Mormon Literaturstreit: the rooted and the open
Hello.
I hope you’ve had a lovely, maybe even lazy, August.
For this newsletter I have two things for you:
The next installment in the Mormon Literaturstreit, featuring Gideon Burton
Some half-baked thoughts on the afterlife and literature
Since I last emailed you, I made a bit of progress on the novella I’m writing and also came up with a couple of ideas for short stories, both of which fall into the Mormon side of my writing. It was a promising but not wildly productive month.
I also did a live Q&A with the Dialogue Book Club to talk about The Unseating of Dr. Smoot. It was a fun time. Really thoughtful questions that led to me sharing stuff I haven’t before about both the book and my writing process and approach to Mormon fiction. They do record the sessions, so if you join now you should be able to go back and view my appearance as well as those of the previous authors.
August also saw the release of another Will Esplin track on Bandcamp: “out of frame” is a companion track to “failed to compile” that fuses a hard techno beat with an acid bass line. As always, you can stream it for free five or six times and then purchase it if you’d like to keep listening to it.
I’m hoping to release a full EP of techno tracks later this year.
Mormon Literaturstreit: Gideon Burton attempts a synthesis
Back to the Mormon Literaturstreit this month. We’re now past the Cracroft/Jorgensen back and forth and into attempts to, if not reconcile, at least synthesize or move forward from their debate.
Mormon Literaturstreit: Gideon Burton argues for both rootedness and openness
Brief Summary
Gideon Burton, who later would become a professor in BYU English’s department, but at the time was a grad student, entered the Mormon Literaturstreit via a presentation at the AML annual conference that was later published in Dialogue. With “Should We Ask, ‘Is This Mormon Literature?’ Towards a Mormon Criticism”, Burton says that both Cracroft and Jorgensen are correct, claiming that Mormon criticism needs to be both rooted in Mormonism (the Cracroft POV) and open to “entertaining the stranger” (the Jorgensen POV). He argues that the both/and approach is foundational to the Restorationist ethos of Mormonism and should be the model for Mormon criticism. He also warns against the two dangers of “misrepresenting one side to another and underestimating the utility of one side to the other”.
In proposing this synthesis, Burton situates the project of Mormon criticism not only within the concept of Restoration, but as a key cultural project that can lead to the establishment of Zion.
Key Quote
“Worries over preserving Mormon identity in literature should center less on whether we are reminding readers of our current cultural configuration as whether we are maintaining this vision of an emerging Mormon identity—one in which we come to understand ourselves more fully during that process of reflection and interaction which occurs in making ourselves known to others and making others known to us.”
Why It’s Important
Because while I have several quibbles with Burton’s approach (click through to the full post above for those), this sentence here is as good of an encapsulation of any of my motivation for and approach to creating and writing about Mormon culture. The key reason is the verb “emerging” (although the “process of reflection and interaction” is also important, of course). As I’ve said before, I feel quite strongly that my involvement in Mormon literature is a calling to express and explore ways of being Mormon and thinking about Mormonism (doctrrine, history, experience, culture) in ways that sidestep or transmute or mess with the more dominant narratives (positive or negative) about Mormons and Mormonism.
On the Mormon conception of the afterlife as an opportunity for literary creation
Speaking of emerging ways of thinking about Mormonism:
I continue to be interested in mortal experience as not the only state of being as that relates to notions of embodiment, the experience of time, agency, theories of the mind, models of individuated beings (intelligence to spirit to embodied spirit). In other words: I’m interested in the experience of the dead (or to be more precise: the non-mortal).
I’m not a theologian, philosopher, physicist, or neuroscientist, and so this is mostly an aesthetic exercise for me with a goal of creating interesting narratives and metaphors rather than trying to update current models or uncover some sort of foundational truth.
More specifically, I’m interested in the Mormon conception of the afterlife prior to the final judgement. That is, in the embodied individual—a mortal being—that then become disembodied and the implications this has for individual minds.
This interest shows up in three stories in The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories.
In “After the Fast”, it manifests in a story of one of the Three Nephites, who is not a disembodied individual, but one whose body has been changed so it is no longer mortal. I engage in some speculative theology in the story, but more importantly, I push back against the world-weary immortal trope (the vampire or the highlander) and explore how to avoid becoming completely alienated from mortality.
In “With All Our Dead”, it manifests as an exploration of the idea that the same sociality that exists in mortality persists into the afterlife, including and especially, family relationships, and how the echoes of ones mortal experience may affect how the spirits in the afterlife relate to each other and to their living relations.
And then in “A Mormon Writer Visits Spirit Prison”, it manifests as an exploration of the spirit/mind separated from the body and what might happen to individuals who are faced with an afterlife they didn’t expect, with again, their embodied experience echoing in their being. I think it’s clear that one of the worries/beliefs I have is that the intensity of mortal (physical/sensory) experience and the memory of it will be a preoccupation of disembodied beings prior to the resurrection.
As I think about these stories and about Mormon (and other religious/cultural) conceptions of the afterlife, I can’t help but come to two conclusions:
We know so little about and also have such a paucity of imagination about and true concern for the afterlife. We often say we care about what we do/say here in mortal life, but we really don’t. We mostly care about that as a way to get others to behave in the way we want them to. What we actually do is spend our time on so much that we’ll need to let go of, unlearn, repent of in the next life. And don’t spend our time doing things that will lead to greate wisdom and a lot less regret. We spend time and energy like there’s plenty of it. We are childish (not child-like), focused on the now and/or obsessive about the past and/or the future. And even when we claim to not be with, say, some sort of mindfulness practice, we’re really only soothing ourselves so we can cope, not unlocking pure intelligence. So it’s probably for the better that we don’t know that much and don’t let what we do know sink in too much: a stronger awareness might be paralyzing. I write all this not to be depressing. I think that clearly all of the above is why we need the intensities and hardships of mortality. And grace and repentance. And each other. Life is hard. It’s easy to get distracted. Religious activity can be helpful, yet it doesn’t solve everything for every individual (at least not in modernity, thus, the need for culture). But what if we viewed the afterlife with awe and excitement rather than fear and guilt? Mortality as less a test than an opportunity to train up? Level up skills? Prep for a marathon? Build knowledge and creativity storage for the long winter before the resurrection?
I suspect that even the righteous will find the disembodiment that comes with death a difficult thing to deal with. I think that developing good habits and learning new things will be something we still struggle with. Yes, there is the saving power of the atonement. But grace is not just a get out of jail card, it is an opportunity for us to become. And the process of becoming requires effort on our part. Not to “earn” salvation. But rather, to gain the capacity to become more creative, wise, and charitible inviduals. So I expect, for example, that it will be difficult in the next life to overcome the lingering effects of my sugar addiction. And that I will need to learn higher level math. And that I will need to avoid the temptation to brood and make an effort to be more sociable with others, etc. And I wonder if all that will be more difficult to accomplish without the interface of the body. I’ll have more time, but I’ll have less intensity of experience. I don’t know maybe I’m wrong about that. But it’s what little doctrine there is on the subject seems to suggest.
If we continue to exist as individuals in the afterlife and the same sociality that exists in mortality exists there, what does that mean for how we spend our time there? And who do we spend it with? How does society form itself when material conditions are no longer the primary driving force/baseline for human existence? Are there still hierarchies? If so, are those solely based around priesthood structures? If not, what determines what work is done? Is the work solely discursive or are there other ways in which to spend time? How does learning there differ from learning here? What ways are there in which individuals can express themselves creatively? etc. etc.
I’m not sure, what, if anything, I should do with these conclusions. I guess keep writing fiction and making music and hope that such creative activity really is valuable. Certainly, keep trying to be a kinder, more thoughtful, less selfish, less addicted person.
But from the standpoint of Mormon aesthetic possibilities, it seems to me there is a lot more meat on the bone. Most afterlife narratives are explorations of hell (and are satire or horror or both) or they are about the ennui/boring-ness of eternal goodness. I think both of those conceptions happen because our human minds can’t really grasp long stretches of time or modes of being that are more finely gradated than mortal experience, so I’m sympathetic to them, but I also think they lead to less interesting art.
I welcome more interesting, speculative, nuanced, imaginative takes.
Let me know if you know of any creative work on the afterlife, especially Mormon conceptions of it, you find especially interesting (obviously I’ve already read Steve Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell).
See you next month!
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