Lemon Tart is a Miss Marple-style mystery (what the marketing copy calls a “cozie”) — that is, it feature an older woman who gets drawn in to a murder case (here, it’s the murder of a neighbor) and uses her pluck, life experience, natural curiosity, and local connections to help solve the case. What I liked about the novel is that it succeeds as a cozie, but that it also brings some character and plot elements in that have a real impact on the protagonist Sadie Hoffmiller. The emotional, physical and family/community/romantic repercussions from not just the murder, but also solving the murder are not glossed over at all. There’s just enough grit to it to make it work for a reader like me. And, in particular, the climactic sequences are fairly thrilling. The danger is real.

I do find it somewhat amusing, though, that Sadie is not-LDS, but lives LDS values. Not that there are Christian women of faith that don’t fit the profile. And certainly I understand that having a non-LDS heroine allows Kilpack to write certain settings and details and storylines that it would be much harder to deal with a Mormon context. It’s just that it sometimes creates reading moments where the fact that it’s a non-LDS-themed-book-written-by-an-active-LDS becomes a little too present.

On the whole, though, it’s the most entertaining and best crafted of the non-David-Farland, non-indie-press (Gravity vs. the Girl, No Going Back), non-national publisher speculative fiction (except it’s much better than Wings) Whitney Awards finalists. It’s also the first time I’ve been almost convinced by the mantra that LDS genre authors are catching up with their national counterparts.

The contrast between these two paintings and the Edenic mythos their marriage evoked struck me as a tension that might work well in a poem. So I set out to lyrically critique the one in terms of the other (I’ll let you decide which one is which) and to extrapolate connections between images that are removed from one another by over five centuries.

As always, comments are welcome.

* * * *

No Botticelli, This—

No ginger virgin, hands modest to sex and breast,
flesh fallow, fecund as sky gone to seed in the sea:
her father’s cerulean stones sickled into primordium,
become pit to her emanant pith. No escort ashore
on the zephyr’s hymned gestures toward Paradise,
wafted with rose hips come like souls wanting skin.
No velvet robes ready to sop up her mythology, to
keep her from burning her first day at the beach.

Just this Eve and her Adam, curling down currents
of dawn like leaves slipped from the knowledge tree,
flesh converging to vessel the easterly sighed down-
canyon when God realized they’d grown restless
waiting for his newly charged cherubim to doze,
drop their swords, spill the tokens and signs
of his mystery as they dreamed. So the pair
streaked through asphodel fields instead, emerged
from under cover fig leaves into the blush of blossom
against bodies gnawing, gnawing at the edges of sky.

Mormon Artist Magazine Literature editor and fellow AMVer Katherine Morris suggested I post here at AMV questions and answers cut from the interview.   So, for your reading pleasure:

There also seems to be an underlying theme of agency in your writing: “[I]t enables those who read or hear it to create choices for themselves”. How does the concept of agency inform your writing?

The “It” here refers to “sustainable language.”  Sustainable language is creative, proactive, productive language that effectively sparks others to create their own risk-choice spectrums and generate possibilities for themselves.  It’s the language of life. Sustainable language goes out on its faith in others’ creativity, creative drive being a far more commonplace phenomenon in all levels of society than is popularly supposed. Good language—sustainable language—allows for that creativity and invigorates human agency.

Bad language runs the other way.  Through fear, guilt, shame, and other devices of control it prods people in the direction it wants them to go, dismissing agency as counterproductive and undependable.

I believe language and human agency to be intimately bound up together. I depend on readers’ native creativity and tendency to exercise choice to make something meaningful for themselves (within reason) of the words I put out there.  The question of language—what it is and what it does to and for us—lies at the heart of my novel The Pictograph Murders.  At a critical moment the protagonist catches wind of a key element of the villain’s philosophy—he “perceived himself as having the power, and so he could make things mean what he wanted them to”—a version of the might makes right stance, which shows as clearly in rhetorical acts as it does in physical ones.

What role does religious symbolism play in The Pictograph Murders?

I think what symbolism comes across depends on what symbolism readers bring to the story.  Since The Pictograph Murders seems to sell in a steady trickle in non-LDS bookstores on the tourist circuit here in southeastern Utah, like the local museum gift shop where people visit from all over the world, readers may well find a wider range of symbolic elements in the book than I can anticipate. To my thinking, that’s perfect.  My hope is that even readers who distrust religious symbolism will find archetypal appeal in the story’s spiritual elements.

When I read your essays/posts on language, I feel your gentle urging for awareness and watchfulness in the use of language.  In “The Downstream Principle” your concern is with the rhetoric of those with two different perspectives on the use of a canyon. “But given the weighty importance of what I don’t know about this place, I’m cleaning up my language”. Could people be substituted for place and what suggestions do you have for cleaning up language?

“Could ‘people’ be substituted for ‘place’?”  Yes.  Practices that result in exploitation and manipulation of or damage to the natural environment or that display carelessness or unawareness are only extensions of our behavior in the human environment. In other words, if I’m doing it to nature, I’m doing it to people, too, at one level or another.  I don’t think we can improve our behavior in the natural sector without improving behavior in the human one. I said earlier that spirituality is a quality of character, not of place, and so carries across in person from home to church to field to canyon.  Furthermore, human language now exerts tremendous influence upon the world. It creates experience for others and can affect them powerfully, for good or for ill, with some effects extending beyond sight. That suggests that how I behave in language is a deeply spiritual concern.

Characteristics of human language make it a wilderness in its own right, chock full of wild beauty and miraculous realms where fabulous adventures unfold and heroes and villains choose their parts.  It contains a wealth of cultural and natural resources. Whenever I act to clean up my language, I examine it for unfortunate or wrongful intent, looking for evidence that I’ve relied on anger, fear, guilt, etc. to assert myself.  I also look for shortsightedness.  To me, the question of bad language reaches beyond what’s commonly considered off-colored or offensive—it goes to usual words thought clean as a whistle that are spoken in common conversations but carry the interest to control, exploit, or harm.

But really, my hope for my language is not just to clean it up but to find ways to apply the common dictum many outdoor websites and camping brochures contain: Leave the environment better than it was when you found it.

Author: Alan Michael Williams

Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (self-published)

Genre: Fiction (gay fiction)

Year Published: 2009

Number of Pages: 250

Binding: Paperback

ISBN10: 1439235279

ISBN13: 978-1439235270

Price: $12.99 print; $7.99 Kindle. Available at Amazon.com.

Reviewed by Jonathan Langford.

Note: I received a free electronic review copy of this book from the author.

Reviewing Ockham’s Razor is a bit odd for me. It’s a book about Micah, a gay kid in his early twenties who was raised a Mormon (though he claims not to be one anymore), and his on-again-off-again relationship with Brendan, a 17-year-old gay Mormon who isn’t sure if he wants to stay in the Church or not. It’s also about the mutual misunderstandings and awkwardness that are common in relationships of any kind at this age, and about Micah’s efforts to engage with mental models about life from a variety of sources, ranging from French philosopher Michel Foucault to Micah’s Mormon mother, to two nurses who work at the same detox center as Micah. And it’s about Brendan as well, though as readers we never really see him clearly: only the imperfect and poorly understood Brendan-construct, subject of endless hypothesizing on Micah’s part, that dwells in the older boy’s mind.

On a surface level, Ockham’s Razor seems in some ways like a mirror image to my own novel, No Going Back, also published in 2009 (maybe it was something in the water?) and also about a gay teenage Mormon kid, though the character in No Going Back is somewhat younger and never strays quite as far from the Church as either Brendan or Micah. In both novels, the Mormon Church and its teachings about homosexuality represent almost another major character in the story, influencing the actions and motivations of the other characters and representing at least a perceived alternative to self-acceptance as a homosexual. Despite some optimistic suggestions otherwise early in Ockham’s Razor and Paul’s initial attempts to balance his gay side and his Mormon side in No Going Back, ultimately in both cases choosing to be Mormon means choosing not to live as a homosexual.

One big difference is the stance of the books toward Mormonism. The central viewpoint depicted in No Going Back is one in which Mormonism is true as a belief system, written primarily for an audience of believing Mormons. Ockham’s Razor, by contrast, is written from a distinctly non-LDS worldview, in which Mormon beliefs are a source of ongoing frustration and wonder on the part of the main character as to how others can believe and accept this stuff. It’s perhaps indicative that the term “Ockham’s razor” is first introduced as part of a discussion in which Micah is berating his mother about the Church’s position on blacks, including his claim that Ockham’s razor (the principle that the simplest explanation consistent with the facts is likely to be true) suggests causes other than revelation for the 1978 change in policy. While part of this rings true in terms of typical late adolescent badgering of parents — something Micah is never slow to do whenever his mother shows up in a scene — it reflects a viewpoint that will resonate more with those who have left the Mormon faith than with believing Mormons.

It’s hard to imagine that many believing Mormons would be comfortable reading this book. Aside from the main character’s constant mental and verbal martialing of arguments against the Church’s position on various issues, most commonly homosexuality, there are some explicit descriptions of homosexual sex that few practicing Mormons will be comfortable with.

The novel is well-written on a sentence, paragraph, and scene level, though at first I found the style sometimes confusing in its quick alternative of person (first person, second person, third person) in internally reported thoughts. Example:

I scootch next to him on the couch and notice he hasn’t put on deodorant today. His pheromones make the world grow pleasantly fuzzy. I never got the chance to be close to you like this at school. This is surreal. (p. 11)

Either the style grew clearer as I went along, or I got used to it.

In general, the story appeared well-edited and well-produced, which is a challenge for self-published books. However, the story’s biggest challenge is its lack of a natural audience: as I pointed out above, it’s not a good match for most Mormon readers, but at the same time it’s also sufficiently engaged with the matter of Mormonism that readers without a Mormon background may find it hard to follow and/or sympathize with. It’s also very much a story about the internal thought processes of the main character and the real-world events that prompt those thoughts, as opposed to a more externally plot-driven narrative. It’s a cerebral story where sometimes it seems that the main characters are more interested in talking about ideas than having a relationship. And the romance doesn’t turn out happily in the end: Brendan decides he wants to go on a mission and stops seeing Micah. All these are strikes against the book finding a very wide readership.

What the novel does best, in my view, is its depiction of Micah as a young man, confused in the way that many (perhaps most?) young men are often confused in their first serious relationships, whether that relationship is with a female or (as described here) with another male. Micah is constantly questioning what Brendan means, what he should say to the other boy, what just went wrong in their interaction, whether or not he should push for more physical contact or back off… the usual suspects.

In this respect, it strikes me that despite the thematic focus on homosexuality, much of the story could be retold as a boy-girl romance without changing a lot of the interpersonal dynamics. That’s not a bad thing, in my opinion. If anything, I think it’s a step forward to acknowledge that gay relationships can be just a clueless and frustrating as straight relationships can be, particularly between two people who are too young to really know what they’re doing and still largely narcissistically focused on themselves and their own agendas (as all of us tend to be when we start down the relationship path). The randomness in story events — the flow of conversation, the moods and attitudes of the main character — strikes me as in many ways a faithful depiction of reality, particularly the element of mutual befuddlement and confusion that so often creates problems during the early stages of relationships.

At the same time, the story’s sudden shifts also made it hard for me as a reader to process things. Much of the time I felt like there was something missing from what I was reading: as if Micah’s own understanding of his and Brendan’s situation was so lacking that he was leaving out vital information that would help me make sense out of things. Most notably, I’m not sure I ever had a clear sense of just what it was that held Micah and Brendan together as a couple. Their breakup was no surprise to me because their relationship had never made sense to begin with. I can’t decide if that’s the way Williams wanted me to react, or if I’m missing something as a reader. It’s also unclear to me why Micah, who has never had a testimony and who on the face of it doesn’t seem to have much reason to value the Church, spends so much time and mental energy thinking up arguments against the Church’s position on homosexuality.

The book’s biggest unknown is Brendan. How does he feel about being gay? How does he feel about being Mormon? Why does he ultimately choose to be Mormon instead of gay? Micah never knows, and we never know. We’re told that Brendan values the Church, but I saw nothing in his attitude suggesting a real spiritual conviction. Instead, he comes across as confused and unwilling to take a risky step outside his family’s expectations into a gay world. In general, I’d say that while Ockham’s Razor engages with Mormon ideas and experiences, it doesn’t do it in a way that explains why anyone with a healthy sense of intelligence or self-worth would ever want to stay in the Church, particularly if that person is homosexually attracted. While not by any means an anti-Mormon book, it’s definitely a book written from the outside looking in, or perhaps more accurately from a post-Mormon life phase looking back.

I’ve commented elsewhere on the need for stories about faithful, believing Mormons who also happen to be homosexually attracted. What the example of Ockham’s Razor makes clear is that if we don’t generate such stories, others certainly won’t hold back from telling stories about this topic that won’t please us nearly as much. Most examples are likely to be far less balanced and sympathetic to Mormon characters (and likely less well-written) than Ockham’s Razor.

And yes, there is still plenty of time to submit — we won’t close submissions until Oct. 1. Indeed, you have time even if you haven’t started yet (11 weeks — so get to it). For those still thinking about possibly participating, we have some suggestions for styles/sub-genres to consider. Obviously, the best thing you can do is write an awesome, well-crafted story. An excellent story never faileth (to catch the editor’s eye).

However…

Our cup spilleth over with space opera.

And we could use (more) entries that are…

• urban fantasy
• mystery/noir/detective
• alternate history (that’s not in the future)
• set in “real” (or alternate) 19th and 20th century settings
• written from the pov of a female protagonist
• written from the pov of known church figures (although word is that a few Porter Rockwell submissions are in process so maybe not him*)
• western (with monster)
• Professional Adventurer (Doc Savage, Indy Jones [Orson Pratt? Jacob Hamblin?])
• occult
• giant monster (Them!, Godzilla)
• werewolf, mummy or Frankenstein monster
• ancient horror unleashed
• horror in general
• steampunk
• set in wartime (Civil, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, contemporary…)
• Dan Brown-style thriller
• set in a Book of Mormon setting
• not set in space or the U.S.

We also need illustrations and photographs so if you have something that fits the theme send it in (submission details here). In addition, (or instead) if you have artistic talent and are interested in illustrating one of the stories, drop us a line at monsters AT motleyvision DOT org with an example of your work, and we’ll connect you with a story in October. We have some good ones that we think will be fun to illustrate.

To sum up: Things are on track and going well. We want more stories and illustrations. And this first crop of submissions totally validates the Mormons & Monsters concept. You are going to really enjoy this anthology.

*although, as mentioned, the awesome caveat trumps all

Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods makes the case that a beautiful, ages old relationship is on the rocks: children and nature have fallen out of love.  Say it isn’t so.  There must be some kids still getting out there, developing lightning-fast reflexes from chasing lizards, solving the whole-body puzzle of climbing a tree, honing their future driving skills by walking on logs across creeks, etc.

It’s in the hope that nature children still exist somewhere that Wilderness Interface Zone is issuing a call for nature poems and short essays written by children.  The works may address any aspect of nature and the child’s relationship to it.  Poems should be 50 lines or under and essays 150-1000 words.  If you have a budding nature photojournalist in your family, we’ll consider posting his or her photos.  Children ages 6-18 are invited to submit work to pk.wizadmin@gmail.com from July 6, 2010 to July 31, 2010.  Depending on how many submissions we get, we’ll post them in batches off and on July-August.  Parents and kids: Please review submission guidelines here before submitting.

LDS Cinema Online and the new Prop. 8 documentary

Kevin has posted an in-depth review of “8: The Mormon Proposition” that actually finds a few things to like among all the preaching to the choir.

Earth day musings from Patricia

And they’re not quite what you think they would be. But you still get the fantastic writing and insightful commentaries on how we use language and relate to difference and the natural world that one has come to expect from Patricia.

Jonathan Langford at King’s English July 13

Jonathan will be reading from his novel No Going Back at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 13, as part of the King’s English Bookstore’s local author showcase. The bookstore is located at 1511 South 1500 East Salt Lake City, UT 84105.

Mormon criticism of a non-LDS film

Theric recently sent to me this link to a column by Davey Morrison that does a Mormon reading of “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Davey summarizes the field of Mormon criticism and then takes the approach that “Mormon film is any film as seen by a Mormon” and attempts to prove it. The result is quite interesting.

Zarahemla Books new releases two-fer

Hopefully you’ve already read my interview with Stephen Carter about his new collection of personal essays. But that’s not the only Zarahemla Books summer title. Chris has also published a collection of short stories by Darin Cozzens. Currently you can buy both titles for $19.95 (35% savings off of the cover price).

Ask Mormon Girl on the Great Mormon Novel

Joanna Brooks takes on the whole Great Mormon Novel question. Note that the discussion takes place both at Mormon Matters and the Ask Mormon Girl blog. See Wm get all snippy and whiny! See the same attitudes play out all over again! But anyway, Joanna makes a great point about how the discussion often ignores female authors (although, you know, the Shakespeares and Miltons come up with Whitney for a specific reason, which I’ve already discussed. Short answer: they are the founding geniuses of English language literature. When authors to emulate gets brought up in all seriousness it’s almost always Chaim Potok and Flannery O’Connor. And as I mention, many of the most celebrated and widely read authors of Mormon-themed literary fiction are Margaret Young and Angela Hallstrom. But I digress) and makes the claim for Terry Tempest Williams.

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!

So I’ve posted different versions (with different titles) in the two places. The version at my blog focuses on the original question of whether No Going Back is a YA novel. The version here retains most of that content, but also considers some more general questions about the nature and status of YA novels, particularly in the Mormon universe.

Who’s the intended audience of No Going Back? In particular, does No Going Back fit the definition of a young adult (YA) novel? That’s proved to be a tricky question — one that raises, for me, broader questions related to the teen market in general, and in particular the market for teen Mormon fiction. And other fiction too, for that matter.

As best I can tell, “young adult” is a label used by publishers and librarians in trying to target books to an early-teen to mid-teen clientele (sometimes stretching down to preteens in practical application), whether by appealing to kids themselves or to the adults who buy, recommend, and/or assign books for them to read. There’s also a general perception (whether justified or not) that such books tend to be shorter, focused on teen protagonists dealing with teen issues, and often written in a simpler style, compared to novels labeled as adult fiction.

Chris Bigelow (my publisher) and I didn’t label No Going Back as a YA book, for reasons that made sense to us at the time. Evidence continues to accumulate, however, that many readers — including some who almost certainly know better than Chris and I — see it as a YA novel. For instance, there’s the review in the spring 2010 newsletter of the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered Round Table, which evaluates No Going Back as an example of Mormon YA literature.

I’m happy, of course, with people buying and reading my book, whatever they choose to call it. Let’s pretend for a moment, though, that this question of definitions has some importance, and look at some arguments each way.

First, reasons why No Going Back is a YA novel:

• Most of the action centers on a teenage protagonist, his best friend, and their agemates at school and Church.
• The central story arc is about growing up.
• The central issue is how the teenage protagonist will deal with his increasing awareness of the conflict between his homosexual attractions and the religious beliefs he’s been raised with, together with a large side helping of questions about popularity and peer group loyalties — classic teen issues, just the sort of stuff you might have seen in those much-dreaded After School Specials of yesteryear.
• Much of the story is taken up with details of teenage life, from lunch-table conversation to video games.
• The style is relatively simple and straightforward, with a lot of space devoted to dialogue and internal monologue.

On the other hand:

• Not all of the characters are teenagers. One of the three characters who gets a lot of air space is an adult, the protagonist’s bishop and father of his best friend.
• There’s a major subplot (seen as irrelevant by some readers, but praised by others) about that adult character and his relationship with his wife, which has been strained by the demands of his calling as bishop.
• The book is grittier and more realistic in areas such as teenage language than titles that are sold as standard Mormon YA fiction.
• Although it reads quickly, the book is actually longer than typical size for a regular novel, let alone a YA novel, weighing in at about 110,000 words (standard adult novel size is considered 80,000-100,000).
• Perhaps most important, the book wasn’t written with a teenage audience in mind. So far, in fact, the only teenager I’m aware of who’s read it is my own daughter. (No, I didn’t twist her arm.) To be honest, I don’t think it’s a story that would interest many teenagers (unless they’re dealing with this issue personally) or that they would enjoy.

Readers so far have been divided in whether they think it’s suitable for a YA audience. A criticism some readers have made (both from a faithful LDS perspective and from a gay perspective, interestingly) is that the book could easily be depressing for teenage readers who are themselves same-sex attracted (SSA) and Mormon. Certainly it doesn’t spell out any easy answers for them. And the main character gets hit with a lot of hard things, partly as a result of choices he makes but largely as a result of things that are completely out of his control. When it comes down to it, I’m not sure I’d want a same-sex attracted teenage Mormon kid to read this book. (Though I think it might be good if his bishop had read it.)

Perhaps more to the point, as I indicated above, there’s little evidence so far that teen readers will want to read the book, or will like it if they do read it. This, however, raises a broader question to me: Who actually is buying YA novels? Who is reading them? Who is choosing who reads them?

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There’s a key definitional question that centers, I think, on differences between the Mormon YA market and the category of YA fiction in the larger non-Mormon world. Mormon YA titles are expected to be pretty much squeaky clean as regards language and what is considered inappropriate behavior, especially sexual behavior. You might have a (pretty daring) YA Mormon novel where a character or a character’s friend slips and falls morally, but all of the inappropriate behavior — and the feelings leading up to that behavior — would happen offstage. You could never (for example) allude to a straight teenage boy’s physical reaction to being next to a pretty girl — at least, that’s my perception — let alone a SSA teenage boy’s physical reaction to seeing a cute guy, as No Going Back does.

This is far from true as regards YA fiction nationally. In fact, YA fiction in general takes a certain pride in tackling the issues that are most relevant (if often embarrassing) for teenagers, like unwanted and socially distressing physical reactions. The very scenes in my book that would horrify buyers and editors of Mormon YA fiction actually increase its qualifications as YA fiction, judged by a national standard.

I think part of the reason for this — on top of a general prudishness in what’s usually referred to as the Mormon market — is that YA Mormon fiction, unlike YA fiction nationally, is a category that’s been created largely by publishers and booksellers, not librarians. Furthermore, it’s being sold largely to parents, grandparents, etc., not directly to teenagers themselves. The primary marketing niche for Mormon YA fiction, as I see it, is as an alternative to mainstream YA fiction, for those who are horrified by the very realism that mainstream YA fiction is so proud of. Marketing No Going Back as a YA novel in a Mormon market would have targeted it at precisely those buyers least likely to like it, while guaranteeing that it would have been overlooked by many who might have liked it but who know what the code of “Mormon YA fiction” generally means.

But then I have to wonder: Do teenagers really like all those issue-oriented YA books that are being sold and praised in the national market very much? Are they books that teenagers generally choose to read? Or do they read them because they’re assigned in classes and pushed on teenagers by librarians?

From my experience, when teenagers read at all by choice, they usually read genre fiction: science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, romances, or whatever their particular preferred flavor may be. (Adults aren’t much different in that respect.) I think there’s some evidence that teenagers tend to like books with teenage protagonists, dealing with themes related to growing up and coming of age. It seems to me, though, that they tend to like them in works such as Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game — a book with younger-than-teenage protagonists for most of the book, which resonates for many sf nerds with their experiences of unpopular brilliance, but not written, marketed, or (mostly) read as a YA novel, though it has many of the generic markers I mentioned above.

On the other hand, searching online, I found the following:

Orson Scott Card is the recipient of the 2008 Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring his outstanding lifetime contribution to writing for teens for his novels “Ender’s Game” and “Ender’s Shadow.” An accomplished storyteller, Card weaves the everyday experiences of adolescence into broader narratives, addressing universal questions about humanity and society. The award was announced January 14 at the 2008 Midwinter Meeting of the American Library Association (ALA) in Philadelphia.

So maybe Ender’s Game really is a YA novel, even if he and most of his readers don’t think it is. Kind of like No Going Back. Wait…

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Teenagers, I would argue, of all of us, very often most live in a fallen world beyond their ability to change. What good is done with stories featuring lives so unreal that their happy endings happen to people utterly different from those our teenagers know themselves to be? Of course, that’s assuming that teenagers do or will want to read such books at all, which as I’ve pointed out above is something I just don’t know. This, however, is an approach that conventional Mormon publishing absolutely cannot take, for market reasons.

I should acknowledge here that there are, by all accounts, some positive and fairly groundbreaking things that have happened in Mormon YA fiction. I’d be interested to know more about these, and to know if the experimentation that I heard about 5-10 years ago is still happening today. What drives Mormon YA fiction? What are its potentials and possibilities? Where is it headed? Clearly it’s not going to be the entering wedge for gritty realism within Mormon fiction, but are there other ways it might help push the boundaries? E.g., genre categories? I’m under the impression that a lot of the sf&f that’s coming from mainstream LDS publishers is YA fiction, though I’m not sure how much of it is distinctively LDS. Are there places Mormon YA fiction is leading (or has the potential to lead)? Inquiring minds want to know!

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There are, within the Mormon universe, a great many stories stories about growing up that are clearly intended for an adult audience. For a few examples off the top of my head, I need only think about The Tree House by Doug Thayer and On the Road to Heaven by Coke Newell. Not to mention The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint by Brady Udall.

What marks these novels as non-YA is a combination of things, but style perhaps more than anything else. In some cases, such books are written from a clearly backward-looking stance: adolescence recollected from adulthood, as in the case of On the Road to Heaven. In other cases, the sheer sophistication of language and approach makes it clear that the expected reader isn’t teenagers. Doug Thayer does a particularly neat trick with this, writing with a highly literary style that nonetheless reflects the internal “voice” of the character, as in the following paragraph which starts The Tree House:

Harris walked out the back door and down through the dark garden past the antler pole, chicken cook, rabbit pens, and fruit trees. Lady, his dad’s big golden Lab, followed him. Harris looked up at the starry night. He walked down to the big, thick sycamore, which his dad said was at least seventy-five years old and one of the tallest trees in Provo. He climbed the rope ladder up to the tree house, climbed the trap door ladder, and crawled onto the low-pitched roof. He lay down on the old rug, his hands under his head, looking up into the sycamore just to watch the leaves move. He and Luke liked to do that.

The style is spare and lean. On a sentence-by-sentence level, there’s nothing you couldn’t expect teenage readers to process. At the same time, the prose is also dense, composed of short but thickly laid verbal brush strokes. It demands processing. Internal thoughts and feelings are reported simply but indirectly, creating a portrait of a young man that is at once intimate and somewhat distanced. It’s a very good, possibly great novel with an effective style, but not one (book or style) that I expect to attract young readers who would be looking to see their current selves in the adolescent protagonist.

I wonder whether it’s generally true — possibly even a requirement for such writing — that “adult” novels about a YA protagonist move so quickly to establish a literary distance of some kind between the protagonist and the expected age and sympathies of the readers? That would be an interesting question to look at more broadly. Examples, anyone?

Let’s take, by way of contrast, the first paragraph from Kristen Randle’s Slumming, a YA novel with a highly Mormon storyline, but from a national publisher:

There’s something about traveling to another country: you can never see your own home quite the same way again. I believe it was this experience that inspired by Great Philosophical Idea. Not that I am necessarily blaming the French. Or my mother.

The style is far more immediate than Thayer’s. Thayer’s first paragraph sketches a picture of a teenage boy; but Randle’s first paragraph is written in the voice of a teenager, and not just because it’s in first person, though I think that choice (highly typical of much YA fiction) is also not an accident.

And then just to round things out, let’s take the first paragraph of No Going Back. This, by the way, is a real-time experiment: I’ve written the foregoing without actually looking at my own first paragraph, and don’t have quite that good a memory for my own work. It will be interesting to see what comes out. Double-click the file… waiting… waiting…:

Paul had no intention of telling Chad that he was gay. Not anytime soon. Not ever, if he could get away with it. Eight years as Chad’s best friend told him Chad’s reaction wouldn’t be good. So why did he keep thinking about doing something he already knew was really, really stupid?

Even though this is in third person, it seems pretty evident to me that it’s a lot closer stylistically to Randle than to Thayer, particularly in the aspect of voice: you hear the adolescent character (at least, if I’ve done my job right). So maybe it’s understandable that readers are confused about whether or not this is supposed to be YA fiction.

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I can’t really be unhappy about the choices I made for No Going Back. I think it does what I wanted it to do, for a large part of my main intended audience: that is, believing adult Mormons with a tolerance for realism in their reading, without a particular investment in the issue of same-sex attraction but willing to consider how we as Church members can be more supportive in this area. I think, though, that for future ventures I shall try to be more cautious about the dividing line between YA and adult fiction, and work more clearly to stay on one side or the other — if only to keep from confusing the heck out of everyone. Then again…

Then earlier this year I ran across (and mentioned in a links roundup post) this brief Richard Brody review of the film for The New Yorker. Here was an urban(e) critic who made me rethink my earlier impressions — enough so that last week my wife and I watched Gentlemen Broncos. Brody writes, “…. it’s a work of visionary inspiration that, like many outrageous Hollywood comedies of the classic era (such as those of Frank Tashlin), tackles remarkably serious matters.”

It turns out that he’s right. What I’m less sure about is where he tries to give a Mormon gloss on the film: “In his jejune yet highly moral inspiration, Benjamin is the prophet of a pop-infused Gospel, an updated Book of Mormon, that speaks to a new generation of young people whose coarsened sensibility is paradoxically attuned to Biblical explicitness and ferocity.”

I don’t think that that’s exactly what this film is about, but it’s a nice try, and perhaps there’s something to the coarsened sensibility thing. I hope to give a full accounting over at LDS Cinema Online, but for this revisit let me throw this out there: with Gentlemen Broncos, the Hesses package issues of authenticity, fandom, selling out, provincialism and dreams of stardom in a way that both celebrates and makes fun of and keenly dissects the myths of Hollywood and Big Publishing. In order to appreciate this movie you have to a) really feel the sweetness — not just see that it is there — and b) focus in on the relationship between the protagonist Benjamin and his mom. If Napoleon Dynamite was an awesome takedown of hipsterism and faux-quirkiness in indie/mainstream indie film (and I think it was); Gentlemen Broncos is a masterful takedown of both the haughtiness of artists who have no ideas left and make worshipers of their fans and the pretensions and faux-celebrations of fan fiction. And it actually succeeds. There’s more there than the critics are seeing because they refuse to buy in to the possibility of the sweetness and authenticity and affection in the Hesses writing/filmmaking. They don’t understand that we are meant to love Saltair even though we also laugh at it, and that it’s precisely that double feeling (instead of complete disdain) that gives lie to the way Hollywood usually treats religion, small town America, family relationships and the American dream.

Anyone else actually seen this film?