"Regimen" and the Mormon Lit Blitz

The second annual Mormon Lit Blitz began this week, and rather than participating behind the scenes, I get to to compete this year. My short story "Regimen" went up on James Goldberg's Mormon Midrashim blog yesterday. (See a full list of finalists below.)

"Regimen" is the third piece of micro-fiction I've had posted online. The first, "Album," was posted on Everyday Mormon Writer shortly after last year's Blitz. My second piece, "The Curse of Eve," went up on Wilderness Interface Zone in February. I've been pleased with all three pieces. They have been a nice creative outlet and distraction from my dissertation writing.

In the spirit of Wm Morris' "Liner Notes," I'll offer a few notes on "Regimen" for readers interested in its origins. Initially, the story began as an homage to Douglas Thayer's fiction, although many of the Thayeresque elements became lost through revision, particularly in the second half of the story. I wanted the story to be about a young man's awakening to the disparities between what is real and what he often assumes and imagines to be real. One thing Thayer's writing has done, I think, is make us more aware of the inner lives of young men in the Church--inner lives which tend to be much richer, imaginative, and valued than we as adult leaders generally want to believe. In "Regimen," I wanted this valued--even sacred--inner life to surface, or threaten to surface, in a way that challenged the main character's hold on it. I wanted him to feel his world coming apart.

I also tried to address the issues of wealth and social inequality within Mormon culture, which is another prominent theme in Thayer's work, and something I felt keenly as a youth in the Church. Wyler's ambivalence toward his adolescent body is another nod toward Thayer and his career-long study of Mormon masculinity. Wyler's idealization of Tina and preemptive disillusionment, however, derive from my own observations about how young Mormon men learn to think about young women.  

The green bikini is symbolic. Opaque clues to the origins of the color green are in Thayer's The Conversion of Jeff Williams, my favorite Thayer novel.

I have more to say, but I think I've already indulged enough in self-analysis. I've enjoyed reading the responses and analyses from readers. I hope to read more.

I'm also enjoying daily Mormon literature. It's going to be a great two weeks.

Here's the Mormon Lit Blitz line up:

Mon, 13 May: Introductory essay by the editors

Tues, 14 May: "Actionable Intelligence" by Jonathon Penny

Wed, 15 May: "Regimen" by Scott Hales

Thur, 16 May: "Celestial Terms" by Sarah Dunster

Fri, 17 May: "The Accidental Jaywalker" by Ben Crowder

Sat, 18 May: "Dumb Idols" by Hilary Stirling

Mon, 20 May: "Sister" by Merrijane Rice

Tues, 21 May: "Kayden Abernathy's Journal Pages 35-37 Partially Recovered from the House Fire, 6/21/2013" by Steven Peck

Wed, 22 May: "Natural Coloring" by Marianne Hales Harding

Thu, 23 May: "Birthright" by Emily Harris Adams

Fri, 24 May: "In Which Eve Names Everything Else" by Katherine Cowley

Sat, 25 May: "When I Rise" by Kimberly Hartvigsen 

Troubling the Metanarrative: A Review of Sarah Dunster's Lightning Tree

The challenge of Mormon historical fiction is Mormonism itself. As a metanarrative, after all, Mormonism assumes history is a giant puzzle where every piece contributes perfectly to the whole. Eternity extends forever in all directions, but time unfolds with a purpose. Adam falls, Christ redeems, Joseph Smith restores. Every baptism furthers the gathering of Israel, contributes to Abraham’s posterity, and brings to pass God’s work and glory. When something bad happens, Mormonism assures us it’s all part of the plan.

Except when a few puzzle pieces refuse to fit. For example: Black men are kept from the priesthood for longer than a century, seemingly without explanation. This is where Mormon historical fiction becomes challenging. If all history is supposed to testify that God’s hand is in the details, particularly in respect to the unfolding of the Restoration, how do we make sense of the aberrations, the ill-fitting pieces? Do we ignore or whitewash them, as some authors have done, and focus on the bigger picture? Do we take a pair of scissors to the pieces and force them to fit? Or do we toss out the metanarrative and consign Mormon history to chaos of chance?

These are the questions Mormon historical novelists have to ask whenever they take on the Mormon past—especially when what they take on seems to challenge the integrity of the sacred metanarrative. This is what Sarah Dunster has done with Lightning Tree (Bonneville Books, 2012), a novel about the difficult years of the Utah War (1857-1858), an era of Mormon history that few Mormons today know much about. And for good reason. No time in their history have they been more afraid, more desperate, and more willing to grapple tooth and nail with their enemies. These were days when Brigham Young preached blood atonement and George A. Smith whipped southern Utah into a frenzy so intense that a handful of zealots carried out the Mountain Meadows Massacre, one of the worst atrocities committed on American soil. It’s hardly the stuff of a tidy metanarrative, and one can understand why a Mormon historical novelist would want to avoid it.   

Still, Dunster is not the first to set her novel during the Utah War. Nephi Anderson treats the war briefly in Marcus King, Mormon (1900), strategically skipping over any messy details with the assurance that “a great poet” would “[s]ome day […] find all he needs in the heart histories of those trying hours” (107). Perhaps trying to be that poet, Susa Young Gates uses the Utah War as the backdrop for her jingoistic novel John Stevens’ Courtship (1909), which paints the Mormons as innocent victims of a corrupt and heathen state. More recently, the Utah War—or something akin to it—has been the stuff of science fiction, with Lee Allred’s For the Strength of the Hills (2001) and D. J. Butler’s The City of the Saints (2012). Also, the Mountain Meadows Massacre has been featured in many novels, including Vardis Fisher’s The Children of God (1939), Lee Nelson’ Storm Testament IV (1985), Marilyn Brown’s The Wine Dark Sea of Grass (2001), Judith Freeman’s Red Water (2002), and Gerald Grimmett’s The Ferry Woman (2004).

Lightning Tree, of course, is like these novels in its determination to bring forgotten history to life. Set in Provo one year after Mountain Meadows, the war initially seems a thing far removed from the life of Magdalena Chabert—or Maggie—the novel’s fifteen-year-old French-Italian protagonist. Like most teenagers, Maggie is less concerned about regional political crises than she is about more immediate concerns: friendships, family, and growing up. She is an orphan, the eldest daughter of Waldensian converts who died on the trek to Zion, and feels her second-class status keenly. Angsty, rebellious, and resentful, she battles constantly with Ma Alden, her foster mother, over her own upbringing and the upbringing of her younger sister, Giovanna. She also harbors suspicions about Ma Alden that a series of terrifying dreams—and alarming discoveries—only heighten.

Unlike so many novels about the Utah War, however, Lightning Tree does not try to capture history with broad strokes. The turmoil of Johnston’s occupation of Utah, along with the haunting specter of Mountain Meadows, lurks beneath the surface of Maggie’s story. Yet, it is not until the end of the novel, when John Cradlebaugh arrives in Provo to investigate rumors of Mountain Meadows and other crimes, that history collides with the intimacy of Dunster’s narrative. Even then, however, Maggie’s story never falls by the wayside. Indeed, if Lightening Tree succeeds on any level, it is on the level of character. The Utah War and Mountain Meadows may be unfamiliar territory, but Maggie’s confusion, vulnerability, and loneliness are not. As a character, she serves as a helpful anchor for readers who feel adrift in the strange setting.

Maggie’s is more than an anchor, however. The trauma she experiences when she uncovers the truth of her dreams parallels the trauma of the Mormon people—past and present—in the aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The way she copes with the startling truth—the way she comes to terms with it and the silence surrounding it—serves as a model for how readers deal with the ill-fitting pieces of the metanarrative. Moreover, like the reader, she must herself find a way to reconcile her faith with the rumors of the massacre, particularly since her foster father is implicated in them. However, unlike characters in The Wine-Dark Sea of Grass and Red Water, Maggie’s questions and fears about the Mountain Meadows are steps removed from the source. Her personal trauma, which is a figure for our larger historical trauma (and trauma from history), is her primary concern.

The distance Dunster keeps from Mountain Meadows is perhaps a reflection of her target audience, young adult readers. Lightning Tree zeroes in on grim years from the Mormon past, yet she does so without overburdening readers with the full emotional weight of the Utah War. As an adult reader who prefers to drink history straight, I wish Lightning Tree had more of an edge to it. While the story and its characters captivated me, I did not feel fully transported to the alien world of nineteenth-century Mormonism. To be sure, this is no critique against Dunster’s writing style or historical sense; rather, I think it is merely my reaction against the novel’s tight focus on Maggie’s young adult experience. Her naïveté makes her a heartbreaking, realistic character, but it also limits her perception. Had Dunster allowed the novel’s point-of-view to drift into the minds and hearts of her other characters, especially the complex Ma and Pa Alden, Lightning Tree would have resonated more with me.

At the same time, I recognize that this is an important novel for young adult readers—and certainly adult readers—who are interested in Mormon history. Far from the whitewash of The Work and the Glory and its imitators, this novel provides a matter-of-fact portrayal of nineteenth century Mormonism that is free of cliché. Dunster, for example, bravely incorporates into her narrative such taboo topics as blood atonement and polygamy, yet without the sensationalism that we see in works like Red Water, The 19^th Wife, and True Sisters.

This, in my opinion, makes Lightning Tree a must-read work of Mormon historical fiction. It troubles our notion of the Mormon metanarrative puzzle, yet without the scary music that causes so many to flee the puzzle’s challenge. It draws us in, pulls us towards the truth(s) of history, and gives us ways come to terms with what we find.

Nephi Anderson Sites in Brigham City

Nephi Anderson lived in Brigham City from 1890 to 1904. During that time, he worked as a teacher for the Third Ward schools, served a mission to Norway, and published  more than forty works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. In 1900 and 1902 he was elected and reelected county superintendent of schools, and in late 1903 he was called to assist Heber J. Grant in editing the Millennial Star in Great Britain.

Shortly after his call, tragedy struck. On Christmas Day 1903, his wife Asenath began showing signs of sickness. By the end of January 1904 she had not improved, and she died on the 26th. They had been married for just over seventeen years. Together, they had six children--two girls and four boys. Three of the boys died shortly after birth, though, and the surviving son, Gerald, was always sickly.

The grave marker for Nephi and Asenath's three sons who died  in infancy.
NOTE: The marker incorrectly identifies Anderson as Nephi C. Anderson rather than C. Nephi Anderson.
Curious...

Asenath was buried in the Brigham City Cemetery beside the graves of the three infant boys. I visited the graves last month during my trip to Utah for the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference. The graveyard is only a few blocks away from the home where I believe Anderson lived when his wife passed away. Nearby is also the grave of the Andersons' oldest daughter, Ronella, and her husband. It is also within sight of the grave of Lorenzo Snow, one of the founders of Brigham City and President of the Church between 1898 and 1901.

Asenath's headstone

What I believe to be Anderson's last home in Brigham City is now a funeral home, Olsen-Meyer Mortuary, across the street from the Box Elder Tabernacle and a block away from the new Brigham City Temple. I visited the home immediately after leaving the graveyard and found two women there who let me in and gave me a tour. Neither knew anything about Anderson or the history of the home--aside from the fact that it was owned by Lorenzo Snow--but they showed me what in the home was original and what had been added on when it was converted into the funeral home. They also let me take pictures.

Olsen-Meyer Mortuary
former residence of Nephi Anderson
205 South 100 East, Brigham City, UT

I believe Anderson lived in the home based on a picture I discovered in the digital collection of Utah State University, which labels it his home. I only hesitate to call it Nephi Anderson's home because I currently lack additional corroborating evidence tying him to the house. Also, on my way out of the cemetery, I saw a headstone for another Nephi Anderson in the city. It seems to have been a popular name. I don't want to jump to conclusions...

Nephi Anderson Home, ca. 1898
205 South 100 East, Brigham City, Utah

My optimistic guess, of course, is that it is his house. The picture is labeled 1898, which would place it around the time Added Upon was published. If this is his house, then it is likely that the woman and two girls on the front porch are Asenath, Ronella (age 11), and Laurine (age 2).

Asenath and Laurine?

Ronella?

The inside of the house is, as one would expect, funereally Victorian. The women who worked there, again, were unsure about what was and was not original to the house, but it had an old-ish decor and I image certain elements--the staircase, the fireplace, the chandelier--could possible date back to Anderson's day.

Perhaps the oddest part of my visit to the Nephi Anderson home was my glimpse into the Anderson bathroom--or what could have been his bathroom--which the funeral home now uses as a storage closet. The woman who showed me around said that they assume the room was the bathroom based on old pipes sticking from the wall. I have no reason to doubt them.

I hope to get better evidence that this was the house of the Nephi Anderson. If it was, then this house has enormous significance to Mormon literary history. Maybe after I make my first million, I will purchase it and turn it into an Anderson museum--especially since Anderson's Salt Lake City home near the 10th Ward Chapel is not a strip mall with a closed Hostess bakery shop.

Site of Anderson's last home
722 East 400 South, Salt Lake City

Now I just need to make my first million. Or try to crowd-fund my way into ownership. 

[Insert cynical laughter here.]

But on a more serious note, I end with a poem Anderson wrote in his Great Britain mission journal on 3 March 1905, what would have been Asenath's thirty-seventh birthday:

Dear Lord, to her who lives with Thee

     My birthday gift confer,

That she today my think of me,

     As I now think of her. 

Asenath Anderson Grave
Brigham City Cemetery

Post Script: Here are a few more picture for good measure...

The Logan Temple
Nephi Anderson and Asenath Tillotson were sealed here on 22 December 1886

Another shot of the house...

The Brigham City Temple
I think Anderson would like today's view from his old front porch step

A side view of the temple

Moroni...

The Box Elder Tabernacle
Across the street from Anderson's house. He would have attended meetings here. 

Nephi Anderson at work...

Nephi Anderson at his desk in the office of the Utah Genealogical Society, 1917

Nephi Anderson's "Duplicity"

I don't think Nephi Anderson was a bad writer, but he was--like most writers--guilty of producing some less than impressive works. Take "Duplicity," for instance. I discovered it during my research trip last year in the Church History Library. It was written in 1890, when Anderson was twenty-five years old. It's the earliest thing I've discovered by Anderson, although I'm sure there is earlier stuff out there. It was read during a teacher's conference in Ogden, but I don't know if it was ever published.  

As indicated in the title, the poem is a fairly standard treatment on the theme of duplicity. I find the first four lines particularly amusing, with predictable rhymes and the clumsy line "Thou art a monster grim." As it progresses, though, I think the poem improves, yet I wouldn't call it Anderson's best work. Of course, I haven't made a study of his poetry, but what I have read of it hasn't impressed me as much as his long fiction. 

What I do find interesting about the poem is its context. The poem was written to be read and performed before an audience. I've come across accounts of Anderson reading his work to an audience before--with a less than stellar reception*--so I wonder how "Duplicity" played out with its audience. In 1890, Anderson would have been a new teacher with his success as a popular Mormon writer still in the future. Moreover, he was still a year away from his first mission to Norway, which may suggest that his public speaking skills were still rough and largely untried before anyone but a classroom full of young students.  I wonder how and how well Anderson carried out the reading.

Anyway, here's the poem:

Duplicity

Duplicity, what evil lies

Within thy double-dealing eyes!

Thou art a monster grim. Within

Thy heart is hid a grievous sin.

First from thy meek, smoothe lips are sent

Soft honeyed words to represent

Kind feeling; and when simple hearts,

Not skilled in all thy wily arts,

Extend the tender flower of trust,

Thou scorn it, tread it in the dust.

Duplicity, in Godlike guise

Thou drovest Eve from Paradise.

And ever since the world began

Has stirr’d up strife in man ‘gainst man.

Oft hidden in the church, the state;

Found dwelling in the low, the great;

Existed in the rich, the poor,

The meek, the proud, the evil doer;

In lowest depths, on top most heights,

Where e’er man’s pinions take their flights.

Duplicity, what loving bands

Are burst asunder by thy hands!

Fair maiden, wife, or motherhood

Escape not they capricious mood.

In cooing lovers’ calm retreat,

Thou comest with thy dark deceit.

E’en round the sacred hearth of home

Thou’rt not afraid, bold one, to come.

Where peace should reign, where love should bless,

Thou’rt seen in all thy hideousness.

Duplicity, in armour bright,

The cause of freedom feigns to fight.

Yet, but within that glit’ring mail

Cowers a fearful, craven snail.

Sitting on heights, beneath thine eye

Earth’s hoards of toiling creatures lie,

Looking to thee for help, for light

Protection in each vested right

With the right hand stretched out to bless

Thy left pours forth destructiveness.

Duplicity, what meaning lies

Within thy double-dealing eyes?

Who, laughing maid, from wanton glances

Can judge aright fond lovers’ chances?

From eye, or hand or lips can guess?

For oft thy “no” means naught but “yes.”

Who can discern thee in thy guises?

Who are prepared for thy surprises?

Thou art too wise, too deep for me,

Duplicity, Duplicity.

                                                Nephi Anderson

Read before the Ogden City Teachers’ Association. May 6, 1890.

* In the 1 July 1894 issue of the Woman's Exponent, this mixed review was given of Anderson's reading at a Brigham City event: 

"Changing the character of the entertainment was an original true story composed and read by Nephi Anderson. The reading and the scenes were restful and true to life and portrayed the talent of the young man in story telling, though the pictures were not so powerfully drawn as to be at all exciting" (157).

New Tumblr Page

I've set up a new Low-Tech World Tumblr page. I hope to use it to share pictures, memes, quotes, and links about Mormon literature.

Things are getting busy, so this is one way for me to contribute without investing a lot of time.

I also plan to keep things pretty light on Tumblr. Hence the tagline: A Mormon Literary Funhouse.

The house is metaphorical. The fun is not...at least not to me.

If you are on Tumblr, I implore you to follow me...

If you are not, I implore you stop by once and a while...

Here's the link: http://thelowtechworld.tumblr.com/

Help Fund Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS

Do you have $15 to $1000 to spend in support of Mormon literature? Why not spend it on Christopher K. Bigelow's latest project, a crowd-funded memoir called Mormon Punk: From LSD to LDS. As the publisher of Zarahemla Books, Bigelow has record for producing quality, award-winning books. Why not throw some money his way?

Interested people can learn more about the project, read a chapter from the memoir, and find out how to contribute here. Also, here is a synopsis of the book: 

Synopsis

As a sixth-generation Mormon and the oldest of ten siblings, I was ordained to the priesthood at age twelve. By then, however, I was utterly bored with the LDS religion—my true inner religion had become Dungeons & Dragons and the rock group Rush. As soon as I left home at age seventeen, I escaped into Salt Lake City’s mid-1980s underground punk and New Wave scene, my generation's version of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Rather than finding a workable new life, however, I ended up—possibly as a result of taking hallucinogenic drugs—encountering the devil in a harrowing midnight ordeal. My encounter was not unlike the demonic experiences of some early Mormons, including Joseph Smith and my own ancestor, the polygamous apostle Heber C. Kimball. Wanting to protect myself against such malevolent forces, I did a 180 and dove back into the religion of my youth.

As I started seeking my spiritual fortune in Mormonism, I confronted an epic decision: Should I go through the mysterious Mormon temple and embark on the faith's rite of passage, a two-year proselytizing mission? And if I made it through that test, how would I then fashion an endurable lifelong Mormon reality for myself?

From the Vaults: Josephine Spencer's "The House-Warming at Eardley's"

Here's some Mormon local color fiction for you...

“The House-Warming At Eardley’s”

By Josephine Spencer

Improvement Era

October 1907

Martha Stone looked after Letitia’s lithe, young figure with sudden inspiration.

“Dan’l, I wouldn’t wonder if she could ketch Purdy!”

“Who, Letty? I hope she’s got better sense’n to take up with that hulk!”

“His hulk o’ money’d come handy clearin’ up her family’s finances.”

“Martha !” Daniel rose and shook a warning finger at his wife.

“Don’t you go workin’ any sense of a duty like that into your match-makin’ for that child. She’s got a right to her own happiness and-”

“And that’s why she ought to know Sam Purdy’s got money enough to lift all her own and her family’s burdens. If that ain’t happiness enough she can go on school-teachin’ for life; or marry Marvin Pond and help keep the town store.”

“Either of them’s a heap better than helpin’ Purdy raise punkins. That’s what his wife ‘ll do in the end; and it ‘ll be Ellen Eardley that ‘ll do it. I’ll guarantee her punkin-fields against Letty’s pink cheeks and star-eyes any time.”

“You better not!” quoth Martha; “Sam’s had ten years chance at Ellen, and ain’t snapped her up yet.”

“It’s because of the sport you match-makin’, meddlin’ friends and mothers and daughters have made him, anglin’!” snapped Daniel; and for once his word was the last.

Letitia could not but feel resentful against the family financial crash which had nipped short her budding college career, and made her a pedagogic exile in Mayville; but nineteen is an effervescent age; and there were things that atoned.

Marvin Pond, for instance, she considered a dispensation. Could anything else have cut short his college career to bring him-keen-witted, stalwart-limbed, Roman-featured, brown-eyed-to sojourn here during her own exile? Of course, Dad Pond had ailed for years; but strange that the stroke that laid him at last temporarily helpless, and his beloved store at the mercy of strangers, should have happened to bring Marvin home this autumn, instead of some other! Both of them stranded, as it were, on ash-heaps of affinitive ambition-what wonder that the secret, though silent, sense of such a tie should electrically thrill their hearts.

Read This Book: A Review of Theric Jepson's Byuck

How do you review a book that can’t hold still? This has been my dilemma this morning. I’ve already tried four or five times to write this review, and each time I’ve written about two hundred words before the inkwells of my brain dry up and my fingers stop typing. Part of me, the half prone to guilt and other matters of the spirit, blames my struggle on the fact that I started it Sunday morning when I had more important things I needed to be doing, like reading my scriptures or listening to conference talks. The rest of me blames it on the book itself. Why else would I be wrestling to get words on the page. It’s not like I’ve never written a book review before.

I guess part of me also wants to throw in the towel, forget all of the analytic crap that goes with being a critic, and write what I want to say: THIS BOOK IS HILARIOUS! READ IT, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! READ IT!! READ IT!!! YOU WON’T REGRET IT! IT’S FANTASTIC!!!

But that wouldn’t really preserve that cool objective tone I like to use so much.

And I hate when people write in all caps. It’s so tacky.

Anyway, the book is Byuck (Strange Violin Editions, 2013), Theric Jepson’s debut novel about two college roomates, David Them and Curses Olai, who resist the thrall of matrimony and adult responsibility by writing Byuck, a rock opera about resisting the thrall of matrimony and adult responsibility. If that sounds like a screwy premise, it’s because it is. Byuck follows in the long tradition of Mormon screwball comedy. Like the films Napoleon Dynamite and Unicorn City, as well as David Clark’s recent novel The Death of a Disco Dancer, it orbits around the antics of a likable loser—in this case, Dave—whose ill-fit in the world prods him ever onward toward the ridiculous and absurd. If you like any of these comedies, you’ll like Byuck.

But it’s worth mentioning that Byuck isn’t just another instance of Mormon screwball realism, which is basically a genre that tends to hide its Mormonness as much as it flaunts it. For one thing, it’s more kinetic, more flighty than these other works. Rather than staying more or less grounded in the oddities of this world—which is essentially what Napoleon Dynamite, Unicorn City, and Disco Dancer do—Byuck is frequently interrupted by scraps of English major Dave’s idiosyncratic writings: lousy rock opera scenes, short stories, numbered lists, and short autobiographies of his friends. These interchapters, which seems the best word for them, compliment the main narrative and offer a much-needed window into the psyche of Dave, who isn’t the most self-aware character in Mormon fiction. They are also pretty fun. Like “The Mysterious Game,” the short story Dave writes about a game female BYU students play with the ward directory. It’s chuckle-worthy, like practically everything else in the novel.

Have I made my point yet? You need to read Byuck. You need to stop reading this review right now and buy the book. Or borrow it from someone else who has already read it. Because you need to read it.

Do I need to bring out the caps?

Like Steven Peck’s The Scholar of Moab and A Short Stay in Hell, Byuck isn’t your parents’ Mormon novel. For instance, you can see the influence of postmodernism on it--yet Jepson never lets the novel feel like some rerun from the tail end of the twentieth century—which is remarkable considering how important nostalgia for that era is for Byuck and its characters. (Fans of Billy Joel and long-distance calling cards might shed tears for days gone by.) I prefer to call it (let’s aim high here) paradoxical realism—nay, Mormon Paradoxical Realism—for the way it constantly tries to undercut and contradict itself. Byuck, after all, is absurd realism, a celebratory critique of Mormon sexual mores. It champions artistic creation with a crappy rock opera. It parades as light reading in order to posture as literary fiction.

And Dave?

Dave is a Byronic hero without any shred of Byron to his name. (Or soul? Byron resides in the soul, right?)

Which brings me to the next thing I wanted to bring up about Byuck. There’s a great scene where Dave, Curses, and Ref—Dave’s sort-of love interest and friend since childhood—attend an MFA opening at the HFAC. At the opening, the central piece is a giant painting of a thumbtack entitled Of International Significance #45, which meets Dave’s bare minimum standard for good art—it features “neither eye trauma nor naked people”—yet “[does] nothing for him.” It is another painting—a “triptych of Washington, Lincoln, and a jack-in-the-milk-jug”—that he prefers. “Not only was it kind of funny,” we learn, “but the strength of the colors made it rise above the silly.” I like the scene because it explains what’s great about Byuck. So much of what tries to pass as significant art is…

Heck.

Maybe I’m trying too hard with this review. Byuck is simply a great book. A pleasure to read. It might even be the funniest novel about Mormons writing a rock opera that you will read this year. Unless teenagers start writing Byuck fan fiction that’s better than the original. Which isn’t likely since Byuck is nothing like Twilight.

Put simply: Byuck is its own review. In fact, it wrote its own review. You can find it (according to my Kindle) 5% of your way into the book:

“What’s Byuck?”

“It’s like BYU, only it’s Byuck.”

“I don’t get it.”

Dave looked at Curses and Curses shrugged. “No one does,” said Dave.

“Then why are you calling it something no one gets?”

Dave opened his mouth a few times. Finally he said, “Simple faith.” 

Personal Mormonism: A Review of Stephen Carter's What of the Night?

The personal essay and Mormonism go way back. Joseph Smith wasn’t much of a writer, but he took every opportunity to dictate his life story to his scribes. More often than not, these dictations were rather mundane and clerically impersonal, revealing a life spent in meetings and councils and conferences. Occasionally, he would strike an anecdotal note, particularly when he wanted to set the record straight on his story. He would then narrate fantastic events and give them meaning. He would endow a common grove of trees with light or a brilliant meteor shower with apocalyptic grandeur.

At these times, Joseph Smith wore the hat of a personal essayist—and he wore it well.

Stephen Carter carries on this tradition with What of the Night? (Zarahemla Books, 2010), a rare collection of personal essays about Mormons by a Mormon—mostly for Mormons. Many Mormon readers already know Carter’s work, of course, from Sunstone magazine, that bastion of alternative Mormon thought that Carter has edited since 2008. Most of the essays in What of the Night?, in fact, first appeared in Sunstone or its bastion-brother Dialogue, which is not surprising considering the alternative Mormon story they tell.

Or seek to tell. Like Joseph Smith, Carter finds meaning everywhere—in the dead husk of a gutted fish, in the smoke circles of his brother’s cigarette habit, in the solid aftermath of a digested habanera—yet the conclusions he draws from these meanings are never as cocksure and conclusive as the Prophet’s. Joseph Smith wrote with a certainty that bordered for many of his contemporaries on righteous arrogance. Carter writes in an opposite vein, however: a kind of doubt fueled by wicked humility. Here, for example, is his take on the Priesthood and the weight it carries:

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have this weight. Sometimes I wish I could drop it: the power, the responsibility, the tradition, the expectations. I wish I could cut all the ropes and just fly for a little while, scope out the scenery and choose a nice place to visit. Sometimes I envy the people who can leave the Mormon church, who can forget about their priesthood, who can find a new tradition that suits them better, or create their own. What would happen if I didn’t have to wrestle this angel anymore? (Kindle Location 462)

Honest admissions like this are scattered throughout What of the Night? They give the collection a vulnerable voice that is all but absent from the writing in mainstream Mormon publications. In essays like “The Weight of Priesthood,” where the above quotation comes from, and “The Calling,” an account of Carter’s last month in the mission field, this vulnerability seems particularly gutsy because it exposes the often unspoken chinks in the armor of Mormon masculinity. Carter, in a sense, presents himself as a Thayeresque hero. Burdened with the legacy of Mormonism, awed and alarmed by the responsibility of manhood and priesthood, he struggles to reconcile the real of his experience with the ideal of his religious education. Like Harris Thatcher, the protagonist of The Tree House, he feels the vague presence of truth constantly, but never succeeds in holding it in his hand for very long. As he notes in “Writing as Repentance,” the last essay in the collection, this constant—sometimes futile—grasping for truth has placed him in the relatively unexplored canyon between the mountains of Mormon and anti-Mormon orthodoxy.

Despite its honesty, however, I felt that What of the Night? was missing something. In his essay about the priesthood, for example, Carter has much to say about his early experiences with the Priesthood, yet becomes vague when he describes his post-mission shift from orthodox belief to doubt. “Doubting is a difficult business in Mormonism,” he writes, “especially if you were raised in the church.” This is true, of course, but Carter largely leaves you to take his word for it. What is missing, in a sense, is the narrative of Carter’s own descent down the mountain of orthodox Mormon belief. As readers, we know that Carter doubts, but we never get the specifics of why. What happened in the “five years after [his] mission” that led him to doubt? What doctrines or ideas troubled him the most? What were the effects of this changes on those he cared most about? Detail are surprisingly few, especially considering the standard transparencyof the personal essay genre.

Lacking as well are other, less personal details. While I enjoyed his essays on Eugene England, I felt that they needed to supply more background on England himself, especially since the pre-Bloggernacle England and his legacy are becoming increasingly more distant as the years pass. Moreover, I felt that the collection was altogether too short. Carter is a fantastic writer who has a keen understanding of the American Mormon mind and culture. By the time I finished What of the Night?, I was ready for more.

Which is to say: What of the Night?, despite its unfortunate omissions, is worth your time. In fact, it is worth more time than it actually demands from its readers. It is, after all, a fairly quick read.

Finally—and I invoke the language of testimony—I would be ungrateful if I did not mention “The Departed,” the essay from the collection that resonated most with me. It is not, to be sure, the best essay in the collection—that would be “The Calling”—but it is the essay that speaks of what I value most in Mormonism outside of my own personal commitment to its doctrines and teachings: the Mormon artist. In this essay, the Artist is Mormon filmmaker Richard Dutcher, but Dutcher functions for Carter (and the reader) more as a symbol for Mormon creative potential in the essay than as a living, breathing artist. As Carter observes, Dutcher stands apart from his contemporary Mormon filmmakers—the Hesses, Ryan Little, Neil LaBute—because he “took Mormonism seriously in all its peculiarity, in all its promise, in all its paradox,” yet was met with a deaf ear by the Mormon community. Carter asks:

What can you do when a huge part of your community can’t or won’t hear the unique voice you’ve cultivated? What do you do when parts of your community condemn you for exercising your talents? What do you do when your community ignores or reviles the stories that nourish you? (Kindle Location 947)

As usual, Carter doesn’t give us the pleasing answer. The title of the essay—“The Departed”—references a kind of historical exodus of Mormon artist away from the community that nurtured them—a perpetual Lost Generation that includes not only Dutcher, but also poet May Swenson, Carter’s great aunt.  “Maybe one of Mormonism’s roles in the world, beside producing FBI agents, is to export artist to the world the way the Soviet Union used to,” Carter suggests. The notion troubles me immensely, but with Carter I regret that “the field of Mormon arts has been left to hard-working but only semi-talented artist [or, in my case, critics] like me.” I’m optimistic that the situation will improve—in fact, I’ve seen a lot of work lately that gives me great hope—but I still think we have miles and miles to go.

The good news is that we still have Stephen Carter. And that means we’ll likely have more books like What of the Night? in the future.