Note: This week's blog is a guest post by Jonathan Langford. If you would like to contribute a guest post, please contact Darlene Young at youngbookshelf at gmail dot com.

There’s a certain sense of validation, in our commercial culture, that comes with being paid for one’s work. This is at least as true in literature as elsewhere. Anyone (or so the thinking goes) can write a novel. The real test is whether you can get someone (not yourself) to pay money to publish it.

I sometimes get the sense that this applies not only to art but also to those who create it. Being a “professional” writer — i.e., someone who supports yourself financially through your writing — carries with it a kind of moral and artistic authority, and perhaps rightly so. A professional career in writing provides evidence of sustained quality, plus opportunities (and a powerful incentive) to improve over time.

Not to mention the fact that professionalism provides a partial solution to the often-discussed problem of Mormon ambivalence toward the arts. Otherwise pointless endeavors gain value, in the LDS scheme of things, if one can make a living from them. Art that brings in little or no money, on the other hand, is suspect at best, simply because it takes time away from supporting oneself and one’s family. More...

A little over a decade ago, I had met several of my goals as a writer. I had won awards and published books. Strangely, I found that publishing wasn't that big of a deal. Neither was winning an award. I even faced a rather embarrassing situation after I was given a medal for my fiction. I was joking around with my family and put the medal on, saying, "What if I really wore this thing?" Then, of course, I forgot that I was wearing it. Sure enough, company arrived, and there I was wearing my medal, as though it were part of my daily wardrobe. It was like answering the door wearing a tiara, swimsuit, and a queen's robe.

I could write stories which made it into some good journals, but I wasn't at all sure that a well-crafted sentence mattered much--certainly not nearly as much as it once had, when I was embarking on my dream to become a published writer. Now I really wanted to write something of importance, not just something that might win an award. I wanted to consecrate my talent, and I prayed for guidance to do just that. More...

Last Saturday, at the AML Annual meeting, we had the privilege of seeing a public screening of Corianton, probably the first Mormon feature film.  Based on the play by Orestes Utah Bean (if there were ever a perfect name for a Mormon playwright, it would be Orestes Utah Bean), the film was produced in 1931 by Lester Park, who, as it happens, is also Orson Scott Card's grandfather.  It was long thought that no prints of Corianton existed, but the Card family did have one, and it's now been digitally restored and can be seen at the BYU library.  James D'Arc, who oversaw the restoration, was kind enough to allow AML members to see the film.  It's a corker.  Of course, it's old fashioned to our eyes; reminiscient of the early silent Bible epics of Cecil B. DeMille, in particular his 1923 Ten Commandments.  The acting style is one we make fun of today--everyone in the film sounds like Margaret Dumont (Groucho Marx's comic foil), and they do blather on.  And the film really has alarming amounts of skin.  Of course, the story of Corianton is also the story of his seduction by the harlot Isabel, which in the film is accomplished with the aid of numerous half-naked dancing girls, cavorting about in what appears to be a 1931 attempt to capture Native American dance. More...

In an earlier post here at the AML Blog (and again during a panel discussion at last weekend's AML Conference) Chris Bigelow admitted that even though Seagull Book had requested ordering information on the anthology I edited, Dispensation: Latter-Day Fiction, he felt it was important to warn the buyer that this book's content is PG-13.  First of all, I'm not surprised that Chris hasn't heard back from the buyer (although I am very, very encouraged that the buyer even contacted Chris at all).  But--perhaps surprisingly?--I don't fault Chris one bit for issuing the warning that may have affected this anthology's ability to hit the shelves in a Seagull store.  I mean, I've dreamt of one of my titles being available at Deseret Book or Seagull.  I've lamented the fact that smallish publishers like Zarahemla and Parables will never score significant sales unless one of their books breaks through and shows up in these stores.  So why wouldn't I want the anthology I edited to be that book? More...

Today we are seeing Mormon Studies slowly emerge as a legitimate field of study in the academy. Endowed chairs have been established at Utah State and Claremont Universities with more on the horizon; courses on Mormonism and Mormon-themed scholarly conferences are found at schools across the nation; and several university presses are publishing major works in the field. The LDS Church has published two articles in its newsroom on the subject, one in 2008 here and one in 2007 here.

Both newsroom articles take a warm and welcome approach to this new era of scholarship. It appears we are moving into a period where scholars are beginning to take Mormonism seriously and the Church is recognizing that, as the newsroom article puts it, "Mormonism has a depth and breadth of substance that can hold up under academic scrutiny."

For the past few years, I have taught Mormon Literature at Utah Valley University, where, I believe, we offer more classes on Mormon themes than any other school. I have come to believe that Mormon fiction, poetry, drama, and film should be a central focus for scholars seeking to understand and teach Mormonism. Far too often, textbook descriptions of Mormonism tend to "flatten" out the diversity and complexity of the religion, and I see Mormon literature as a corrective to this tendency, enlarging the view and pointing out the breadth of Mormon thought. Terryl Givens' book People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture provides numerous examples of the value of Mormon cultural production in expanding the vision of Mormonism. He demonstrates that the tensions within Mormon thought give rise to our culture, that great art emerges only when Mormon artists take the religion and theology seriously. And he also documents a more robust version of Mormonism than that portrayed in many Religious Studies textbooks.

So my question for AML blog readers is this: if you were suddenly asked to teach a course on Mormonism at a secular university, what works of Mormon fiction, poetry, drama, and film would you use and why? What works best depict the history and theology of Mormonism? And what works do you see as giving this broader, more robust, view of Mormonism?

Stop the treadmill! I want to get off. Or even just slap it down a notch. But my publisher is wondering where my next manuscript is, my children need help with scouts and a science project (my daughter could use a bath, too, but that might be asking a little too much of me), and if I don’t do laundry my children may have to resort to their dirty clothes basket. (Hey, at least they had root beer floats today—I’m a hero.)

This week I had two major deadlines, including my latest manuscript for my publisher, who has been all kinds of patient. Though I usually write only during the day, this week I spent the better part of three evenings working to finish, mostly after I put the children to bed. Then in order to drag my exhausted body out of bed the next morning, I’d have to tell myself I’d go back to bed after the kids went to school. Actually, I use this tactic often. Of course what I really do is turn on the computer and sit there until they get home again because the magic always kicks in and sleep means nothing after that. Sometimes I remember to eat breakfast before one. More...

Since this will be the last new blog post before the fact I wanted to remind everyone that the annual AML Conference is this Saturday, February 27 in the library at Utah Valley University. It's a great opportunity to meet people, hear fascinating presentations, and share interesting conversation. If you can make it, I highly recommend the event. Registration starts at 8:00, so get there early.

On to the post proper.

Despite its reputation for hostility toward organized religion, science fiction has a storied history of directly addressing issues of ethics, philosophy, spirituality, and transcendent experience. As often as not the harsh treatment of institutions of religion is designed to point out that meaningful experience comes from the inside out, not by being pushed down from a homogenized organization. We discover who we are and what we believe (or at least who we want to be and what we hope is true) by personal exploration, not prepackaged dogmas.

Sf is just as hard on corporations and government institutions—and for largely similar reasons. More...

Years ago when I wrote a column for AML-List, Ben Parkinson and I had several discussions about humor narrative voice, style and tone. As Ben pointed out to me, traditional literary humor usually required a sustained, single narrative voice throughout the piece like other literature, whereas contemporary humor, both written and performed, may mix style in a stream of consciousness, expecting a modern audience to follow any sudden shifts in voice, style or tone. In performed humor these shifts are easily understood due to a variety of signals from the performer, whether via changes in voice tone, facial expression or gesture. In writing, however, such changes are difficult to follow, although the modern reader may more readily recognize those shifts as a result of hearing and seeing comedic performances and recognizing many of its conventions translated to the page.

Ben further suggested that humor writing had essentially only two narrative postures: the wag and the knave (or fool). The wag is understood as a clever wit, a comedic observer with the reader's point of view, whereas the knave is not a wit, but mostly an unreliable narrator and (you hope) unintentionally funny. More...

Literacy is changing. At BYU, we're retooling first year writing courses and implementing "multimodal literacy." It boils down to learning how to communicate using media in combination with words, mostly. Literacy is starting to be about design, about the combination of elements, not just text, nor just text + illustrating picture. There is a dynamic at play between the two, and there are different ways one engages audiences through adding image, video, audio, or hyperlinking to one's communication. 

I notice now that I think very differently about reading. I've been reading Daniel Boorstin's book, The Discoverers, a very good layman's history of famous voyages, inventions, and cultural changes. As I turned the pages, I found myself impatient with the fact that there was no image of the Ptolemaic world maps that he was discussing at length. I quickly pulled up very good images of the various maps he was talking about on my iPhone. Sure, I followed his words, but suddenly his words meant a lot more when I could see the thing he was talking about. How could anyone publish a book today and keep such readily available media from those who could profit from it? More...

Spoke last week in a stake fireside in Las Vegas. David Skousen introduced me (he also accompanied the opening hymn for the fireside: a rendition of “The Spirit of God” that would have parted your hair. Also, as he stood at the pulpit I learned that he’d dated my stepmom). In his introduction, he spoke of the necessity of being a “useful artist,” which is kind of a loaded phrase. And while I wouldn’t presume to speak for David as to exactly what he’d call a “useful artist” (I’ve got my own ideas about artists and their usefulness), it did at least seem apparent that his comment had to do with the relationship between artist and audience – that it contained an assertion that in the process of making art, the audience has a seat at the table.

So I’m thinking over the last few days about audiences. And the one solid principle that I keep coming back to is this: audiences don’t owe artists anything. More...