The Religion of Literature

This weekend I've been in Cincinnati with Teach for America. On Thursday, I went with one of the current TFA teachers to visit his fourth grade class, observe his teaching technique, and teach a math lesson to his kids. During the lesson, I noticed that while many of the students sped through the math problems in their worksheets, they were uniformly stumped when they reached the word problems, either flinging their hands in the air for me to help them, or sitting back in their chairs, arms crossed, defeated. This was strange, I thought, since the word problems were just like the math problems before them—the only difference was that they used words instead of numbers.

          “Are the kids big readers?” I asked Nick later. Most of them seemed to like it, he said. They even read Harry Potter together as a class. “But to be honest,” he said, “I hate reading. I can’t remember the last time I read a book for myself.”

          This didn’t faze me; I’ve heard the same thing from many people in my generation, and from many in the generation before mine. Movies and television are more popular in our day, and I don’t condemn anyone for not enjoying literature, because that would be like if someone condemned me for not liking peanut butter. Moreover, reading is not easy. It demands energy; you have to sit still, usually without distraction, and put millions of letters into your eyes, and somehow get your brain to process them into words, and then into an aesthetic experience. Really good reading requires reading practice—every day—and if you don’t like the experience, it can be hard to find the motivation to have that practice. Word problems are harder than number problems if you have never read a book.

          Reading is hard, yes, and reading well is harder. Millions of Americans are literate, and I would bet that a smaller number of millions honestly read for fun. They read books that give them stories they want, with the excitement that they want, in language that they expect. But if you want to read for wisdom—the truth of the ages passed down by the conscious—that requires work. And more than work, it requires humility. You have to put yourself aside; you have to ignore your own thoughts and feelings and seriously consider the ideas of another. You have to have discipline, you have to have reverence, you have to have meditation, you have to have solitude.

          Such is the religion of literature. And such is so much religion—Hinduism, Christianity, Mormonism, Judaism. This is the religion of selflessness: put yourself last. Do difficult things. Ponder wisdom continually. Learn to love others.

Authority in the Book of Mormon

Scripture, by nature, assumes a commanding, authoritative voice. We turn to scripture for truth, for that truth distilled into dogma, for that dogma distilled into ritual. As such, we expect scripture to read as the voice of God--flawless, omniscient, and absolute. And much of the Bible does indeed use this voice.

Many Book of Mormon orators, however, try not to build themselves up as they speak, but rather downplay themselves. They point out their own flaws and limits. King Benjamin says, "I am like yourselves, subject to all manner of infirmities." (Mosiah 2:11) Enos and Alma speak of their struggles with sin before God. Nephi says, "O wretched man that I am." (2 Ne. 4:17) This appears to be the common denominator of many Book of Mormon leaders--they dissuade the reader from thinking of them as perfect, and encourage the reader to listen more to their teaching.

Why did they do this? It can be a little intimidating to talk to someone who is larger than life. But when the person you meet is closer to your level--not sinless but sin averse--then it is easier to accept their message. You feel more connected with them, more willing to listen and receive. These Book of Mormon speakers really nail that; it's easy to imagine them as humans, perhaps not knowing all truth, but like their readers, trying to find it.

Thinking of the Book of Mormon as their stories--the stories of imperfect people--can help humanize the book, and make it less intimidating. We can see its stories as our own story, and find ourselves in its pages.

Dreams and Visions: Two Perspectives on the Tree of Life

Is there a difference between a dream and a vision?

Lehi and Nephi both see revelations of a tree of life, an iron rod, a great and spacious building, and brilliant, white fruit. But while Lehi presumably received his while he was sleeping, saying “I have dreamed a dream,” Nephi receives his while he is awake, pondering in his heart.

Though they apparently saw the same things, Lehi and Nephi describe them differently. Lehi tells his dream as a narrative, explaining how he and his family traveled through the darkness, followed the rod of iron, received persecution from the masses, and eventually found the tree of life. In contrast, Nephi describes his vision as a series of images--the same darkness, iron rod, spacious building, and tree--and he explicates their meanings as given to him by the angel. While Lehi’s dream remains limited to the perspective of the family, Nephi’s vision is more universal: it prophesies the fall of the spacious building, as well as the coming of the Savior.

I read these two revelations very differently. When I read Lehi’s dream, I am swept up in the imagery and the narrative. I imagine my own family pushing forward through the darkness, being tempted by the crowds, clinging to the iron rod. The texture of Lehi’s storytelling makes me more empathetic to the story, more self-reflective of my own spiritual responsibility. On the other hand, when I read Nephi’s vision, I scan the verses looking for doctrine. I accept as principles the explications that the angel gives. I read the vision both as a set of symbols and as a prophetic account for what will occur in the future.

Form, in the case of these two accounts, determines what I get out of them as a reader. This is something that occurs all over the Book of Mormon. Sometimes the authors write very personally, using rich narratives and descriptions; other times, they write like the Ten Commandments, laying down the law impersonally and non-figuratively. It is fascinating to me that Nephi and Lehi seem to separate these two styles into dreams and visions; it makes me wonder if dreams can be taken as dogma, or if visions can ever pass for poetry.

Then again, Lehi’s own statement--”I have dreamed a dream, or, in other words, I have seen a vision”--may suggest that there is almost no difference between dreams and visions at all.

Separation and Faith in James Goldberg's "Ghazal"

One of the difficulties of being a Mormon is accepting the love of God and trying to develop a personal relationship with him, while simultaneously accepting his absence, to live life and make decisions without him telling you every choice you should make.

          James Goldberg’s “Ghazal” illustrates that difficulty poetically. The poem is a formal ghazal, meaning that it begins with a rhyming couplet and continues with unrhymed couplets after, each ending on the rhyme initiated by the first couplet. Goldberg’s poem begins with the rhyme “free again,” which is echoed throughout in variations of “—ee again.” This gives the poem a certain amount of momentum, pulling the reader through each couplet to hear what the next rhyme will be, like this:

Faith was the beam I removed—and went blind
You had to wash the clearness out with mud so I could see again

I left you once—because you told me that I should
When I come back, what will I be again?

The altar has room, James, for both of your legs
So don’t ask for that promise on just one knee again

          Ghazals originated anciently in Arabia, which immediately connotes Jerusalem, and both the Old and New Testaments. Goldberg touches on several biblical stories—Adam and Eve, Moses, Jonah—before landing on the story of Jesus, his experience in Gethsemane, and his healing of the blind man with clay.

          But the next stanza, the one when (I assume) Christ tells the man to leave, that one is less explicit. That stanza only says that the man told him to leave, and then he wondered what would happen when he was gone. This is like the story of the ten lepers, when Jesus told them all to go see the priests, and they weren’t healed until they left.

          It must have been a little scary to have to leave Jesus, and not know if you were going to be healed. The lepers must have wanted so badly to stay with Jesus, and when he told them to leave, it may have been a difficult thing to hear. But this is the great anxiety of our religion—to come to love and worship the Savior, but to have the faith that we can keep living in this world without him physically by our side. The faith that it took to obey Jesus, and leave him, is the same faith we must develop if we are to become like him. We must have the faith to act, knowing that with his Atonement, he can heal us.

Matthew 17: 15, 18

Throw yourself.     I see them all, angular and twisted like a kaleidoscope. People walking, people buying, people eating, people chatting. But their wallets are bigger than their hearts, and their mouths never seem to end, whatever they do. Rotate the glass, and here I am, not a master, not a lover, not a merchant, not a friend. Just look away; keep pruning olive trees at midnight, without once paying attention to the boy in the

Throw yourself.      Clams are hard to open but worth it if you like pearls. Pull, cut, pull, cut, pull, cut. I don't want these sandals. All I want is a warm hearth with a dancing flame and a cherished name. All I want is nobody, because at least nobody can't ignore you. And the flame grows higher, and it laps at your skin until

Throw yourself into the fire.      Hold your nose because it will start to smell. I'm doing it. I'm jumping in. Like hot knives it pierces and smolders and chars and burns. Did someone light a cigarette because it's starting to get

[Someone places two hands upon his head.]

What are they doing. What are they saying. Please stop. I'll jump, I swear I will. You don't even have to look at me twice to know

[The man pats him on the shoulder. Then he turns and leaves.]

In seventeen years nobody has ever--what did you do? How did you stop it?

[The boy feels the scars and taps his burns.]

Nobody has ever--who was that man? It's over. Stay, please. Don't leave me. Please stay.

Form and Counterpoint in The Welcoming Door

Kenny Kemp’s The Welcoming Door offers a refreshing take on the New Testament, fictionalizing that period of time about which we know absolutely nothing—Jesus Christ’s early adulthood. Kemp portrays the Christ doing what his earthly father did (woodworking), and makes Christ the witness to three vignetted stories, each with characters who struggle individually with the allure of temptation, the paralysis of fear, and the brutality of human negligence. These stories are familiar to Christian readers, who will recognize them as the parables of the Prodigal Son, of the Talents, and of the Good Samaritan. Kemp implies that Christ first saw these parables happen before he told them.

          Such a thesis imbues the parables with heart, as the reader sees Jesus connect with people on a deep, spiritual level. But context is not the only thing Kemp alters of the parables. He tells each story with description, with dialogue, with character, with subtext. Whereas in the scriptures the parables are like fables, distant and concise, Kemp’s versions are like books, alive and rich.

The Love Triangle of Mountains Between Us

Jenny Proctor’s new novel Mountains Between Us, tells the story of a love triangle—Henry, Eliza, and Flip—and the struggles that they individually experience while trying to have it all. Unlike the LDS literature that our class has read to date, Mountains Between Us is primarily designed for an adult audience, and it could be adequately classified as a “romance novel.”

          Proctor’s characters are introspective and easily frustrated. Henry is a high school English teacher recovering from a divorce (and estrangement from his biological father), and he channels his energy into writing a novel he won’t let anyone read, and ignoring his pre-teen son, AJ. Eliza is a 20 year old social worker laden with a family history of alcoholism and grief. The two come together in North Carolina, where they both work at the same rehabilitation center, and where they attend the same LDS ward.

          Henry and Eliza are the heroes of the novel; as is sometimes the case with romantic love triangles, their third counterpart, Flip, is an undeveloped character who exists solely to give Eliza and Henry something else to worry about. Interestingly enough, Proctor makes Flip the non-Mormon. He initially attends church only out of interest for Eliza, though he soon begins to take the discussions from the missionaries, out of what appears to be a sincere, self-driven interest in their message.

          Proctor’s novel, like Douglas Thayer’s Will Wonders Never Cease, is explicitly LDS, and would doubtless confuse a reader unfamiliar with the faith. Still, like Thayer, and like Orson Scott Card and Luisa Perkins, Proctor makes an admirable attempt at conveying Mormonistic hope in a small work of fiction. Many of the novel’s conflicts that seem beyond repair somehow manage to work out in the end, and while Edith Wharton would decry the novel as impossible and underthought, a novice reader make take some solace in Proctor’s work, finding in Henry and Eliza’s example the courage to continue forward, to face fears head-on regardless of anxiety.

Parenting and Oblivion in Will Wonders Never Cease

Doug Thayer’s new book, Will Wonders Never Cease: A Hopeful Novel for Mormon Mothers and Their Teenage Sons, tells the story of Kyle Hooper, a go-with-the-flow teenager with a penchant for writing and a remarkably lucid sense of self. The book is a modern retelling of the story of Alma the Younger, as Kyle is struck by an avalanche (just as Alma is struck by an angel) and as his confrontation with despair causes him to contemplate his life choices.

          Thayer's book exhibits a profoundly Mormon anxiety on every page: the question, “How do I get my kid to choose the right?” and its haunting shadow, “If my kid chooses the wrong, is it my fault?” Through Kyle’s inner monologue, the reader meets Kyle’s mother, Lucille, a woman who clearly wants her son to live righteously, but who parents him in a non-traditional, laissez-faire way, using sarcasm and candor where Victorian parents would probably use restraint and subtext.

          Does this book teach “the right way to parent”? Lucille seems at first to be the master parent, but Kyle’s narrative quickly shows that she is haphazard and frantic, probably doing parenting by the seat of her pants, and much less self-possessed than she appears. Moreover, the subtitle of the novel is not “How Mormon Mothers Should Teach Their Teenage Sons” but “A Hopeful Novel,” which suggests that this is only meant to be an example of parenting working out, not a paragon of how it has to happen.

          What I find more interesting is the subtextual moral of this book, which is that human beings need to have avalanches dropped on them before they take anything seriously. Are we really that obtuse that we can’t actually choose righteousness until death is right in front of us? I would take offense at this, except that I was exactly the same way when I was a teenager, and honestly, am often just as oblivious now. If there is anything positive to get out of this book, I think it must be this message: Wake up, and don’t make God send you an avalanche before you get smart about life.

Two Blog Approaches

I started my journey into the blogosphere with “The 444 Project,” which was started by my friend’s girlfriend, Josie. For the past two years, she’s used her blog and internet presence to teach people about a condition that she suffers with: bipolar disorder. She discusses her struggles with drug abuse and suicidal thoughts. She talks about the difficulty of growing up with bipolar disorder, and how her struggles with the disorder have brought her closer to God.

Josie’s blog is wildly popular. She travels throughout the United States (and, as of last year, Italy) giving stake firesides and youth conferences to help spread her story.  She also interviews “random strangers” on the street, asking them what “gets them out of bed each day.” She shares the stories she hears with the people in the firesides, in an attempt to spread joy with all of the people she sees.

Another blog I looked at, “Bright and Beautiful,” had a similar mission. This one is written by Beth, a friend of mine who just moved here from Hawaii. Her blog is more intimate, detailing her lifelong struggle with body image and confidence. She writes posts weekly which explain her views on self-perception, as well as how we treat others.

In reading these two blogs side by side, I realized that while their two approaches were very different, both of these blogs had the same mission: they wanted to convey something that their authors had learned, so that an audience could benefit from their experiences. Beth and Josie have very noble intentions to share their knowledge with the world, though Josie does so through macro-level public speaking and campaigning, and Beth does so through modest essayistic posts.

I don’t know if one way is better than the other to do what they want to do. Josie will obviously reach more people, but her blog seemed a little chaotic to me, which made it hard to focus on what she was saying. Beth’s brevity and eloquence in writing made me reflect more on what she wrote; but then, Beth will probably reach less people through her writing, in the long run.

Both approaches, though, are really admirable. I love the idea of using writing to teach, so that a reader can learn through experiences that someone else has had.

Evil in Dispirited

Luisa Perkins’ newish novel, Dispirited, personifies evil in the form of Zared, a spirit who steals the body of Blake Something, and inhabits the body for most of the boy’s teenage years. Inside of Blake, he causes the body to indulge in vices—pornography, heroin, pedophilia—which horrify his step-sister Cathy, and cause her to engage in a struggle to expel Zared from Blake’s body, and return it to its rightful spiritual owner.

          Thus the theological questions are ushered in: What is the source of evil? How are the spirit and body related? Is the spirit responsible for the body’s actions? Can one person’s spirit be replaced by an evil one? What is spiritual identity?

          Perkins’ novel not only raises these questions, but brilliantly tackles them with impressive complexity and texture. Zared didn’t just overtake Blake by magic; Blake’s body was vulnerable from grief over the loss of his mother. And Blake’s “true” spirit is personified too, in the innocent, powerless figure of a little boy. It’s not a black and white story—everything is shrouded in a difficult veil, which forces the reader to reflect on what they really believe about sin, agency, and the soul of man.

          Should novels address these kinds of issues? The answer is a clear “duh”—novels provide a new lens with which to study reality, and how to cope with it in humanity. Whether or not Perkins’ novel accurately reflects Mormon dogma is irrelevant; the fact that she chooses to talk about Mormon issues at all sets her novel apart from the floods of cheap literature that line most “Best Sellers” shelves. Perkins’ premise provides an opportunity for readers to think—not just be entertained—to question—rather than just memorize answers. The closer our literature gets to reality, the better, and Perkins’ novel approaches spiritual reality in a way that is laudably accessible for people.

Critiquing "Frontier"

In an attempt to break out of my “inner circle,” I decided to share a post with someone I haven’t seen since high school, when we worked on the literary magazine together. Her name is Brianna and she’s a senior now at Elon University. She’s a remarkable writer—about to publish a novel, actually—and I haven’t seen her in almost seven years.

          I asked her to read “Frontier,” the post that I wrote for our three mini-essays assignment. This time, I offered specific questions that she could think about in her response.

1. What does this post make you think about?
2. Which stylistic choices do you like? Which do you dislike?
3. What could I do to make the writing more polished?
4. Was any part of the post confusing or difficult to follow?
5. What does this post tell you about me?
6. What does this post tell you about Mormons?

          In return, she sent me two pages of reactions and advice. I was stunned. I had no idea she would be so thorough for this assignment, nor that her advice would be so specific and concrete. I wish I could copy and paste the whole thing onto this post, but instead I’ll point out some of the major tenets of what she said:

      She appreciated specific things. In particular, she liked “moments of elegance” in my writing, especially since most of my writing is so colloquial. She pointed out lines that she was “obsessed with,” and told me how they made her feel, and what they provoked her to wonder about/ask. 

      She suggested that I reverse the order of the essays. I hadn’t even considered this as an option, since I had just written the essays in the order they were assigned. But Brianna made me realize that the essays do connect to each other, and thus the order that they are in is an important part of the experience reading them. The stories in them, she noted, are reverse chronological—putting them in reverse order would thus build chronologically as well as emotionally.

      She noted specific technical flaws. Since writing is so personal/subjective, casual critics almost never do this. But there were verbs in my essays that were trite, stylistic choices that were confusing, and moments that could have been made more specific. Brianna noted all of them, and offered examples of how to fix them.

In short, her help was just what these essays needed. Everything really synergized for her critique of this essay: the fact that we haven’t seen each other in a while (and she doesn’t know as much about me as closer readers), my specific questions, her literary expertise, and her honesty in critiquing.

Gaia? More like goodbye-a!

A few days ago, my friend and I performed Eric Samuelsen’s one-act play, called Gaia. Our “performance” was really just a cold read of the play—I thought it would be more fun to read the play out loud with someone than inwardly by myself—and our “acting” was obscured by the first-time discovery of what we were reading. We tried to hide our emotions as we told the story of Lucifer and Eve in the preexistence, of Lucifer’s disgust with the unfairness of God’s plan, of Eve trying to persuade Lucifer to come to Earth with her, and of God’s own life as a mortal before all of this happened.

          In the grand tradition of Mormon literature, Samuelsen himself has amazingly recorded what he himself thinks the preexistence was like! His additions to the concept include ideas about Lucifer could have been the first man on earth, or how God's own mortality was provincial and short. I’m not going to criticize how stale of an idea this whole play is; sure, it’s been done, but people should write about what they want to write about. I don’t know why so many authors think that their Mormonism only extends as far as The Fall of Adam and Eve, but hey—Milton’s Paradise Lost didn’t go any further. Maybe someday we’ll have a Milton who can tell that story in a new, permanent way.

          What instead bothers me about Gaia is its total ignorance of technique, form, irony, and gravity. My friend and I reveled in the chance to ham up the play’s two emotions: scorn (Lucifer) and lachrymosity (Eve). That one-dimensionality combined with total sincerity made lines like “Engage with me!” and “It could have been you” ring with bathos. (Our audience was keeled over for most of the play.) Could Samuelsen not have come up with less operatic dialogue?

          And why is this story even a play at all? Reading it out loud made me realize how much this story doesn’t need a theater, a stage, props, or a congregation. It could have worked just as well (and appeared less ludicrous) as a short story, or—goodness me—an essay! But this inattention to aesthetic is Samuelsen’s plague; it’s clear that Gaia is not interested in creating art, but in serving as a vehicle for Samuelsen’s own ideological convictions.
          In short: I'd give it a 24%, a lead medal, a 2 out of 10 iPods. Go see it only if there is no other play showing in your city.

Comments on "Falcon"

I have a very close friend who I go to anytime I need inspiration in my writing. She’s an exceptionally perceptive person, a strong critic, a helpful editor, and I trust her taste on all things literary. She is, more than anyone else I am lucky enough to associate with, my muse.

          For the sharing assignment, though, I went to her sister. I asked her to read my imitation essay, “Falcon,” and tell me her thoughts on it: what she liked, what she didn’t, and ways she thought I could improve the piece.

          After reading it, she sent me this text message:

Okay well I really like the concept—I went and read the original scripture from Alma. I think the falcon was a good choice. My only issue is that sometimes the Biblical phrasing and the contemporary ideas (like libraries, skyscrapers, photographs) didn’t mesh well. Parts of it read awkwardly. But overall, I enjoyed it!

          I really appreciate Tess’s comments. She immediately identified what I had not noticed, but what had been bothering me about the piece: moments of “awkwardness,” when the image and the language don’t quite seem to match up. She also validated what I hoped people would like in reading it, that thematically, Alma 29 and my imitation have a nice counterpoint, and that the falcon is a stirring image.

Falcon

In reading for this week’s class, I was interested in the form DeNae Handy uses in her essay, “An Epistle to the Roamin’(s).” In it, she performs her own imitations of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, conforming an anecdote about her children into New Testament standards of diction, tone, and verse division. Handy’s essay is only loosely related to the Book of Romans, but I wanted to adhere more strictly to a particular scripture in writing mine. Thus, my imitation only imitates Handy in that it imitates something else: in this case, Alma 29. My essay, unlike Handy's, is not a narrative, nor does it include, I hope, any amount of shtick.

Aesthetic Optimism

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I’ve been on campus for most of the day now. Four hours, actually, but it feels like a lot when you stay in the same place and don’t have that much homework to do. After I write this journal-blog, I’m going to get a Firehouse sub (Italian) and then get ready to a musical in the DeJong: it’s The Count of Monte Cristo, a new one by Jekyll and Hyde’s Frank Wildhorn.

          The second-best thing about working in the Writing Center, after the community of writers you get to talk to daily, is all-hours access to this place. 4026 JKB has become my sanctuary in the past two years. It’s got all the amenities—computers, refrigerator, microwave, light—it’s locked to the public, it’s quiet, it’s wide, and it has these fantastic skylights in the other room. Some days, when the sun is bright enough, I leave the lights off in here, for the diffused light-gray of the sky is enough to read by, and to me, any added fluorescence kind of kills it.

          I took a break two hours ago to go get a haircut. I like going to that place Marinello’s, where Lindsey Conrad used to work, cause it’s cheap and I have to get my hair cut often. The last time I was there, the girl—Bri…I’ll never forget her name—performed a slash-and-burn, cutting off an inch more than I asked for, and turning me into a Backstreet Boy. “Is Bri working today?” I asked as I called this morning. “No, I’m sorry,” the receptionist replied. Don’t be sorry! Hooray! I thought. “Aww, that’s ok,” I said.

          When I leave campus to the west, I like to go through the Tanner building in a secret route that I found when I used to work there that isn’t very secret but nobody knows about it. It’s just in the new wing, on the fourth floor, in the southwest corner. It’s a staircase that leads out of the building, and it has a lot of windows so the whole place is filled with light. You can see all of Bulldog Avenue, and the mountains beyond. Will Cincinnati be this beautiful? Will I have these aesthetic touchstones in the Midwest?

          I got to Marinello’s at 2:50 for my 3:00. The girl—Linda—was a no-nonsense girl. Zero small talk, and I appreciated her for it. I told her what had happened last time and she told me how she would try to fix it. She took five minutes.

          “How does this length look?” she asked.

          It could be a little shorter on the sides. “Great,” I said.

          “Do you like how it looks in the front?”

          I wish it was blended a little smoother. “Yep, it’s perfect.”

          I sat there, stewing in my discontent as she washed my hair with shampoo. Why didn’t I say anything? Dad says the difference between a good haircut and a bad one is three days. He’s right, but I could get rid of that difference by just asking her to fix it now.

          I have sometimes tried to convey the beauty of this Writing Center and of the Tanner Building exit to my friends, with little success. They follow me there, and then they just throw their heads back laughing, chalking it up to another one of the weird things about being my friend. I don’t mind; actually, I know they’re right. I didn’t care much for Provo until about 4 years into my stay. The human aesthetic, I think, is so optimistic that it can make beauty out of anything, no matter where it is on the map, how urbanized it is, or how un-blended it appears.

Frontier

Struggle

A few weeks ago I heard back from Teach from America about my interview: I’m in. They’ve offered me a job teaching middle school math in Cincinnati. That’s in Ohio.[1] I accepted the job; I start training in Atlanta in June, and then I will move out to Cincinnati in July.

          “How are you going to do that?” everyone asks, out of what I believe to be a sincere concern for my well-being. This question has a couple of subtexts, the first one being Pack up and move to a new place where you don’t know anyone? Eeesh. Another is Who would ever want to live in the Midwest? Yuck. (That one mostly comes from natives of the American West.) The last, a really fun one, is Why would you leave the Promised Land? There aren’t any Mormons in Cincinnati. My answer to all of these external struggles is, simply, This is what I am going to do. My decision to join Teach for America was a prayerful one, derived from about a hundred moments of personal revelation which led me to it. So as irritating as that initial question is, it really doesn’t mean anything to me, because I know that this is what I should be doing.

          Still—and I never thought I would say this—Provo, in the past seven years, has become a home for me. I’m at the point in school where I love being in my classes and feel on top of college, rather than crushed by it. I love working at my job, where I get to help people learn to write, and where I am part of an inspiring community of writers. I love my apartment—after four years of searching, I’ve finally found one that is close to campus and not gross! I love the mountains, I love the 7-11 on 5^th and University. And I love the friendships I’ve made here, which are ultimately what makes me love everything else. There are some people in this town that I cannot imagine not seeing every day.

          How do I carry out my own plans? How do I move to Cincinnati without being terrified?

Hermetic Pragmatism

In each of these essays, the authors talked about problems they had faced, and then how their spiritual life allowed them to grapple with those problems. The problems were all problems of solitude, and the difficulty of being an individual among the masses, and the solutions were all hopeful—if the authors didn’t learn some new nugget of knowledge, then at least they ended the essay with the hope that they could learn something. These characteristics, solitude and wisdom, imbued each of the essays with a hermetic pragmatism, although I think such would be true of any essay by an American young adult. It is an inheritance of Wordsworth and Montaigne more than it is of the Mormon tradition. In writing my essay, I might enjoy breaking from this tradition, though as yet I don’t have a clue how I would do so.

Four of the five essays I read used a linear narrative to tell their stories, usually following the Freitag triangle: exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution. However, “L.A. Lost and Found,” by Elijah Broadbent, used an inventive spin in its composition: his essay was a series of vignettes which illustrated glimpses of Broadbent’s mission. In writing my essay I would like to try something non-linear, perhaps with a reverse or reorganized linearity, to give the essay some gravity and intrigue.

American Mormonism in Card's Seventh Son

Orson Scott Card’s Seventh Son feels very little like a fantasy novel, primarily because it does not take place in Medieval Northern Europe. The opening map, now something of a ritual in fantasy literature, is in fact just a map of the United States as it is now, with all its rivers and mountains right where they should be. The technology and customs of the novel are not of swords and chain mail, but of waterwheels and wagons. And the heroes and sages worshipped by the common man are not Arthur or Odin, but John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson.

          This refreshing change of scenery is, in addition to being an evocative deconstruction of the fantasy genre, crucial to the Mormonism of the story, for Mormonism is a profoundly American religion. Mormons exist because men like James Madison fought to establish religious freedom. Three of the four parts to the Mormon scriptural canon were either translated or recorded first in American English. Our flight westward helped explore the continent and expand the nation.[1] And in more than just the political or geographical sense of America, much of cultural and doctrinal Mormonism directly mirrors spiritual America: individualism, humanism, solitude, and progressive destiny.

          Card sets up his main character, Alvin, as a representation of Joseph Smith. As Harold Bloom has written, Joseph Smith is America’s religion. He taught men that they could become like gods, an idea which amplifies both Emerson’s writing about self-reliance as well as Whitman’s poetic celebration of the self.[2] Like Mark Twain, he created a purely American text in Doctrine and Covenants.[3] Whitman is America’s poet, Bloom writes, and Emerson its sage, but Joseph Smith is its prophet.[4] Thus Seventh Son must take place in America almost by force, as its main character, and its allegorized religion, are such inherently American entities.

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[1] The irony here is that this inherently American people, rejected by its homeland, was aiming to stay in Mexico. Were they bummed out when Utah did become part of the States?

[2] Harold Bloom, The Western Canon, New York: Riverhead Books (1994), 253.

[3] In an attempt to paraphrase Bloom, the radicalism of Doctrine and Covenants comes from Joseph’s declaration that it is new scripture, not anything else handed down by older cultures.

[4] Bloom 6, 267.

"Because we cannot know enough people"

When I was a college freshman—back when I liked to read obscure books to satisfy my pretension—I stumbled upon a genre I had never heard of before, in a book and author who were equally unfamiliar: Novelists and Novels, a collection of essays in literary criticism by Harold Bloom.

          Cool! I thought, this guy has read all the cool books that I have, and even some that I haven’t! Too cheap to buy the book, I spent hours at the BYU bookstore, flipping through Bloom’s essays, anxious to hear what he thought about Jane Eyre, Sons and Lovers, The Sound and the Fury, Ulysses. I subscribed completely to Bloom’s philosophy: reading well means seeking for aesthetic and spiritual wisdom, not collecting ammunition for political polemics.

          Bloom completely altered the path of my education. He taught me to read books as I would read scripture, that literature is different than allegory, that solitude requires responsibility. He gave me the courage to change majors, and to take literature as seriously as I do living. This is spirituality—the art of living full, and of embracing humanity with confidence. Six years later, I am amazed that his writing had this effect on me, particularly because there is so much other literary criticism out there that I find soul-suckingly anti-human.

          I haven’t given you any examples yet, so I will just end this essay with one of his quotes:

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you, because it is, at least in my experience, the most healing of pleasures. It returns you to otherness, whether in yourself or in your friends, or in those who may become friends. Imaginative literature is otherness, and as such alleviates loneliness. We read…because we cannot know enough people.

(How to Read and Why, 19). 

"Go Bang Your Head on a Desk": Ideology in Nephi Anderson's Added Upon

Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon, typically regarded as the first Mormon novel, outlines the Mormon doctrine of the plan of salvation onto a narrative about some people. The novel serves as a fascinating window into the lives of turn-of-the-century Mormons: how they interacted with the world around them, and how they valued and practiced the various doctrines of their religion. As a work of literature, though, Anderson’s novel commits a cardinal sin: that of being one of the most boring books out there, and of making its reader want to bang their head on their desk.

          Most of the literature that I value employs a pragmatic, “showing is better than telling” construct to its design. This is what makes literature not just words, but art: it elevates somebody else’s story into a vicarious experience for the reader. Added Upon, however, is driven by dogmatic, “tell, don’t show” methods of craft. This makes the book feel more like a really long pamphlet than a novel, and, again, will make you want to bang your head on your desk.

          How does Anderson pull off this magnificent effect, you ask? Here’s a few ways:

1.     Hollow character. This book has six main characters: Rupert, Signe, Henrik, Marie, Rachel, and the King of Poland (I'm serious), all of whom are essentially the same person. These are not people, but ghosts, who essentially think the same way, and who never have to make any concrete decisions. They were so boring, that when I got to the part about Chicago, I leapt with delight, because the city itself was the most interesting character so far. (It got about a paragraph of description before Anderson moved on to other stuff.)

Something you should go see instead of reading Added Upon

2.     Technical ideology. More than character, Anderson concerns his “book” with ideology: he wants to tell you all of the most famous Mormon doctrines, more than tell you about the people he’s created. I use the word technical in this bullet point because this ideological emphasis gives the book a scientific, explanatory spin to it. It’s a recipe, it’s an owner’s manual, it’s Yahoo Answers, it’s an infomercial—but it's not a novel.

3.     Forward design. Unlike a tightly plotted movie, in which the writer sees the end from the beginning, Anderson writes this book like a journal, never really sure about what’s coming next. This is why so few of the conflicts in the novel—Homan and Delsa’s suspended love, Rupert’s loss of his parents, Marie refusing Henrik’s proposal—ever land; they get barely any time to simmer, which prevents the reader from connecting with them. Anderson’s forward design gives the book no forward motion; it makes you want to put the book down, not race to the end.

I give it an iron medal! Hopefully you’ll never have to think about seeing this one in theaters.