our relationship. My love for them is no less, my hopes for their success and happiness in this life no less fervent. If they can’t ever agree with me on this vital thing, then I certainly do not want to sacrifice the parts of our relationship that can still be salvaged. If you lose an arm, you don’t want to lose the leg as well. “Prodigal Son” brings up many of these sobering realities, all while still having an under-girding of spirituality and love.

The “wayward” son is, of course, the flip side to this  equation, being recently born into the faith. His conversion is real, never emotionally forced and never didactic. He’s a seasoned, likable character of faith and kindness, but capable of real grief due to this division from the father he has felt so close to in the past. Despite the havoc his conversion made in his life, however, the fire of his faith is undeniable and worth the pain. The son’s statements of spirituality are powerful:

I couldn’t tell it to him, then, but … all my life. I’d been waiting for something, you know? And I never knew what. But I’d have these feelings sometimes like when I went to my friend’s Bar Mitzvah, and it was like God was on a train but there weren’t any scheduled stops to pick me up. And maybe I could have run, maybe I could have jumped up there in front of everybody and said, “Hey, can it be my turn now? I know I’m not Jewish, but… Bar Mitzvah me, too!”

….I figured if God’s a train, and fate didn’t leave me any stops …maybe I’ve got to stand on the tracks. I can’t get on smoothly like everyone else, but if I take that step out onto those tracks then God’ll have to hit me. And I’ll know then whatever it is the prophets and saints used to know.

Goldberg, as much as anyone, instilled in New Play Project it’s ability to ask the hard questions, while never snapping the cord that tied them to the household of faith. In this information age of easy access and inquisitive fingers, gone are the days when a Latter-day Saint could simply put down the questions and expect that to satiate the inquisitor. You can’t hide documents, you can’t dodge inquiries. If we as a Church and as its members are not equipped to handle the tough issues, then a doubter can simply find all sorts of alternative attacks on the Church with a few quick key strokes.

Thus I believe it’s very important that, as Mormon writers, actors, artists, scholars, and thinkers, that we engage in the kind of work that is able to unflinchingly tackle the most disheartening and conflicted parts of our narratives. And I’m not necessarily calling for apologetics, although being a huge fan of C.S. Lewis, I warmly understand that they have their very necessary place as well. But writers like Goldberg are showing the complexity of the lives we live as Mormons. He is showing how, as Joseph Smith said, “in proving contraries, the truth is made manifest.”

James and I used to argue a little bit about show length. My shows tend to run long, while I would tease him that he had never written a full length play. Goldberg was a kind of champion for the usefulness and power of the short play. Although I still feel that our culture suffers from a post MTV/ Sesame Street short attention span, and I long for an audience who can sit through uncut Shakespeare and massive Eugene O’Neil playing times,  Goldberg certainly proved his point with “Prodigal Son” on how the short play can be a truly powerful form. I believe it may be the only short play to have won the Association for Mormon Letters’ Best Drama award and it was a very well deserved win.

But beyond form, its the soulful content of Goldberg’s work that digs deep into our hearts and bares the secrets we have kept there. Unearthed, we search through the record written thereon, and discover the Mormon in each of us, the Jew in each of us, the Hindu in each of us, the Christian in each of us. We realize that these stories we tell, whether you believe them literally or not, whether you have faith in them or not, the narrative has meaning, has significance… the narrative is true.

It’s always interesting seeing what non-Mormon readers of No Going Back have to say about the book. For one thing, it includes an awful lot of Mormon detail. Since I never imagined that it might have a large non-Mormon audience, I didn’t go to any trouble to explain that detail. No real accommodations for any readers who don’t happen to be Mormon.

At a more basic level, I’ve wondered if non-Mormons would even be able to identify with the characters and their motivations. Sure, there’s a lot of universality to the basic conflicts in the book. Every teenager struggles with issues of identity and peer pressure. Every married couple struggles with issues of communication and priorities. But that doesn’t necessarily make the particulars of one person’s conflict easy to identify with on the part of readers whose lives are very different.

I particularly wonder if there’s much possibility for non-Mormon readers to identify with the main characters in No Going Back in their Mormonness. Granted, there are other conservative churches that reject homosexuality as a lifestyle, and even some that embrace the delicate balance of viewing the attraction itself as not a sign of sin but rather as a trial that must be resisted. It’s my perception, however, that being a Mormon is rather different on an experiential level from being a Baptist or a Catholic or what have you. Certainly on a theological level the reasons why Mormons reject homosexuality are quite different, so far as I know, from the reasons given by any other religion — because we’re the only ones who believe that (a) it is human destiny (if we accept it) to become like God, and (b) that the definition of God includes, and is indeed partly defined by, heterosexual marriage. That’s far more than just rhetoric for Mormon teenagers; it’s a fundamental part of how we view ourselves. One of the first songs we learn in childhood starts, “I am a child of God” — and for us, that’s literal.

So I’m always interested to read or hear what non-Mormon readers think about No Going Back, and whether it makes sense to them. All of which made me particularly interested in a review that showed up earlier this week on Amazon.com by Amos Lassen, a veteran Amazon reviewer (almost 3,000 reviews!) who apparently tries to read as many GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) titles as he can and who also has strong interests in religion, but not specifically LDS religion. Awarding No Going Back 5 stars (out of 5), he writes in part:

“Everyone tries to understand [Paul’s] feelings and provide him with love and support but he remains somewhat in pain…. He doesn’t try to cure himself but he feels he needs the support of others but he does not want to come out and he knows that gay sex is forbidden by his religion. He wants a life of virtue and to be accepted for the person that he is…. The struggle between desire and faith seems to always be with us and the author has us examine ourselves closely so that we can be more understanding and accepting of others. The book is not an attack on gay people and is just the story of a boy who understands that he has the right to make the choice about how he wants to live his life.”

After reading Lassen’s review, I emailed him to thank him for his thoughts and find out more about how he’d become aware of my book. (Answer: browsing Amazon.) He mentioned that he teaches a class in gay literature at the college level, and is thinking of adding No Going Back. I’d love to find out what his students think.

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It’s a perpetual question among many Mormon writers just how we as Mormons can effectively present Mormon experience to a national audience. Examples that are frequently held up for emulation from other traditions include the novel The Chosen, by Chaim Potok, depicting the coming-of-age of a Jewish boy during World War II, and the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I freely admit that No Going Back isn’t a terribly good candidate for that. It’s got too many other things going on to really be a good depiction of Mormon experience for non-Mormons — including the gay issue, which kind of overshadows everything else. But the positive responses I’ve received from a few non-Mormon readers — including the one from Amos Lassen, and one from a non-LDS retired literature professor published in my Wisconsin hometown newspaper, and even the surprisingly positive response I got from a vehemently atheist gay British acquaintance — make me wonder if maybe the target isn’t a little closer than I’d thought.

Looking at what I’ve seen of Mormon attempts to portray our experience in literature intended for Mormons and non-Mormons both, I find that a lot of it suffers from one or more of the following problems:

- Eccentricity — showing characters that would be oddballs in any Mormon ward (or anywhere else, for that matter)

- Over-the-top slapstick

- Whitewashing

- Focus on superficial elements of Mormon experience

- Attempts to convert

All of these have their place, but they get in the way of helping non-Mormon readers come away from the reading with a better understanding of what it means to be Mormon.

Some characteristics of a Mormon literature that would speak meaningfully to non-Mormons are obvious inverses of the problems I listed above. Such a literature would present its Mormon characters as being fundamentally ordinary, in both good and bad ways. It would show them as flawed, but sincere in their beliefs. It would take the Mormon context seriously enough not to exaggerate or turn things into a joke. It would not shy away from showing some of the deeper aspects of what it means to be a believing Mormon — the spiritual experiences and such —but would do it in a way that invites readers to accept those elements as part of understanding the character, rather than demanding that readers make a decision as to whether they personally accept Mormonism as true. It may be that such a literature will be more successful if it doesn’t attempt to explain elements of Mormon culture, but simply puts the reader into the middle of it.

Certainly we’ve seen some examples of this. Personally I think the first two Dutcher movies (God’s Army and Brigham City) did this quite well. (I haven’t watched States of Grace and so don’t have an opinion on it.) And Orson Scott Card’s Lost Boys is, bar none, the best depiction of modern suburban Mormonism that I’ve yet read, though I suspect the supernatural element in it functions kind of like homosexuality in No Going Back to distract non-Mormon readers from the Mormonness of it all.

But I think there’s a lot more that can be done. And reading the responses of non-Mormon readers to No Going Back gives me, I think, a clearer idea of what that might involve.

Both Austenland and A & H tackle romantic fantasies and the nature of romantic comedies, their “grotesque mimicry of actual love (A & H 304).”  And when Becky tries to decide whether or not she could actually love Felix romantically, she writes a screenplay with a movie ending.  But the novel’s conclusion isn’t a “Hollywood ending.”  Did you feel that writing it the way you did was risky?

Oh sure. I knew some readers would be angry, and I was sorry for that, because I knew absolutely that the ending was the right one for this story. I think it goes back to genre–those who expected a certain ending might not be willing to go with me where I wanted to take the story. And this story just might not be a good fit for their sensibilities. That’s okay. I knew (was told) that the book would sell better if I made the Hollywood ending work, but for me that would have made the story pointless and been sheer betrayal of the characters. I try to do right by the characters.

Speaking of that ending, it isn’t really an ending, especially as far as romantic comedies go.  How have readers reacted to it?

One of my sisters sobbed when a certain character died, and was elated by the ending. Another of my sisters was dry-eyed throughout the book then sobbed at the ending because it wasn’t what she wanted. I’ve had many letters from women who have experienced Becky’s personal tragedy who were so happy and relieved by the ending, and that was a huge validation for me. I crafted the book carefully to lead to that moment, and I wonder if those readers who were unhappy with it could read the book a second time, what they’d think then. We are often shackled by notions of genre! And the truth is, our lives don’t fit cozily into any particular one. I love genre fiction–I write genre fiction–but I think there’s a place for this kind of story too. I think exploring the great mystery of a genre-less life is exciting, and it gave me a chance to look at how stories affect how we conceive of our own lives and how we tell ourselves our own stories.

Do you think of A & H as subverting the romantic comedy, or does it do something more like open possibilities for other stories than what the conventions of romantic comedies allow for?

Someone said that all artists are by nature subversive, and I guess that’s true. And maybe true of me too, insofar as I’m a possibilities junkie. For me, that’s the most beautiful part of the religion I follow: agency. Choices. We can trap ourselves in life by expecting things to go like they do in a story, and being disappointed when they don’t. The romantic comedy is a fine and ancient genre, and one I respect tremendously. And I think it deserves exploration: why do we honor it? Why do we revisit this story again and again? And what does it mean in our own lives? What draws me as an author, what fascinates me, is both the clash and marriage of two very different things. Becky and Felix. Fantasy and reality. Comedy and tragedy. Ancient and new. Spiritual and mundane. My life is a series of clashing and coupling in strange and enticing ways. I want stories to provide that. A great story should be a place where we can see the messy wonderfulness of life from arm’s length, be entertained, and come away from it seeing our own world a little bit differently.

As I read this novel, I got the feeling that writing it might have changed you. Did it?  How?

I went to a place in A&H I never thought I’d go. Grief is so hard for me. When I write a book, I live in the world where I wrote it, and the death of one character especially was agonizing. But it was good too. I kept chanting that old Greek word to myself–cathartic, cathartic, it’s cathartic. It helped me own the pain and make it productive. I lost a sister a few years ago, as most people have lost someone, and it made me very wary of tragedy and death. Why seek it out in stories when it can accost us so suddenly and so horribly in life? And of course the kind of death in the book is a horror that I tried to never contemplate without shuddering away. But it was good for me to face it and see what it would be like, and to move through it to a different place again. I think that’s part of the wonder of stories. They can take hold of all those kinked emotions inside us and lay them out straight where we can view them, thoughtfully.

What do you hear about A & H?  Is it generating as much discussion as you’d hoped?

I don’t google myself or eavesdrop on others’ conversations in that way, so I only know what comes to me. What I hear both delights and discourages me. I am very sorry when people refer to Becky Jack as “evil.” The judgement in that word makes me worried for us as a people. Is no one allowed to make mistakes? To think differently than we do? I hear the book often dismissed because of the premise, which I’m sorry about as well. The premise was a place to start and a way to explore and ask questions that intrigued me, as well as a way to play with a kind of a story that I’d never read. I’d hoped it could be read and thought about. I think sometimes our lives are precarious, and we can be afraid if they’re nudged a bit, it’ll all come falling down. And some people very honestly have reasons to be worried by the premise, and I understand that. I am so grateful for those readers who are willing to set aside prejudgement and go on this journey with me.

Austenland and A & H seem to be establishing a trajectory of romantic comedy/social prodding for your writing.  Do you think you have more books like these two in your head?

I am writing another Austenland book, which has been tremendous fun. I never considered it until a few months ago when a new story occurred to me, ever so tauntingly. It’s a very different exercise than writing a period fantasy, and I really enjoy doing comedy. As a teenager, I was all about drama, but as I get older, I think making people laugh is one of the noblest things on this planet. Humor requires intelligence, and to laugh and cry together is divine. I haven’t yet explored all that I want to with these stories–why do we need romance? How do stories affect our self-concept and how we see others? Where do fantasy and realism meet? I write whichever story shouts at me the loudest, and I’m always listening, so we’ll see what comes.

Thank you, Shannon, for this wonderful interview!

So: What do you think are some major developments that MUST be included in any summary of Mormon literature? And which literary artists, critics, editors, works, and websites MUST be mentioned?

No Going Back is a coming-of-age novel about a gay Mormon teenager who is torn between his feelings and his desire to stay in the Church. The cover blurb reads:

“A gay teenage Mormon growing up in western Oregon in 2003. His straight best friend. Their parents. A typical LDS ward, a high-school club about tolerance for gays, and a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution. In No Going Back, these elements combine in a coming-of-age story about faithfulness and friendship, temptation and redemption, tough choices and conflicting loyalties.”

(A side-note: Does anyone know the logic that Amazon.com uses in deciding on the size of the discount it offers? My book is now selling for $11.53. Rift, by Todd Robert Petersen, released just a few weeks ago by Zarahemla Books, is selling for $13.22. Both have a cover price of $16.95. Chris Bigelow says he doesn’t know the logic, either.)

A couple of months ago, I was listening to an interview on NPR with someone who was talking about the death of mass marketing and mass media. I can’t really do justice to the man’s arguments — I didn’t hear the whole thing, and besides, I was paying more attention to the thoughts inside my head, some of which I may write up someday as a post about the future of book publishing.

The other part of my thinking had to do with marketing for my book, which — now that the book is wending its way toward actual publication, past the editing and desktop publishing process — has been taking up an increasing share of my mental attention, as to my dismay I realize all over again that publication notwithstanding, Books Don’t Sell Themselves.

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First, the relevant facts:

My book is being published. Yay! Hurrah for me. I need to cheer, you see, because aside from family and friends, it’s highly unlikely that simply publishing my book will really excite that many people — especially if they never know it exists.

My book is aimed at a Mormon market. I flatter myself that it’s acceptably written and might be accessible to some non-Mormon readers. Still, it seems pretty clear that most of those who’d ever want to read or care about the story will be Mormons. (I’ve had some people suggest trying to sell it to a national market — but no one, so far as I can recall, who’s actually read the story.)

My book will almost certainly never be carried by most LDS bookstores, due both to the Deseret Bookstore “inappropriateness” policy (my book is at least a PG-13) and the fact that DB and Seagull prefer to work with multi-product vendors and/or a developed marketing plan through established distributors. I’m giving it a try, but I don’t hold out much hope.

My book is on a topic (Gay! Teen! Mormon!) that is likely to push most of my target audience (adult, relatively orthodox Mormons) away. As my brother-in-law put it, after reading and enthusiastically enjoying my manuscript: “But you know, if I saw a book about this topic on a bookstore shelf, I’d put it back again without a second glance.”

What does all this tell me? Basically, that any attempt to sell to the Mormon market has to get past problems of access and initial perception.

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One thing I remember from that NPR show is the notion that social connections are coming to mean more to many people than traditional marketing. In this era of Internet communities, people increasingly choose what to buy based on what their friends tell them, not what book publishers and sellers tell them.

This, as I see it, is mostly good news as regards my book, since it confirms that shelling out mega-dollars (which neither Chris Bigelow — owner and operator of my publisher, Zarahemla Books — nor I possess) in some kind of ad campaign probably wouldn’t work anyway. Especially in light of the concerns mentioned above, word of mouth is pretty much the only way my book is ever likely to sell to most Mormon readers.

This, unfortunately, seems like a chicken-and-egg dilemma. How do people find out about the book in order to recommend it to other people? At best, it seems like a long, slow process.

A classic solution is book reviews, which are essentially word of mouth amplified. Zarahemla’s standard marketing effort, from what I can tell, consists largely of using press releases to generate interest, sending out review copies, and then publicizing the resulting reviews. Given the realities of Mormon small-press publishing, it’s hard to see how Chris could do much more than that — and even if he could, it probably wouldn’t do much good.

We have hopes that my book may catch reviewers’ attention since it’s on a hot-button topic that hasn’t been seen much in Mormon literature. It’s nice to think so, anyway.

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I’m also trying to expand on the notion of community connections and word-of-mouth in less traditional ways.

Due to a combination of factors, I wound up with a very large number people of manuscript reviewers — 34, by my count. The polite thing to do, I’ve decided, is send each of these a complimentary print copy of the book (assuming they want it). And if they wind up sharing their copies or talking about the book with friends, that’s all to the good.

As a member of the Mormon lit community I can probably count on a few sales there, at least if they don’t all wind up with complimentary copies. That’s an awfully tiny pool, though — especially when you consider that (a) we don’t tend to be terribly rich, and (b) all of us have dozens of other books we want to buy and read as well. I figure that based on sales from AML, AMV, etc., Chris and I could probably go out to McDonalds for lunch — if neither of us is very hungry.

I’ve also been attempting (somewhat clumsily) to approach various Mormon-related blogs about distributing online PDF review copies. In some ways, this is just an extension of the concept of book reviews into a new medium. But then I start to think about the implication of PDF distribution, which means I can give away as many review copies as I like without any actual cost to myself or my publisher. The issue of lost revenue, as I see it, doesn’t really apply to those of us on the bottom of the exposure scale. Anything that increases discussion about the book can only be a good thing. Heck, if there’s a group out there that wants to sponsor an online discussion of my book, I’ll gladly provide PDFs to everyone who wants to take part. The real problem is finding people who have an interest. After all, there are only so many Mormon bloggers — and how many of them will want to read my novel, anyway?

(I should also mention blog tours, which I’d never heard of until today’s email from Chris. Hey! I’m just living up to my billing here. Part of the amusement of this Writing Rookie series for the rest of you is watching me fumble around without any idea what I’m doing…)

Which brings me to the two-market problem: i.e., the large market I’d like to reach of Mormon adults with no special interest in the issue of homosexuality and Mormonism, versus the considerably smaller but more invested market of those who do have a stake in this issue: i.e., gay/same-sex attracted Mormons (SSAMs, for the purposes of this post).

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SSAMs, as I see it, aren’t the primary audience for my book. There is, I suspect, nothing my novel will have to say to them that they don’t already know. The most it could hope to do is capture, in a sharable way, some part of what they’ve found true in their own experience — something they might want to show bishops or friends or family members, perhaps.

I’m reluctant to rely too much on this audience. For one thing, there’s a huge range of human experience occupying the intersection of “same-sex attracted” and “Mormon.” What I’ve written isn’t a map to that experience, but one specific story — unlikely in the way that all specific stories are unlikely. SSAMs are likely to notice at least as many differences as similarities between this novel and their experiences.

On the other hand, that sense of built-in investment is likely to translate into a cadre of high-interest readers who could, if they like the book, feel highly motivated to share it with others. I’ve already had several positive responses along those lines: manuscript readers who’ve said that as soon as the book is available, they plan to buy and give away several copies.

This, if it can be made to work, represents a potential answer to the word-of-mouth problem. And so I’ve been contacting various SSAM-connected people and organizations. I’m now moving toward a position where I’m likely to provide a PDF copy to pretty much any SSAM who asks me for one — on the theory, again, that if their impression is a positive one, that’s likely to translate to both word-of-mouth and potential sales down the road.

There’s a politic to this, of course, as illustrated by the reactions of both Evergreen and Affirmation — two major organizations focusing on homosexuality and Mormonism — when I asked if they’d put out flyers for my book at their annual conferences on Sept. 19-21 (a juxtaposition that speaks volumes about the adversarial relationship between the two groups, but I digress). Both wanted a copy of the book to review before letting me know if it was something they’s be comfortable publicizing, even to the extent of putting out flyers. There are orthodoxies on both the right and the left — with a significant probability that my book won’t satisfy people on either side. But then, that’s the nature of community dynamics.

(As of Monday, Sept. 14, I haven’t heard from either group about whether they want my flyers. In at least one case, I know that’s because they haven’t had a chance to finish reading it yet. Ah, well.)

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I’d like to be able to draw some general conclusions from all this. But what do I know? I’m still figuring all this out. The one thing I can definitely say is this: marketing my first novel — like writing it — is turning out to be more of a learning experience than I ever imagined. It’s a whole new world out there, Dorothy…

As we approach publication, I’m trying to round up people who might have an interest in reading and reviewing the book, not just for AMV but for any other venue (electronic, print, etc.) that might have an interest in the subject matter.

Apropos of which, here’s the back-cover blurb describing the book:

“A gay teenage Mormon growing up in western Oregon in 2003. His straight best friend. Their parents. A typical LDS ward, a high-school club about tolerance for gays, and a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment to the state constitution. In No Going Back, these elements combine in a coming-of-age story about faithfulness and friendship, temptation and redemption, tough choices and conflicting loyalties.”

So far as I know, this is the first novel to address the issue of same-sex attraction/gayness within an LDS context for a general LDS audience. It doesn’t end in suicide (a question I’ve been asked more than once), and the main thrust describes a teenager whose goal is to stay in the Church, not one whose path inevitably leads him out of the Church. I consider the book as now edited to be roughly PG-13 in terms of language and sexually explicit themes. (Those of you who read the manuscript may be interested to know that the language is slightly toned down from what you saw.)

At this point, I can’t say for sure when print copies of the book will be available, though we are shooting for sometime in October. Electronic (PDF) files should be available for review before that. I think that both Chris Bigelow (my publisher) and I are inclined to be fairly liberal in the matter of distributing electronic copies for review, so long as the reader can promise to (a) at least attempt to read the book with a possible interest in talking about it afterwards in some vaguely appropriate venue, and (b) not to copy or distribute the review copy. Print copies, alas, we will need to be more chary with, due to the fact that neither Chris nor I is swimming in money. So your chances of getting a review copy are better if you can settle for PDF – and you’ll be able to get it quicker too.

FYI, those who read and commented on part or all of the manuscript will eventually be receiving a complimentary print copy of the book (with the exception of one reader who preferred a PDF copy). However, if any of you who read the manuscript would like a PDF version earlier so that you can look at the book as it actually turned out and review and/or take part in discussions, please let me know.

Anyone who is interested in a review copy should email me, Jonathan Langford, at Jonathan At motleyvision DOT org, with:
- Your name
- Your qualifications to review
- The venue where you might review/discuss the book
- Whether you’re requesting a print or electronic copy

Please feel free to mention this to anyone you think might have an interest. I’d also welcome any suggestions for additional places to contact about lining up reviewers. Thanks!

Just to let you know, we’ve received some very positive responses on the MS, including reviews from LDS playwright Tom Rogers and BYU English professor Steve Walker. The MS has been through several rounds of revision already. But we’re still hoping to make it better.

This is also, as Theric reminded me to mention, the book I’ve been blathering on about here at AMV for months now. For a list of my Writing Rookie blogs describing my writing process, click here.

I’m NOT looking for a proofreader/copyeditor (Chris will do that, after I’ve polished as much as I can). Rather, what I’m looking for is honest overall responses to the book, plus feedback about what works and what doesn’t work for you as a reader: scenes, character developments, plot events, stylistic irritations, etc.

Rather than going into much detail about the book here, I’ll simply jot down a few points of orientation. First, this book is about a teenager who’s trying to stay in the Church, and who by the end of the book is still holding to that decision, although he’s had a fair number of difficulties along the way. Second, I’d rate this as about a PG-13, both for language (though it’s less than what many teenagers use) and for a reported sexual encounter (which is, however, critical for the story).

My primary intended audience for this book is believing Mormons who are doctrinally orthodox but relatively liberal in their reading tastes and tolerances. I’m hoping the book will appeal not only to those with connections to gays (e.g., family members who are gay) but also to those (bishops, other leaders, and just ordinary folks) who may wonder about the kinds of challenges that those who are same-sex attracted face in the Church and how the rest of the LDS community can help support them.

Our plan is for the book to be released this summer. Chris and I figure that having more people read it in MS now will mean more good comments to guide my revision, as well as generating more publicity for the book itself. What you get out of it is a chance to read this groundbreaking book – okay, groundbreaking within the LDS market – for free! And possibly even have an impact on it and get your name mentioned as one of my readers on the Acknowledgments page! What more could you ask for? (Don’t answer that…)

Honestly, we really do want a range of opinions and perspectives. No literary credentials needed – just a willingness to read and give feedback. I may not take your suggestions, but I will listen to them carefully.

If you’re interested in reading the MS, contact me at jonathan@motleyvision.org for details.

When I read Kristen D. Randle’s Slumming–which I found on the AMV Book Club list– I was completely surprised. The main characters were not vapid gossip girls looking to lose their virginity or angst ridden, beer drinking, wannabe boys (also looking to lose their virginity), like the characters in so many popular bestsellers aimed at young adults. No, these characters were different. They were Mormons.

Sam, Nikki, and Alicia are the only three Mormon kids in their school and it is that familial-type relationship that drives them to set up a great experiment for their senior year. A Mormon twist on the Pygmalion myth, the three teens decide to find someone who is “obviously untapped” and help them live up to their potential (was there ever a more Mormon phrase!). Nikki picks the biggest nerd in school. Alicia picks the bad boy who does drugs in the woods behind the bleachers during lunch. And Sam picks Tia, the eyebrow ring sporting, chip on her shoulder Goth girl. Throughout the book their ideals—which the three LDS kids can’t help but wear on their sleeves—are questioned and deconstructed as they discover that teenagers can be cruel but what hurts more is when trusted adults betray you. And that, sometimes, doing the right thing is painful and comes with untold costs, but it still feels good in the long run.

Kristen D. Randle is a fiery woman—a woman who doesn’t settle for compact answers and can’t help but complicate her own thought processes. Her passion shows in her writing and in her interview.

LC: Slumming is a very Mormon book–it has Mormon characters and it talks about Mormon theology–and it was published by a national publisher. That’s supposed to be impossible! How did you do it?

KDR: My editor at Harper, Rosemary Brosnan, is an incredible woman. We began working together when she was at a smaller company that was dissolved and she brought me along to Harper. When Rosemary was looking for a position – not hard for her, because her reputation in the business is glowing and offers came thick and fast – the choosing of a job WAS hard for her – because had two sons and her work schedule had to accommodate them.  Not the other way around.  She had to be home when they were home – period.  How many women in this competitive, shallow little world of ours would have that kind of depth of character, love and sense of duty and responsibility. This was a woman I could respect.

This is a long answer.  But I have to explain these things so that you will see that I did not, in fact, “do it.”  Rosemary did.  I had written the book, expecting to have to pull back all of the specific religious elements in it to almost nothing.  But when she, who is Jewish by lineage – but whose religious practice is personal and private, read this manuscript, she loved it.  She loved the fact that I was treating – almost examining –  a religious ethos in the story.  She said, “Nobody does this!”

We found out why.

The reviews of Slumming were very good, most of them.  Some of them glowing. Some saw the social aspects of having kids recognize and cross social lines as the heart of the book.  But some seemed to resent any mention of religion whatsoever and let a cynical tone carry that displeasure.  On top of that, the hard back YA market is mostly libraries.  And the National Library Association tends to the PC—which disallows serious mention of anything like a “predominant” religion.  My downfall, then, was not the LDS characters, but the “Christianity”  of the characters, which is deeply ironic.

You can write the word “God” as an explicative.  But you cannot put the word into the mouth of a character who uses it reverently and with meaning.  Not unless your story is ironic, hinging on the cruel inequality of religion and its rejections of certain behaviors, and thus proving your character to be a fool or a hypocrite, or something even worse.

Thus, even though Slumming sold far more hard back copies than my other books did—which were both award winning books; The Only Alien on the Planet went into seven printings in paperback—it languished and never made paperback.  Either that, or people just didn’t like it – but the sales numbers didn’t suggest that at all.

Pretty much the entire religious expression in the book was character development - a basic statement of where he was coming from, from a boy who was not perfect, who did not have a perfect life, but who cared deeply about doing the right thing.  And found out that, even in that effort, he was far more flawed than he’d ever dreamed.

Including “Mormon” characters?  It wasn’t really their LDS affiliation that the book was about.  It’s just, in writing what I know, I knew very well the oddly intimate relationships that can form in LDS wards – kids who end up feeling more like family in that consistent and germinal experience of participating in a ward long-term.  I wanted kids who were more than friends, who shared heart.  Thus, the church affiliation was really a plot element.  Obviously, those with no experience in this particular culture wouldn’t understand the power of that element, so I knew I was taking a chance.  But Rosemary recognized it right away.  So I became more confident about it as we went along.

Actually, I think that using the three voices to narrate was more controversial in many ways.

LC: Besides the LDS teenagers you knew, what was the inspiration for Slumming. Why did you write it?

KDR: Slumming was written differently than my other books.  It was a deliberately written book rather than a mystic download out of whatever place stories come from.  There are a lot of elements to its coming to pass.  One of the main things was reading a Louise Plummer novel–it was called Dance for Three, in which she used several voices to tell a story.  That simple unconventional convention allowed me the freedom to stage a story I had started fifty different ways only to leave after several paragraphs.  There had been no flow.  No real narrator.  No reason to tell the story.

But with three voices or two or four (and I had written in two before), suddenly the story could be told as it needed to be.  So there was a beginning.  Many things were happening in our lives during those days, and in our friends’ lives.  Some very distressing and strange.  And some of those things got woven into the story.  While I am not really much of a people person, and while I can only take so much of the happy fecklessness of kids (before I brain somebody), I care very much about what adults do to their children.  Adults, in our age of the world (as opposed to, say, the Greatest Generation – a generation of self sacrificing, shoulder-to-the-wheel people) are simply well furnished adolescents.  We don’t give up our angst as part of our matriculation from childhood.  It’s all about us – finding ourselves – defining ourselves through our stuff.

I was very involved with my kids’ schooling from the beginning.  And when high school rolled around, I knew their friends—knew and loved them and sometimes wanted to kick them in the pants.  Those years of experience with kids from other kinds of families (there are as many kinds as there are families), coupled with some very intense experiences with kids and their families when I was teaching in Salt Lake and Lehi showed me just how much damage idiot, selfish, self-enamored parents do to the children they have brought into the world.  Brought in and betrayed.  So that went into the story.

Living in Utah also crept in there. There is plenty of diversity here, and people run the same gamut that they run elsewhere.  It’s just, here – you somehow expect people to be preternaturally and consistently good, and since you know your neighbors, you also know they are flawed.  I think that I was writing about the person behind the “you” in that last sentence.  The one who somehow feels that, being who they are, they are in a position to make assumptions about the people around them.  Maybe that’s all of us.  So I wanted to explore good characters who do it, too—and who have defined the world so vividly in their own terms, they have little idea that there might be anything acceptable outside of those terms.

The book had the impact I’d hoped it would.  I saw it in the reviews and read it in the letters I was sent.  And that was a good feeling.

But primarily, I think, I wrote the book because I needed, for myself, to write a book.

LC: Why do you write for the YA market?

KDR: I think that writing to kids – that even teaching Sunday School to 13 year olds – is one of the most important things you can do.  Their brains are at an odd place – the brain is re-written back to front starting at age 11 and ending at around 24.  If you think you know something about life – about how to live it well, how to live it with meaning – this is the time to teach it.  This is the time you can get in on the wiring.  Adults have already made themselves, either into something significant, or into something – else – but kids?  They are waiting for the things that will help them sort out what is significant from what is glitz and not significant.  I tell other writers (arrogantly) that they better look at their lives and see if there’s anything in them that makes them worthy to write to children.  Because too many people use writing as a way of escaping the reality of the lives they have  - allowed to grow up around them.  That’s not a place from which to write to kids.  Kids don’t need to be enlightened and given direction by grown up adolescents.

LC: You are a woman of many interests. What are some of them and how do they interact with your creative process?

KDR: It’s funny that we speak in terms of “creative process.”  Is that not an oxymoron?

I’m interested in family.  And in the people I care about.  And in my animals – you’ll note that all of this amounts to: interested in creatures over which I have a some influence. I quilt.  I turn wood – really, really small pieces of wood. I love glass and so I dabble in stained glass and fused glass.  And I love beads (I would’ve sold Manhattan for beads, easy).  I guess what I really love are all those books with the shiny pictures you can spend big bucks on just to look at what other people have done with this kind of stuff.  I love making things.  I don’t love the process – I just love the idea of finishing. My house is full of tiny, amateurish little weird things. I’m also a genealogist—a primary source researcher.  Love the hunt.  Love the puzzle.   And I sing.  And I have five horses.

There is too much to do – there are too many wonderful, amazing skills and materials and projects to do in one lifetime.  There better be an eternity.  People who are bored are nuts.

How does all that interact with my CP?  I’ve learned this: when you put all the fabric of a certain color and texture group in one box, and all of another in another box, your brain has to come up with color concepts all out of its own little imagination, which is limited.  But if you take all the fabric and dump it on the floor, there will be combinations of things you NEVER would have thought of, lying right there on the carpet in front of you, free for the discovery. I recognize a shortfall of that kind of chaos with my circumscribed human world.  And yet, that world affords me endless concerns and joys and fuels my action full time.

An artist is like a big fat blender.  All the experiences of his life, all the news stories he’s heard, everything he knows about his friends, his world, his sex, his own particular brand of order – all of the museums he’s been to, and movies and books he’s partaken of – all experiences inside and outside go into his head and the blender goes on, and all that stuff gets shredded and sent racing around until everything falls out in new combinations.   The more you experience, the more elements you can combine.  The more you put your hand to, the more basic laws of physics you learn.  The more questions you ask, the more interesting your thinking—and your writing—becomes.

Check out Kristen D. Randle’s two other award winning books, too. The Only Alien on the Planet is like an in-depth, more hopeful version of the old LDS classic, “Cipher in the Snow.” Breaking Rank also has LDS characters, although only covertly. It’s a great book for examining the dynamics of the erotics of abstinence and how our good intentions can lead us to good and bad places at the same time. Definitely worth reading—especially if you have teenagers.