From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #162 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 Monday, October 2 2000 Volume 01 : Number 162 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 12:23:40 -0700 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] Introductions: Tom Kimball On Tue, 26 Sep 2000 17:30:33 MDT Tom Kimball writes: > The reason I would enjoy publishing a biblio-mystery or a > mystery about the book trade is because they are very popular > in the trade world and the Mormon market is ripe for a compelling > murder mystery. Why not have Jack Welch being killed for > uncovering some Christian Scroll or Curt Bench having his head > cut off for selling some White Salamanderish document. Wouldn’t > it be fun to read about someone’s obsessive compulsive behavior to > own the words of the prophets get way out of hand. I know, we could set it in the Utah State Prison library, where a Brigham Young ms has just turned up--Brigham's answer to D&C 7, a translation of an ancient ms he sees in a vision--maybe a copy of Aristotle's treatise on comedy, or a letter written by the apostle John after having read Aristotle's treatise on comedy. (Scholars generally agree he had something of a Greek education.) Of course, suspicion immediately falls on Mark Hoffman, except it's not his MO to kill people by poisoning the pages in a ms, and then Hoffman becomes one of the victims. Just to make things interesting we could throw in a heresy trial and have a huge fire at the end with firefighters hang gliding in from the fast-diminishing point of the mountain. BTW, have you read Robert Kirby's _Brigham's Bees_? An interesting biblio-historio-mystery. The detective uncovers the villain partly through archival research and partly with an apostle's revelation to him. The apostle doesn't name the murderer but gives the detective to understand that the answer will be found in a proper understanding of genealogy. I haven't read Kirby's second novel, _Dark Angel_, but the detective in _Brigham's Bees_ has the same name as some of the characters in that novel, a descendant, perhaps. 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: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 00:54:57 -0600 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Moral Issues in Art Jason Steed wrote: > It strikes me that, perhaps, "didacticism" is like "pornography": We all > agree that we don't like it, that it's bad, bad, bad. But it's a very > difficult thing to define. When is art being didactic--and is it for one > person and not for another? Is the only thing we can say about didacticism, > "I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it"? Didacticism--in the negative sense that people say literature should avoid--is when the author places the message above being honest with his characters, his plot events, and with the reader. If the author is manipulating his characters without regard to what they'd "really" do, or manipulating the plot events without regard to whether it's reasonable for such things to happen given the circumstances he's set up, or is trying very hard to get the reader to see one specific message, instead of letting the reader glean his own messages from the story--THAT'S didacticism. Didacticism is when the desire of the author to send a message exceeds his commitment to being honest with his story. - -- 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: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 18:55:28 EDT From: Larry Jackson Subject: [AML] MN Premiere of "Sy's Girl" opens Pardoe Theatre Season at BYU: BYU Press Release From: BYU Press Release To: Mormon News Subject: MN Premiere of "Sy's Girl" opens Pardoe Theatre Season at BYU: BYU Press Release 18Sep00 A3 Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2000 23:30:00 -0400 [From Mormon-News] Premiere of "Sy's Girl" opens Pardoe Theatre Season at BYU PROVO, UTAH -- Brigham Young University's Department of Theatre and Media Arts will present the world premiere of "Sy's Girl," an original play developed by BYU's Writers/Directors/Actors Workshop (WDA), opening Friday (Sept. 29) in the Pardoe Theatre at 7:30 p.m. The production, written by BYU undergraduate student Natalie Prado, will run Tuesdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through Oct. 14. On Oct. 8, the performance will begin at 8:30 p.m. to accommodate the LDS Church General Conference. A matinee will be presented on Saturday, Oct. 14, at 2 p.m. Half-price preview performances will run Sept. 27 and 28. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $8 for students and faculty. For more information or to purchase tickets, call (801) 378-4322. "'Sy's Girl' is about the fantasies we all have about the ideal boy or girl, man or woman," said AdreAnn Sundrud, the director of the play who recently completed a master's degree in theatre and media arts at BYU. "But, during the course of the play, we learn we have to be careful what we wish for, because we might not want what the wish brings." Things just couldn't be better for Moira, a young college student. In particular, her boyfriend Sy is absolutely ideal--clever, handsome, gentle, romantic, always punctual and never forgets an anniversary. But there is a problem: Sy is imaginary, and the "perfect" world Moira has built around herself begins to crumble when a real guy enters the scene. Sundrud said Moira's situation examines the separation of imagination and reality. "How do you break up with your own imagination?" she asks. She said the play creates some surprising answers and takes apart the imaginary "ideal" person and situation. Jessica Mockett plays Moira, with Luke Drake as the imaginary Sy and Richard Murdock as the real-life Quinn. Other roles include F. Oscar Wright and Ruth Ann Lay as Moira's parents and Rebecca Connerley as Quinn's cousin Delia. Scenic and costume design is by Richard Clifford, and lighting is by Brad Nelson, a guest designer from New York City. Makeup is by Janae Judd, and Alisha Paddock is the stage manager. - ### - >From Mormon-News: Mormon News and Events Forwarding is permitted as long as this footer is included Mormon News items may not be posted to the World Wide Web sites without permission. Please link to our pages instead. For more information see http://www.MormonsToday.com/ Send join and remove commands to: majordomo@MormonsToday.com Put appropriate commands in body of the message: To join: subscribe mormon-news To leave: unsubscribe mormon-news To join digest: subscribe mormon-news-digest - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 06:19:24 -0700 From: "Kenny Kemp" Subject: [AML] Self-Publishing Seminar Saturday, Sept. 30th This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - ------=_NextPart_000_0012_01C029DD.363DB9A0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_001_0013_01C029DD.363DB9A0" - ------=_NextPart_001_0013_01C029DD.363DB9A0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit GlacierMod: Please include this on the List: - ------------------------------------------ FREE SELF-PUBLISHING SEMINAR Do you have a novel inside you aching to get out? A memoir? A how-to book? A story only you can tell, but you don't know where to start? Then start here: Join award-winning author and filmmaker Kenny Kemp, winner of the National Self-Published Book Award for his memoir Dad Was A Carpenter, this Saturday night at 7:00pm at the Media Play in Fort Union. Kenny will share his experience and insights into creativity, writing, and getting published. There is no charge for this FREE event, but seating is limited, so arrive early. Every journey begins with a single step. Stop procrastinating and make your dream of getting published come true! Media Play at Fort Union Saturday, September 30th at 7:00pm Sponsored by Alta Films & Press and Media Play. For more information, call (801) 943-0321. www.alta-films.com - ------=_NextPart_001_0013_01C029DD.363DB9A0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Glacier
Mod: Please include this on the=20 List:
------------------------------------------
 
FREE SELF-PUBLISHING=20 SEMINAR
 
Do you have a novel inside you = aching to get=20 out? A memoir? A how-to book? A story only you can tell, but you don't = know=20 where to start?
 
Then start here: = Join award-winning author and filmmaker = Kenny=20 Kemp, winner of the National Self-Published Book Award for his = memoir=20 Dad Was A Carpenter, this Saturday night at = 7:00pm at=20 the Media Play in Fort Union.  Kenny will share his experience and=20 insights into creativity,=20 writing, and getting published. = There is no=20 charge for this FREE event, but seating is limited, so arrive=20 early.
 
Every journey begins = with a=20 single step. Stop procrastinating and make your dream of getting = published come=20 true! 
 
Media Play = at Fort=20 Union
Saturday, = September=20 30th at 7:00pm
 
Sponsored by Alta = Films &=20 Press and Media Play. For more=20 information, call (801) 943-0321.  = www.alta-films.com =
 
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Hardcover, 364pp. ISBN 1-56085-130-9. Suggested retail= price $20.95.=20 Terry Jeffress just wrote a great review about _Dancing Naked_. I am also= slated to write one, and I'll go forward from where he left off.=20 The week I read _Dancing Naked_, I was also hearing some stories. In my= work, I hear lots of stories, and for some serendipitous reason, the tales= I heard that week were all about sex, just like _Dancing Naked_. There was= the man, temple-married for 35 years, who had met a young foreign exchange= student who offered him the warmth, companionship and sex that his cold,= negative wife never gave during all those years. He didn't sleep with her= and she went back to Europe, but now he is pondering his situation-wishing= he maybe had slept with her--wondering how he can ever get what he wants= from a wife who has never given it to him. Then there was the woman, just= going through menopause, remembering the time in college when she had gone= to her bishop about a minor sexual transgression--recalling the shame,= feeling like a very bad girl even though she was now in her fifties. Then= again, a man remembering that he first started masturbating following a= discussion during a bishop's interview--a clear case of the kind of= unintended consequences our sexual teaching can have.=20 _Dancing Naked_ is about how our sexual background influences and forms so= much of our life-view, the way we live our lives. That must grate against= chaste Mormon ears, which have heard all our lives, "Don't, don't, don't,= DON'T!!!" until the few moments across the altar, after which the curtain= is drawn and we assume that we DO. And, like Terry Walker in _Dancing= Naked_, we come to the marriage bed with our sexual background. It= influences not only our sex lives, but almost everything in our marriages.= =20 Another story. My friend, many years divorced, chaste before marriage and= chaste after divorce, says, "I don't have a sexual background, Cathy. I= did nothing more than hold hands before marriage, our sex life was good,= and after divorce I haven't even kissed a guy. I never saw my parents kiss= or embrace [they had ten kids]."=20 Well. . . that IS a sexual background. In its way, it is like Terry Walker'= s background, an absolute denial of a growing child's sexuality. Van= Wagoner takes it further, implicating generational attitudes in forming our= sexual identity. We can be sure that Terry would never have harassed his= son Blake about homosexuality as his father had harassed him. Yet the= influence of the father's extreme attitudes carried right into the third= generation. It reminded me of a scene in the funny, funny movie, _To Wung= Fu with Love_. There the homophobic policeman has been ardently pursuing= some drag queens with the intent of jailing them for assault. The= policeman sits at a bar, getting more and more drunk, chronicling the= horrors of these gay boys. Soon you hear him say, "Those masculine hands.= . . .on another man's hairy chest. . . .they put their arms around each= other. . . TIGHT." We see that his homophobia masks the inevitable= attraction, and so, Van Wagoner implies, with Terry's father.=20 These deeply rooted sexual attitudes color his whole existence. After Blake= 's death, Terry feels he needs to evaluate everything in his life. He even= wonders if he should have married his wife. In a brilliant scene, he sees= himself going over the issues of his marriage. At the same time, he finds= himself recalling a teenage incident when his father caught him= masturbating and kicked him hard in the rear, repeatedly, just as he had= kicked him when Terry was a little child and his father found in bathing= with his mom, with his first little-boy erection.=20 Now, because he never could leave it alone, he asks himself, "Did I marry = Rayne to spite my father, to please my mother, to replace her for the sake = of emotional convenience? All three, could it be all three?"=20 Suddenly he is thinking about particulars about masturbation, echoes of his= childhood conflict with his dad. Now he's back evaluating his marriage,= and then again rehearses his feelings about masturbation. Van Wagoner= takes us into Terry's mind, back and forth, back and forth, so we see that= even in a moment of trying to find some clarity about his life, Terry's= sexual background still colors everything. Van Wagoner's clean prose seems= to deal lightly with such heavy-weight issues, but he pinpoints them= unerringly and artistically. Indeed, his prose is often almost poetry:=20 He drives slowly around the large campus. He considers turning into the= parking lot, like he has considered turning onto an inter-state spoke into= a new city. Children tumble from exits, human buck-shot exploded from= double-doored cannons.=20 Near the end of the book, we hear a character explaining his homosexuality= in the usual terms: it's the way I am, there's nothing I can do about it.= But we have had a whole book to help us understand that our sexual= education--both in our families of origin and in our family's history as= well--creates our sexuality, powerfully, inexorably. We hear the= character's explanation of his homosexuality filtered through these= insights and know that no matter what people say about their sexuality, the= realities may run much deeper.=20 Reading _Dancing Naked_, we end up compelled to examine our own sexual= background and how it formed our life-view. We wonder how our= child-raising is creating sexuality in our young ones. We ask if the= Church's stance on chastity is taught in the most beneficial way. We look= to see if our intense prejudices about sex might mask feelings we do not= dare examine. Does sexuality really influence us so much? If we are= honest, we must say yes. Van Wagoner artistically addresses these kinds of= questions (it is no accident that he has degrees in Psychology AND= English), and although we don't get direct answers, there is enough implied= here to give us much to think about.=20 Cathy (Gileadi) Wilson Editing Etc. 15 East 600 North Price UT 84501 - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 14:57:39 -0500 From: Jonathan Langford Subject: [AML] VAN WAGONER, _Dancing Naked_ (Review) [MOD: I'm sending this again, because due to my mixup, it may come through with lines off the screen for some of you depending on your e-mail settings. Apologies.] Van Wagoner, Robert Hodgson. _Dancing Naked._ Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1999. Hardcover, 364pp. ISBN 1-56085-130-9. Suggested retail price $20.95. Terry Jeffress just wrote a great review about _Dancing Naked_. I am also slated to write one, and I'll go forward from where he left off. The week I read _Dancing Naked_, I was also hearing some stories. In my work, I hear lots of stories, and for some serendipitous reason, the tales I heard that week were all about sex, just like _Dancing Naked_. There was the man, temple-married for 35 years, who had met a young foreign exchange student who offered him the warmth, companionship and sex that his cold, negative wife never gave during all those years. He didn't sleep with her and she went back to Europe, but now he is pondering his situation-wishing he maybe had slept with her--wondering how he can ever get what he wants from a wife who has never given it to him. Then there was the woman, just going through menopause, remembering the time in college when she had gone to her bishop about a minor sexual transgression--recalling the shame, feeling like a very bad girl even though she was now in her fifties. Then again, a man remembering that he first started masturbating following a discussion during a bishop's interview--a clear case of the kind of unintended consequences our sexual teaching can have. _Dancing Naked_ is about how our sexual background influences and forms so much of our life-view, the way we live our lives. That must grate against chaste Mormon ears, which have heard all our lives, "Don't, don't, don't, DON'T!!!" until the few moments across the altar, after which the curtain is drawn and we assume that we DO. And, like Terry Walker in _Dancing Naked_, we come to the marriage bed with our sexual background. It influences not only our sex lives, but almost everything in our marriages. Another story. My friend, many years divorced, chaste before marriage and chaste after divorce, says, "I don't have a sexual background, Cathy. I did nothing more than hold hands before marriage, our sex life was good, and after divorce I haven't even kissed a guy. I never saw my parents kiss or embrace [they had ten kids]." Well. . . that IS a sexual background. In its way, it is like Terry Walker' s background, an absolute denial of a growing child's sexuality. Van Wagoner takes it further, implicating generational attitudes in forming our sexual identity. We can be sure that Terry would never have harassed his son Blake about homosexuality as his father had harassed him. Yet the influence of the father's extreme attitudes carried right into the third generation. It reminded me of a scene in the funny, funny movie, _To Wung Fu with Love_. There the homophobic policeman has been ardently pursuing some drag queens with the intent of jailing them for assault. The policeman sits at a bar, getting more and more drunk, chronicling the horrors of these gay boys. Soon you hear him say, "Those masculine hands. . . .on another man's hairy chest. . . .they put their arms around each other. . . TIGHT." We see that his homophobia masks the inevitable attraction, and so, Van Wagoner implies, with Terry's father. These deeply rooted sexual attitudes color his whole existence. After Blake 's death, Terry feels he needs to evaluate everything in his life. He even wonders if he should have married his wife. In a brilliant scene, he sees himself going over the issues of his marriage. At the same time, he finds himself recalling a teenage incident when his father caught him masturbating and kicked him hard in the rear, repeatedly, just as he had kicked him when Terry was a little child and his father found in bathing with his mom, with his first little-boy erection. Now, because he never could leave it alone, he asks himself, "Did I marry Rayne to spite my father, to please my mother, to replace her for the sake of emotional convenience? All three, could it be all three?" Suddenly he is thinking about particulars about masturbation, echoes of his childhood conflict with his dad. Now he's back evaluating his marriage, and then again rehearses his feelings about masturbation. Van Wagoner takes us into Terry's mind, back and forth, back and forth, so we see that even in a moment of trying to find some clarity about his life, Terry's sexual background still colors everything. Van Wagoner's clean prose seems to deal lightly with such heavy-weight issues, but he pinpoints them unerringly and artistically. Indeed, his prose is often almost poetry: He drives slowly around the large campus. He considers turning into the parking lot, like he has considered turning onto an inter-state spoke into a new city. Children tumble from exits, human buck-shot exploded from double-doored cannons. Near the end of the book, we hear a character explaining his homosexuality in the usual terms: it's the way I am, there's nothing I can do about it. But we have had a whole book to help us understand that our sexual education--both in our families of origin and in our family's history as well--creates our sexuality, powerfully, inexorably. We hear the character's explanation of his homosexuality filtered through these insights and know that no matter what people say about their sexuality, the realities may run much deeper. Reading _Dancing Naked_, we end up compelled to examine our own sexual background and how it formed our life-view. We wonder how our child-raising is creating sexuality in our young ones. We ask if the Church's stance on chastity is taught in the most beneficial way. We look to see if our intense prejudices about sex might mask feelings we do not dare examine. Does sexuality really influence us so much? If we are honest, we must say yes. Van Wagoner artistically addresses these kinds of questions (it is no accident that he has degrees in Psychology AND English), and although we don't get direct answers, there is enough implied here to give us much to think about. Cathy (Gileadi) Wilson Editing Etc. 15 East 600 North Price UT 84501 - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 09:34:07 MDT From: "Tom Kimball" Subject: Re: [AML] Introductions: Tom Kimball Harlow Feel free to expand that out. 200+ pages or so. Ditch the flying Firemen but throw in a GA self emolating while jumping from the top of the church office building. Make that at night just seconds before the lighting of the Temple Square Christmas lights. Tom >From: harlowclark@juno.com >I know, we could set it in the Utah State Prison library, where a Brigham >Young ms has just turned up--Brigham's answer to D&C 7, a translation of >an ancient ms he sees in a vision--maybe a copy of Aristotle's treatise >on comedy, or a letter written by the apostle John after having read >Aristotle's treatise on comedy. (Scholars generally agree he had >something of a Greek education.) > >Of course, suspicion immediately falls on Mark Hoffman, except it's not >his MO to kill people by poisoning the pages in a ms, and then Hoffman >becomes one of the victims. Just to make things interesting we could >throw in a heresy trial and have a huge fire at the end with firefighters >hang gliding in from the fast-diminishing point of the mountain. > >Harlow S. Clark - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 10:51:06 -0600 From: Thom Duncan Subject: Re: [AML] MN Premiere of "Sy's Girl" opens Pardoe Theatre Season at BYU: BYU Press Release Larry Jackson wrote: > "'Sy's Girl' is about the fantasies we all have about the ideal boy > or girl, man or woman," said AdreAnn Sundrud, the director of the > play who recently completed a master's degree in theatre and media > arts at BYU. The fantasies we "all" have? Maybe the slavering unmarried at BYU, but some of us have gratefully passed that point and have already found the ideal other. I haven't seen this play, so it may not be what it's advertised to be, but, if it is, hopefully it is a blip in the annals of LDS theatre. With all that can be explored about our culture, religion, and history of a serious, compelling, and dramatic nature, what prompts an LDS writer to spend 90 pages talking about something so mundane as imaginary lovers? Please! Someone's already explored date rape on campus, so maybe that's out, but what about a play about contemporary gays at BYU (they do exist, you know). Or the drama inherent in VOICE's near constant clashes with the conservative BYU leadership. Or, if the BYU student must strike a comedic tone, why not a farce dealing with academic freedom among the faculty? Or the censorship of the Rodin exhibit? Thom Duncan - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 15:37:40 EDT From: "Rex Goode" Subject: Re: [AML] conservative hatred I wish that I had kept up on whatever thread produced this topic. I would know a little more about how it relates to the list topic. I've been busy over the last few weeks, including a trip to Utah. I was too busy to visit anyone, but perhaps you saw me on KUTV news interviewed by the infamous Rod Decker. He was certainly a lot nicer than I was led to believe. In terms of liberal vs. conservative, my interview was sandwiched right between two such opposing points of view. One man who took the point of view that homosexuals can and do change to heterosexuals, and that no one is born homosexual. A woman took the point of view that homosexuals cannot and should not change, that it is a matter of being born that way, and that it is harmful for anyone to try. I was between the two. It was an unfortunate situation, because I could not be reasonably used as evidence that either point of view was right. I have not changed my orientation, but also haven't tried. The woman, a professor at the UofU said that to even suggest that men like me can get help is to stigmatize us and cause self-hatred. When I viewed the piece later, I wanted to shout at her through the tube, "Hey! Do I LOOK stigmatized to you?! I don't even WEAR glasses!" Here is the problem with exploring an issue like this through a polemic approach. People entrench themselves in unfounded opinions, not based on real evidence or the lives of real people, but on what model best proves to themselves that they are right. In other words, even though no one can tell you any more than how they feel whether they were born like me, those whose point of view is best served by a genetic cause will insist that it is the only viable explanation. Those whose point of view is best served by an environmental cause will insist that it is the only viable explanation. In the middle, are people like me who have a life to live in the real trenches of the issue, largely ignored. I specifically told Mr. Decker that I had not been through the conversion therapy and was not, therefore, a first-hand witness of its efficacy. I also told him that I had not experienced any low-level changes in my orientation. The way it came out in the news piece was that Mr. Richard Cohen, author of _Coming Out Straight_ stated emphatically that no one is born homosexual and that everyone can change. Then they showed me, who has only changed insofar as behavior is concerned. Then they showed the UofU prof telling Mr. Decker how impossible it is to change orientation and harmful it is to try to change something that is unchangeable. Everything I said to Mr. Decker that might have dispelled the polemics of the issue were edited out. Having two opposing points of view talk past each other seems to be what the news is made of. Here is why I find myself undermotivated to finish my autobiography. I'm not sensational. I'm mildly controversial. I have a somewhat middle-of-the-road attitude about how same-sex attracted people deal with their own lives. While I believe with all my heart that those men, apostles and prophets, speak with the authority of God when they set standards of behavior, I prefer to expend my energy living by those standards myself rather than pontificating on how others ought to do the same. My story is no _Coming Out Straight_ (COHEN) or _Born That Way?_ (Eldridge). It is no wonder to me that such animosity exists between so-called liberals and conservatives. It doesn't surpise me that a conservative bent makes a person a suspect for hatemongering. It is just one more way for liberals to try to seem right, just like painting liberals as contributing to the decay of morals is a way to make conservatives seem right. Somewhere behind all of the polemics are real people, making choices and following their hearts. I would prefer to see literature that asks more questions than it answers, because when it seeks to answer certain questions, it moves from being artistic to political, in my opinion of course. Rex Goode _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. - - AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature http://www.xmission.com/~aml/aml-list.htm ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 12:50:48 PDT From: "Jason Steed" Subject: Re: [AML] Moral Issues in Art >Didacticism--in the negative sense that people say literature should >avoid--is when the author places the message above being honest with his >characters, his plot events, and with the reader. If the author is >manipulating his characters without regard to what they'd "really" do, >or manipulating the plot events without regard to whether it's >reasonable for such things to happen given the circumstances he's set >up, or is trying very hard to get the reader to see one specific >message, instead of letting the reader glean his own messages from the >story--THAT'S didacticism. Didacticism is when the desire of the author >to send a message exceeds his commitment to being honest with his story. But who decides when this is happening? And by this definition--that didacticism is the desire to send a message, superceding a desire to be "honest" with his/her story (whatever that means)--shouldn't we say that all satire is didactic (thus "bad")? Again, it seems to me to come down to how well the message is conveyed--not to whether or not there is a message, or a desire to send one. And it seems even more clear to me that charging a work with "didacticism" (as a bad thing) is more a reader's response than an objective statement of fact. One of my favorite teachers at BYU was the one many other students despised--isn't this like saying that one of my favorite works of art is the one that many others find "too didactic"? Jason _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. - - 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 #162 ******************************