From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #133 Reply-To: aml-list Sender: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk aml-list-digest Thursday, August 17 2000 Volume 01 : Number 133 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 19:23:56 -0500 From: "webmaster@adherents.com" Subject: [AML] Re: _Contact_ harlowclark@juno.com wrote: > > I also never read the book, so I can't comment to its faithfulness to > > Sagan's words. But while I found the movie to contain a deeply > > spiritual element, I found it quite lacking in what I would consider > > to be an intellectually honest presentation of religion as anything > > but hocum. Sagan's _Contact_ is one of the books indexed at the in the Adherents.com "Religion in Literature" database. If I recall correctly, there are over 100 citations from the book in the database. The book is half religious fiction and half science-oriented. Major sections are devoted to various religions and religious characters, including Protestantism, Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, and Ahmadiyya (Islam's version of Mormonism). Mormonism itself gets only one sentence in the book. Sagan obviously knew nothing about it, or was being willfully ignorant in the book. Contact the movie doesn't begin to indicate the extent to which the novel is concerned with religion. I think most LDS readers would find a surprising amount of things they really like in the novel. There are positive portrayals of religious people (such as the Ahmadiyyan scientist). But Sagan has somewhat capriciously decided which are the good and which are the bad religions. The Adherents.com site's index is listed by name of religion, not by book, but if anybody wants to get an idea of the extent to which Sagan included religion in the book, you can use Google: Type in "custom apps" and "Sagan, Carl" as the search string, or just use the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22custom+apps%22+%22Sagan,+Carl%22+Contact&hl=en&safe=active&filter=0 Once you get results, use the "cached" pages instead of the live links, because the site has been updated and pages shifted since Google last spidered it. Preston Hunter www.adherents.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 19:13:01 MDT From: "Samuel Brunson" Subject: [AML] Re: Teaching in Art On the topic of teaching in art (and on the ongoing topic of how to write from an LDS ideology), I was in LA this past weekend and the LA Times' Book section on Sunday had an interesting article. Because it was the eve of the Democratic national convention, the paper asked an assortment of contemporary authors to write about their philosophies on politics and literature, and what influenced them politically. I haven't read all of it, although what I read I found terribly interesting. Although they're talking specifically about politics, I found their ideas applicable to LDS writing, especially those who wrote about writing from an ideological viewpoint. Of those I read, I liked T.C. Boyle's viewpoint the best (possibly because I'm a big T.C. Boyle fan); basically, he finds books written from an ideology with the express purpose of proving that ideology dull and unsuccessful. He prefers that a book actually explore whatever situation it's dealing with and find an honest conclusion. There are interesting ideas from Ishmael Reed and Margaret Atwood, among others. I'd be interested in knowing what other people thought of these authors' opinions and their application to our writing. They can be found on the web (at least for now; I'd swear yesterday they were at a different site) at: http://www.calendarlive.com/books/lat_0813politics1.htm I am more interested in writing for a national literary audience, so these authors' opinions are in the direction I'm interested in. They're valuable, though, for just about anyone. And none of them agree completely. But I'd love to hear what other readers and writers think. Sam Brunson ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 00:25:42 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Teaching in Art Thom Duncan wrote: > Art, however, is art. Totally different rules apply. The ultimate goal > is different, too. It is not to teach, never, never to teach. Todd Robert Petersen wrote: > Two pretty big hitters, Horace and Phillip Sidney disagree with you. Both > say that art's purpose is two-fold: to delight AND instruct. > Also what's so wrong with teaching anyways? I don't think Thom really means art shouldn't or can't teach, but that the artist shouldn't be _trying_ to teach. Rather art should be an exploration of truth for both the reader and artist, without any preconceived notions where that exploration will end up. That's how art teaches us best. Essays, lectures, histories, etc., are the best form for the direct teaching approach. - -- D. Michael Martindale dmichael@wwno.com ================================== Check out Worldsmiths, the new online LDS writers group, at http://www.wwno.com/worldsmiths Sponsored by Worlds Without Number http://www.wwno.com ================================== - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 00:56:15 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Nudity Per Jonathan's warning, a comment about the sociological implications of nude photos, a comment about nudity in films that bears on recent discussions of artist's responsibility, and "a really, really strong connection to Mormon letters." On Fri, 04 Aug 2000 00:41:29 D. Michael Martindale replied to David Hansen's comment: > > > I've found it hard to show examples of movies or live theater > > where nudity would be appropriate. Any suggestions? > > Off the top of my head: > > _The Mission_. The Catholic Church is threatening the existence of a > rainforest tribe in Brazil. Lots of religion bashing, but the nudity is > the natural, "National Geographic" state of the natives, including > complete front and rear nudity of a prepubescent girl. Nothing > sexual about any of the scenes. This reminds me of a discussion we used to have in my former life as a teacher. When we were discussing fallacies I'd pass out a quiz to my students with strange questions that illustrated fallacies, or led to a discussion of fallacies. The last question was, "Where can you go in any school library to find pictures of naked women?" I said that the answer wasn't a fallacy, but has some interesting implications for the reasons we give when portraying nudity. Most students didn't know the answer until I said, "Any junior high school boy knows this," and then almost immediately someone would say, "National Geographic." Everyone knows, of course, that National Geographic isn't banned from school libraries because the nudity is non-sexual, but several years ago a friend said, "Why are the naked people in National Geographic always African?" I got some thoughtful responses to that question, generally that the people in those photos were in their natural cultural setting. But, I would ask, how often do you see photos in National Geographic of nude French beaches? That's their culture. But France is also a first-world country. I keep wondering whether we accept nude photos of people in third-world countries because we consider them human in a different way than we are. I think about the implications of calling non- or less-industrialized (for which Juno's spellchecker suggests Lilliputian as a substitute) countries third-world, especially given the prestige and privilege the west attaches to being first and the disdain for third place. > _Braveheart_. Wedding night of newly married couple. The woman's > breasts are exposed. Even though this is an obvious prelude to sex, > the scene does not evoke sexual emotions, but rather feelings of > tenderness and love. And certainly the sex depicted is moral. > > _Romeo and Juliet_, the one with Olivia Hussey. The young couple are > shown waking up after their wedding night, he from the rear, and she > a quick view of her breasts. Nothing sexual about the scene itself, and > the nudity in the story is completely appropriate to the situation. These two remind me of a comment Jamie Lee Curtis made about a movie where she had brief frontal nudity. A friend called to tell her he was throwing a party and had rented the video and frozen it on that shot. Once a nude shot has been created it's available for anyone to use, whatever the context or original intent. Not a big problem in movies before video, I suppose, but it has an interesting connection to threads recently where we've discussed what responsibility artists have for the way people use or react to their art. I don't suppose the photographers and editors of National Geographic are thinking about horny junior high boys when they put together their issues--though many of them were horny junior high boys who went to National Geographic for their nudity--and if they are, I doubt there's anything they can do to control how those boys use the magazine. For me, that particular issue is crucial to thinking about responsibility and art. We get a lot of talk about creating art responsibly, but I don't hear a lot about receiving, partaking of, consuming art responsibly. And now for the "really, really strong connection to Mormon letters." Nine or ten years ago I published a short novel in which nudity plays a part. In some ways the story is a meditation on nudity. I had been working on the story for about 6 years when it finally got into print, started in one marriage and finished in another. Before I got married the first time the woman I was courting was living in a student apartment on 5th East and 5th North in Provo. She had a pair of roommates fresh out of high school who would, at nights sometimes, stick their heads out the upstairs window and shout, "Let's get naked," then slide to the floor giggling. Of course such behavior annoyed her, being a (very mature) RM. When I started writing the story I knew I had to get that remark in there. In the first several versions I have POV thinking about how daring the girls think they're being, and about the danger of doing it, but then a marvelous phrase presented itself to me, and this is how it came out. Much of the story takes place in the BYU library, which Amos imagines in the opening dream as the great and spacious building in Lehi's dream, which he's making his way towards. The fog in Lehi's dream is mirrored by a winter temperature inversion in the valley. This passage is from the middle of the story: >>>>> He looked at the people walking through the fog, past the library to their classes, their breath with the breath of a thousand automobiles hanging inverted in the air till the air they breathed out would be the air they breathed in, or until the wind came and blew it away, or the rain fell, absorbing the acid in the air to wash ponds and grass, fish, trees and bronze, to wash the twelve-foot bronze Indian standing on the lawn surveying the fog, surely cold, wearing only a loincloth. "A definite dress standards violation," Beth had said. "I think we ought to write a letter to the editor." "He's got a pipe too," Amos had said. "Not a good example to impressionable freshman." When they were courting, Beth had had some freshman roommates who used to shout out the upstairs window, "Let's get naked," and then slide to the floor giggling. Looking at the naked buttocks of the bronze Indian, it struck him how daring they must have felt, and how innocent they were to take such pleasure in that kind of daring. 'Let's get naked' is the altar call of marriage, he thought. <<<<< There's another passage in the story that deals with nudity, right towards the beginning, where Amos remembers a conversation with Beth about whether some people are prone to adultery. >>>>> One couldn't help wondering, 'What if I were in that position?' Prone? 'No, I didn't mean--' Prone to what? That was the question. There was something about the naked male body--especially of very skinny men like himself--almost too ludicrous to be prone to anything. To think of any couple he knew and loved prone together in the altogether was too embarrassing altogether. The wide-screen exposure of flesh didn't make it any less so. He supposed this insistent embarrassment was proper; sex was too intimate a con-joining to be thought of recklessly. <<<<< This leads him into a memory of verbal love play that's too explicit to quote here. There's a lot of verbal wit in the story. I enjoyed writing it. Love making words play. ("You're more interested in wordplay than foreplay," Beth tells Amos at one point.) I've written a couple of other stories about Amos, and I need to write one from Beth's POV, get inside her mind. There's a sad story in there somewhere. Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 02:06:31 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] (Andrew's Poll) Influential Teacher On Fri, 11 Aug 2000 19:36:57 JST (See, Joseph Smith shows up everywhere) Andrew Hall writes: > 1. What teacher has had the greatest impact on you as a writer? Joyce Nelson, my highschool AP English teacher and Al Stumphy my highschool French teacher (and Brian Evenson's--I dropped by Timpview High to see M. Stumphy about 4 years ago and he stunned me by telling me he was retiring. "I'm 59 1/2 and it's time to get on a ship with my wife and cruise." Excellent dancer. He's talked to cruise lines about becoming their resident ballroom dance partner. He asked me if I'd ever gotten in trouble for my writing, and If I knew Brian Evenson. "Tears me apart" he said, and indicated that the people at BYU were idiots) were very good for me. Marden Clark has had a vast influence on my life. When his first book of poems, _Moods: of Late_, was published John S. Harris, department chair, [MOD note: I believe this would have been John B. Harris] introduced him at a reading by saying, "I don't know anyone who ponders and agonizes over every ethical question like Marden does." High praise (but double-edged?) I wish I had his ethical depth. I read him this wonderful passage in Walker Percy's _The Last Gentleman_ where Williston Bibb Barrett III(?) thinks about the decline of fine southern families, how his great grandfather once walked up to the local head of the KKK on the street and challenged him to a duel. Will thinks of himself as far below that kind of courage. I said I thought of myself that way, the ebb tide of the family. "I don't see you that way at all," he replied. "I think of you as a hero." Bela Petsco was a wonderful teacher. I hope he starts writing again. I benefited greatly from Leslie Norris's work, though I write very differently than he does. I appreciate the alternate line of descent he sketched for 20th century British poetry, a line that doesn't descend through Eliot. Lois Hudson at the UW taught me by example how closely a teacher can read, and that if you want to influence someone's prose, show them you've read carefully enough to understand what they're doing. This has had a tremendous impact on my criticism and how I review books. > 2. What author has had the greatest impact on you as a writer? Dennis Clark, surely. The year I was born he was out of school with rheumatic fever and he took care of me. I have a whole sklonky of nonsense words that I've repeated all my life. I thought I made them up, but my father used them in a poem about Dennis called "Some Couth" (which Leslie Norris called, "a miraculous human document"). The poem shocked me, and I thought he had the wrong son, and considered challenging his poetic license when it came up for renewal. Then it occurred to me I may have learned the words from Dennis. (I think sklonky came from our father.) We have remarkably similar tastes. If I tell him I heard a story on NPR Sunday morning about Charles Bukowski, he's likely to have heard the same story on the same station, KUSU, about 7:00, because his ward meets at 9:00 (Colin's homecoming--marvelous talk--Dennis and Valerie did pretty well too) when KUER broadcasts Weekend Edition Sunday. And we've never gotten together and said, 'Hey, let's listen to the same radio station at the same times.' Marden Clark has also influenced my writing, as has Bessie Clark in some ways. She wanted to be a writer way back in the 30's a long time before her not-yet husband had even decided whether he wanted to keep trucking produce around Utah, Idaho and Wyoming or do something else like go off to college and meet the daughter of the first mayor of South Salt Lake (before the city was briefly unincorporated). She's always very encouraging, and has formidable verbal skills which it took me a long time to appreciate. Debating with her is like mud-wrestling a greased pig. Amazing how she can turn your words around on you. :) Dennis wrote a wonderful poem about her called "Selvage." Tess Gallagher's class at the UW was very good. I'm not sure what her influence is, except her story about how Ray Carver finally published the original un-Lishized version of "A Small, Good Thing," taught me a lot about how to approach certain kinds of dark writing, and got me thinking a lot about the ethics of editing, and the unequal power relationship between writers and editors. Walker Percy has shown me some of the possibilities of philosophical fiction, and some very interesting ideas about language as behavior. Reading this over, I think I would also add John Gardner, just from an exercise I read about that he used to give his students to write 100-word sentences. Before reading that I thought you just got lucky with sentences that long. You can craft long sentences. What a wonderful idea. What possibilities. And one final brief and immodest comment. When our niece Sarah moved down here fresh out of high school to help take care of her grandmother she took a job decorating candy at Kencraft in Highland (our niece Carrie, who grew up split between Highland and SLC and worked there once, calls it Hellcraft), where she worked with a woman named Jackie Ostler. She said Jackie saw me walking along State Street one day with my plastic bags (lunch with lots of left-overs containers in one, books, disks and student papers in the other) and thought I was a homeless man. Her husband, Nick said I had been one of his teachers. Later, when my teaching career was ending, Nick told Sarah that I had given him so much encouragement about one of his golf-course stories that he decided he could write a book, and he did. Thing is, I never had him in one of my classes. He swears he was, but I can't find his name on any of my old rolls. He was Lee Ann Mortensen's student and I subbed for her the day he brought in his golf course story. I'm glad he wrote his book. I opened the April 26 PG Review and saw his picture. He lost his fight with leukemia. His new baby daughter will not know him, but she'll have the book. Harlow Soderborg Clark ________________________________________________________________ YOU'RE PAYING TOO MUCH FOR THE INTERNET! Juno now offers FREE Internet Access! Try it today - there's no risk! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/tagj. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2000 10:12:54 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] Teaching in Art "D. Michael Martindale" wrote: > I don't think Thom really means art shouldn't or can't teach, but that > the artist shouldn't be _trying_ to teach. Rather art should be an > exploration of truth for both the reader and artist, without any > preconceived notions where that exploration will end up. That's how art > teaches us best. Essays, lectures, histories, etc., are the best form > for the direct teaching approach. For example, the following thought, or similar one's should never pop into the head of a serious LDS writer: "This novel will be so good and inspirational that thousands of non-members will join the Church because of it." The second such a thought creeps into the conscious mind, the writer is doomed to create nothing more than propaganda, capable of converting no one who isn't already pre-disposed to believe. I stand to be corrected the moment I read about a raging atheist visitor to SLC who, upon seeing the new church film, "The Testaments," then accepts the missionary lessons and becomes baptized. - -- Thom Duncan - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 19:20:57 -0500 From: "Todd Robert Petersen" Subject: Re: [AML] Teaching in Art I wrote: >> Also what's so wrong with teaching anyways? Thom answered: > If it's ancillary to the main piece, I see nothing wrong with it. [snip] > But it's all in the background. I see, this is the old, "I don't want it rammed down my throat argument." Is that right, or am I too flippant. Am I in danger of the council ? So we are left with separate but equal spheres. Teaching should happen in teaching places. Art should happen in art places. By the same logic, there should only be ancillary apearances of art in teaching, in the classroom, and it should only be in the back ground if it is to be any good. Basic logic dictates that every premise's opposite must also be true. I think that most good writers are trying to teach and delight in the same stroke and in more or less equal measures. Those more predisposed to entertainment are hacks. Those more predisposed to teaching are pampleteers. Todd Robert Petersen - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #133 ******************************