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"Going Underground," is the story of a seventeen year-old convicted felon. Del, the protagonist of the story works at a private cemetery because its the only business in town that will hire him. He was convicted because of "sexting" charges with his consenting (but slightly younger) girlfriend when he was 14. The story talks about his future as a felon and Del grappling with life and his sentence. I think I gave the book 3 or 4 stars because it was well-written.
So, guess the book! I admit, I stared at this a second before a smile came to my face recalling the source material.
On Friday, my mom shared with me an op-ed by Jerry Johnston. Mr. Johnston declared that the "Great Mormon Novel" written by an active latter day saint is a pipe dream and will never exist. Now, he's right on one point, the "Great Mormon Novel" has never been written before. In the fiction category, I can't think of any novel that comes close to being the "Great Mormon Novel." Now, the term, the "Great Mormon Novel" is obviously a variation of "The Great American Novel which according to Wiki is :
The "Great American Novel" is the concept of a novel that most perfectly represents the spirit of life in the United States at the time of its writing. It is presumed to be written by an American author who is knowledgeable about the state, culture, and perspective of the common American citizen.
So, by simply simply substituting "Mormon" for American, you get a pretty adequate definition of the "Great Mormon Novel" and one that is align with the definition that Mr. Johnston is using in his op-ed piece.
Mr. Johnston contends that the "Great Mormon Novel will never exist because:
Because of the points above, he then goes on to say that a grand and glorious literary novel heralded by both the LDS faithful and the literary world could never exist.
I agree with him that great literary masterpieces use doubt as their "vantage" point. Doubt in the LDS church isn't exactly encouraged. In fact, I'm honestly thinking about how I would describe the role of doubt in the LDS church and in my own experience as a Latter Day Saint. That being said, there are so many gray areas in the LDS church that can be explored.
I personally rarely see the world in black and white, and often Mormonism to me is no different. There's gray areas all over the place in the church. Yes, I have a strong testimony of the gospel, but there's many gray areas in the church that are ripe for exploration in a literary context. There's history, some doctrine, and then there's this-we don't have a perfect understanding of God's plan for us. If we don't have a perfect understanding, there's room for doubt-and because we are not perfect, there will be gray areas because we don't have perfect knowlege. Granted, I've had quite a few friends who explored the gray areas so much that they ultimately left the church.
I understand why most LDS fiction writers portray the church in a favorable light and want to promote the church. However, there's a voice in my head that wonders what if someone were to portray the religious culture, the warts and the glorious parts of itl. What if a fiction writer were to lay bare how they see the church in a novel? Mr. Johnson alludes in his essay that the writer would be ostracized by the church. I'm not sure if that's true. But then at this point, both Mr. Johnson and myself are purely speculating.
I almost see Mr. Johnston challenging a generation of aspiring and published LDS writers. He says it can never be done, but I'm sure there's more than one person out there saying, "it can never be done? I'll show you."
"The restraints that Mormonism places on our behavior and our comportment should be viewed as the rhyme scheme in a sonnet or the censors in Iran. The pain is in using the limits to force yourself to look inward and work harder with the available material. If we accept the limits, and the necessity of the limits, that should inspire us to find ways to transcend them. So much Mormon literature is about the maintenance of the limits; so little seems to find the value that comes from the struggle with them (that’s what they are there for, after all)."
MormonTimes.com is produced by the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah.
It is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Copyright © 2009 Deseret News Publishing Company
A couple of other blogs about Jerry Johnston's article:
William Morris and S.P. Bailey at A Motley Vision makes some interesting points, most I don't agree with-but his piece is thought-provoking.
Dallas has a fun piece about this essay
Kent Larson at Times and Season has a thought provoking piece on the article.
As Mr. Darcy walked off, Elizabeth felt her blood turn cold. She had never in her life been so insulted. The warrior code demanded she avenge her honour. Elizabeth reached down to her ankle, taking care not to draw attention. There, her hand met the dagger concealed beneath her dress. She meant to follow this proud Mr. Darcy outside and open his throat.
I finished "Rough Stone Rolling" today, and the thing that struck me the most about it was how many people were interested in what I was reading! I usually read on my commute to and from work, and have never been asked what I was reading by fellow commuters until I started reading this book. Over the course of a week, several people on the train asked me what I was reading, and several others were reading the book over my shoulder. One gentleman appeared to be as into the last 30 pages as I was. I was trying to finish reading the book, so I read a few pages at work during lunch, and a couple of co-workers asked me about it. Needless to say, "Rough Stone Rolling," drew more attention than the rare occasion I read the Scriptures on the metro. Comprehensive thorough biography of Joseph Smith and touches upon the basic
tenets of Mormonism. I appreciated how the book put doctrine J.Smith taught into
a context I hadn't thought of before. I also liked the way the author laid out
the life story of J.Smith. Fascinating book-doesn't gloss over the controversial
parts of J.Smith's life, but is somewhat sympathetic. In my opinion, it's
impossible to be completely objective when talking about J.Smith.
