The following letter will be sent to all past Irreantum subscribers. Of course, the incentives described below will apply to anybody who chooses to subscribe. So don’t let this opportunity pass you by. Subscribe!!

Dear Friends of Irreantum,

Irreantum’s Spring/Fall 2009 Anniversary Double Issue will soon be released. As we celebrate Irreantum’s tenth year, we’re offering special incentives for all subscribers—past, present, and future.

The upcoming issue is one of Irreantum’s best yet, including fiction by Orson Scott Card, essays by Terryl Givens and Patrick Madden, poetry by Holly Welker, and photography by Val Brinkerhoff. You won’t want to miss it! (See a complete table of contents at the end of this message.)

This issue celebrates another milestone as well: having caught up with past issues, Irreantum now pledges to deliver Spring and Fall issues in a timely manner. Change, and even tragedy, has challenged Irreantum’s short history—including the death of our editor and dear friend Laraine Wilkins. Delays have resulted. But with this issue we’re officially back on track.

As a thanks to those who’ve stayed with us, the double issue will count as a single issue for current subscribers. If your subscription was due to end with the Fall 2009 issue, you’ll now receive a Spring 2010 issue before your subscription lapses. You’ll also receive another bonus: a complimentary copy The Best of Mormonism, courtesy of Curelom Books, the book publishing arm of Sunstone. This collection, which includes the best writing by, for, or about Mormons from 2007-2008, is packed with award-winning work from several national publications—including fiction, personal essays, book chapters, poetry, and a play. (A table of contents of The Best of Mormonism also can be found at the end of this message.)

A special offer for new subscribers and those whose subscriptions have lapsed: if you purchase a one-year subscription to Irreantum in the month of November 2009, you will receive Irreantum’s Fall 2009 Anniversary Double Issue, The Best of Mormonism, and next year’s Spring 2010 issue, edited by our new co-editor, Jack Harrell.

Irreantum is at a crossroads. Subscription rates have declined. If the numbers don’t improve, the magazine’s viability may be at risk. No matter how dedicated our staff, how excellent our contributors, Irreantum cannot continue without the support of paying subscribers. Please take this opportunity to renew your subscription. Pass this message along to friends and encourage others to subscribe. Or buy Irreantum subscriptions as Christmas gifts. The $25 one-year subscription to Irreantum includes membership in the Association for Mormon Letters, a non-profit organization advancing Mormon literature since 1976. To subscribe, please visit http://irreantum.mormonletters.org/subscribe. Your subscription will help ensure Irreantum’s survival and deliver the best in Mormon literature to your door.

Sincerely,
Angela Hallstrom
Jack Harrell
co-editors, Irreantum

Irreantum Spring/Fall 2009 Double Issue Table of Contents:

Fiction:

Orson Scott Card “The Elephants of Poznan”
Darin Cozzens “The Treading of Lesser Cattle”
Larry Menlove “Path of Antelope, Pelican, and Moon”
Charmayne Gubler Warnock “Nightshade”
Joshua Foster “Cheddar”

Critical Essays:

Terryl Givens “Paradox and Discipleship”
Jack Harrell “Human Conflict and the Mormon Writer”
Eric Samuelsen “The Association for Mormon Letters: Toward a Mission, Minus the Statement”

Poetry:

Doug Talley “Overcoming the World,” “Caelestia,” “Finding Place”
Paul Swenson “Behind the Mask,” “Traces of Laraine”
Holly Welker “Barren,” “Creation”
Michael R. Collings “Contrition,” “Damon Again”

Creative Nonfiction:

Jaren Watson “Of the Drowned”
Ryan McIlvain “Confessions of a Secular Mormon”
Patrick Madden “The Path of Redemption”

Reviews:

Patricia Karamesines, “No Better Off: Amy Irvine’s Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land”
Phyllis Barber “Big Love Before Big Love: Dorothy Allred Solomon’s In My Father’s House: A Memoir of Polygamy”
Laura Hilton Craner “A Mother Must Leave Behind Her Illusions: Kathryn Lynard Soper’s The Year My Son and I Were Born”
Heidi Hart “Fierce Voices: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History”

Best of Mormonism by Curelom Books Table of Contents:

Neil Aitken. TRAVELING THROUGH THE PRAIRIES, I THINK OF MY FATHER’S VOICE
FROM The Lost Country of Sight

Brittney Carman. BELIEVING OWL, SEEING OWL
FROM Black Warrior Review

Johnna Benson Cornett. GATHER
FROM Segullah

Darin Cozzens. REAP IN MERCY
FROM Irreantum

Lisa Torcasso Downing. CLOTHING ESTHER
FROM Sunstone

Joshua Foster. GOD DAMNED THE LAND BUT LIFTED THE PEOPLE; OR, A REDEMPTION IN THREE LEVITATIONS
FROM South Loop Review

James Goldberg, PRODIGAL SON
FROM New Play Project

Angela Hallstrom. WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?
FROM Bound on Earth

Lance Larsen. A FEELING IN YOUR HEAD
FROM Iowa Review

Patrick Madden. A SUDDEN PULL BEHIND THE HEART
FROM The Best Creative Nonfiction, vol 2

Scott Russell Morris. NOTHING IN PARTICULAR
FROM Prick of the Spindle

Kathryn Lynard Soper. SOLITAIRE
FROM The Year My Son and I Were Born

Emily Summerhays. HOW THE PRAYERS RAN DRY
FROM Sunstone

Lynda MacKey Wilson. WE WHO OWE EVERYTHING TO A NAME
FROM BYU Studies

Darlene Young. PATRIARCHAL BLESSING
FROM Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought

After reading Busby’s essay, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the following: Can a Mormon author write an unapologetically Mormon story—similar to Potok’s unapologetically Jewish stories—and expect it to be embraced by the larger community? And is Potok a Mormon writer’s best guide to the promised land of mainstream success?

The Gap between Jewish and Mormon Literature

The question of primary interest should be if . . . [mirroring the techniques Potok uses to make his novels accessible to a wide audience] could help Mormon literature go mainstream. Phyllis Barber, for one, questions whether these techniques are really transferable to a religion as new as Mormonism. After pointing out the difficulties in making our paradigm relevant to a mainstream audience, Barber mentions the common fallback to Chaim Potok:

An observer can say, “What about Chaim Potok . . . [and other] Jewish and Catholic writers? People are interested in them.” As I understand it, Judaism and Catholicism are much more universal, much more ancient and puzzling to the public mind than is Mormonism, which many consider a quaint, odd, right-wing cult, mainly known by its oddities, its yellow headlines. (114)

Barber’s statement highlights the problem with assuming Potok’s techniques can be transferred to a Mormon story, that is, the public mindset into which stories are born, which gives Jewish literature distinct advantages over Mormon literature in its ability to “go mainstream.”

First is the problem of familiarity with the religion. Although Potok’s stories are mainly about a fundamentalist branch not representative of mainstream Judaism, they are still rightly connected with the longer tradition of Judaism in the public mind. Though foreign to the reader’s practice, Jewishness still has the familiarity of its high-profile presence both in political history and practice. It seems something that readers ought to learn about—one might pick up the book for its cultural education value just as one might pick up Sandra Cisneros’s House on Mango Street primarily to get a glimpse of Latino culture and only secondarily because of its artful coming-of-age story. Judaism’s massive presence in modern society raises its interest as a subject for public consumption. In addition, people with more than a cursory knowledge are fascinated by the “ancient and puzzling” nature of the religion (Barber 114). A tale of Judaism brings connotations of holiness and secrecy, of strange ancient rituals, and in general, a way of life both connected and disconnected from one’s own.

On the other hand, the public image of Mormonism, if it exists at all, is often negative to modern sensibilities. A reader with no knowledge of Mormonism may feel no attraction at all to a book about its people. Given the vast amount of published material, a novel about a strange and obscure culture, one which a reader may be ignorantly certain they will never encounter, may serve to place it below seemingly more “relevant” works in the reader’s priority. At the opposite end, readers familiar with Mormonism may expect a Mormon novel to be an exposé on polygamy or cult-like corruption. Indeed, successful mainstream books about Mormons have been just that. Martha Beck’s Leaving the Saints serves as the main example, along with scores of lesser known memoirs recently published by those who have escaped from various polygamist colonies. The Mormon characters popular in mainstream genre fiction exist primarily as a convenient label on generic cult behavior (Austin). And even the great Lost Generation novels—The Giant Joshua and A Little Lower than the Angels—show this same leaning toward a sensationalist depiction of Mormonism. A desire to replace this type of literature with something more positive, modern, and community centered has driven Mormons to envision Potok’s work as a template for new Mormon literature.

There is some hope that recent events, in which Mormonism has hit the national news with a mostly positive spin, are paving the way for such a mainstream Mormon novel. Events with positive media coverage of the Church, such as the 2002 Olympics and Mitt Romney’s presidential bid, might change this tide of ignorance and stereotypes. However, their influence is limited in two ways. First, these events have been countered by negative press the Church has received—again, Martha Beck’s book being embraced by Oprah, the HBO series Big Love, and the FLDS raids in Texas, which, in spite of all the Church’s efforts, strengthened the connection of Mormons to polygamy.

Even if these negative events are compensated for by positive stories, the overall scale of media exposure remains a problem. The events propelling Mormonism into the public eye seem small and temporary compared with the events that propelled this century’s interest in Jewish literature. In particular, Jewish scholars have noted that events such as the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel were not only the impetus for much Jewish writing, but also a driving force behind that writing’s popularity. In his book on the Jewish presence in American literature, Louis Harap notes, “These events did a great deal to reduce the exoticism with which the Jew was regarded. Jews could be treated in literature as individuals, rather than a stereotype, to a greater extent than ever before. Nor can one overlook the fact that millions of American participants in the war had been brought into contact with Jews, which contributed to their demystification” (25). Clearly, Mormon history lacks an event of the same order of magnitude to attract public interest and dampen stereotypes. Although the Holocaust is certainly an extreme example, other subcultures in America have similar large-scale events backing their relevancy to the modern reader.

Cultural Specificity as a Road to Empathy

Does this barrier really matter though? Will the unfamiliarity of Mormonism inevitably keep it unfamiliar? Writers like Barber seem to think so: who would want to read a novel about a backwater religious tradition with less than two hundred years of its own history? Yet one might also ask, as Jewish literary critic Sheldon Grebstein does:

What would seem an unlikelier best seller than . . . a novel about Orthodox Jews, especially Hasidic Jews, set in the Brooklyn of the early 40s . . . whose most stirring action is a schoolboy baseball game? Yet Chaim Potok’s novel The Chosen . . . was a best seller indeed, even rising to the exalted number one position on the New York Times list. (23)

As Grebstein notes in his article, predicting best sellers is a difficult business, but it is irresistible to see if they can be “explained after the fact” (23). He concludes that at least part of the novel’s success was due to its combination of a Jewish community, “an alien and thus intriguing life-style,” with an American story, a “dream of success” ending with “a limitless future” (25).

This assessment of Potok’s appeal, I believe, is accurate: his writing is fascinating because the stories he tells are both foreign and familiar. Although The Chosen deals with the specific problems of a boy who doesn’t want to inherit his father’s religious empire, such intergenerational problems are universal. The conflict between the ideas one has been brought up with and those encountered in the world is likewise a universal phenomenon; as Potok says, “We endlessly travel culture highways crowded with ideas. And we continue to encounter new visions of the human experience” (Potok, “The Culture Highways We Travel” 10). Certainly situating the reader into a new society presents some challenges to the writer, but as we see in Potok, this barrier is not insurmountable.

Another evidence of this is Potok’s own discovery of this mode of writing. As a fifteen-year-old, Potok read Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, “a book about an upper class, British Catholic family, and I was a member of a very closed, very Orthodox Jewish world. And you can imagine that I knew a great deal about upper class British Catholics” (Walden 112). Seemingly, the story of the Flyte family should have been too alien for Potok to grasp. Yet the book quickly became one of the greatest influences on his adolescent life:

I was overwhelmed by that story. . . . I was fifteen years old, a little Jewish boy in New York and found myself, after about 70-80 pages, so inside the world of that book. That was the first time in my life that I was actually inside the feelings of people. . . . I remember closing that book and looking down at it and sensing the power of this form of expression (Walden 112).

After having a similar experience with James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Potok was compelled to create for the Jewish world what these two novels had done for the Catholic one. He saw that “these writers could get me to be interested in two different Catholic worlds” although there ought to have been no connection to his own perspective.

If Potok’s theory is correct, perhaps “a character’s struggle between obedience to LDS principles and obedience to self, or the struggle with emotions of fear/anger because of a bishop’s interview” are not untransferable as Barber fears (114). Potok claims that “a novel is really a way of presenting a particular world universally. It’s about particulars, but the writer’s hope is that it can be crafted in such a way that will enable all people to lock with it if they are willing to invest some time and energy getting into that world” (Chavkin 155). As novels like Waugh’s, Joyce’s, or Potok’s immerse us in a world, they teach us to think as that community, to understand the signs and symbols otherwise meaningless to us. We as readers learn to play by the rules of the community, again much as if we were reading science fiction, and our reward is a new understanding of problems that are not as foreign as we first thought. Perhaps what draws Mormons to Potok’s work is his mastery of this art, both bringing familiarity into an otherwise alien culture and bringing a deeper examination of our own. If these are the types of books we want to share with the world, perhaps Mormon writers can have no better model than this Orthodox Jew.

Elizabeth K. M. Busby graduated from Brigham Young University in August 2008 with a BA in English and a minor in chemistry. She and her husband, George, live in Springville, UT, where they recently welcomed their first child. Liz enjoys studying religious literature and writing creative non-fiction about her own spiritual experiences.

Jack Harrell teaches English and creative writing at Brigham Young University-Idaho. His novel Vernal Promises won the Marilyn Brown Novel Award in 2000. “Calling and Election” will be included in his next book, a short story collection forthcoming from Signature Books. Jack and his wife, Cindy, live in Rexburg, Idaho.

I must also add that Jack is a real pleasure to work with. Now on to the interview.

-What was the genesis of “Calling and Election”?

As an undergrad at BYU, back in 1992, I presented a paper on King Lear at the National Undergraduate Literature Conference. My paper was called, “The Unburdening of a King.” In the first act of the play, Lear says,

’tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age;
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburthen’d crawl toward death.

I was intrigued with the idea of Lear being “unburdened” of his worldly cares and duties. The thesis of my paper was that Lear only lost things of worldly value, and nothing of eternal value. Therefore, the story was not a tragedy.

So a couple of years ago, I was teaching Lear in one of my literature classes, and the idea came to me to have a Mormon protagonist who loses everything of worldly value—his job, his money, his house, his reputation—but loses nothing of eternal value—his wife and his testimony. That’s what got the story started.

-Many readers have questioned whether or not Jerry’s brain tumor is intended to indicate that Jerry’s experiencing a delusion. Although I’m sure you’re reluctant to impose your authorial interpretation on this story (its open-endedness is part of what makes this story effective, in my opinion), could you speak in some way to how the brain tumor functions in this narrative?

In the conclusion of my novel Vernal Promises, Jacob, drunk and confused, bails out of the bishop’s moving pickup and has a vision of Christ while injured on the side of the road. Some readers could call his experience non-miraculous and explainable, due to his drunkenness and injury. They could say he’s just imagining it all. But for me, the vision is literal. I feel the same way about Jerry’s experience. I think it’s an interesting reading to call it all a hallucination—I’m open to the possibilities there—but I don’t read it that way myself.

-The spousal relationship between Jerry and Camille is also integral to this piece. Could you speak to Camille’s role in the story, and to her thematic importance?

For me, Camille is one of those “eternal” things in Jerry’s life that we won’t lose. No matter what Brother Lucy puts them through, Jerry and Camille will have each other forever.

-Brother Lucy is another fascinating character. How did this character evolve? What role do you see him playing in the story?

Brother Lucy is obviously a trickster figure. One could ask, is he good, and truly working for the brethren? That seems unlikely in the context of the church as we know it. Is he a bad guy, then, a tool of the devil? That doesn’t fully satisfy me either. However, he does remind me of something Flannery O’Connor says about how the devil is always accomplishing means other than his own. Though Satan tries to inflict misery upon us, we often end up turning, in our pain, toward God.

In the process of writing the story, I was also thinking about the Book of Job. In that story, God and angels and the devil are just sitting around chit-chatting one day, when God asks the devil, “What about old Job?” God says, “of course he serves faithfully, because you always bless him.” So God allows the devil to torment Job. Fascinating! In the end, though, the devil fails and God’s servant is proved.

-Did you do much research on having one’s calling and election made sure, or did this story grow out of your general knowledge of the doctrine, mingled with your own imagination?

Well, I’m no expert, but I feel like I know at least as much as the next person about Mormon doctrine. When I joined the church in 1981, I immediately started a pretty hearty habit of reading everything about Mormon teachings—Talmage, McConkie, Brigham and Joseph. (I think I read almost everything by Cleon Skousen back in those days, too.) Since then I’ve added others to the list—B.H. Roberts and Sterling McMurrin, for example. When I started this story, I probably did about an hour of Internet research, enough to assure me that—though some talk as if they know what this calling and election business truly is—we really don’t know much about it at all. One Internet source said that an early 1900’s Salt Lake Temple record of ordinances listed about ten performances of the ordinance of having one’s calling and election made sure. I’m not sure if I even believe this. I did enough research to satisfy myself that I wasn’t messing with something that’s cut and dried, but is, instead, something that’s pretty fuzzy in our collective understanding—and thus open to a bit of interpretation on my part.

-Some have labeled this story as Mormon magical realism. Do you think this label is apt, or you consider the story to be a generally realistic depiction of something that could, conceivably, happen?

I like that idea of magical realism, though I’m only now learning what that means. After seeing this mentioned by readers on your blog, I asked a colleague for some further understanding of the phrase “magical realism.” My understanding now is that it describes stories set on this planet, contemporary to the writer, in which everything in the world is basically normal—everything except a few magical things that are experienced by the characters as though they’re ordinary.

This fits nicely with the Mormon worldview, I think. As a Mormon, I believe in the material world in the same way that someone with a contemporary scientific worldview might. But I also believe in the ministry of angels—and lots of other things, like the Spirit. Not just any kind of angel, but Mormon angels. Some angels have resurrected, physically-real bodies. Others have bodies of spirit, which Joseph described as still being material, but of a more refined nature. So our Mormon worldview is pretty material and “real.”

-This story is inextricably bound up with LDS theology. Do you consider yourself a writer of “Mormon literature”? Is most of your fiction as “Mormon” as this story? Do you think non-Mormon readers would find this story (and other fiction you write) accessible?

As for “Mormon Literature,” I like how AML and Irreantum try to continually revisit what that phrase means. We’re in trouble if we try to fix it too strictly. Concerning non-Mormon readers, I’ve heard a lot of writers say that the way to the universal is through the specific.

A lot of my stuff is Mormon, but not all of it. I always ask myself a question: Must this piece be “Mormon” in setting and characters? If the answer is no, or if it doesn’t matter either way, then I don’t make it Mormon. But this particular story genuinely had to be Mormon because the conflict and circumstances are totally connected to the Mormon idea of calling and election.

-How does your work as a teacher affect you as a writer?

A few years ago I saw Robert Redford, on TV, giving advice to would-be actors. He said, “Have a day job,” and for two very good reasons. One, it’s nice to get a paycheck and eat. Second, he said the artist’s craft is always drawn from the real lives of others.

The fringe benefit of being an English teacher is that I get to assign my students all these great stories, and I get to learn from the stories and how the students engage them. Beyond that, I’m always hearing things from my students—about their friends, parents, church leaders—that make me think about how people really relate to each other. But this goes for any profession that keeps one interacting with others. There are lots of lives and experiences out there, and these real lives are the stuff of good writing.

-What are you working on now?

I just finished a novel about an Idaho state park ranger, a convert to Mormonism, who’s struggling in his marriage and with his father-in-law, a Mormon religious extremist. A lot of the novel deals with questions about pre-existence and how promises made there affect our fate or free will here. I’m just beginning to look for a publisher for it. We’ll see if I have any luck.

Thanks so much, Jack! It’s been fascinating.