The Future of Mormon Fiction and Camille Paglia, Just For the Hell of It

Warning:  If my last post was a little salty, this one gets a little grand.  Offense is welcome.

After posting my rant on the Great Mormon Novel in response to Jerry Johnston’s article, I didn’t expect it to garner so much subsequent discussion.  Thanks to everyone for the interesting and challenging responses. Over at Motley Vision, both S.P. Bailey and William Morris chimed in with some excellent insights and ideas.  

Bailey refutes Johnston’s idea that Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene could comfortably move inside and outside their religious circles, writing for both Catholics and the larger literary culture.  It seems that life is always more complicated than newspaper columnists like to explore.

Bailey says:

Johnston’s view of Graham Greene and Flannery O’Connor also fails to persuade. Some “true Catholics” considered them heretical, irredeemably worldly, and decidedly un-Catholic. Just read O’Connor’s letters! Here’s the thing: they were serious Christians who refused to speak the language of their own flock. They told Christian stories in the terms of 20C fiction, and gained literary acceptance in the process. What stops Mormons from doing the same? Nothing. Really! Mormons that go this direction may not be loved (at first) in their own country. But what minor prophet is? Johnston’s assertion that there was no tension between Greene/O’Connor and their faith community is simply false.

And William simply wants everyone to stop worrying about the Great Mormon Novel.

The Great American Novel idea is dead. It’s worn out cliche that barely anybody has the energy for anymore and for Mormons to take up the idea is for us to prove yet again our status as belated moderns. And to play in to the discourse of the literary elites, of the critics and academics and editors and book reviewers who trot out the trope every so often simply to generate energy for their own decrepit ideas is to bow to an authority that Mormons shouldn’t and don’t need to acknowledge. No one is going to tell me what I should be worrying about when it comes to the production of Mormon narrative art.

So I have no worries about this whole Great Mormon Novel thing. I suggest you drop them too. The opportunity to create Mormon narratives, Mormon aesthetics, Mormon discourses, Mormon criticism is the only “great” thing we need to worry about.

Even at Times and Seasons, Kent Larsen has continued the discussion, bringing in Jer3miah into the mix.

The real solution to our image is, of course, to let people see us and understand us. When we portray our sacred in film and fiction, others will believe that our sacred is, in fact, sacred, although, admittedly, at the risk that others will ridicule. The solution is also to let others see that we have problems too, members who do evil and awful things and leaders who sometimes, inadvertently, err.

But, for now, the major Mormon book publishers, the rest of the principle Mormon media, don’t get it. They are stuck in this mentality that our image must be pure. And, as a result, the work they produce seems to say “All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well…”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like where that is headed.

In contemplating all these provocative ideas around the mythic goal of a Great Mormon Novel, I couldn’t help but think about the literary excellence that Mormons have achieved in the novel form, and the possible future of such excellence among a broader audience.  Thought I understand Kent’s view, I’m not despondent in the least.

An idea that seems central to this discussion: is it possible that quality Mormon fiction can cross the divide and please both Mormon readers and a general audience?  I wouldn't be easy, but I really don’t see why it couldn’t happen, other than a lack of imagination.

Since religion is such an important theme in Mormon fiction, it might be commonly perceived that a national audience would not be interested in Mormon life or its spiritual complexities and power.  But why not?

An article by literary critic Camille Paglia addresses the issue of the decline of religion in the arts and argues that the study of religion is necessary for a renaissance in American literature and art.  If you are a Mormon writer who only wants to create more of the same faith-promoting, didactic, storytelling tripe to make yourself feel all safe and sound, then stop here and don’t read further.  But if you are a Mormon writer who cares to create something more, that strives to progress beyond our past, then it would be good to contemplate and consider some points by Paglia.  

I would argue that the route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion. Let me make my premises clear: I am a professed atheist and a pro-choice libertarian Democrat. But based on my college experiences in the 1960s, when interest in Hinduism and Buddhism was intense, I have been calling for nearly two decades for massive educational reform that would put the study of comparative religion at the center of the university curriculum. Though I shared the exasperation of my generation with the moralism and prudery of organized religion, I view each world religion, including Judeo-Christianity and Islam, as a complex symbol system, a metaphysical lens through which we can see the vastness and sublimity of the universe. Knowledge of the Bible, one of the West's foundational texts, is dangerously waning among aspiring young artists and writers. When a society becomes all-consumed in the provincial minutiae of partisan politics (as has happened in the US over the past twenty years), all perspective is lost. Great art can be made out of love for religion as well as rebellion against it. But a totally secularized society with contempt for religion sinks into materialism and self-absorption and gradually goes slack, without leaving an artistic legacy.

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center.

Paglia offers a provocative and passionate analysis of religion and its influence, or lack thereof, in American literature and art.  She laments the lack of religious education and literacy in an every increasing humanistic American society where partisan politics is the cultural absolute.  She calls on creators to bring about a renaissance in American arts and letters thought the mythic stories and sublime ideas that religion can nourish. (Read the full article: PDF, html).

I think Mormons can be part of such a literary rebirth in the national arena.

We need to look beyond the minutia of the Wasatch Front and have a vision that the Mormon story is an American story, even a global story.

Stories that speaks to the concerns of human nature, sex, love, suffering, adversity, redemption, death, and the terrifying call of the sublime.

Stories that explore the grace and guts of real living, through the eyes and ears of all kinds of characters: good and evil, faithful and apostate, halfway-in and partway-out, Mormon and not-Mormon, but more importantly, everything in between.

A new vision in Mormon letters is essential for future excellence.  Let us tell stories that push us further and father, progressing along a path that will take Mormon fiction to new risks and heights.

Here’s to the future!

Comments

[Th.]

.

Three thoughts:

1. I live in the California's liberal East Bay but when I polled my high school students for interest in either a Bible as Lit class or a Comparative Religions class, interest was wild. Months later kids ask me if I'll be teaching the class next year. (Answer: the year after that --- if I'm really really lucky.)

2. Buy the Fob Bible! http://peculiarpages.com

3. I think what you're calling for is happening. Wm Morris told me it's looking like the zeitgeist actually. We were discussing the aforementioned Fob Bible and his own “Speculations: Trees” and a couple other slightly different but still scripture-based things (Jack Harrell's excellent "Calling and Election" comes to mind) and you know what? Maybe it is. I'm reading Card's new fiction anthology and the first story? Adam and Eve. The second? Noah and the Flood. It looks like we're dipping back into those wells.

[jared]

I LOVED the quote from Paglia about the need for a spiritual center in the arts.

As for the question of whether or not LDS fiction can be accessible to non-LDS audiences, check out this review of Jer3miah on salon.com (written by a non-lds writer)

http://www.salon.com/tech/giga_om/online_video/2009/06/12/the_book_of_jer3miah_not_just_for_mormons_anymore/index.html

[Stephen Carter]

In a non-fiction seminar we read an essay about Samson and Delilah. No one in the class understood it except the the two people in the class who had actually cracked a bible; me and a guy who used to be a pastor.

The teacher looked around the room and said in his southern drawl: "I'm not going to start a bible study or anything, but y'all should really read it. There are some great stories in there."