Most of us involved with the LDS market simply assume that there is a consumer need or desire that is being filled, and that the audience will always want Mormon materials. Less frequently, many assume that separate LDS stores and perhaps publishers will eventually be absorbed into the rest of the market for books, music, film and other cultural goods, because, they believe, there isn’t any reason that consumers need separate LDS stores.

Perhaps.

The current LDS market is best defined as a niche — a small portion of the overall market that consists of customers with specific interests or needs different from the rest of the market. A niche is usually small enough that it is overlooked or ignored by the rest of the market. It often also has some kind of impediment or ‘insulation’ from the rest of the market, something that keeps those in the  rest of the market from simply adding one additional product to serve the needs of the niche.

The answer to whether or not the LDS market will continue lies in this “insulation” form the rest of the market. Without some impediment, companies currently outside the market will eventually see the niche as attractive and absorb the market.

So what are the impediments? What, if anything, keeps Random House from publishing books for Mormons? or what keeps Barnes and Noble from becoming the preferred seller of LDS titles for most buyers?

I’m not sure that I have all the answers to these questions, but several possible impediments have occurred to me:

1. Unique Products — By and large the products in the LDS market are different from those outside of the market, and many of the products outside of the market won’t work inside the market. The language and terms and other cultural elements that we use in Mormon books, music and film make us comfortable and help us understand what the author means, and the doctrines and cultural beliefs that most Mormons share are reflected in these works. While we understand outside works just fine, in certain kinds of works (religious works, or fiction with Mormon settings) outside language or beliefs seem strange or out of place. Outside publishers and other companies would likely need to have LDS employees in order to get these things right in books for the LDS market, and it doesn’t seem likely that they will make the necessary expenditures anytime soon.
2. LDS Consumer Interest in “Safe” Products — Many Mormons, influenced by Church counsel to seek wholesome entertainment and avoid that which might fill the mind with impure thoughts, look for materials that are “safe.” They are cautious about purchasing books, music and film from non-LDS sources, because the works they purchase may not be as “safe” as they want. They then look for indications of what to expect — publisher/imprint names, authors, etc., that they know will fit what they believe to be “appropriate.” At least in part, they believe that books in LDS stores are “safe” and prefer to shop there for some kinds of materials. This doesn’t mean that they never purchase elsewhere, just that they have a preference in some cases where the risk seems greatest. This preference will, I think, continue at least as long as Church leaders continue to emphasize avoiding unwholesome materials.
3. LDS Publishers and Marketing Information Often Unavailable — While most LDS Publishers do make their books available to the rest of the market in the U.S., that doesn’t mean that their books find much of a market there. Other than basic availability, LDS books largely aren’t noticed and haven’t much of a presence in the market. LDS publishers in general don’t try to sell their books to stores outside of the LDS market–no sales calls are made to stores, no marketing materials sent to vendors and no advertising to the non-LDS consumer outside of areas where LDS members are a large portion of the population. The few vendors like Amazon.com that list LDS books, music and film are lucky to categorize books as LDS at all, let alone divide them into categories meaningful to consumers. Of course, this could change, but both LDS publishers and outside vendors would need to perceive this as worth their while.
4. The Christian/LDS Split — In a sense the most likely market to absorb the LDS market is the general Christian market. I believe that, if asked, most professionals in the national market would assume that these markets are already the same. But most LDS Church members and most evangelicals know that any combination of the two is impossible. The few LDS authors, musicians, publishers, labels or producers who have attempted to get their works into Christian bookstores have been roundly rejected, even when their works are not specifically Mormon. While in contrast LDS stores have been somewhat more open to Christian materials, they are often different from LDS materials in a way that makes it difficult for LDS consumers to relate.

There could be other impediments that keep the LDS market separate from the rest of the market (please let me know if you think of something). But even if these are the principal impediments, I think they are quite substantial. And I don’t see them changing much in the next few decades.

I won’t be surprised if someone believes that the Internet, or print-on-demand, or ebooks will somehow overcome all this. Personally, I don’t see that happening. While the Internet continues to have a substantial effect on the market, it most likely means that the division we see in the physical portion of the market will continue, as it has, transferred to the virtual portion of the market. LDS products will still be different from other products, LDS consumers will still want different products and want assurance that what they purchase is “safe.” Print-on-demand and ebooks are simply changes in form and production process. While important advances, they won’t overcome these impediments.

That isn’t to say that these impediments are permanent. It is possible to overcome them, or for preferences among consumers to change. But those changes are most likely to take decades, if they happen at all, because they involve long-standing cultural assumptions and needs, not technology. In the meantime, I think we can safely assume that there will be some kind of LDS market.

More or Less Mormon? The Problem(atizing) of Mormon Identity

In his 1997 Dialogue article, “‘Awaiting Translation’: Timothy Liu, Identity Politics, and the Question of Religious Authenticity,” Waterman interrogates the notion of a coherent Mormon cultural identity, a religious sense of communal self constructed around nineteenth century Mormonism’s flirtation with nationhood and ethnic identity separate from that of the nineteenth century American mainstream. This “incipient nationality,” Thomas F. O’Dea observes, was born of the “combination of [Mormonism's] distinctive values, separate and peculiar social institutions”—as, among other things, its lay ministry and its insistence that humans can receive direct revelation from God—”and [its] geographic segregation” from the rest of America (qtd. in Mauss 291 [from this]). Such “protonationality,” as Armand Mauss labels it, was “strengthened by three ‘Mormon wars’”—the 1838 conflict with neighbors in northwest Missouri, the 1844-46 conflict with neighbors in west Illinois, and the 1857-58 conflict with the Federal Government over Utah Territory—and “‘constant … conflict’ with the [world] outside [Mormonism] to produce a total Mormon cultural environment and worldview that became ‘progressively more distinct’” (291).

Yet this distinctness faded some as Mormonism made inroads into secular American culture, assimilating, to a degree, in order to accommodate the organization’s need for expansion: if the culture of the saints had stayed too peculiar, refusing engagement with what O’dea labels “modern secular thought” in order to be wholly separate from the world, the institution may have remained indefinitely stagnant and small.

Such accommodation, even in the midst of—perhaps even in spite or as a result of—the church’s continuing growth and church leaders’ efforts in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s to return this “new” Mormonism to its earlier theological and cultural distinctness (most notably through the continuing effort to correlate church policies, programs, and teachings under a single banner) has had a profound influence on Mormon cultural identity. For instance, though some may lament the religious culture that has room enough for the church headquarters bureaucrat and New York Doll, the minivan-driving at-home mom and the powersuit-wearing business executive, the tatoo-toting-former-drug-dealing Maori and the long-bearded caucajewmexdian, the writer of YA love stories and the writer of erotic romance novels populated with flawed-enough-to-be-human Mormon characters, I find such cultural pluralism a mark of contemporary Mormonism’s growing vitality.

And I’m convinced Waterman would agree, though, as he implies throughout his essay, this increased plurality has been a source of anxiety and concern for others, especially those with a vested interest (for whatever reason and however justifiably from a theological standpoint) in correlating and perpetuating a fairly rigid cultural identity.

Working from similar assumptions about the dynamic making of Mormon identity, Waterman takes up the efforts of many Mormon literary critics (specifically England, Cracroft, and Jorgenson) and (as an aside) of those reviewers adhering to what he calls “the thirteenth article of faith school” of Mormon criticism. He positions the latter as an attempt to codify and perpetuate aesthetic standards of moral “loveliness, etc., [that can be] as difficult to pin down as the word ‘Mormon’ is to define.” And he concludes that this difficulty—which begs the question, “[I]f ‘we’ base our literary tastes and canons on prescriptive categories such as ‘virtuous, lovely, or of good report,’” then “What authority polices these categories?”—”only increases the muddiness of the ‘Mormon’ critical pool,” bogging the critic down in the murky work of trying to fix, patrol, and/or defend relatively dynamic and diffuse cultural, aesthetic, and (increasingly) market boundaries, something I don’t consider the literary critic’s job.

Yet, this is where much of Mormonism’s critical energy has been spent: on prescribing, policing, and defending boundaries. To be fair, Waterman does acknowledges “that ‘Mormon’ criticism’s tendency toward prescription [...] has been paralleled in the early stages of many ‘minority’ literatures and criticisms.” As an example, he cites Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong’s 1993 observation that “critics [of Asian-American literature] have not reached any agreement on how their subject matter is to be delimited. Prescriptive usages exist side by side with descriptive ones; some favor a narrow precision, others an expansive catholicity.” The question of critical approach, then—whether it’s best to outline what makes a text (and by extension, a writer) more or less part of the tradition in question or to allow descriptive categories and theories of literature to “grow [...] out of a body of work already recognized as belonging to the tradition”—is not unique to Mormon letters. In fact, the expense of such critical energy seems necessary in the initial stages of canon formation, allowing early critics (and on) a position from which to build/expand the tradition.

In this light, Waterman recognizes the value of England’s call for a Mormon literature that “contain[s] elements derived from Mormon experience and history,” tropes formed around “a certain epic consciousness,” around “mythic identification with ancient peoples and processes,” even as he (Waterman) wants to move beyond such categorization. Indeed, he observes that, “Rather than allowing one pat label [...] to pretend to unlock all the secrets of a text, we can use such categories (if we want or need to) as starting points” for discussing a text, always “recognizing the primacy of individual experience over the group identity of the author.”

The Primacy of Individual Experience

Waterman thus calls for a movement in Mormon criticism beyond the cataloging of tropes—a taxonomic effort that belies, not so much the desire to facilitate identification with a distinct Mormon cultural identity (although that does play a role here), but to pre-scribe the texts of Mormon writers. That is, to write or to order them before they’re written. Or more accurately, to dictate the standards against which a text—written or to-be-written—ought to be judged worthy of the community’s sanction and, by extension, its intellectual and literary attention and investment. He calls for Mormon critical discussions to move beyond the essentialism of group identity, beyond asking only, “Is this literature Mormon?” or “Is this author faithful?” to recognizing the problems of group identity—to wondering, “How can this literature be profitably read as coming out of a Mormon tradition?” and “What does it have in common with other work that is recognized as ‘Mormon’ in some way?” His focus, then, is less on preemptively excluding texts from the Mormon canon based on how Mormon the writer and the text is or is not and more on the process of reading as a Mormon, of attending to the Mormon aspects of a text “without seeking to quantify or define Mormonness.”

As a case-in-point, Waterman points to Susan Elizabeth Howe’s insightful exploration, “‘I Do Remember How It Smelled Heavenly’: Mormon Aspects of May Swenson’s Poetry,” which opens by admitting Swenson into the Mormon canon by virtue of her lifelong engagement with the Mormon experience:

Any discussion of Mormon culture or doctrine in the work of nationally prominent American poet May Swenson must begin with the caveat that Swenson, for virtually all of her adult life, was not a believing Mormon. She rejected Mormonism when she was in college, moved to New York City a few years after graduating from Utah State University, and never looked back. Nevertheless, she was raised in a devout Mormon family, her parents having emigrated from Sweden to live with the Saints. She learned Mormon teachings at home and attended church meetings weekly throughout her childhood and youth. She maintained lifelong affection for her parents and eight brothers and sisters, and occasionally came to Utah to visit them. Mormonism shaped her attitudes and perceptions both consciously and unconsciously. And because her poetry rises directly from her life experience—her interests, her study, her thought, her travels—she could not help but respond to Mormon culture and beliefs in some of her poems.

Poet Javen Tanner mirrors Howe’s observations about the lasting influence of early life experience in his 2007 interview with Meridian Magazine’s Doug Talley. When asked how “[his] religious sensibility inform[s] and guide[s] [his] work,” Tanner responded by referring to Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, who writes his poems “first in Polish and then translate[s] them into English” because, Milosz observed (according to Tanner’s paraphrase), “you must write in the language you learned as a child,” the principle being that the experience we’re socialized into when young has a profound influence on how we perceive and respond to the world for the rest of our lives, even if we drift away from that experience as we mature. And since “Mormonism is the language [Tanner] learned as a child,” he affirms that, while “[his] poems are not overtly religious, [...] the language of [his] experience [as an active Mormon] is in them,” an unconscious inclusion that can add another layer to any critical interpretation of Tanner’s poetic corpus. (Of course, it’s not the only thing to consider about Tanner’s identity and work, even though a person’s religiosity/spirituality can inform most every aspect of their lives.)

However, as Howe and Waterman imply, every Mormon-ism is not constructed equally and the critic should attend to these differences by considering the possible ways a text might, yes, acknowledge, but also revise or subvert conventional Mormonisms according to the writer’s degree of (self-)identification with Mormon culture and theology. Howe provides an excellent example of such critical consideration in her discussion of the Mormon aspects of Swenson’s work, which includes an exploration of Swenson’s poetic critique of (among other things) Mormon conformity to unquestioned cultural norms and of Mormonism’s rigid patriarchy.

Howe also provides here an excellent example of the politics involved in canon-formation and of the fluid matter of (group-)identity construction. By claiming Swenson as one of Mormonism’s own (though I’m sure Howe wasn’t the first to make this claim and she definitely isn’t the last), she radically challenges the decision made by Eugene England and Dennis Clark, editors of Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems, to exclude Swenson from the main body of their anthology—and by extension, of Mormon literature—by sitting her at the “friends and relations” table, which, though an amenable place of (relative) acceptance and honor, is still a place apart, an-other place: a place of Otherness. Constructed as an outsider, it becomes easier, I think, to dismiss her pointed critique of Mormonism and to gloss over a sexual identity not in keeping with the Mormon theological or cultural standards of her time or, for that matter, of ours. But to dismiss either aspect of Swenson’s identity is to deny the agency of her experience, is to make less valid and compelling her position on the fringes of cultural Mormonism.

And what does the Mormon literary community lose by opening space in the canon for those speaking from the fringes? Or to phrase that more positively: how might the community be enhanced, made more rich, more meaningful, even more transformative, by recognizing the validity of Swenson’s experience–or anyone else’s–as a “post-Mormon”?

So where to from here? Find out next week when I confess my personal agenda and search for Mormon criticism’s liberating paradoxes.

I’ve been reading Shannon Hale’s YA novels to my daughter, now 13, for four years.  The Books of Bayern are wonderfully emotionally textured, edgy enough to challenge my daughter, and filled with lots of girl power to encourage her to consider her options.  Hale’s attention to language attracts my interest sharply.  I’ve come to trust her writing as a source of fine language and narrative prowess for my daughter’s developing mind.  We snatch up her YA novels whenever they come out.

But I wasn’t interested in Hale’s adult novel, The Actor and the Housewife, until this discussion on AMV.  Complaints that the novel’s readers registered there piqued my curiosity.  Just before William’s not-necessarily-a-review, Kevin Barney put up this post reviewing the church’s article on emotional infidelity that drew a lot of comments.  In January, a BCC-er linked to this article in Slate on opposite sex friendship.  The stars seemed to align.  I decided to drop other projects and pick up The Actor and the Housewife, see what was what.  To make the narrative journey more interesting, I read it aloud to my husband Mark, who during our married life has done such gracious deeds as taking the kids outside so I could talk with male friends or helping me understand the man-side of baffling conversations.  I have included in this essay bits of our discussion of the novel as we read it.

We had a rough start.  The Actor and the Housewife opens with a flash flood of “spiritual signs” and unlikely coincidences that seemed to strain the storyline.  The banter between the main characters—Mormon housewife Becky Jack and movie star Felix Callahan—seemed at times to flip over into barely tolerable giddiness.  Sometimes the dialogue felt downright immodest, as in a scene where Becky tells her husband Mike about her first encounter with Felix.  In the wake of the recounting’s excitement, Becky and Mike wind up in bed.

Mark: Mike’s insistence on Becky’s femme fatale powers affects him.

I think I was expecting a story and language more along the lines of Hale’s Bayern Books—lovely, deep, connected all around and through, each book a satisfying environment in itself.  The tenor of the language in Actor and Housewife was so different, so abrasive by comparison that Mark and I wondered at times if Hale disliked Becky.

Patricia: This reads like a script.  And the witty dialogue seems contrived and irritating.
Mark: [Hale] is taking the book where she wants it to go.

Only my previous experience with the author’s writing made it possible for us to suspend our early judgment and trust that Hale would take us someplace interesting.  I began relaxing into the story when passages like these appeared:

“In a way, it almost feels like falling—“ No, she wasn’t going to say it.  “There should be a new term—falling in friendship or something like that.  I wish there was a word for it!  The English language is seriously flawed … (56)”

and

“I wish the English language gave us a better option.  ‘Pals,’ ‘chums,’ ‘buddies’ … but a word that implies the sudden and unusual nature—like ‘metabuddies’? (56)”

The “no language for this” issue surfaces repeatedly as Becky tries to relate her new experience to what she knows but can’t make it fit.  Through wordplay, Becky and Felix finesse the relationship, negotiating a space for its existence and continued development outside what the usual language of friendship allows for.  Language and relationship—for me, an absolutely dynamite combination.

Mark (speaking of the Valentine’s Dance scene where Becky and Felix go outside into the night air so Felix can test his theory that he’s falling in love with Becky): Becky wants to “get out there” and remain chaste.  How can she make it work?  She “goes outside” with Felix.

As the story progresses, the matter of social expectations and limitations—lines—where they are and whether or not Becky should cross them—arises frequently.  As Becky follows her instincts and her heart across her lines toward Felix while maintaining her lifelines to Mike and her kids, the flash flood turns into a deep, sinuously flowing river.  For this reader, the current became fully compelling.

Mark: The reader is not in control here.  The writer is.  Hale takes us through a series of emotional states.  By the break-up, the writer is exerting powerful control.

(By “break-up,” he means the point in the story where Mike expresses his misgivings about how deeply involved his wife and her movie star buddy are becoming. To save her marriage, Becky and Felix break up.)

As the story continues, Becky’s iconoclastic nature becomes increasingly apparent.  As she follows her attraction to Felix, she makes leaps of faith that shake up friends and extended family members, all of whom express their doubts about the relationship which they either expect or hope will fail.  Why would they expect or hope for the worst?  Because the friendship’s failure would confirm their own moral takes on the world.  The family get-together where Becky discovers her siblings are betting against her is one of the most important parts of the book.  There we begin to see just how deeply the Becky-Felix dynamic affects others’ lives as, watching the relationship intensify, Becky’s mother, her brothers, a sister, and a sister-in-law either manifest or confront their own social fears and limitations, including and especially, the fear of attraction.

Mark: As much as Becky loves her Mormon world, she has a hunger for something else—not instead of, but in addition to.  She has complete confidence in her social lines.  But she’s experimenting with various individuals to see “Can I make this work within the social universe where my children and husband live?”
Patricia: Becky and Felix’s relationship changes both their worlds.
Mark: Their relationship ends up relegating her older, primary relationships to supporting roles.
Patricia: She tries including the bishop.  He draws his line, re-thinks, changes.  Change is a main current in the book.
Mark: She was successful at integrating Mike.

One of the amazing elements of this book is how Hale makes Mormonism sexy.  This isn’t a matter of imbuing the book with only erotic energy but rather with life-begetting fertility operating within a Mormon moral context.  More than once, Felix calls Becky “a goddess” and clearly means it.  Likewise, he alludes to her physical fertility.  But the fertility language doesn’t just remark upon Becky’s childbearing prowess. Body and soul, Becky is a fountain of happy fecundity.

Mark: She is powerful as a demonstrably fertile woman, terrifyingly brave to outsiders.  Her character as a character is more developed than Felix’s.  More than Celeste’s also.  Celeste is supposed to be the demonstrable paragon.  But what is she in the face of this Becky power over her husband?  Celeste submits to the goddess.  She keeps what she can, relinquishes what she can’t hold on to.
Patricia: By virtue of their more open marriage, Felix and Celeste are completely vulnerable to the “cheeky [Mormon] minx” (12).

At the book’s outset, Felix and Celeste are statistics in Europe and Britain’s demographic winter.  Felix is hardened in his aversion to children and to fathering them.  This means that, philosophically, emotionally, and sexually a kind of sterility exists in Felix’s erotically charged bond with Celeste.  Following their involvement with Becky and her family, this cultural sterility leads to the collapse of Felix and Celeste’s marriage.

Mark: Becky could have Felix but doesn’t.  Celeste can’t have Mike.

Some readers complain that the story is unbelievable, a fact Hale herself has fun with toward its conclusion: “[S]eriously, who would buy a Mormon housewife as a romantic comedy heroine (320)?”  But Hale uses the device of extremity to frame up the story firmly.  If there weren’t unlikely extremes in the tale—the Hollywood scene vs. the Layton, Utah scene; Mormon housewife vs. famous actor—it might come off as “too Mormon.”  Yet via extremities, Hale brings Becky’s brand of Mormonism into relief.  Otherwise, the lines Becky draws and crosses wouldn’t show up nearly as vividly.

Mark: This is going to take everybody somewhere they haven’t been.  Is Hale working at illustrating a future archetype?

Some readers lament that Felix gets the best lines, making less stellar husband Mike look boring by comparison.  Me, I was amused by but not terribly impressed with Felix.  Nor did I find Mike boring.  Mike’s lines of dialogue are understated but impressively brave, since in a practical yet courageous way he navigates new seas he finds himself sailing as he opens his home to Felix.  Why does Becky love Mike?  She just does.  At first sniff she knows they have compatible pheromones and their genetic prospects are excellent: “His pheromones practically danced down my gullet and straight to my ovaries” (289). This line goes to the fertility motif woven throughout the book.

Mark: The best lines support the Becky character and they support the relationship.  It makes sense that Felix has charismatic lines.
Patricia: I want this to be a more beautifully written book, but it’s a screenplay.
Mark: The book is dependent on and devoted to that device.

Felix appears to have the male lead in this made-for-a-novel screenplay.  As it turns out, he can’t rival plain ol’ Mike, either his pheromones or his stolid Mormon stance.  Even after he dies, Mike exerts influence on the story and gets in Felix’s way, though many might wish that, when alive, Mike could have competed more compellingly against flamboyant Felix.  But it’s Becky that provides the narrative’s driving force. That neither Mike nor Felix as characters are as developed as is Becky’s character is hardly surprising.  The story is really about a Mormon woman and her “indomitable Mormon willpower” (214). In Hale’s stories, male characters commonly act in supporting roles, standing back as the strong female leads do their thing to keep the world in balance, plying extraordinary gifts separately and in alliance to unseat tyrants and preserve their families.

No tyranny overtly menaces the storyline of The Actor and the Housewife, only doubtful imperatives of social conventions and expectations bent on circumscribing the relationship.  Yet the language wrestles to pioneer a narrative trail for a definitely outside-the-usual mingling between two unlikely soul mates and their at-odds worldviews, thus directing its energy into deep space exploration.  In entering The Dance with Felix, Becky Jack, married Mormon mother of four, bravely goes where not very many Mormon mothers—maybe not many women at all, and with reason—have gone before.  Given the outcome for most of the story’s characters—more life for everyone all around—she does it with style, holding open prospects for everybody.

It’s important to the story that Becky and Felix not follow the usual romantic comedy script and become fully sexually entwined.  In my opinion, the reason is pretty simple. Becky is fully Mormon; Felix is fully not.  For Becky, family is everything.  Felix has estranged himself from even his mother.  By the end of the book, Felix, at nearly fifty years old, is only just coming to accept the prospect of being a father and “[settling] into [his] adult skin (301).”  By standards not just embedded in Mormon culture but also in other family-oriented societies, his social arc is way behind Becky’s.  But mainly, the idea that what she does and whom she does it with will affect prospects for others fully informs her sensibilities.  “Others” here include her children, whose lives are rather dramatically affected by her relationship with Felix; her husband, who must face his own fears and take his own leap of faith; her mother, who worries; her siblings, betting one an other that their doubts will be confirmed; her friends, who have their own lives to work out; and her church community, which at times behaves less than elegantly in response to Felix’s presence, an actual problem that exists between the church and the not-church communities.  Finally, there is Felix himself, so caught up in following Becky into “whatevership” that he makes himself vulnerable.  She is careful not to take advantage.  With her out there taking such chances, the agency and narrative prospects for everyone whose lives touch hers hangs in balance.  Fertility—not merely sexual fulfillment and not simply physical ability to bear children but also life-begetting, possibility-multiplying, world-building spiritual and emotional abundance—is the name of Becky’s Mormon game of risk.

Mark: The whole point is to prepare the Mormon reader to approach the point of agency.  Readers experience their own fears, doubts, expectations—all of which will be broken by this iconoclastic Mormon character.

Or not. Some readers, seeing Becky cross lines they themselves have taken pains to hold in place, will find the story unacceptable.  Many there be that have experienced worry, heartbreak, or the destruction of their families in situations that will uncomfortably resemble the arc of The Actor and the Housewife’s storyline.  To such people, the premise of the novel—that some men and some women can work through the confusion and intricacies of attraction—including sexual attraction—to establish positive, productive metafriendships might well come off as unbelievable, perhaps even painful.  This book isn’t trying to bully its point across, only to prompt thought: What if …?  The Actor and the Housewife is not for everyone, a fact Hale acknowledges and accepts.  I suspect that only a relatively small audience will find the novel to carry a stronger punch than can either an unconvincing and quirky romantic fantasy or an irresponsible and/or dangerous love story.  Yet The Actor and the Housewife’s intent is to be more than either-ors allow for.  I found it neither this nor that, but something else altogether different: a remarkably courageous work that chips away at the horns of social and spiritual dilemmas.

In the latter vein, I came across the story of perhaps the first major Mormon actor, Tom Lyne, who already had a substantial reputation as an actor in Philadelphia when he joined the Church. Here is an account of his relationship with the Church.

The following is from Chapter 1 of The Mormons and the Theatre (1905) by John S. Lindsay:

…Back in the days of Nauvoo, before Brigham Young was chief of the Mormon church, under the rule of its original prophet, Joseph Smith, the Mormon people were encouraged in the practice of dancing and going to witness plays. Indeed, the Mormons have always been a fun-loving people; it is recorded of their founder and prophet that he was so fond of fun that he would often indulge in a foot race, or pulling sticks, or even a wrestling match. he often amazed and sometimes shocked the sensibilities of the more staid and pious members of his flock by his antics.

Before the Mormons ever dreamed of emigrating to Utah (or Mexico, as it was then), they had what they called a “Fun Hall,” or theatre and dance hall combined, where they mingled occasionally in the merry dance or sat to witness a play. Then, as later in Salt Lake, their prophet led them through the mazy evolutions of the terpsichorean numbers and was the most conspicuous figure at all their social gatherings.

While building temples and propagating their new revelation to the world, the Mormons have always found time to sing and dance and play and have a pleasant social time, excepting, of course, in their days of sore trial. Indeed, they are an anomaly among religious sects in this respect, and that is what has made Salt Lake City proverbially a “great show town.”

Mormonism during the Nauvoo days had numerous missionaries in the field and many converts were added to the new faith. Among others that were attracted to the modern Mecca to look into the claims of the new evangel, was Thomas A. Lyne, known more familiarly among his theatrical associates as “Tom” Lyne.

Lyne, at this time, 1842, was an actor of wide and fair repute, in the very flush of manhood, about thirty-five years of age. He had played leading support to Edwin Forrest, the elder Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Ellen Tree (before she became Mrs. Charles Kean), besides having starred in all the popular classic roles. Lyne was the second actor in the United States to essay the character of Bulwer’s Richelieu—Edwin Forrest being the first.

The story of “Tom” Lyne’s conversion to the Mormon faith created quite a sensation in theatrical circles of the time, and illustrates the great proselyting power the elders of the new religion possessed.

Lyne, when he encountered Mormonism, was a skeptic, having outgrown belief in all of the creeds. It was in 1841 that George J. Adams, a brother-in-law of Lyne’s, turned up suddenly in Philadelphia (Lyne’s home) where he met the popular actor and told him the story of his conversion to the Mormon faith. Adams had been to Nauvoo, met the prophet and become one of his most enthusiastic disciples. Adams had been an actor, also, of more than mediocre ability, and as a preacher proved to be one of the most brilliant and successful expounders of the new religion. Elder Adams had been sent as a missionary to Philadelphia in the home that his able exposition of the new evangel would convert that staid city of brotherly love to the new and everlasting covenant.

In pursuance of the New Testament injunction, the Mormon missionaries are sent out into their fields of labor without purse or scrip, so Elder Adams, on arriving at his field of labor, lost no time in hunting up his brother-in-law, “Tom” Lyne, to whom he related with dramatic fervor and religious enthusiasm the story of his wonderful conversion, his subsequent visit to Nauvoo, his meeting with the young “Mohammed of the West,” for whom he had conceived the greatest admiration, as well as a powerful testimony of the divinity of his mission.

Adams was so convincing and made such an impression on Lyne that he at once became greatly interested in the Mormon prophet and his new revelation. This proved to be a great help to Elder Adams, who was entirely without “the sinews of war” with which to start his great campaign.

The brothers-in-law put their heads together in council as to how the campaign fund was to be raised, and the result was that they decided to rent a theatre, get a company together, and play Richard III for a week. Lyne was a native of Philadelphia and at this time one of its most popular actors. It was here that Adams had met him a few years before and had given him his sister in marriage.

The theatrical venture was carried through, Lyne playing Richard and Elder Adams, Richmond. The week’s business, after paying all expenses, left a handsome profit. Lyne generously donated his share to the new cause in which he had now grown so deeply interested and Elder Adams procured a suitable hall and began his missionary labors. His eloquent exposition of the new and strange religion won many to the faith; one of the first fruits of his labors being the conversion of Thomas A. Lyne.

Such an impression had Adams’s description of the Mormon prophet and the City of the Saints (Nauvoo) made upon Lyne that he could not rest satisfied until he went and saw for himself. He packed up his wardrobe and took the road for Nauvoo. With a warm letter of introduction from Elder Adams to the prophet, it was not long before Lyne was thoroughly ingratiated in the good graces of the Mormon people. He met the prophet Joseph, was enchanted with him, and readily gave his adherence to the new and strange doctrines which the prophet advanced, but whether with an eye single to his eternal salvation or with both eyes open to a lucrative engagement “this deponent saith not.”

The story runs that after a long sojourn with the Saints in Nauvoo, during which he played a round of his favorite characters, supported by a full Mormon cast, he bade the prophet and his followers a sorrowful farewell and returned to his accustomed haunts in the vicinity of Liberty Hall.

During his stay in Nauvoo, Mr. Lyne played quite a number of classical plays, including “William Tell,” “Virginius,” “Damon and Pythias,” “The Iron Chest,” and “Pizarro.” In the latter play, he had no less a personage than Brigham Young in the cast; he was selected to play the part of the Peruvian high priest, and is said to have led the singing in the Temple scene where the Peruvians offer up sacrifice and sign the invocation for Rolla’s victory. Brigham Young is said to have taken a genuine interest in the character of the high priest and to have played it with becoming dignity and solemnity. Here was an early and unmistakable proof of Brigham Young’s love for the drama.

Mr. Lyne, while relating this Nauvoo incident in his experience to the writer, broke into a humorous vein and remarked:

“I’ve always regretted having cast Brigham Young for that part of the high priest.”

“Why?” I inquired, with some surprise.

With a merry twinkle in his eye and a sly chuckle in his voice, he replied: “Why don’t you see John, he’s been playing the character with great success ever since.”

There are still a few survivors of the old Nauvoo dramatic company, who supported “Tom” Lyne, living in Salt Lake. Bishop Clawson, one of the first managers of the Salt Lake theatre, is among them.

Lyne played a winning hand at Nauvoo. He made a great hit with the prophet, who took such a fancy to him that he wanted to ordain him and send him on a mission, thinking that Lyne’s eleocutionary powers would make him a great preacher. But “Tom” had not become sufficiently enthused over the prophet’s revelations to abjure the profession he so dearly loved, and become a traveling elder going about from place to place without purse or scrip, instead of a popular actor who was in demand at a good sized salary.

Lyne had made his visit remunerative and had enshrined himself in the hearts of the Mormon people, as the sequel will show; but he drifted away from them as unexpectedly as he had come. Having become a convert to the new religion, it was confidently expected that he would remain among the Saints and be one of them; but he drifted away from them and the Mormons saw no more of “Tom” Lyne till he turned up in Salt Lake some twenty years later, soon after the opening of the Salt Lake Theatre.

Lyne was the first star to tread its stage and played quite a number of engagements during the years from ‘62 to ‘70. He made money enough out of his engagements at the Salt Lake Theatre to live on for the remainder of his days. For the last twenty years of his life, he rarely appeared in public except to give a reading occasionally. With his French wife, Madeline, he settled down and took life easy, living cosily in his own cottage, and in 1891 at the advanced age of eighty-four Thomas A. Lyne passed peacefully away, a firm believer in a life to come but at utter variance with the Mormon creed, which he had discarded soon after his departure from Nauvoo.

To enter the drawing for the free tickets, you may do one of three things: Give a shout out to the movie on Twitter, as your Facebook status, or as a group email to your friends. Then either send a cc of the email or a link to your Twitter/Facebook status to tigerindustryfilms@gmail.com. The drawing will be held at 5:00pm Mountain Time on Thursday, Oct. 1. Winners will receive a Fandango confirmation number to their show of choice. So the contest is done entirely by email and you have no tickets to pick up anywhere. Let the games begin!

Now, onto a little fuller explanation of the film.

Most of the reviewers I’ve read can’t help but compare White on Rice to Napoleon Dynamite, which is an interesting enough commentary on what Mormons have been contributing to the world of cinema. We seem to do really well in two genres: first, there are the insular comedies and melodramatic dramas that are so inaccessible that no one outside of the Intermountain West even bothers to take a side in the debates that ensue over how appropriate they are, and then there are the screwball comedies about lovable, bumbling, socially inept protagonists that do remarkably well with sarcastic college kids across the nation.

White on Rice falls squarely into Category 2, but what I love about it is its ability to avoid some of the over-the-top nonsense (not that protagonist Hajime “Jimmy” Beppu isn’t over-the-top; it’s just not nonsense) that plagues Jared Hess’s films, and also the amazingly innovative stabs that director Dave Boyle isn’t afraid to take. At the risk of sounding like the deconstructivist nihilist that I’m not, here are the pleasant ways in which White on Rice effectively pushes the envelope:

1. It’s subtitled. Not the whole movie – in fact, I can’t remember what percentage of the dialog is in English; maybe half. But they jump over the American box office assumption that subtitles are too much for our poor little demographic to handle, and throw entire Japanese scenes into the film. This shows significant faith in their audience, an audience that Boyle knows probably includes a fair share of anime enthusiast white kids who are going to latch onto this quirky indie film like there’s no tomorrow, not in spite of, but because it hits a particularly live cultural vein. (NPR once called Japan the first nation whose economy is supported by its ability to be hip.)

2. It uses violence to humorous effect. Not that I’m a fan of violent movies. (I Am Legend kept me awake and shaking for two weeks.) But White on Rice manages to open with a parody of a bloody samurai film and twist it to a commentary on the ridiculous role that violence has taken in our entertainment culture. Why on earth would someone laugh at a bloody samurai film? I don’t know. Why on earth do we pay millions of dollars to see machine gun blockbusters? Why is it OK to send our kids on virtual alien-slaying missions and call it playtime? I don’t know. Perhaps that’s something we need to examine.

3. It tackles cultural stereotypes head-on. The Deseret News criticized White on Rice’s use of ethnic humor. The fact that it was Asian people making the Asian jokes doesn’t seem to register. The most endearing and well-played character in the film is Justin Kwong’s 10-year-old Bob, Jimmy’s nephew who is a straight-A student, concert pianist and profitable entrepreneur. Because his strict Asian immigrant parents pressured him to achieve? No, actually, because he sneaks around and does it under their radar. Another highlight is when Aiko, Jimmy’s sister, is presented with  a woefully misunderstood attempt at “cultural sensitivity” by an emergency room doctor – and she laughs in his face.

4. It’s not actually an American comedy. Director and co-writer Boyle may be American; the film may be set and shot in Salt Lake City; the movie maybe be ostensibly western in its plot structure, but everything about this film, including the quirky, irreverent humor and the decidedly atypical approach to violence, is extremely Japanese. This movie had more in common with one of my favorite quirky Japanese films, The Taste of Tea, than it did with Napoleon Dynamite. It runs on a different cultural spectrum than what we’re used to seeing. For this reason, it might not sit well with a lot of American LDS audiences. But not for the same reasons that “edgy” attempts at art like the U of U’s production of The Bakkhai won’t sit well with those audiences. (Reviewers have claimed that White on Rice has sexual references – they’re not blatant and they’re not thrown in to tease and titilate or intentionally provoke the audience. In fact, they’re deliciously unromantic and Japanese-pragmatic and one of my favorite lines of the movie is what Aiko’s husband Tak says to the salesman at the adult store he enters to buy an anniversary gift for his wife.) It’s a truly international piece of cinema. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for an original, international piece of LDS cinema?

The film is rated PG-13, mostly for the samurai-style violence and for one memorable use of the S-word, and probably isn’t appropriate for young children. But I think it would do well with teens and young adults and I encourage you to catch it while it’s still playing in Utah and California or at an upcoming opening in Denver or Hawaii. And let me know what you think – let me know if this indie take on entertainment has a future or deserves a spot in the Mormon art world.

Defining Mormon literature from the writer’s/editor’s/publisher’s perspective is probably the most labyrinthine discussion in the world of Mormon letters–with most definitions leaning toward anything and everything relating to Mormons. Irreantum’s definition is a good example. In the submissions section it says:

Irreantum seeks to publish high-quality work that explores the Mormon experience, directly or by implication, through literature. We acknowledge a broad range of experience with Mormonism, both as a faith and as a culture — on the part of devoted multi-generation Mormons, ethnic Mormons, new converts, and people outside of the faith and culture who interact with Mormons and Mormon culture.

Under the reviews section it states it more succinctly. Mormon literature is basically, “any books of fiction or poetry, films, or plays written by, for, or about Mormons, or that also may be of interest to a Mormon readership (such as books with strong religious themes).” That’s pretty open and that seems to be where most other magazines and publishers draw the line.

However, it’s also obvious that many, many readers don’t agree with that open definition. Take last year’s snafu over LDS Publisher accepting Angel Falling Softly as a contest sponsor as an example. Or AMV’s heated discussion of Brother Brigham by D. Michael Martindale. Both books are obviously by, for, and about Mormons. But many, many LDS readers were offended by the association.

So why the gap between the writers/editors and the readers? That’s where the Mormon Literary Litmus Test comes in.

Most readers will readily admit that defining great/worthy/recommendable literature is highly subjective. But, when it comes to niche marketing and writing, the subjectivity becomes limited. After all, niches by their very definition are limited and specific and in the case of the Mormon market those limitations come in the form of *gulp* morals. It is the Mormon/LDS stance on moral issues that sets its members apart from the culture at large and it is how individual Mormons relate to those moral stances that set Mormon/LDS readers apart from the the national market. The doctrinal idea that no Mormon can be a fence-sitter, that we cannot be lukewarm and still be part of the body of Christ, only makes this debate more heated.

Of course not every reader will relate to the morality the same so there is a degree of subjectivity but that subjectivity is hedged by the inherent culture expectations and pressures to make moral stands. (This, in part, explains the success of Deseret Book even though so many readers are displeased with the books they find in the stores. Deseret Book understands and caters to the cultural moral expectations.) In other words, because we are readers and because we are Mormons we each have our own litmus test, the way we take a stand,–they may all be different litmus tests, but we have them all the same. My personal litmus test: Do I identify with the work in question? Does the literature represent me, my beliefs, and experiences in some way?

At first glance this sounds almost as open as Irreantum, but I worry that it isn’t. I’m a pretty normal Mormon gal and I’ve lived a pretty normal Mormon life. Raised in Utah, married young, had kids–it’s a story that many Mormons could tell as they introduce themselves in sacrament meeting. But the Church doesn’t only exist in the Rocky Mountain west. It doesn’t belong only to born-in-the-covenant members. There are a lot of members (and ex-members) out there and each of their stories IS part of the LDS experience, but they aren’t necessarily part of MY LDS experience.

My litmus test makes it easy to like books like Bound on Earth or, because so many other LDS chicks read them, Stephenie Meyer’s The Twilight Saga, but classic books like The Backslider push the limits of my litmus test. There is almost nothing in that book I identify with. The only thing that feels even remotely familiar is the protagonist’s intense yearning to understand the nature of Christ’s love and atoning sacrifice. On the other hand, other classics, like Marilyn Brown’s The Earthkeepers and Virginia Sorensen’s Where Nothing is Long Ago don’t reflect directly on my experience, but the moods of those books feel comfortable and stretch my litmus test without trying to break it. In fact, that might be the very reason they are classics: because they push people just enough but not too hard.

A friend and ward member who is also an avid reader defines her litmus test much like Madeleine L’Engle does in Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton Literary Series). In talking about her actor-husband’s roles on stage she said that if the kids couldn’t see him in it, then he wouldn’t accept the part (p 79). My friend chooses which books to buy and keep according to the kind of reading experiences they will give her children. She asks herself, “Would I ever want my child to read this?” If the answer is no then she doesn’t keep the book. L’Engle says this kind of screening and thought process is the mark of artistic integrity and I would venture that many Mormon readers feel the same.

For me, I’ve decided that a litmus test in and of itself is not bad. It is limiting but only if readers don’t recognize they have one. Of course, now I have to know, what’s your litmus test?

When a subject and object look at one another, there is no subject and no object, there’s only relation, the scope of which extends beyond either creature’s ability to fully grasp it.  You can’t grasp it, but you can step out to meet it.  If you do, prepare to catch on fire …

When I was in my early twenties, two events ignited my life.  The first involved a disagreement with a close friend whose feelings of friendship toward me had cooled.  I was changing, growing up a little, I guess.  I think my friend no longer felt needed, and feeling needed was important to her.  My feelings of deep friendship hadn’t changed, yet somehow that didn’t matter, not to her.  Why not? I wondered.  Why shouldn’t my feelings matter to her?

In a fit of confusion, I went a-walking.  I ended up in the playground of an elementary school where I straddled a seesaw.  There I sat, turning questions over and over.  It was an act of prayer, that deep mood of introspection.  Like Telemachus pinning Proteus to the strand, I watched a strange procession of ideas contort the face of the problem, each one trying to spook me into letting go.  I didn’t let go; finding out was too important.  Suddenly, the face quieted and the revelation came: Your love for others, a voice said, needn’t depend upon others’ feelings for you. 

It was a moment of liberation that illuminated the world.      

A voice of another kind touched off the second event.  I was sitting at a desk in an undergrad English class at BYU staring down at John Keats’s “Ode on Melancholy,” where read I for the first time:

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
    Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
        Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
    Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine …

I didn’t care much for that “Veil’d Melancholy” bit, but the other image—that strenuous tongue bursting Joy’s grape against the palate—flashed in my mind like lightning striking summer grasses.  “I could do that,” I thought, as I squinted against the glare of Keats’s image.  “I want to do that.”  I meant, write like that.

Ten years of superheated life followed these moments, hyper-nomadic years during which I abandoned narrative constructs almost at the moment I finished assembling them.  At first, I felt afraid.  The world refused to hold still long enough for me to put down intellectual, emotional, or spiritual roots, though something about the movement itself felt natural and compelling, like the contractions I experienced later with childbirth. 

Fortunately, I had good mentors during this time, a lot of them, because that’s what it took.  Observing my growing love for life and humankind, Arthur King released me from dilemma when he said, “My dear, it’s all right to love, and to love deeply.”  Yes!  Leslie Norris: “You strike me as someone who wants to wander the face of the earth.”  That was pretty close, closer than I realized at the time, because I took him literally.  But he provided the metaphor for what I eventually understood my nature to have become.  I had learned to like living at the frontier of who I am, a frontier that, rather than shrinking as I crossed over into its gorgeous wilderness of the unknown, became all the more unbounded. 

At this point, my essay wants to fly off in several directions: to talk about love, the role it plays in writing, in a writer’s language, in the tendering of human agency; to talk about the priesthood as it shined through my interaction with those long-suffering mentors, all of whom were men; to talk about narrative constructs, houses for our beliefs where we attempt to settle but that suffer inevitable tensions of being built on sand or a floodplain; about my sense for how, in the spreading garden of the Creation, human beings shiver in the budtime of an indefinite spring; about the leading role language plays in the drama of the developing mind—indeed, in human progression overall.  But at the risk of reputation, I’ve decided to talk about one of the especially unsettling aspects of living at the frontier of who you are: those crazy voices. 

Reading her poetry at the Bluff Arts Festival, Lorraine Nakai, a Navajo poet and crop entomologist, remarked that new science suggests that schizophrenia is an artifact of the evolution of the human brain.  Now that this “the human brain is still evolving” idea has finally caught on, scientists, wrestling with the usual ironies of self-portraiture, are hurriedly applying, in broad strokes, yet another coat of paint to their never-finished (yet often exhibited) masterpiece of human nature. 

Because of my twenty-plus years’ experience with voices, dreams, and other cerebral pops, flashes, and fires over the personal pan-sized evolutionary course of my own brain, I had already wondered if schizophrenia was more than an unlucky misfiring of clay, a cracked pot.  My exploits in cognition suggested that not knowing what something is or not knowing what to do about it doesn’t mean it’s an impenetrable mystery or that nothing can be done.  In fact, in the case of the human encephalon, some mysteries are divine calls to action and epic adventure.

I began hearing voices at what is probably the usual threshold for it: mid-to-late teens.  The sound of someone calling my name often startled me awake, middle of the night.  The fact that the house was dark and quiet and that my sister, who shared the bedroom, was fast asleep, confounded my compelling urge to answer. Usually, I lay awake for a while wondering then fell back to sleep, sometimes to be awakened again later. 

Other than these middle-of-the-night wake-up calls, nothing happened until the two events mentioned above lit me up.  Then voices and other artifacts of heightened brain activity aroused and integrated themselves into my daily life, making in poetic/religious language statements about my prospects, summing up my condition, helping me find people, etc.  These in turn gave rise to more striking events.  Feelings of heightened clarity or transcendence accompanied most of these incidents.  Sometimes flashes of illumination occurred without a voice-over making a fortune-cookie-like remark: I simply saw through myself, clearly and hotly.  And the dreams … straight out of Joseph Campbell, redolent with archetype.

I spent a couple years worrying I might be going mad, because while LDS beliefs rightly herald the refining fires of salvation, accurate topo maps for said fiery terrains are rare to nonexistent.  The village spirit of the church displays itself in objectives and goals, the signposts of accomplishment. Indeed, objectives and goals do seem to be obvious destinations.  Problem was, I didn’t know where I was headed.  Every time I imagined I had arrived, the scene dissolved and another frontier opened.  But a few experiences (including a you-won’t-believe-this dream sequence culminating in a real-life encounter with Joseph Campbell) helped me understand that within a certain range of activity level in the brain, the voices and other artifacts not only were normal but also healthy, maybe even very healthy.  They are the brain’s strivings—at least, they’re my brain’s strivings—to integrate regions, update wiring, and get to the next level, or, as Joseph Campbell puts it, to answer the call. 

Accordingly, I made peace with my psychic fires.  Making peace with them didn’t exorcise them, nor have I outgrown them.  They’re not as concentrated as they were when I was in my 20s but they still come.  The voices accompany events I call “quickenings,” movements into new levels of awareness and social, artistic, and spiritual responsibility.  Other phenomena exert themselves more commonly than do the voices.  For instance, it was a brain flash, which feels like a charge of energy going off head to toe, that called my attention to the man I married.  I think because my mind is accustomed to these fireworks as a side effect of interaction with other humans, for which I have a great passion; the natural world, which folds me into its bosom; and God, who exudes irresistible mystery, these fires have jumped firebreaks into my middle years. 

Two elements proved essential for navigating by these fires: language and relation, which together form the double helix of human experience. I needed words of two kinds. First, words to work off of, forged in others’ fires, written or uttered expression from men and women who speak the language of transformation.  Second, I needed words to generate new prospects as my old take on life went up in flame, wrapped in the most recently woven shroud of broken-heartedness, bound up in shreds of contrite spirit.  But of course, I’m not the only one who needs to feel the fine touch of well-turned words; everybody needs good language, though it seems to me that many, despairing of finding the better part, settle for bad language and try hard to make something of it.

As for human relations, they formed—still do—my true north.  That might sound impossible and unwise, trust not in the arm of flesh, etc.  But I wasn’t trusting in the arm of flesh.  As I contended with the loss of bearings that often comes with traveling uncharted territory, over-the-pulpit sermons to “love thy neighbor” begged the question.  I finally developed a simple touchstone for testing the quality of a situation: If the new thought, event, question, association led me deeper into happy community with my fellow beings, then it was good—pursue it.  If the new circumstances led me away from people I loved or who loved me, or even from human society in general toward isolation or abandonment, then all engines reverse full.  So simple, a matter of learning to take responsibility for my actions, including my thinking, with is also action, and my language, which can be an especially long-lived form of action, as dynamic and effectual as physical exertion is thought to be.  Works for me.

A year and a half ago, I sat talking with my supervisor about a student I’d had in one of my classes and subsequently tutored.  This student posed challenges I’d never encountered.  As I wrestled with him and his needs, I found myself at the far reaches of my teaching experience.  My supervisor knew the student and understood the problems he posed.  He wasn’t the actual trouble, of course; the real bind was an intricately woven tapestry of human condition through which ran the frayed threads of our not knowing what to do.  All I understood was that in spite of the fact this young man challenged my skills and questioned my experience on many levels, pushing my patience to its furthermost borders, I had deep feelings for him and desired more than anything to find a way through. 

In the middle of a sentence I spoke to my supervisor describing my frustrations, the bookcase I sat facing, and indeed, the whole office winked out.  I found myself in a dark cave, or maybe an open but rocky area under ceiling of night.  Right of center stood a column of fire, slender and straight like an aspen tree, bright yellow flames wrapping tightly against its segmented core, driving upward in a spiral of combustion. The fire cast a glow that lit up a rock wall behind the column.   The dirt floor surrounding the pillar was vacant and smooth, except that slightly out from the pillar’s base something moved, some kind of backfire maybe, a small flame, so hot it burned clear, yet I could detect it.  Animated with intention, it circled the pillar, forward and backward, encouraging the fire to burn more intensely while at the same time guiding its energy upward.

If I were William Blake, I could make a painting of the thing, or if I knew Blake and described it to him he’d draw it exactly right.  I don’t know how long I sat gazing at the column, but when I came out of that cave and the bookcase rematerialized, I turned to find my supervisor throwing me a sharp look of concern.  I think I might have smiled; how could I not have.  As far as I know, I picked up the conversation where I left off and we continued exploring prospects for the young man in question.  She said, “We’re talking about love here.”  “Yes,” I said.  “I know.”  The burning pillar had rendered that much clear.

Out there at the edges of my known territory, that pillar of fire, my most extravagant brain-flash ever, oriented me to the work at hand—entering the wilds of my unknowingness to find the better place.  It provided light and, just as important, warmth to go by.  

Blake said, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as infinite.”  Thinking about the Exodus and those two, stiff-backed, preternatural ushers, the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, I wonder now if they were manifestations of God’s standing with his people, creation’s support poles running between the apparent fixed position and the movable and growing mystery. But also, I wonder if those columns reflected the backbone of the Israelites’ burning desire to cross the frontiers of what they had become in captivity and get to Promised Land, that better place.  I wonder because that’s what my flaming pillar looked like—a backbone of fire.

…thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
(Exodus 20:4)

This little verse has caused more turmoil in art and in history throughout the monotheistic world than perhaps any other. It characterizes Islamic art, which for centuries has avoided the depiction of any living creature, for the fear that the artist who tried to create was usurping the role of the One true Creator. It characterizes the turmoil in Byzantium, it crops up again in the Protestant reformation, which sees Netherlanders whitewashing their cathedrals to separate themselves from their Catholic Belgian cousins. Its subsequent transformation into anti-religious fervor is the battle cry of the French revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks, and the Communists in China. In more recent years, it rears an impious head as the Taliban government of Afghanistan destroys monumental Buddhist sculpture.

And faithful Latter-day Saints find themselves alternately sympathizing with both viewpoints.

Vern Swanson points out that most of the 19th century pioneer Mormons came from Protestant traditions of Northern Europe, and carried their characteristic whitewashed iconoclasm with them across the plains. The dearth of Mormon art in the 19th century may be construed as a curmudgeonly holdover of this culture, or it may be a legitimate doctrinal concern. Even when the church purposely conscripted “art missionaries” to study fine art in Paris, they studied the casual genre scenes of the Impressionists rather than the monumental allegory and mythology of the History Painting tradition that was always a staple of Catholic France. While Mormons may not have taken a violently anti-art iconoclastic stance, it seems that they did inherit the bourgeois sentimentality of the Dutch Baroque. The Dutch were adept at sublimating blatant depictions of religious stories into subtle commentaries on morality through still life, landscape and genre scenes which decorated the interior of middle-class homes rather than adorning the pulpits of cathedrals. This is a very sympathetic aesthetic for the family-as-cathedral Mormons, who led lives, not quite of stark aseticism, but of tranquil domestic simplicity.

Except for the notable exception of Minerva Teichert, who produced grand historical and scriptural scenes in the early part of the 20th century, there is no notable presence in the fine arts for Mormons until the 1950s and 60s. This is not to say that Mormons of the Great Basin era weren’t engaging in the arts – early Mormon settlements were renowned for their bands, choirs, and theaters – they just weren’t creating “graven images.”

Lest we think this was a mere cultural preference, Swanson illustrates how very profound its religious underpinnings were, even into modern years, by relating an interchange between artist Arnold Friberg and Church President David O. McKay. President McKay instructed Friberg not to paint pictures of Deity because “the Finite cannot conceive of the Infinite.” When Friberg challenged that the church was already using pictures of the Savior painted by others, the Prophet answered, “Those were not done by our people! Our artists are not to portray the Lord Christ!”

While the official prophetic prohibition was soon lifted, remnants of the revulsion against graven images remain to this day.

When I was in the MTC, a well-meaning mother sent me some little bookmark-sized versions of the newest Del Parson painting – Christ’s Love. It wasn’t really my style, but I thought the other sister missionaries in my dorm would appreciate them (since sister missionaries tend to be into such things) and I handed them around. I was a little surprised at the reaction I got. Sister Pyper laughed. “Sorry. It just looks like Jesus got glamor shots.” Sister Dance gave it back. “Sorry, I just don’t think it’s very reverent.”

Funny how something as seemingly simple as a smiling Christ, in an era where a lot of the more commercially successful artists are capitalizing on modern social sensibilities being translated to traditional subjects, as in this depiction of Christ embracing His mother by Liz Lemon Swindle, could evoke such a reactionary response. But I think even amid the sudden movement to embrace very frank and very Americanized views of scripture and Deity that seems to be selling so well, there is still a vast sea of unsettled angst and discomfort among the membership of the Church.

Another anecdotal experience, but it illustrates my point well, comes from an elder I served with. One day he came to district meeting with a very odd-looking, small spiral-bound book.

“What is that?” I asked him.

“Preach My Gospel,” he answered. It was about 3/4 the size of the copy I owned. I looked at it quizzically. “I got sick of it,” he elaborated, “all that note space on the margins. So I cut it all off. And I wanted to go through and cut out the pictures I didn’t like, but there was important stuff on the back.” He indicated a few of the pages, “so I just used a magic marker.” And indeed he had – he had blacked out every Simon Dewey painting in the entire book.

“I just don’t like the way they portray the Son of God,” he said firmly.

The Church itself has no official position on the depiction of Deity, and uses many direct representations of the Savior in its official publications. While for years it relied on Harry Anderson, a Seventh-Day Adventist, to illustrate the Savior in its media products, it eventually did give official sanction to the now-famous (and often urban mythologized) portrait of Christ by Del Parson. A definite reversal of President McKay’s counsel is obvious.

But what of the average Latter-day Saint who is trying to avoid idolatry in his life, trying to tear down the groves and the wooden fertility goddesses that so plagued the Israelites, trying to teach his children to worship a living God and not an image? What of the conscientious artist who sees the need to instruct and to testify but fears the potential to blaspheme? I imagine this is a discussion that will continue for years, especially as people from less pictoral traditions, or, more compellingly, those from very idolatrous traditions who were asked by the missionaries to remove shrines and statues from their houses, swell the ranks of worldwide church membership? It’s an issue that still lies at the heart of our visual aesthetic.

But I think, in our noble Dutch tradition, some of us are still approaching it very deftly.

As with movies, books, and music, I enjoy a good video game. Note that I said, “good.” I’ve known a few developers in my time and, having worked in the Disney animation studios, I have a deep respect for the commitment those long projects require. To them, it is an art form. Much of the attention paid to video games concerns the violence involved (and there’s no doubt that there’s plenty of it), but like the aforementioned arts, I believe there is good mixed in with the bad. In fact, my wife (not a big fan of gaming) noted that I only really play games that have a good story. She’s right. To me, video games can represent a sort of interactive story experience.

Whether one likes games or gaming isn’t really the point. The point is two-fold. First, that with billions of dollars in revenue yearly, video games are here to stay. Secondly, as technology increases and games develop, they become much more complex. Just as movies have evolved from the kinetoscope fare of the early twentieth century, so too have games moved on from progenitors such as Space Invaders and Pac-Man. I had the opportunity a few years ago to meet the lead developer of Assassin’s Creed for a demonstration of the game two years before its release. At the time, he took us through a virtual tour of the Dark Age, Middle Eastern city of Acre. His programmers, artists, and developers had done-painstaking research to recreate “brick for brick” the city as it had existed at that time (they did the same for Damascus and Jerusalem). The recent release Mass Effect has an AI system that is so complex that every single interaction with every single character impacts the outcome.

The point of all this is to set up my reaction to a game I recently had the opportunity to play. I had read numerous things — all good — about a game called “Bioshock.” All I knew was that it was a first-person shooter (which I tend to shun), but because of some trusted recommendations, I turned it on. I was blown away. Set in 1960, the game begins when a man named Jack (played by you) survives a passenger plane crash in the Atlantic Ocean and discovers a nearby bathysphere that takes him to an underwater city called Rapture. Until recently, Rapture had been an Objectivist utopia controlled by Andrew Ryan, a man with uncanny resemblance both physically and vocally to Orson Welles’s immortal Charles Foster Kane (from Citizen Kane). A Russian immigrant to the United States, Ryan had become disillusioned with the governments of both countries and created “a city where the artist would not fear the censor; where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality; where the great would not be constrained by the small.” Of course, within moments of arriving in Rapture, one discovers that Ryan’s dream has become a nightmare.

I was amazed at first by the homage to famous Objectivists like George Orwell and particularly Ayn Rand (the name Andrew Ryan is a take on her name and Jack’s guide through the game is a mysterious man named “Atlas”). When my AP English teacher introduced me to Rand in high school, it was love at first read. I enjoyed Rand’s writing and, being a fiery teenager, was drawn to the principles of Objectivism. Of course, while I by no means reject them today, I do see where Rand manipulates her stories in such a way to prove her point rather than explore it.

That’s where Bioshock comes in.

I was skeptical of the game as I began to play it. First-person shooters are just that, right? Well, make no mistake, Bioshock is about trying to survive in a city where the citizens’ moral disregard for genetic tampering has driven them all to utter insanity. Living in – and being jaded by – Hollywood, I expected something between an anti-Objectivist and pro-Socialist message. But as one moves through the game and discovers the tape-recorded messages of its various denizens (doctors, scientists, artists, Ryan himself, etc.), it becomes clear that the story is exploring both the virtues and the flaws of Objectivist utopian ideals. I was flabbergasted by the complexity not so much of the plot, but of the philosophy. It took everything that I had wondered about Ayn Rand’s work (such as the role of children in a purely Objectivist environment) and examined it.

Take it for what it’s worth. Bioshock is a violent game, but also an extremely intelligent one. However, it derived its philosophy from literature. Somehow, this got me thinking back to a recent post about Mormon culture and what should and perhaps should not be passed on from generation to generation, culturally speaking. I began to think less in the context of books and more in the context of games. Cinematically speaking, the current generation of youth will probably come to know Scarface, The Godfather, and James Bond through the mediation of video games. John Madden is relevant not because he’s a Super Bowl winning coach and Hall of Fame broadcaster, but because his monicker controls the NFL license for video games.

So, after all that, this is what I’m interested in hearing. If video games are here to stay as a form of entertainment media (and they are), and they can achieve an artistic goal (and they can), what kinds of games could be valuable to the Latter-day Saint? We already do this with board games so why not video games? Development and marketing cost aside, if you could create an LDS-themed game, what would it be? Remember the ol’ classic, “The Oregon Trail?” Would you recreate the Book of Mormon war chapters as a tactical turn-based or real-time combat engine (a la Civilization, Warcraft, or Medieval: Total War). Would you prefer a puzzle-based game such as Myst, Riven, and Uru where a character travels throughout the scriptures? Would you prefer a story-based action-RPG set in newly-settled Utah, where one performs various missions for Brigham Young (as Porter Rockwell used to) as a way to learn church history? Would you incorporate the elements of online Co-op and multiplayer into some kind of missionary-training game. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that church-themed means just that. I don’t think Rainbow Six:Church Headquarters is what we’re after here. Simply consider, if you could capture some element of Mormon culture in a game, what would it be?

But despite the overall improvement that these resources have brought and are bringing to the market for books, these new services have all dashed my hopes for LDS books and Mormon literature. By and large they have done little to help me find Mormon books, and I sometimes wonder if they haven’t actually made it more difficult.

This happens despite an increasing awareness by Mormons of the Internet and the LDS presence here. I doubt that there are many LDS Church members in the US who have never heard of Amazon.com, and I’m sure that the vast majority even know or have visited DeseretBook.com. And I’m sure that among those who have purchased an LDS book in the past year, 90+% have purchased some book from either one or the other. But what is presented as “Mormon” in each case is very different. And neither has everything (in fact, a significant number of LDS books either aren’t listed or aren’t identified as LDS on either store!).

Traditionally, LDS books were sold almost exclusively in LDS bookstores. It was a segregated market — traditional bookstores didn’t buy LDS books because no one would buy them — non-members because they either had no interest in the subject matter or because they, consciously or unconsciously, associated a stigma with Mormonism; and members because it never occurred to them that a non-LDS store would stock LDS books. The only exception to this segregation sometimes happened in Utah, where Church members were the majority of the population.

The growth of the LDS Church and the rise of the Internet has forced changes. Like the racial segregation practiced in the US, it was never really “separate but equal.” The range of products available in the national market and the convenience of access to those products even today makes non-LDS market books much more appealing to the average LDS Church member. It is easy to live your life in the LDS Church and never purchase LDS market products (except for the LDS scriptures and magazines and a few other products prepared by the Church. But most LDS Church members could benefit from more (see Why We Need Mormon Culture).

The changes that arise from LDS Church growth and from the rise of the Internet are substantial. With a market less concentrated geographically, LDS bookstores have struggled to reach their potential audience. But instead of offering a solution for LDS stores, the Internet brought new competition (see The Internet is killing the LDS Market?), from Amazon.com and other retailers who carry everything (even LDS market books) and from a much wider range of books and subjects that compete with LDS-oriented materials for the reader’s attention.

Even if the Internet-based retailers make it easier for Mormons to purchase Mormon books and literature, this change isn’t without its own problems. Deseretbook.com seems to list several thousand LDS titles on its website (it doesn’t give totals). In contrast, Amazon lists nearly 4,300 books in the category “Latter-day Saints (Mormons)” — including out-of-print titles. But, the LDSBA shows something like 6,000 books in print, and in my own estimation, there are at least 7,500 books in print and at least 25,000 (conservatively) out-of-print. So neither Deseret Book nor Amazon has everything.

[Amazon also shows over 43,000 books when you search books by "Mormon" but these results are too large because they include almost every book that includes the word Mormon in it (thanks to Amazon's "search inside" feature). Of course, not every book that might be considered Mormon mentions the word Mormon. For example, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series doesn't mention Mormonism in the book, and the Amazon pages for the books also don't mention the author's religion. All this makes finding LDS books on Amazon a challenge at times.]

I suppose this all could be easier for the LDS consumer if the LDS market were completely segregated from the national market again. LDS bookstores would have books that other stores didn’t have, and would probably sell more. And communicating with consumers about what LDS books are available is up to the stores, not Amazon.

Alternatively, if the LDS market simply became part of the national market, LDS consumers probably would see a greater variety of products without LDS bookstores reviewing and limiting what gets carried in the market. Authors and publishers might also get better access to the market, with a lot more retailers and other parties to work with. Working with broader national markets can also make it easier to expand geographically to other areas of the world, where LDS Church members need cultural goods.

At the moment, we have a kind of hybrid — both LDS bookstores and participation in the U.S. national market. But that doesn’t quite work either — consumers are often confused about where to go. They either assume that Deseret Book has everything, or that they will be able to find what they want on Amazon. And when they can’t find what they want, they assume that it just doesn’t exist — that isn’t unusual in the LDS market after all.

But I’m not sure how long this hybrid will last. The situation is kind of like the Negro baseball leagues in the late 1940s. When Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, there was, for a short period, a hybrid system — African-Americans either played in the major leagues or the negro leagues. But by the early 1960s, the negro leagues were gone.

The same may happen to LDS bookstores. For them to compete successfully with national retailers like Amazon, they will have to make major improvements and changes in their operations. And even if they do so, they will still have to face the fact that large national retailers can draw on the financial benefits of a very large audience, which allows national retailers to simply outspend their competitors, should they choose to do so.

In contrast, national retailers need only make the database and programming changes needed to attract an LDS audience. [This assumes they figure out that the LDS market is different from the Christian market and believe that it is worth their time.]

I’m not sure what will happen. LDS bookstores may be doomed in the long run. But even if the market does maintain some kind of separation, I hope it will somehow become more equal. That’s the only way that LDS stores will survive.