AML 2004 Annual
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Annual of the Association for Mormon Letters 2004 Association for Mormon Letters Provo, Utah © 2004 by the Association for Mormon Letters. After publi- cation herein, all rights revert to the authors. The Association for Mormon Letters assumes no responsibility for contri- butors’ statements of fact or opinion. Editor: Linda Hunter Adams Production Director: Marny K. Parkin Staff: Robert Cunningham Marshelle Mason Papa Jena Peterson Amanda Riddle Jared Salter Erin Saunders Anna Swallow Jodi Traveller The Association for Mormon Letters P.O. Box 51364 Provo, UT 84605-1364 (801) 714-1326 [email protected] www.aml-online.org Note: An AML order form appears at the end of this volume. Contents Presidential Address Our Mormon Renaissance Gideon O. Burton 1 Friday Sessions Keynote Address The Place of Knowing Emma Lou Thayne 9 The Tragedy of Brigham City: How a Film about Morality Becomes Immoral Michael Minch 23 The Novelization of Brigham City: An Odyssey Marilyn Brown 29 Pious Poisonings and Saintly Slayings: Creating a Mormon Murder Mystery Genre Lavina Fielding Anderson 35 Murder Most Mormon: Swelling the National Trend (Part II) Conspiring to Commit Paul M. Edwards, read by Tom Kimball 39 God and Man in The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint Bradley D. Woodworth 43 Brady Udall, the Smart-Ass Deacon Mary L. Bingham Lee 47 Egypt and Israel versus Germany and Jews: Comparing Margaret Blair Young’s House without Walls to the Bible Nichole Sutherland 53 iii AML Annual 2004 Stone Tables: Believable Characters in Orson Scott Card’s Historical Fiction Holly King 57 Out of the Mouth of Babes: An Analysis of Orson Scott Card’s Use of Dialogue in Ender’s Game Casey Vanderhoef 61 Subversion and Containment in Xenocide Daniel Muhlestein 65 Saturday Sessions Keynote Address Art and Soul: Lessons from Willa Cather for Mormon Writers, Critics, and Audiences Marilyn Arnold 75 “I Write Personal Essays to Save My Soul”: The Sermonic Roots of Eugene England’s Literary Voice Travis Manning 85 Bridging the Divide: Writing about the Spirit for the National Young Adult Market Kimberley Heuston 97 Real Life, Who Needs It?: Real World Influences on the Writing of Young Adult Fiction Randall Wright 101 Defiling the Hands with a Holy Book: Future of Book of Mormon Scholarship Mark Thomas 109 Cities of Refuge Harlow S. Clark 115 Gathering in Nauvoo: Remembrances of the Lofgren Family Elizabeth Mangum 123 Sister Bean and Satan’s Power: A Look at Contemporary LDS Legends Ronda Walker 129 Mormon Women Writers and the Healing Power of Truth Kelly A. Thompson 135 iv Contents Wallace Stegner’s Gathering of Zion: Creating a Usable Mormon Past Jennifer Minster Asay 141 Telling the Truth: Teaching Creative Writing to LDS Students Jack Harrell 145 The Cultural Shaping of American LDS Women Jacqueline Thursby 151 Questing I, Altogether Other, or Both? Three Poems and a Prose Bit on Nature Patricia Gunter Karamesines 167 My Big Fat Greek Wedding as a Model for LDS Filmmakers Eric Samuelsen 173 “Dangerous Questions Affecting Closer Interests”: Subversion and Containment in “The Senator from Utah” Kylie Turley 179 A Mind-Body-Spirit Assault: The True Antagonist in The Giant Joshua Michelle Ernst 187 Holiness Emerging from My Mouth Jacqueline Osherow 191 Writing Religion from a Christian Perspective David McGlynn 193 The Power of Parables Sarah Read 197 The Threat of Mormon Cinema Gideon O. Burton 199 NOTE: Unless otherwise identified, all of the papers in this compilation were delivered at the Association for Mormon Letters Annual Meeting, “Passing the Portals: Mormon Literature for the Twenty-first Century,” 21–22 February 2003, at Utah Valley State College, chaired by Cherry Silver and Jen Wahlquist, sponsored by the Association for Mormon Letters; the Center for the Study of Ethics, UVSC; and the Department of English, UVSC. Also presented but not submitted for publication were “The Mormon Literature Database” by Gideon Burton, Connie Lamb, Robert Means, and Larry Draper; and “A Spycho-Social Evaluation of Edgar Mint” by Charles J. Woodworth. v Presidential Address Our Mormon Renaissance Gideon O. Burton enaissance. The very word conjures notions of And this from the poet laureate of both Cambridge R possibility. It means revival, rebirth, and by and Oxford! English literature was in trouble. Writers this term we celebrate the best of human creativity, like Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard began to the realization of our greatest potential in art and imitate Petrarch’s sonnets. But it took most of the literature. Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Galileo, sixteenth century for British writers to experiment Cellini, Montaigne, Raphael, Gutenberg, Giotto, with poetic meters that actually sounded good. We Petrarch, Castiglione, Cervantes, Copernicus, often think of Shakespeare representing the Michelangelo, Milton—in the bright shadow of Renaissance, but long before Shakespeare came these leading lights, is it presumptuous to name a the experimenters who were less successful with Mormon Renaissance? Is it an embarrassing under- their subjects and their sounds. Consider Richard statement, an oxymoron? Of course it is! You can’t Stanyhurst, who diligently translated Virgil’s compare My Turn on Earth to King Lear, or Arnold Aeneid into English, producing lines like these: Friberg to Leonardo da Vinci, or an Enrichment Madness hath enchanted your wits, meeting refrigerator magnet to Ghiberti’s baptistry you townsmen unhappy? doors in Florence. That’s just not fair. The Euro- Ween you, blind hoddypecks, the Greekish pean Renaissance looms so large, its accomplish- navy returned? [. .] ments are so rich and vast, that the artistic and But lo! To what purpose do I chat such literary achievements of our people in comparison janglery trim-trams? (556–57) could only seem, well, very small indeed. To what purpose? I think I know. A few janglery Our culture is in the same position as British trim-trams must be coughed out before “To be or culture was in the early sixteenth century. The Ital- not to be” can come to be. The European Renais- ian Renaissance had been underway for two hun- sance was a period of three hundred years. For the dred years by then, and English authors looked Mormon Renaissance, patience is in order—as well back at Castiglione or Petrarch in Italy with shame as tolerance and encouragement for those in the and envy. And they should have been ashamed and apprenticeship of their craft, or those who are will- envious, for English literature was in pretty bad ing to experiment with new forms of expression or shape. John Skelton, for example, wrote many media. In the nineteenth century, less than twenty poems with form and content like this one, whose Mormon novels were published. In the twentieth lines describe a grotesque moonshiner: century, there have been a thousand. Mormon With a whim wham pens have awakened, and we would do better to Knit with a trim tram measure and commend each moment of literary Upon her brain pan; progress, than to await the messianic arrival of Like an Egypt-i-an. (77) some future Mormon Milton. 1 AML Annual 2004 For this reason the Association for Mormon a writing teacher I am continually amazed how Letters presents its awards, prints its publications, many students fancy themselves to be writers with- and holds its conferences: to encourage and cri- out bothering to be readers. The greatest writers tique Mormon authors. For nearly thirty years we know their debts to generations who preceded them, have been teaching one another upon whose shoul- and in their long apprenticeships have tried on words, ders we must stand to reach upward. I wholeheart- styles, and forms they found effective in the great- edly believe Wayne Booth’s dictum that Mormons est writers. Shakespeare was derivative, and glori- will never attain a great artistic culture until we ously so. I do not mean he simply borrowed plots. have achieved a great critical culture (Booth, 32), He studied and transformed the genres he had read, for until we learn discernment, until we can sepa- from Senecan tragedy to pastoral romance. His son- rate the wheat from the chaff aesthetically and eth- nets also show him working by imitation, closely ically, we would not even recognize a Mormon observing specific rhetorical strategies and patterns Shakespeare if we had one. You will forgive me if I from his predecessors. The great Renaissance liter- suggest that, after examining hundreds of Mormon ary works came about as acts of emulation. publications and products, I find there yet remains Can we pretend to achieve Mormon Shake- some winnowing to be done. speares if we will not imitate Shakespeare’s respect Criticism was a central component animating for and careful study of his predecessors? Can we the European Renaissance, for the Renaissance was pretend to aspirations in the novel if we will not not simply a period in which genius somehow flour- study how the best of novels work, both in our ished; those accomplishments occurred in response own tradition and the larger world? I have read to and in very conscious appreciation of superior some current LDS domestic fiction and know full works of art that had preceded them. Paradoxically, well the authors have read neither Jane Austen nor the great strides forward of the Renaissance were John Updike. I see some LDS Young Adult fiction only possible by looking steadfastly backward. They whose authors haven’t bothered with E. B. White looked to models of the greatest works of literature or with LDS writer Virginia Sorensen’s Miracles on among the Greeks and Romans and strove to imi- Maple Hill, which won the Newbery Medal in tate the powers they perceived in poets like Horace 1957. And if Mormon writers of popular fiction and Ovid, in orators like Cicero and Demosthenes, have read Dickens or Twain, it is not very apparent.