Recent work by me and Louise Plummer's nonfiction
Some update's on recent creative work by William and a look at Louise Plummer's nonfiction collection.
Hello.
First, two pieces of work from other aspects of my creative life:
- I released (as Will Esplin) a single back in September called It's A Silence. As always, it's free to stream on Bandcamp. I'm calling it dirge pop or fractured synth pop. It features some of my favorite lyrics to date and probably my best edited/mixed vocals.
- At the very end of September I published (as Wm Henry Morris) a collection of non-Mormon-lit-related stories: Oddities: Fantasies & Science Fictions. If you enjoyed any of the stories in The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories, it's quite likely you'll enjoy the stories in Oddities.
- I will have piece (a reprint) in The Center for Latter-Day Saint Arts Advent Calendar alongside many other Mormon writers classic and contemporary: Click here to sign up for the advent calendar
Second, a note that I really enjoyed the symposium at The Graduate Theological Union featuring some of the contributors to Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader. I'm delighted that it was a hybrid event so I was able to attend online.
Third, Theric Jepson has curated a second round of Octoberish work for a special edition of Irreantum he calls Fearreantum, and it includes my track "fearsome angels" (as Will Esplin). Give the issue a look!
Louise Plummer's Thoughts of a Grasshopper: Essays and Oddities
I was perusing the shelves in the bookcase in my bedroom a couple of weeks ago. I have one small shelf specifically devoted to works of Mormon literature that I haven't yet read. Louise Plummer's 1992 collection Thoughts of a Grasshopper: Essays and Oddities caught my eye. Partly, I must admit, due to the coincidence of her also using the word oddities for a collection. But also because she labels herself a grasshopper, which intrigued me.
So I decided to read it.
As with much of the LDS nonfiction of the time, parts of it have not aged well, parts of it are ahead of its' time, are, in fact, ahead of its' time in a way that might be impossible now, especially given that it was published by Deseret Book.
After reading the collection, I decided that Plummer, who passed away in March of this year, deserves a specific look as a non-fiction writer. For more on her work as a writer of YA fiction, read this post on the AML blog.
Louise Plummer's collection is a rollicking read. Polished but also rough around in the edges in places and sometimes, yes, odd. Candid but also, at times, elliptical, maybe even lacking self-awareness at times.
Louise's parents joined the LDS Church in Holland and emigrated to Utah when she was a young girl. Several of the essays in the collection focus on her experience as an immigrant in relation to the feminine and romantic ideals of American culture and with her Dutch grandmothers. After marrying Tom Plummer, the couple moved to Massachusetts so he could attend Harvard. After graduating, he secured a position in the University of Minnesota's German department, eventually becoming chair. During this time, Louise completed a master's degree in the literature at the U of M, and in the 1980s, they moved back to Utah and both served as BYU faculty until their retirements.
The collection plays with form. Plummer includes everything from personal essays to church talks she gave to an experiment in meta-fiction. One of the chapters is an audition letter she wrote to the conductor of a performance of the Book of Mormon Oratorio the Minneapolis Stake sponsored in 1975. Another is a self-help article on how to keep a journal by devoting only five minutes of time a day to it.
A recurring theme in the collection is the messiness of life and Plummer's willingness to embrace that, but also the fact that she isn't quite equipped to act like a normal person. As she relates in the opening essay, she is the grasshopper in the Walt Disney adaptation of the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. She is not the practical, plan for the future type.
She writes:
"The story of the grasshopper and the ant makes me uncomfortable because I am a grasshopper. I dance in elevators. The second the door closes, I begin tap dancing and flinging my arms wildly about. I make faces and stick my tongue out at the hidden cameras I believe exist in every elevator. When the doors open, I stop short and state with what I hope is a bored elevator to look into the open hallway ahead" (8).
This is a great anecdote. A vivid way of illustrating who Plummer is.
And one that talks about a world that feels far away from today. Today, the cameras do exist in every elevator, and, often, they are not hidden.
These unintended (and, to be fair, almost impossible to foresee) resonances recur throughout the collection. Artists she points to as admirable who we've come to find out are not. Experiences with family members that suggest mental health issues that might be better dealt with today with modern medications and modes of therapy. Beliefs about the greatness of the U.S. and U.S. monoculture that rang hollow for some folks back then and likely ring hollow with even more folks in the decades that followed the publication of the collection. Horrifying moments that are related without comment or with only surface analysis. Humor that sometimes falls flat.
But let me be clear: Plummer is not living in some bubble of Mormon bliss. In "Strengthening the Family," which is a talk she appears to have given in a stake conference, she writes with characteristic forthrightness about the messiness of family:
"I think we cannot hide behind a pretense of perfection. This is a wonderful stake—the best I've ever lived in, in fact—but it does have problems of abuse, family violence, adultery, AIDS, bulimia, and loneliness. To pretend these problems don't exist in our stake family is to isolate ourselves from each other" (48).
And:
"I think we should share our stories and not hide from them, hugger-mugger, from each other. If we tell our stories, others will feel free to tell theirs without fear of judgment or condescension" (48).
These nuggets of wisdom occur throughout the collection and are always welcome when they arrive.
At the same time, it's an uneven, often thin work.
There are also some mind-boggling to the modern reader decisions found in the text such as:
- Plummer including a long quote from a Flannery O'Connor that includes the n-word in it, which is rather ironic given that the point of the essay is how all people are "equally human" (14) and redeemed by the atonement of Jesus Christ.
- Plummer relating in the introduction to the collection how her husband reacted to her embellishing a story when she told it, a reaction that is, to be blunt, pretty dang mean. And it's not that Plummer discusses his reaction (one that I too am guilty of, although, I hope not quite so forcefully), but that she either doesn't understand how untoward Tom's reaction is or she is willing to gloss over it.
- Plummer talking in a couple of essays about her younger self's perception of Rock Hudson as the ideal man/husband material and Doris Day and Rock Hudson as the ultimate (heterosexual) couple, which is ironic given that Hudson was gay, a fact that, as I recall, was a pretty open secret in 1992 (but maybe not in Utah, or at least not in the Utah of Deseret Book). This is not to say that Plummer shouldn't talk about how she viewed Hudson when she was a teenage girl. She is not at all alone in that experience. But the essays don't complicate that vision in relation to Hudson's sexuality.
I mention these rough edges for the modern reader not to condemn Louise Plummer nor to be condescending about them. Rather, I bring them up as a warning for us in our time to not be so full of hubris, for us, especially those of us who write, to not fall into the trap of thinking we know more/know better than previous generations or younger generations or our own generation.
I also want to celebrate Plummer for who she was and not who she wasn't.
I don't know if Mormonism still produces writers like her. I wonder if social media and modern mores and the evolution and proliferation of MFA programs and how creative nonfiction is taught has ironed much of the humor and optimism and rawness out of both female and male writers with grasshopper-ish tendencies.
I also don't know how many Mormon writers would mention Virginia Woolf, Erma Bombeck, Toni Morrison, Margaret Mead, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and Joseph Smith within two pages of each other. Or who would express an enthusiasm for both the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Anne Sexton. I know a lot of us who could, but I don't know how many of us would.
There is an expansiveness and openness to Plummer's writing and personality, but one that also feels, at times, too restrained or too unexamined. I would have preferred some pieces to be much longer. I would have loved more of her experiments, of her oddities to be included (whether any were actually written or they were left unwritten).
I suspect that, in many ways, Plummer's creative work is all too typical of all too many LDS writers and artists: much of it took place not in writing that endures in published form but in teaching, child-rearing, church service, conversations with friends and loved ones, etc.
In the end, I'm glad I decided to read this collection. And I'm also left to wonder what Plummer's grasshopper tendencies could have produced with additional influences and encouragements and more time to write and opportunities to publish.
I'll be back in your inbox in December.
P.S. my copy of Thoughts of a Grasshopper: Essays and Oddities is signed: "To Irene, with Love and Kisses, Louise Plummer"
Any guesses on who Irene might be?
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