From: owner-aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com (aml-list-digest) To: aml-list-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: aml-list-digest V1 #546 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 Friday, December 14 2001 Volume 01 : Number 546 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:35:18 -0800 From: "Richard R. Hopkins" Subject: Re: [AML] A Curious Letter from Horizon? Again, please do NOT contact Horizon. It will only get Brent in trouble and he's a well-meaning, if clumsy, individual. Thanks. Richard Hopkins - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:41:50 -0700 From: "Scot" Subject: [AML] Re: A Curious Letter from Horizon? May I inject a more moderate response to the Horizon employee's letter? I don't think it is necessarily intended as a scam. The con-man does everything in his power to appear professional. This guy either doesn't understand what is professional or he doesn't care. Any scam artist would at least have typed the letter on some official looking letterhead. I have found that within the Mormon culture, talking about your ancestry and your personal commitment to the church is often the innocent attempt to establish one's bon fides. Many members naively think such information makes them more acceptable or presentable to other members. Yes, this is also a technique used by scam artists to con naive Mormons, but the reason scam artists employ this technique is because they know it works. they know it works because they know many Mormons expect it. And many Mormons do expect it. I have been given this type of information many times both in and out of a business setting by people who seem to think it will make me think more highly of them. Their motives have almost always been nothing more than a severe case of personal insecurity. Several on this list have made the assertion that reputable editors or agents never ask for a fee up front. This is not true. Many reputable agencies offer to read and edit a manuscript for a set fee. Many agencies refuse to read unsolicited manuscripts. Some charge a fee. In this way they are not investing agency resources for nothing. They do not guarantee to represent you, but for the fee, they will give you an honest appraisal of your manuscript and their best suggestions as to what you should do with it next. Needless to say, this letter does not come from an established agency. It is not professional, but that does not necessarily make it a scam. It could be sincere. He could be a guy bored with the routine of the job who likes reading rejected manuscripts. Maybe he thinks it helps him learn about the business. If you send his letter to Horizon management you could get the poor schlub fired. You don't want that on your conscience. I suggest that you call Horizon and ask for the man by name. That will at least tell you if he is even employed there. If you get the chance to speak to him on the phone, you can ask him some of the questions that are plaguing you. To be sure, you do not want to pay to have his BYU professor friend edit your manuscript. Just because you teach writing doesn't make you a good editor. Just because you have written a book doesn't either. Scot Denhalter - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 11:41:43 -0700 From: Steve Subject: Re: [AML] Critiques and Writer's Dreams on 12/13/01 9:59 AM, Brown at wwbrown@burgoyne.com wrote: > If you will > notice, ALL of the great Mormon authors who have written for the national > market (Levi, Neal LaBute, Brady Udall, etc.) don't really look like Mormons > anymore. Marilyn Brown Marilyn, Will you elaborate on what you mean by this? Steve - -- skperry@mac.com - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 12:44:11 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] John BENNION, _Falling toward Heaven_ (Review) On Tue, 4 Dec 2001 21:19:59 -0700 "Scott Parkin" writes: > Bennion, John. _Falling toward Heaven._ Salt Lake City: Signature > Books. > 2000. 312 pages; Trade paperback; $19.95. ISBN 1-56085-140-6. > Even the closet feminists among us are forced to rethink some of our > own behaviors when Allison proclaims of Utah (and by extension, > patriarchal Mormon culture), "It's worse than Texas for--ah--a kind > of deference toward women that is really contempt. They're > diseased with it" (240). When I first read this paragraph I read, "Even the closest feminists us are forced to rethink some of our own behaviors," and thought, 'Ah, here's some nice complexity, Bennion is showing us through inversion that women also have the ability to marginalize others, that the marginalization is a function of dominance, not gender. That makes the story a double critique, a critique of patriarchal culture, and a critique of the idea that all problems would be solved if we simply invert the power structure.' Then I read this, > At times, though, that commentary seemed overstated and a little > forced. Allison spoke a few too many pronouncements for my tastes > and acted too much the emasculating man-eater for most of the novel > for me to really like her all that much. In choosing to invert expectations, > I think Bennion sometimes undercut the righteousness of his womens' > causes and made them seem more like caricatures of the dominating > patriarchs they claimed to hate. and decided that that's probably what Bennion is doing, questioning the idea of hierarchical power structures both by undercutting his women and by examining the problems of Mormon patriarchal culture. I know if I were writing a novel where the social situation was inverted that's what I would be doing--because I am writing a novel, a story cycle, where the social structure is inverted. It's about a man who longs for a revelation that would extend the priesthood to all worthy women as a revelation once extended the priesthood to all worthy men. He sees that as a progression of the expanding priesthood, from the time when it was held only by Levites, to a time when it would be held by all people, where every man and woman would be their own priest and priestess. His wife refuses to discuss the issue with him, and without discussion decides he's lost his soul and apostatized, and when she decides to divorce him she uses this apostasy as an excuse to try and destroy him emotionally. But her attitudes are also deeply mixed. She has great respect for the priesthood, but says at one point to her husband, "I'm damaged goods. How many of theses patriarchal Mormon men are going to want to marry a woman with two children?" "I would," he replies. That is, she doesn't understand the depth of her anger at the idea of male priesthood (or is it that she doesn't understand her anger at men (and her father and brother), or at the idea that there would be some kind of privelege for men?). Toward the end she ratifies her decision by thinking, "Women couldn't hold the priesthood, it was true. And if she couldn't hold the priesthood she could d--n well not hold it without him." So the husband finds the situation inverted--he finds himself without power, and understands he's been pushed into the margins (the story where his wife decides to divorce him is called "Marginalia") much as many women have been. > Again, that's an issue of taste. Unless Bennion wanted to undercut his women, in which case it's part of the story's form. > I admit that I wanted his women to be morally and ethically superior > to his men, perhaps illustrating my own guilt at showing "a kind of > deference toward women that is really contempt." It's possible that all deference is a kind of contempt. (Of course, blanket statements trouble me, but I'll let someone else challenge the comment.) > Or maybe I just wanted to see the focal characters being better than > real, regardless of gender. I think that's a common desire of readers. It might be worth some good discussion. Harlow Clark (who, for some reason, tends toward brevity the last few days. Maybe brevity really is the soul of half-wit.) - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:01:56 -0700 From: Barbara Hume Subject: Re: [AML] What Sells Novels? At 11:40 AM 12/9/01, you wrote: >The technical aspects of pov are helpful in making our stories engrossing, >but no one will be engrossed in them if we do not develop interesting >characters and hatch intriguing plots. I wonder if the list might like to >comment on these elements and see if the collective wisdom residing here >(and you all have more of that than you are willing to admit) can help us to >improve. Some specifics, please. I've always felt that plot and character are the elements that make fiction compelling. Once reason I have no interest in the SF films that are so heavy on special effects is that they often lack strong, clear plots and interesting characters. I don't want to watch an hour-long space battle; I just want to know who wins, and what the outcome means to the characters. Some readers are more interested in a complex plot, and others in complex characters; I am in the second group. But POV is, as you say, a secondary consideration. I've recently read a few Clive Cussler novels, because I want to see what's going on in the genres I know nothing about. The hero, Dirk Pitt, is a modern Indy Jones; in every book he does half-a-dozen impossible things and saves civilization as we know it. But I have little knowledge of his inner self, and that keeps the books from holding my attention. I'm always skimming over pages and pages of raids and rescues and chases and attacks because it's all so distant. As for POV, Cussler does a lot of head-hopping, which bugs me but apparently not his primary audience. What I especially hate is that he hops into the heads of characters right before they die so readers can wallow in their despair and pain and hopelessness. Yet, he creates individual scenes that are quite memorable. Not my cup of tea, but interesting to analyze. I suppose it's the adventure that sells these novels. Must be a guy thing. Barbara R. Hume Provo, Utah - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 13:07:06 -0800 From: jltyner@postoffice.pacbell.net Subject: Re:[AML] Story Beginnings Despite the variety of opinions I've seen expressed on the list about the first chapter(s) of Harry Potter every kid I've talked to who likes these books says almost verbatim, "It grabbed me from the very first page or pages." What writer doesn't dream of that being said about their own work? And the vote is in the millions on Harry Potter. I went back and skimmed the first chapter today and while some of the criticisms have a point I think just the title of the chapter alone helps set it all up-"The Boy Who Lived". I think this chapter is necessary to help set up among other things the differences between these two worlds that operate parallel and next to each other but with ignorance on both sides. Just the first few sentences tell so much about the Dursleys-"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense." I think that says it well about what narrow-minded insular people they are. As you can tell I just love to hate these particular characters. "The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it." Kids like secrets, gets them every time, yet I don't look on this a cheap plot vehicle to get their attention. Rowling uses this and other things to constantly advance her plots even briefly mentioning characters that will make bigger appearances later in the series such as the mention of Sirius Black on page 14. J.K. Rowling already has all the books laid out in her head and has notebooks she's put together on the characters including their childhoods and eventual fates and shared some of this with the actors who played them. I have rarely heard of an author having such a detailed layout of their characters and backgrounds and the world which they inhabit. Some authors probably wouldn't even like to have things that way; they might like to be as surprised at the directions and growth of their own characters as their readers do. But for the Harry Potters books I think this works well, sort of like a piece of Baklava-so many layers, but each just as sweet. The original question that is vaguely stated in the first book becomes larger with each new volume-Why would a powerful dark wizard be so determined to destroy a little boy? What threat is the youngster to him? Sort of like why would villagers of upstate New York be so upset about the stories of a fourteen year old boy and his account of a vivid brush with Deity? Or the powers of darkness so determined to destroy him? Hmmm. BTW, I'm sure most people recognize the parallel of the Dark Lord trying to force people to do things his way and all the glory be his, but has anybody else noticed how Rowling seems to be setting up a least one character who is ambitious and obsessed with rules to become sucked into being a servant of his as well-I mean Percy Weasley, of course. Everyone agree? Show of hands? I thought so. I've defended these books so much, I almost swear I had a piece of the action, ( I should be so lucky). But might I suggest for anyone trying to catch up on all of this that they might get the books on tape of these stories. They're completely unabridged and Jim Dale does a good job coming up with voices for all the characters. (He won an emmy for his voice work on the fourth book). Finally, I know an author can be asking a lot of a reader to put up with a slow beginning to a book and they do so at their own peril, but sometimes it's necessary to help set up the background for the rest of the story. For instance, "Marley was dead to begin with, as dead as a doornail, that one thing you must remember or nothing else that follows will seem wondrous..." Kathy Tyner, Orange County, CA - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:15:21 -0500 From: Tony Markham Subject: Re: [AML] Skeleton Story Beginnings Thanks to all who helped me come up with "Kennewick" Man. As to having to plod through difficult beginnings, I think no novel was as hard to penetrate and yet was so worthwhile in the long run as "Gravity's Rainbow." I really can't recommend it to anyone without the disclaimer to give yourself about 150 pages to pick up the rhythm. Way back when we were getting started with "The Leading Edge," I was privileged to conduct the Fritz Lieber interview and peppered him with questions about GR. It had been nominated for a Hugo a few years previously, but he hadn't read it. All that semester I kept trying to get the other Xenobia (a sci-fi writer's group) members to read it, read it, read it. But that didn't work so well either. They all politely ignored me. The beginning is daunting. And the middle and the end. And the aftermath. I suppose a lot of people would find it a pretentious bit of academic nonsense. But no reading experience before or after has ever hit me with such power (Except for once when I read Shakespeare's "The Tempest" after about a week of fasting and his ghost explained the whole play to me as a wonderfully complex allegory about the three degrees of glory). Tony Markham - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 15:16:03 -0800 From: harlowclark@juno.com Subject: [AML] Acceptance of Mormon Lit (was: Critiques and Writer's Dreams) On Dec. 11, Todd Peterson said, "The LDS tie in is this: LDS writers are going to have to be twice as good as everyone else in order to make it in a national market with LDS themed work. Twice as good. This is not something that we've talked about much here. I think that sometimes we think that we need to be equal with other writers, but that's not true at all. Writing from a Christian perspective is an albatross around a writer's neck that few writers can cut loose." Yes. We do need to talk about this. I've heard this statement several times and I'm always struck at how it repeats verbatim a theme I come across repeatedly in African- American culture. If you look at "twice as good" in that context, it's clear that the unstated assumption is, "The world is so bigoted that it's not going to appreciate us for who we are. They're so bigoted we have to be twice as good as they are just to get noticed. Do we really want to think of our potential audience as a bunch of bigots? Mind you, I could have used a different adjective there as James Wilson did on 12/13: "So many are so convinced that piety is a sham that they don't believe it even when it's obvious and right out in the open. I think people today have a great longing for goodness, exceeding that which has been in most times before, but they're terrified to believe. When you've had the Big Lie practiced upon you a bazillion times it's a miracle if you're only skeptical instead of cynical." But, do we really want to think of our potential audience as having been deceived by Satan? I have often found non-Mormon audiences more receptive to my stories, and the spirituality in them, than Mormon audiences. In grad school I wrote a story called "The Covenant Breaker" about a 30 year old man naming and blessing his baby daughter, who starts thinking about a time he was molested 15 years earlier on the banks of the Susquehanna river by a returned missionary who then asked him the Golden Questions, and turned up in the boy's ward in Elmira, NY, seventy miles away the next Sunday. There's a scene where the molester stands up after sacrament meeting, turns around and sees Brendan and says, "Oh God." "No, it's just me, Brendan." I had two fascinating reactions to that passage there at the exceedingly secular U of (There is no R in) Warshington. One class member wrote in the margin, "That's a pretty b_llsy thing to say, and David Bosworth, the teacher, said, "It's good to be reminded sometimes that when we say that we _are_ taking the Lord's name in vain." The reaction from a liberal (votever dot meinz) Mormon publication that awarded the story 3rd place in the D.K. Brown fiction contest that year? "We feel that publishing the story in its present form would be a good way to lose a third of our subscribers." He was referring to the rape scene itself, involving the man's mouth and the boy's--I can't say the word, the Scungebone editors thought the anatomical name of that particular body part was too offensive to print. There are multiple ironies here. One class member said the offending scene was too trivial to build a story around because Brendan only "almost gets . . ." (sorry for the tasteful ellipses, but I do want this to get posted). I described it clinically because one of the issues in the story is that Brendan is too embarrassed for 15 to speak the words that describe in detail what happened to him. This past spring I was part of a jury in a mock rape trial the UofU law school does each spring to give their law students a peek into how a jury deliberates. When the prosecutor described one part of the rape it sounded like a direct quote from my story. I have more to say on the outside world's willingness to read Mormon Lit, but for now I'll just say that in his "Toward the Dawning of a Brighter Day" speech (1983, I think, because my oldest son, Mason, took his first step at that speech--toward an electrical outlet he wanted to play with (or did Gene say it in a different speech?) Eugene England noted that there are a lot of LDS professors teaching at a lot of non-BY universities, and invited them, next time they taught a short story, to teach a Mormon story. So here's a question for you teachers on the list, When was the last time you taught a piece of MoLit in your class? and when was the last time you wrote about MoLit in (or for) an academic journal? These are not rhetorical questions. I want to know. To paraphrase scripture, How shall they read a literature they haven't heard about? Harlow S. Clark ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:06:39 -0700 From: Christine Subject: Re: [AML] Reading in the Bath (was: Andrew's Poll: What's the Point?) >>By the way, I've solved almost all of my "what to read while waiting in >>line" problems with my Palm Pilot - all but that pesky shower issue. When >>they release a waterproof PDA with a shower-mounted stand, I'll be >>completely set. > >A woman on one of my writers' lists says she puts hers into a ZipLoc bag >when she's reading in the tub. > >barbara hume Hey, that'd work! Except that I never take baths. Too slow. I've got too much to do. - -Christine Atkinson - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:55:41 -0700 From: kathy_f@juno.com Subject: Re: [AML] A Curious Letter from Horizon? > > The bottom line is, if you believe in your writing, NEVER pay > someone else to edit it. Shop the MS around until it finds a home that will pay > YOU. If it is good, it WILL get published. > > > > Linda Adams > > Author, _Prodigal Journey_ While in principle I agree with Linda, in practice I've seen some would-be writers who need the one-on-one teaching process a freelance editor can give to develop their skills to a level a publisher would be willing to work with. A writer's critique group can also help as much but one isn't always available. For example, I onced helped a would-be author with his manuscript, ruthlessly suggesting major rewrites because I thought the writer and the story line held some promise, though it was major Fluff with a capital F. (He had a hook that hadn't been tried yet in the LDS market, but was popular in secular light romance fiction, so was pretty sure it would sell if it could be better written.) He rewrote that manuscript three separate times, with me looking it over and suggesting fewer and fewer changes, before sending it to Covenant. They accepted it and published it, and asked him for more. I looked over his second manuscript at his request and made suggestions for changes again, though not anywhere near as many. It also was published. He wanted me to look over his third one as well, and I did. He had learn so much in the process of working on his first two books he didn't need my help at all anymore. I told him the only editor he needed now was his publisher's. I can guarantee that if he had sent his first manuscript in to them in the condition I first saw it, they would have rejected it with a form letter without a second thought. It was really, really bad. So much so that they wouldn't have put the time and effort it would have taken to get it to a publishable level. But for me, that was okay. I knew enough to spend the time and help him make it good enough for them to take a second look. I couldn't have done it for more complex fiction, mind you. Not then, and I'm pretty sure not today either. But for the kind of fiction he was writing I was just right. He's earned back the $100 he paid me several times over, so we both benefited. The guy's name is Dan Yates. He had titled the manuscript _The Typo_, but Covenant rightly suggested a better name -- _Angels Don't Knock_. Covenant has since published 8 of his novels and apparently they sell well enough that he keeps writing more at their request. So, while I agree that paying a freelance editor isn't usually a good idea, sometimes if you know you have talent but lack skill, it can be worth it. On a personal note, the amusing and ironic thing about this for me is... I can't *write* decent fiction to save my life! I've tried. I can't put a plot together at all. I can only take what someone else has written and can often show ways to improve it, but even then I feel very limited by my lack of education and experience in the real world. Oh well. Right now most of my creative efforts lean toward living, breathing human beings, as they have for the last 15+ years, and my interests have swung around to non-fiction anyway. I let go of my dream of writing the great LDS novel a long time ago. But I'd love to write my own journey on the road from serious and suicidal clinical depression to discovering deep abiding happiness regardless of outward circumstances. That's the story that's in my heart to tell. Someday soon I'll do it, and then maybe some of you will kindly critique it and be as ruthless with it as I was with my friend's husband Dan's ms. ;-) Kathy F[owkes] ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! For your FREE software, visit: http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/. - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 19:07:38 -0500 From: "robert lauer" Subject: RE: [AML] Dyer's Talk Annette Lyon wrote: > >I'm glad to finally know that the source for that so-called doctrine is a >talk and isn't founded in anything. I was taught the same thing in 9th >grade >seminary, and it rubbed me the wrong way, especially since my mother was >born into a Lutheran home in a country far from the US, so according to my >teacher she hadn't been as valiant in the premortal life--yet she is one of >the most faithful, spritually in-tune, and devout people you'll ever find. Actually, what follows is the truth behind the so-called doctrine that your seminary teacher taught. There has been great confusion on this issue and it has inspired not only debate among Church members, but also several LDS musicals. Let me set the record straight: The MOST valiant spirits are born OUTSIDE the Church in the most remote parts of the world because the Lord knew that--being so valiant--nothing would stop them from finding the Church. And in his wisdom, He allowed many of the--how to put this politely?--He allowed the LESS valiant spirits to be born into the Church in small,heavily LDS communities throughout the Rocky Mountain West--knowing that unless these poor struggling souls were completely emerged in the Gospel socially they would never find it. The scripture in which this doctrine is spelled out can be found in Doctrine & Covenants, Section 166, verse 58. ROB LAUER - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 13 Dec 2001 16:45:05 -0800 From: "jana" Subject: [AML] Books Up for Review Folks: Here's a huge list of books up for review. Please read the Review = Guidelines for = details about the AML-List Review Program. If you are interested in = applying for a title on this list, please send me an email at = with your reasons and/or qualifications. Do not = request a book if you haven't completed your last review.=20 Thank you to all who participate in the Review Program-your = contributions are an asset to this List! Jana Remy AML-List Review Editor jana@enivri.com - ----------------------------- Weeks, Hillary. I Will Not Forget (music CD) http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100037514 Bytheway, John. How to Be Totally Miserable http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100035340 Hinckley, Gordon B. Stand a Little Taller http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100037944 Bradshaw, Anne. Chamomile Winter http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175589.html Rowley, BJ. Sixteen in No Time www.bjrowley.com Weyland, Jack. Megan http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100035356 Card, Orson Scott. Rebekah http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100039650 Lund, Gerald. Come Unto Me http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100035401 Orullian, Peter. At the Manger www.atthemanger.com Wilcox, S. Michael. Don't Leap With the Sheep http://deseretbook.com/store/product?product_id=3D100035335 Blair, Kerry. The Heart Only Knows http://www.covenant-lds.com/osb2/itemdetails.cfm?ID=3D23 Tarr, Kenneth. The Last Days: Zion's Trail http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175309.html Guymon, Shannon. Never Letting Go of Hope http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175341.html Wright, Julie. To Catch a Falling Star http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175643.html Leach, Frank. Mission Accomplished http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175686.html Brown, Marilyn. The Macaroni Christmas Tree http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175813.html Brown, Marilyn. The House on the Sound http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175848.html Peck, Lisa J. Nauvoo's Magic http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175368.html Randalls, Vickie Mason. Red Moon Rising http://www.cedarfort.com/catalog/1555175287.html - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 00:26:12 -0700 From: "Eric D. Snider" Subject: [AML] _The Other Side of Heaven_ (Movie Review) "The Other Side of Heaven" Written and directed by Mitch Davis Review from The Daily Herald, Dec. 14, 2001 By Eric D. Snider "The Other Side of Heaven" is an account of Mormon general authority John H. Groberg's missionary experiences in Tonga in the 1950s, based on his book, "In the Eye of the Storm." It is mildly uplifting and reasonably enjoyable, but lacks the emotional or spiritual power that, say, one of Elder Groberg's general conference talks might have. Adapted and directed by Mitch Davis, "Heaven" faithfully tells the stories from Groberg's mission as if faithfully telling the stories from Groberg's mission is all it needs to do. It starts with the beginning of his mission, ends with his homecoming, and in between is full of healings, baptisms and South Pacific islander shenanigans -- but no sense of purpose. Groberg (played here by Christopher Gorham) does not appear to change or grow over the course of it. He is friendly and righteous and rather non-descript to begin with, and he's that way at the end, too. The blame for the lack of dynamics is shared between Davis the writer/director and Gorham the actor. The script is episodic, moving from one event to another with little sense that any of them are having any lasting effect, and no sense of building toward something in particular, plot-wise. There's very little adversity that isn't overcome quickly and easily; the closest thing the movie has to a "villain" is a bureaucratic mission president -- and he immediately apologizes for it. Even when emotional depth might be called for, Gorham doesn't do it. Sure, he cries a couple times, and Groberg does some amazing act-of-faith kind of stuff. But Gorham's attitude throughout is so blandly go-with-the-flow -- almost cavalier -- that we wind up liking him, but not knowing him. To his credit, Davis has control of his craft in terms of making things look good. No amateur (despite this being his first feature film), Davis makes good use of beautiful locales, has an able cast of actors, and doesn't let the pace slow down too much. A couple storm sequences are very exciting. This all makes it a decent film, if not a great one. To be interesting or memorable, movies must be driven by plot or character. Either we like the stuff that's happening, or we like the people it's happening to. The best movies do both. "The Other Side of Heaven" does neither. Nothing happens, and it happens to flat characters. It is not beyond enjoyment, but it is so soft and weak-willed that it's not liable to live in anyone's heart for longer than it takes to watch it. Grade: C+ - -- *************************************************** Eric D. Snider www.ericdsnider.com "Filling all your Eric D. Snider needs since 1974." - -- AML-List, a mailing list for the discussion of Mormon literature ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 03:05:16 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: Re: [AML] Story Beginnings Clark Draney wrote: > Won't you miss a lot of good stuff by having that (it "grabbiness") as your > only (or at least primary) criteria for deciding whether to finish a text? > But then, none of us have time to get to all the the good stuff. Maybe _a_ > criteria is a good thing. This one just makes me a little uncomfortable > (speaking primarily as a reader). Yes, I'll miss a lot of good stuff that way. And I'll miss a lot of good stuff by laboriously wading through a difficult opening until the book starts becoming worthwhile. I'll miss a lot of good stuff by restricting myselt to romances or westerns. I'll also miss a lot of good stuff by restricting myself to classics that are on the English Lit reading list. No matter what criterion I use to choose the next book to read, I will miss out on a lot of good stuff. Being mortal, there's nothing I can do about that. I'll catch up in the next life. Meanwhile, I use the criterion that works best for me: if an author can't convey to me someway, somehow, in the first chapter or two, that there will be something in this book of value to me--enough to peak my interest so I'll read on--then I am too mortal to waste my time on it. - -- 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 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 14 Dec 2001 02:43:25 -0700 From: "D. Michael Martindale" Subject: [AML] Literary Style (was: Critiques and Writer's Dreams) Terry L Jeffress wrote: > > Stephen Carter wrote: > > I recently read a provocative article in the Atlantic Monthly called "A > > Reader's Manifesto." > > Myers, B. B., "A Reader's Manifesto," _Atlantic Monthly,_ July/August > 2001 (288: 1): 104-22. > > Available online at: > > http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/07/myers.htm This is a lo-o-o-ong article, but well worth the time. I walked away from it thinking, "If this is what literature is, then I haven't been missing a thing." BR Myers has the same contempt for the modern literary crowd as Orson Scott Card, but provides detailed ammunition to back up his attitude, something I haven't experienced from Card. Because I know some of you will not want to take the time to read the lenghty piece, I want to include some of my favorite quotes from it: =================== Today any accessible, fast-moving story written in unaffected prose is deemed to be "genre fiction"--at best an excellent "read" or a "page turner," but never literature with a capital L. Everything written in self-conscious, writerly prose, on the other hand, is now considered to be "literary fiction"--not necessarily good literary fiction, mind you, but always worthier of respectful attention than even the best-written thriller or romance. But what we are getting today is a remarkably crude form of affectation: a prose so repetitive, so elementary in its syntax, and so numbing in its overuse of wordplay that it often demands less concentration than the average "genre" novel. Even today's obscurity is easy--the sort of gibberish that stops all thought dead in its tracks. I doubt that any reviewer in our more literate past would have expected people to have favorite sentences from a work of prose fiction. A favorite character or scene, sure; a favorite line of dialogue, maybe; but not a favorite sentence. We have to read a great book more than once to realize how consistently good the prose is, because the first time around, and often even the second, we're too involved in the story to notice. If Proulx's fiction is so compelling, why are its fans more impressed by individual sentences than by the whole? This is the sort of writing, full of brand names and wardrobe inventories, that critics like to praise as an "edgy" take on the insanity of modern American life. It's hard to see what is so edgy about describing suburbia as a wasteland of stupefied shoppers, which is something left-leaning social critics have been doing since the 1950s. Still, this is foolproof subject matter for a novelist of limited gifts. The American supermarket is presented as a haven of womblike contentment, a place where people go to satisfy deep emotional needs.... This sort of patronizing nonsense is typical of Consumerland writers; someone should break the news to them that the average shopper feels nothing in a supermarket but the strong urge to get out again. It is left to real-life professors to explain the passage in light of what DeLillo has said in interviews and other novels about how people use words to assuage a fear of death.... A good novelist, of course, would have written the scene more persuasively in the first place. The point, as Auster's fans will tell you, is that there can be no clear answers to such questions... All interpretations of the above passage are allowed, even encouraged--except, of course, for the most obvious one: that Auster is simply wasting our time. Like DeLillo, Auster knows the prime rule of pseudo-intellectual writing: the harder it is to be pinned down on any idea, the easier it is to conceal that one has no ideas at all. Nobody's perfect. But why should we forgive a writer for trying to pass off a schoolboy anagram as a celestial pun, or snowball as a meteorological reference, or tonality as a synonym for "tone," when he himself is trying so hard to draw attention to his fancy-pants language? A thriller must thrill or it is worthless; this is as true now as it ever was. Today's "literary" novel, on the other hand, need only evince a few quotable passages to be guaranteed at least a lukewarm review. This reflects both the growing influence of the sentence cult and a desire to reward novelists for aiming high. It is perhaps natural, therefore, that the "literary" camp now attracts a type of risk-averse writer who, under different circumstances, might never have strayed from the safest thriller or romance formulae. Many critically acclaimed novels today are no more than mediocre "genre" stories told in a conformist amalgam of approved "literary" styles. You could study that passage all day and find no trace of a flair for words. Many readers, however, including the folks at Granta, are willing to buy into the scam that anything this dull must be Serious and therefore Fine and therefore Beautiful Writing. Like Cormac McCarthy, to whom he is occasionally compared, Guterson thinks it more important to sound literary than to make sense. The answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter one way or the other: Guterson is just swinging a pocket watch in front of our eyes. "You're in professional hands," he's saying, "for only a Serious Writer would express himself so sonorously. Now read on, and remember, the mood's the thing." On the positive side, Guterson has more of a storytelling instinct than many novelists today. Beneath all the verbal rubble in Cedars is a good murder mystery crying out to be heard--feebly, to be sure, but still loud enough for The New York Times to have denied the book its "non-genre" bonus of a second review. Almost every fourth amateur reviewer on Amazon.com complains about the repetitiveness of Snow Falling on Cedars. Kirkus Reviews, on the other hand, called the 345-page novel "as compact as haiku," and Susan Kenney, in The New York Times, praised it as "finely wrought and flawlessly written." At the 1999 National Book Awards ceremony Oprah Winfrey told of calling Toni Morrison to say that she had had to puzzle over many of the latter's sentences. According to Oprah, Morrison's reply was "That, my dear, is called reading." Sorry, my dear Toni, but it's actually called bad writing. Great prose isn't always easy, but it's always lucid; no one of Oprah's intelligence ever had to wonder what Joseph Conrad was trying to say in a particular sentence. This is what the cultural elite wants us to believe: if our writers don't make sense, or bore us to tears, that can only mean that we aren't worthy of them. This must succeed in bullying some people, or else all the purveyors of what the critic Paul Fussell calls the "unreadable second-rate pretentious" would have been forced to find honest work long ago. Still, I'll bet that for every three readers who finished Passaro's article, two made a mental note to avoid new short fiction like the plague. Even a nation brainwashed to equate artsiness with art knows when its eyelids are drooping. This is not to say that traditional realism is the only valid approach to fiction. But today's Serious Writers fail even on their own postmodern terms. They urge us to move beyond our old-fashioned preoccupation with content and plot, to focus on form instead--and then they subject us to the least-expressive form, the least-expressive sentences, in the history of the American novel. Time wasted on these books is time that could be spent reading something fun. It's easy to despair of ever seeing a return to that kind of prose, especially with the cultural elite doing such a quietly efficient job of maintaining the status quo. (Rick Moody received an O. Henry Award for "Demonology" in 1997, whereupon he was made an O. Henry juror himself. And so it goes.) But the paper chain of mediocrity would probably perpetuate itself anyway. Clumsy writing begets clumsy thought, which begets even clumsier writing. Many readers wrestle with only one bad book before concluding that they are too dumb to enjoy anything "challenging." Their first foray into literature shouldn't have to end, for lack of better advice, on the third page of something like Underworld. At the very least, the critics could start toning down their hyperbole. How better to ensure that Faulkner and Melville remain unread by the young than to invoke their names in praise of some new bore every week? - -- 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 ------------------------------ End of aml-list-digest V1 #546 ******************************