Dear “Ask Mormon Girl”:
I ran across this article, “The Great Mormon Novel: Where is it?” about Brady Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist. The article really struck me because I’m a graduate student studying literature, and I often feel like an outsider–socially, politically, and intellectually–around my peers at church. Either I belong to a ward where higher education is viewed with suspicion (being a less “worthy” pursuit than “real” jobs), or I belong to a well-educated ward where I am the lone humanities student amongst aspiring lawyers, physicians, and those studying business. The Slate article references a slightly older article in Dialogue that I have read many times and continue to enjoy. So, to quote the Rectors, “will we ever see the day prophesied by John Taylor, when ‘Zion shall be far ahead of the outside world in everything pertaining to learning of every kind?’” And “can we, and this is the heart of the dilemma, humbly ask the Spirit to guide us beyond our safe and certified, conventional selves?”
Nick from the STL
Oh, Nick. I do know where you’re coming from. Yes, it’s true that AMG makes her living as a literature professor. I do know the loneliness of which you speak, though I do try not to worry too much about it. And I try not to worry too much about this totally-made-up concept of the “Great Mormon Novel” that seems to come up every time a Mormon novelist writes a pretty good novel and then seemingly only for the self-defeating purposes of finding our literature once again failing to be “Great.”
Take, for example, the reception of Brady Udall’s Lonely Polygamist. I loved the book. And I’ve cheered the terrific reviews Brady’s been getting in newspapers across the country. But what’s this we hear from the small land of Mormon-on-Mormon literary criticism: self-conscious grumbling of the “we’re not yet great” variety and internecine bickering about whether Brady Udall is “faithful” enough for his book to count as a “Mormon” novel. And it’s our internal bickering about other people’s piety that makes the news in the New York Times Book Review. What a pity.
There’s a touching line from the end of The Lonely Polygamist wherein Golden Richards (having survived a major crisis of faith in his own ability to be a decent husband and father to so many wives and children) finds that “his heart is spacious enough to accommodate them all.” If more of our Mormon-on-Mormon literary critics had as much heart as Golden Richards, I’m sure they’d stop waiting for the “One Mighty and Strong” Novel and find a lot more in our literature (all of it—even the really good books written by other than perfectly orthodox Mormons) to celebrate and love.
But, Nick, you know what really struck me when I read that Slate article? Not just our tendency to use the fabricated concept of the “Great Mormon Novel” to find ourselves inadequate, but the total absence of women! Why haven’t we produced Miltons, Shakespeares, and (heaven help us) Phillip Roths? Maybe the true marker of our culture’s arrival will be when we start worrying about where our Emily Dickinsons and Toni Morrisons are, not to mention our Isabel Allendes.
So enough with this Great Mormon Novel business! Cheeky soul that I am, I’m ready to take pity on the small land of Mormon-on-Mormon literary criticism and settle this once and for all by declaring that the Great Mormon Novel arrived years ago and (surprise) it was not actually a novel. It was, of course, Terry Tempest Williams’s Refuge. Hallejullah! Now, let’s move on.
Nick, let’s get to the cry of loneliness at the heart of your query: the loneliness of the bookish Mormon. I read an article a few weeks ago in the New York Times by author Michael Chabon, written in the wake of Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla. In his essay, the amazing Chabon (who crafts sentences that leave me slackjawed in awe) reflects on the idea subscribed to among Jews that a superior intelligence or canniness—a yiddishe kop, as the saying goes—has enabled Jewish survival across the centuries. And this, Chabon finds, is “utter nonsense,” because “Jews are stupid in roughly the same proportion as all the world’s people — but . . . from an early age we have been trained, implicitly and explicitly, to ignore [stupid Jews]. A stupid Jew is like a hole in the pocket of your pants, there every time you put them on, always forgotten until the instant your quarters run clattering across the floor.”
If Jews are stereotyped and stereotype themselves for their intelligence, then the stereotype about Mormons goes that we’re all conservative, insular, and intellectually uncurious, but pretty good at working for the CIA and making money. And that, Nick, is the role of us bookish types in Mormon culture (as lonely as we may be): we break the stereotypes. And by breaking the stereotypes, we prove that Mormonism is not a single-minded cult (as the enemies of the faith like to crow) but an actual living human culture after all. A culture that, yes, is capable of producing some truly good art. If we can just stop freaking out about it.
Now, readers, I’ve had my turn. It’s your turn to weigh in. Great Mormon Novel. Mormon Shakespeares. Mormon Miltons. Stereotypes and self-judgment. Discuss.
Send your query to askmormongirl@gmail.com, or follow askmormongirl on Twitter.
You mean Stephanie Meyer is not our Great Mormon Novelist?
Too bad he’s not in my ward – sure we have all the MBAs and law students (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but we also have all kinds of students getting interesting phds, like in sculpture, theater, HPER, musicology, organ playing, etc.
Re: not faithful enough to be “Mormon” – I think if the author identifies as Mormon or believes in some basic tenets of the fait,, that should be enough. I wonder why we are quick to reject people?
The definition which the Association for Mormon Letters use, and which we subscribe to at A Motley Vision is: “anything written by, about or for Mormons.”
I think that Joanna mischaracterizes what that initial AMV post is about I think (and, of course, it led to bickering — that’s what blog comments do). She talks about it as if it’s the critics who are up in arms. Instead, what it is is Theric Jepson reacting to how the book was pitched to a couple of us AMV bloggers and what that says about how Udalls expects for it to be received among Mormons. My objection to it wasn’t that I think that he’s dead wrong for how it will be received in some quarters, but that he was defensive from the get go and that apparently the publicist hadn’t done due diligence in relation to AMV and didn’t realize that we’re (for the most part) fans of Udalls work and have no issue with “challenging” works of Mormon fiction.
I’d also note that Theric also wrote a critical review of The Lonely Polygamist (that’s critical as in literary criticism — not as in a bad review review). But, of course, it’s the roiling discussion that again gets the publicity (here and in the NY Times) rather than the yeoman work of literary criticism. That’s not surprising, but gee I sure wish some of the rest of ya’ll would links to us and even come hang out and comment when we do the real interesting critical work rather than just cover the nth edition of the “great Mormon novel” or “can Mormons handle this ‘heretical’ work of art” discussion.
Enders Game was the great mormon novel
Though what is wrong with Myers? We needed a successful romance novelist of our own, now that Charlie has seemingly run dry.
The issue isn’t whether it is a great novel or not, but rather whether it is “Mormon” enough. The argument always ends up about where you draw the circle of what is “Mormon,” not about the quality of the literature. Having gone to BYU in the early 80s I was amply indoctrinated into the search for the “Great Mormon Novel” to be written by one who was in the culture, but not of it, so admittedly my definition of “Mormon” is extraordinarily broad.
Mormon themed or referenced? Mailer’s Executioner’s Song was a great Mormon novel, probably the most authentic depiction I’ve ever read of Utah Mormon culture.
Mormon writer?
I have enjoyed Brian Evenson’s work over the years. Looking forward to reading Udall. I’ve also heard very good things about his first book. Levi Peterson’s Backslider has been a long time favorite. Walter Kirn is a regular on the NYT Book Review and is completely mainstream and at one time or another Mormon.
Mormon playwright/play: Angels in America, Neil LaBute
I’ve got to take exception to your “heaven help us” on Philip Roths (further nit picky I know, but he spells his name with one “l”.) The Mormon literary tradition would be edified, enriched and significantly better with the addition of authors who analyzed our culture the way that Philip Roth goes after Americana, masculinity, Jewishness and sexuality. From the little bit I’ve read of Udall’s recent book (plot spoiler alert) he does a little Roth-ian action with one of the wives jacking off a comatose teenager. Granted this is up for debate on a religious context, but it works as literature.
Great literature forces us to reexamine our lives and beliefs through the magic of empathy. Forget the Great Mormon Novel, stop pining for the Great Mormon Novel and read and talk about all the great novels instead.
Whether Mormons embrace Udall’s latest or not, it’s clear that it’s having some resonance with middlebrow readers. My Minnesota county library system has 27 copies in circulation and the number of requests has climbed to 280 (it was 156 back in late May). Figuring in those who have already read it based on how many positions I have since moved up, it looks like at the very least there are 320 people in the western half of the Twin Cities who have read or want to read The Lonely Polygamist (not counting any purchases of the novel). That’s quite good for a literary novel, and I dare say, unprecedented for a literary novel about Mormonism.
How about “The Backslider”? For me..that was as powerful as Steinbeck.
Anne Perry? There’s an interesting one. Highly critical article on Mormon literature in wikipedia.
Also Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle and Riders of the Purple Sage for all the wrong reasons.
http://www.adherents.com/lit/sf_lds.html
“The Great Mormon Novel: Where is it?”
I’ve got it under my bed at home. I’m sorry; if I’d known you guys were looking for it, I certainly would have returned it back to the library weeks ago. As is, I’m already looking at some pretty serious late fees.
I posit that the Twilight Series is the Great Mormon novel because Meyer got away with vampires VAMPIRES! not having sex! What a way to influence our morality upon others!
I liked The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, but from what I have read of The Lonely Polygamist Udall was somewhat indulgent.
If anyone has read Grant Hardy’s work, the Book of Mormon itself holds up just fine as the “great Mormon literary novel.” I think we may be on to something interesting here: Mormons are just good at business? Well, didn’t one of our prophets condemn us for treating the Book of Mormon lightly? In recent years, there have been far more serious efforts among scholars to understand the Book of Mormon and, amazingly enough, it’s turning out to be a master composition on so many levels. I wonder, if this revolution of understanding had begun fifty years ago, had we not neglected the Book of Mormon, would this stereotype exist today?
I second (or whatever) that Twilight is the Great Mormon Novel. That isn’t because its great literature by any stretch, or that it is particularly Mormon, but it was written by a Mormon. It will survive (to the chagrin of many) in memory and home libraries across the World long after The Lonely Polygamist is replaced by another critic flavor of the months. The only true rival is Ender’s Game that is in the top of many book lists.
My own belief is that the days of anyone writing The Great Whatever ended a long time ago, if it was ever a reality. Lets not forget that The Great Novels were in their own time just popular fair among many other books. Come back in 100 years and we will see if even Twilight survives the ravages of time that makes a book what it does. In the end, however, if you want a Great Mormon Novel, then like all classics these days you should push it in on college students. Mostly because very few people even read The Greats unless they have to for a grade.
If the Enders Game movie succeeds as well as the current Twilight movie, it will continue to be in the running, though in twenty years, even, I’m curious to see what has endured.
If/when the great Mormon novel descends upon us, I’m not sure very many members are going to be appreciative–given that the same things that make a novel great will be enough to convince most members in good standing that they shouldn’t be reading it. . .
Is Lunds series about Mormon history any good?
I thought about Mormon Shakespeares again as I sat watching two plays at the Stratford Festival in Ontario a few weeks ago.
Perhaps the greatest writing will come like love, when we least expect it.
“given that the same things that make a novel great will be enough to convince most members in good standing that they shouldn’t be reading it.”
After all, Mormons absolutely hate any of the greats by Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and any number of Great Novels written by authors of Western Civilization. Don’t even mention all those pagan authors of Greece and Rome that Mormons would never get caught reading. I think those who believe like the above protest too much. If they don’t then it just goes to show, for me, the sad state of literature these days. Cheep controversy is considered better writing than good prose, interesting characters, and enduring stories.
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Literature is too common and therefore cheap these days for us to ever have another Shakespeare. Even within Mormon letters.
From a Zion sense, this is a good thing, but we still desire to define greatness as Better Than Everyone Else.
My first impulse is to say that Wallace Stegner already wrote it, but the novel that comes to mind, Angle of Repose, is only tangentially Mormon and of course was written by a non-Mormon. Maybe I have a hard time distinguishing Western Americana from Mormon themes. In any case, Stegner’s Mormon Country might fit the bill.
I hate to sound like a wet blanket, but I don’t think a “Mormon Shakespeare” can ever happen. The numbers are just against it.
One can list the “household names” in the English-language literary canon on 2 hands. This is out of five hundred million of English speakers (400 million currently living native speakers + 800 years worth of dead native speakers). If you use secondary speakers as well, the numbers get worse. That puts the rate of “literary genius” to “English speaking world” 1 in 50,000,000.
Let’s estimate 3 million (12M worldwide x.5 english speakers x.5 mormon-self-identification) possible English speaking Mormons. If we assume an equal ratio of adults to children, that makes 1.5 million adults. If we make the assumption that you need to have an existing middle class lifestyle to afford perfecting the non-economically productive work of writing, that means that we cut that down to 39% of itself again. That’s 585,000 possible full-time writers. That’s everyone in the Mormon middle class giving up their job to write full time. I don’t know how to estimate what the ration of “aspiring writer” to “middle class populace” is, so I’ll be *very* generous and assume *all possible candidates* want to be a world-famous author and are working on it. Remember this big, fat fudge in the numbers.
This puts the chance at having a Mormon full-time writer become a literary genius and household name is: .00117%.
In order to make that number close to “1″ we have to either increase the number of members by 1000x. Imagine 1000x more meetinghouses in your home town. Imagine a 1000x more missionaries walking the streets of your town. Making the *entire population* of the US Mormon only increases the numbers 100x (active mormons are about .75% of the US).
This is the world that would have to exist to generate 1 literary household name that would also be Mormon. There’s your sense of scale.
The other option to make this mathematical lottery scenario work is to shoot for something much less than “literary genius, household name.” We have to open up end goal to be “influential writer” or “known writer” or some such. We have to open the list of “known, successful, canon” authors up by about 1000x.
If you argue that being a “Shakespeare” is more talent or luck than work, the numbers get even worse by many orders of magnitude.
At these numbers, the fact that O. Card and S. Meyers are known *at all* is pretty remarkable and odds-defying.
Disclaimer: this is “bistro math” or “napkin math.” Real statisticians and demographers are welcome to do the real computations.
Perhaps “having” our Shakespeares and Miltons doesn’t necessitate widespread cultural notoriety as much as speak to the literary talent of these prophesied artists. One can be an artistic genius and be completely unknown in one’s lifetime, only to have a resurgence many years later after someone else rediscovers one’s work and promotes it in the right channels. Van Gogh is a contemporary example of this phenomenon, but others include J.S. Bach, who, although he didn’t die in complete obscurity, was virtually forgotten by the musical establishment until the mid- to late nineteenth century when Mendelssohn, Brahms, and others began promoting Bach’s virtues to others.
IMO, the greatness of Shakespeare or Milton is their ability to masterfully use a particular medium to comment upon the human condition such that those who interact with their works are profoundly affected by them. We become different people having read King Lear, Henry V, The Tempest, or Paradise Lost–perhaps more compassionate, more caring, less self-centered, more appreciative of the suffering of others, more human. In this sense, I think there have been a few “Mormon” novels that aspire to the level of artistry evident in Shakespeare and Milton. Levi Peterson’s The Backslider was such a work for me, and I recently had a less profound, but moving experience with Udall’s The Lonely Polygamist. Orson Scott Card’s Red Prophet is a profoundly Mormon sci-fi novel that is borderline great literature. Some of Minerva Teichert’s paintings do this for me, and I dare say that Richard Dutcher’s States of Grace was powerfully moving. On rare occasions, even some blog posts have been so artfully written that I would put them in the category of literature.
But Shakespeare and Milton were poets. I’m not terribly familiar with poetry; does anyone know any great Mormon poets? I’m not a huge fan of Eliza Snow.
Good point about the poets. Great poets are even harder to identify than novelists just because there are so few media in which poetry is available to a large group of readers, as most appears in journals or less-widely read magazines.
I’ll point out that Shakespeare was also a superb playwright, and though his plays were (amazingly) written in iambic pentameter, I suspect he’d consider himself a playwright first and poet second, but I’d welcome more informed view telling me I’m wrong about that.
Your comment raises another issue with a “Mormon” Shakespeare — Shakespeare’s enduring appeal is that he speaks to the human condition, as you say, not to a particular culture alone (though some of his plays are directed at a particular culture, their themes are universal). Finding universal themes among the Mormon condition has so far generally eluded those who write for a mass Mormon audience, though I freely admit that there are outstanding short stories by Peterson & others who succeed.
Still, it is a worthy pursuit, as Dutcher demonstrates. Personally I’m not troubled that we have not “arrived” yet — I think there is great excitement (and sometimes surprise and delight) in the journey.
I’ve said this before, but that’s not going to stop me:
I personally think that Whitney’s quote needs to be situated in a particular post-Romantic, 19th-century-ethno-nationalist, belated modernity Zeitgeist that afflicted many peoples/national cultures in the mid to latter part of the 19th century, including Greece, Romania, Argentina, etc. (basically everybody who isn’t France, England, Germany or Russia). It comes out of the desire to prove ones worth as ethnic identity by pointing at (or prophesying) a native genius — a founding genius — who does for the language and culture what Shakespeare and Milton did for England. The whole notion of literary talent or universal themes (while important in terms of discussing literary and cultural value of a particular author or work of narrative art) is secondary to the overarching concern. The problem with Whitney’s prophesy is that a) Mormons got re-integrated (more and less) in to America and b) it came very late in the game just before modernism basically crushed the possibility of the founding genius. That doesn’t mean we won’t see excellent, widely acclaimed, well-crafted, artistic work by Mormon narrative artists come about that deals with universal themes. It does mean that we need not worry about the Great Mormon Novel.
Oh and our founding genius already exists, he just didn’t write fiction (or at least so attest some of us): Joseph Smith.
Well, I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again — start discussing the novels and stop worrying about whether or not it fulfills a prophesy. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t a “heckuva” lot of fun to see what our culture produces and frankly, I think the coming years (my prophesy) are going to produce a large amount of great literature out of the Mormon culture because we have something that has been homogenized out of American literary culture — we still have a lot of conflict. Conflict makes for good reading — and conflict we have, compliments of being peculiar.
It isn’t the fifty cent words, 19th century zeitgeist that makes us yearn for a cultural representative, it is pure tribal pride. We like it when our folks do well, even if they kinda sort of aren’t one of us, in fact then it is easier to discount the bad behavior while reveling in the triumph. How else do you explain BYU fans that still cheered for Jim McMahon when he played for Chicago in the NFL?
And lighten up, Shakespeare was no Puritan — take out the naughty bits and the violence and there isn’t much left of his Elizabethan stories.
One other thing, maybe the biggest problem people have with fiction is that universality and verisimilitude are too close to light and truth.
Because Joanna is too humble and tasteful to mention it, I’ll mention for her that she is a jaw-droppingly great writer herself, and there are many of us waiting with tapping feet for her upcoming memoir. So keep an eye out for that one.
so if I want to write the Great Mormon Novel, what should I include therein so that my novel fits the criteria.
“It isn’t the fifty cent words, 19th century zeitgeist that makes us yearn for a cultural representative, it is pure tribal pride.”
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m not diagnosing the yearning — I’m saying that Whitney’s quote needs to be understood in the context I bring up and that it’s unfortunate that our tribal pride has glommed on to it and worried it to death because it creates a barrier to engaging with real, current Mormon narrative art. Mormons should throw off that worry and be content with minor pride, with minor literature, with minor successes. And yet, in my experience, much of the public discourse about Mormon fiction is worrying at the great Mormon novel and/or Shakespeares/Miltons thing rather than actually looking at what has gone, what is going on, and what could go on.
I agree with you in everything else, though. And I am especially pleased to see you not repeat that other tired trope about there being no possibility for great Mormon literature because there’s no conflict inherent in the Mormon experience.
As for 50-cent words: they saved you all from several more paragraphs of explanation, but if you’d like me to unpack them I’d be happy to oblige. Unlike with much of the post-modern theory obfuscation in latter-day literary theory, they actually have some meaning.
One problem here is that if a Mormon wrote the equivalent of the Great Catholic Novel — Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory — he might very well lose his temple recommend. A Mormon Chaim Potok would run afoul of the hardcases who despise “cultural Mormons stinking up the place.”
That said, a true Mormon artist would fulfill his talent regardless; an artist who shies from criticism is, almost by definition, not going to be great. Nothing worth saying will ever not cheese a good number of people off. I wonder if the non-emergence of the Great Mormon Novel has more to do with demographics and logistics than anyone else: It’s awfully hard to work for a living, raise a multiplying-and-replenishing massive family, and get enough sleep to think coherently about anything, let alone write. Then there’s all the time we waste on blog posts nowadays…
Eugene England said that the great Mormon literary form is the personal essay and I think he was on to something with that. If Mormon culture could produce a Gertrude Bell or Beryl Markham We could call it good. But why do we also refer to achievements of the past when thinking about Mormon creative output? The idea of a “Mormon Shakespeare” is absurd. But I never thought much of Shakespeare in the first place. I think its more important to be looking to the present and asking what our (my) creative output is going to be this year, than it is to ask “can I write the great Mormon novel?” that is stupid beyond words.
32 Not wanting to beat an Elizabethan horse, but I suspect the call for a “Mormon Shakespeare” is in recognition that Shakespeare appealed to a wide audience over time, having mastered the dramatic art as well as the poetic, capable of entertaining (and at times uplifting) the educated and uneducated alike.
That said, England was on to something (he being a master of that Mormon art himself).
In any case, you’re probably right: setting out to write The Great Anything is probably a recipe for failure.
“If Mormon culture could produce a Gertrude Bell…”
Well, we have an Eloise. How many Bells do we need?