Irreantum #17, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 2003
Editorial Correction: The first page of this pre-publication PDF incorrectly states it is the Winter 2002-3 issue. Actually, it is the Spring 2003 issue. Also, all of the photos and other graphics are missing from this PDF.
Table of Contents
- Letters
- AML News
- Interviews
- Jana Riess
- Douglas Adler
- Orson Scott Card (interview by Bob Gerztyn)
- Novel Excerpt
- Douglas D. Alder, Sons of Bear Lake
- Essays
- John Alba Cutler, Los escogidos y los despreciados: Latino Influences in LDS Literature
- Cherry B. Silver, Elegant Angst: Mining the Treasures of Mormon Personal Essays, 1982-2001 (2002 AML Conference Presidential Address)
- D. Michael Martindale, The Legacy of Legacy
- Memoir
- Melody Warnick, Relief Society Women Read the Tao Te Ching: Stories of a Mormon Book Club
- Story
- Katherine Woodbury, Thin, Scarlet Line
- Poetry
- Lance Larsen, This World, Not the Next
- Lance Larsen, Good Friday
- Janean Justham, Almost Two
- Kevin Klein, Drawing
- Sundy Watanabe, Boogeyman
- Lance Larsen, By Road, and By Sky
- Kris Bluth, Baptism
- Reviews
- Andrew Hall, Year in Review: 2002
- Jeffrey Needle, A Mystery Novel Addresses a Larger Mystery: A Review of Paul Edwards’s The Angel Acronym
- Lavina Fielding Anderson, Strong Characters, Rewarding Read: A review of Douglas D. Alder’s Sons of Bear Lake
- Katie Parker, Humor, Emotion, and Suspense: A review of Kerry Blair’s Closing In
- Greg Taggart, For the Defense: A Review of Boyd Petersen’s Hugh Nibley: A Consecrated Life
- Arlene Miera, Heartwarming Lessons from a Lifetime of Sharing: A review of George Durrant’s Scones for the Heart
- Lavina Fielding Anderson, Stone and Sea: A review of Margaret Blair Young’s Heresies of Nature
- Katie Parker, Clean and Likable, Though Lacking Substance: A review of Cheri Crane’s The Girls Next Door
- Katie Parker, Marriage Proposal Prompts Pondering, Yields Perceptive Look at LDS Culture: A review of Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s This is the Place
- Brooke Williams, Thrice Retelling John D. Lee: A review of Judith Freeman’s Red Water
- Charlene Hirschi, Mormon Feminist Memoir: A review of Alison Comes Thorne’s Leave the Dishes in the Sink Adventures of an Activist in Conservative Utah
- Charlene Hirschi, A Review of Sammie Justesen’s Common Threads
- Jeffrey Needle, Sinful Concoction Yields Hilarity: A review of Linda Hoffman Kimball’s The Marketing of Sister B
- Mormon Literary Scene
- AML-List Highlights
William Morris wrote about this issue on AML-List, Oct. 15, 2003:
First: A shout out to Jana Riess. The humor, insider understanding and optimism tempered by realistic expectations you brought to your interview was fabulous. If I ever see a black velvet painting of Joseph Smith again, I’ll buy it and send it to you (re: the painting — it’s a long story but involves a former bishop and a group of priests [LDS priests of course], Tijuana, a stolen van, a grandmother in Santa Monica, an advance screening of T2, a gay couple, and Annie Hall). I’m excited about the Buffy book (and secretly love that Spike is called William the Bloody). And finally, for those who aren’t Irreantum subscribers, here’s a tease quote from Riess’s interview: “As the membership matures, we will see the emergence of more independent Mormon voices. I am not talking of ones that are critical of the church; I am talking of voices that connect the Mormon experience — which has been all too insular — to the wider world.”
May those words be prophetic.
Second: Props to John Alba Cutler for his essay on Latino influences in LDS literature. One thing that Irreantum has lacked is essays that respond to, interpret, and engage with works of LDS fiction and film (I thought the John Charles Duffy/Scott Parkin dialogue-in-essay-form on Brigham City was fantastic — something that really enriched the field). I realize that the scholarly essays are somewhat reserved for the AML conference, but Alba Cutler’s work was rather accessible and raised some very interesting questions. I also liked that he tries to engage some contemporary critics/theorists (bell hooks, Levinas) and appropriate their ideas for use in a Mormon setting — we need more Mormon spins of modernist and postmodernist theorists, I think. It still reads like what it is — a portion of a thesis — but I appreciated the perspectives on Latino characters in such works as Angel of the Danube and Salvador. Finally, I think we’ll see some great stuff come out if artists and critics explore his question “what does it mean to be a Lamanite?” For instance, does it mean something vastly different for Latinos than it does for Pacific Islanders?
Third: Mad props to Katherine Woodbury for her story “Thin, Scarlet Line.” I’ve never really been able to get into Biblical-based fiction, and so I groaned as I began the story and read the names Rahab and Caleb and Joshua. I began to think, yes, this is well-written (and it is — the prose is spare but not sparing, polished but not falsely-faceted), but it’s not doing much for me. Ah, but then when the supernatural (so-to-speak, perhaps uber-natural would be a better term) figure arrived, things got better, and I found that in the end the story worked for me (or in me), and I thought about it at times afterwards. And the part near the end where the watchmen talks about God and fairness. Now that makes it Mormon for me. And makes it truth. Good stuff. Well worth the subscription price alone. So we got all the above, not to mention a quite funny essay by Melody Warnick, Andrew Hall’s invaluable year in review, a sneak peak at Douglas Alder’s novel, and probably the best slate of reviews (in terms of quantity and quality and clever titles and such) ever to appear in an issue of Irreantum, and more. Not bad.
Anyway, now it’s on to the Romance issue.