Jonathan Langford's Blog, page 3

The General and the Particular

There are, speaking broadly (the irony of which will shortly be evident), two different ways of looking at and systematizing the world. The first — favored by theoreticians ranging from Newton to Marx to Freud to Joseph Campbell — involves the attempted deciphering of fundamental underlying codes that explain a broad range of phenomena. The second, in contrast, while it may accept the existence of underlying patterns, focuses on differences: particular instances, local circumstances, and the like.

I admit it. I’m drawn to the general theories. But as I’ve gotten older, I find myself increasingly skeptical about them.

Interestingly, the same thing seems to have happened in many different areas of study. Take biology, for example. The notion of evolution is fundamental, and fundamentally accepted, by biologists everywhere. However, given the variety of successful adaptations in the natural world, evolution starts to seem less like an answer and more like a question, the nature of which is something like the following: What possible evolutionary advantage is granted by this particular adaptation?

Or medieval history. Pioneering historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries focused on broad sweeping patterns: the evolution of the rights of boroughs, the change from feudalism to a market economy, elements that distinguish the medieval from the modern worldview, etc. But a closer look at the data reveals flaws in their methodology. The middle ages — like pretty much every period of history and every group of any meaningful size — was a patchwork, astonishing in its diversity. Offhand, I can’t think of any generalization that has been (or could be) made about the middle ages that doesn’t have possible exceptions.

How many different practices can fit within one broad historical period? How many different successful strategies can there be in response to similar fundamental environmental challenges? The answer, it seems, is: more than we used to think.

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Which brings me to the reseach for my various creative writing projects.

At this point, I’ve largely abandoned any kind of systematic approach to writing research. Instead, I browse through books that catch my interest, on whatever topic. Often, I find that the most interesting things come from the most surprising places.

One thing I’ve found to be generally true, however (and again, note the irony of that phrase), is that I find more value in sources that describe particular cases as opposed to general principles. Thus, for example, in my attempt to teach myself about geology, I’ve found less value in Introduction to Geology textbooks and more value in the Roadside Geology of [fill in the state] series. Similarly, one of the best sources on medieval history that I’ve run across recently is a book based on a specific set of documents from an old storage room in a Cairo synagogue.

Part of this, of course, is because as a writer, what I’m looking for is the particular: those weird little details that I might steal — I mean, borrow — to make my own work seem more lifelike. Specifics are the shiny decorative baubles of research, and the writer — I’m sorry to say — is something of a magpie at heart.

But it’s also more than that. And this is where I have to give the generalizers their due. Part of the value of these more particular works is the way they illustrate and explain the underlying principles of their field through particular cases. I never really understood plate tectonics as well until I read about how the collisions of plates helped form the Cascades, or how a long-past continental plate collision (and subsequent relaxation) were responsible first for the Rockies and then for the instances of vulcanism that surprisingly bubble up through them in various places. (Though not Yellowstone; that’s the result of a “hot spot,” whatever that is.)

I’ll conclude with a quote from another of my favorite recently found sources of well-researched historical particulars, a book titled Cooking and Dining in Medieval England by Peter Brears:

The identical mixture was also one of those used to make a much more exotic dish, the cockatrice. This mythical creature, believed to hatch from a cock’s egg incubated by a venomous snake, had the reputed ability to kill by its mere glance. To make one, a rooster was plucked and skinned, leaving the head and legs attached. The skin of the back end of a sucking pig was then sewn on to it, the whole being stuffed with ground pork flavoured with spices, saffron, currants and salt. After parboiling to set it in shape and cook the stuffing, it was spitted and endored a bright yellow using egg yolks and more saffron. Finally decorated with gold and silver leaf, it was served, complete with its beaked, combed and wattled head, sharp claws, trotters and curly tail. In an alternative version, the front end of the pig was sewn onto the back end of the cock, to produce a similarly startling beast. (p. 318)

And with a presumably renewed appreciation of modern as opposed to medieval cooking, I leave you…

The Pusher (New Years 2004 Reprint)

Note: This is a reprint of a column I sent out, oh, 10 years ago now, purely for my own amusement…

The kids come, one and two at a time. Up the path, a furtive knock at the door. Down the stairs into the cellar, where the stuff is kept. Faces staring at the floor, with every appearance of shame. Then the fateful whispered words, from the addict to the dealer: “Can I have a book?”

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It comes as news to precisely no one reading these columns that I am a book addict: bookworm, son of a bookworm, brother of bookworms, parent and spouse of same. There is little about bookwormish behavior that I don’t know, nothing experts can tell me about the symptoms that I haven’t observed at close hand. It’s all familiar to me. And of all of it, there’s nothing I know better than the urge to share the addiction with others.

There’s nothing that can create a connection between people that’s quite like the bond of having read and enjoyed the same book. It’s like discovering that you share a language that no one around you knows. Reading a book — especially a story — is like living in a separate world for a while. Talking to someone else who’s read the same thing gives you a chance to revisit favorite spots and recall favorite experiences, while at the same time adding that touch of difference that comes from viewing things through the other person’s mind’s eye. That’s one of the prime reasons for giving books as presents. Giving and lending books is an invitation to a conversation about a shared landscape, set of ideas, or collection of characters.

I have longstanding (and inherited) credentials in this regard. Back when my mother taught high school English, she kept a large collection of books in the back of her classroom for students to check out and read on their own. Many of the science fiction and fantasy books were actually mine. I still have a number of paperbacks with a pocket and card glued in the back and “DEAN,” for Mrs. Dean (my mother), printed on the bottom. She didn’t worry too much about the books that walked off permanently, figuring that if they found a home where they were read and enjoyed, they had served their purpose. It was worth it to get people hooked on books. That’s what English teachers are for, after all: to turn people on to reading, even against their natural inclinations, like those hippy activists of the 1960s who would slip LSD to people unawares.

I know I’m not the first person to compare reading to an addiction. For that matter, how many of you, finding yourself stuck, say, in a bathroom for an indeterminate but not inconsiderable period, have found yourselves perusing the fine print on the back of a shampoo bottle, or read a Reader’s Digest article on a subject of utterly no interest to you, or unfolded and squinted at the fine print in the classified section of a three-months-old newspaper your spouse had been using as a moth swatter? Sounds like addiction to me.

And having been a longtime user, who should wonder that I would graduate to distributing? So to speak.

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I remember reading a Dorothy Sayers novel where a man had been murdered to bury his knowledge of London’s drug distribution network. It all hinged on the first line of copy in a weekly ad, and letters mailed to a blind drop, and pubs preselected in telephone books. All very elaborate and unlikely (though the part about Lord Peter Wimsey writing advertising copy was a lot of fun).

My distribution system is considerably simpler, though not without its points of technique. Typically, I start by alluding to the subject in casual conversation — “Read any good books lately?” You know, to make potential customers feel they are in control. If the response is positive, I draw them out with questions: books and authors they’ve enjoyed, their opinion of specific titles I know, and the like. Soon, if things go well, I’m ready to make a recommendation — “I think you’d like this one” — and the offer: “I could lend you a copy.” And the transfer is made, the product (hopefully) ingested, and I take my fee in conversation about the book, its good and bad points. And the inevitable offer of another book to keep the cycle going.

Sometimes it works otherwise with those who enter our home for some reason or another. I recall one young man who, arriving to take his younger brother home from visiting Nathan, was invited downstairs to the abode of the television/video game monitor — which just happens to be the home of our sizeable science fiction and fantasy collection. Inevitably, when he left, he took several books with him. His story is far from unique. Dinner guests, babysitters, relatives — all have been subjected to the lure of the bookspine array, and not emerged unscathed.

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Recently, I’ve decided that satisfying as it is to deal, to match customers to products, the big money (literally and figuratively, though more the latter than the former, I’m afraid) is in the production side of things. They say, you know, that it’s quite easy to whip up batches of the stuff at home. Just takes a word processor, time, and persistence. Of course, the quality is unpredictable with these backroom labs; but hey, caveat emptor, right? Let the buyer beware. Coming in a few years (we hope) to a bookstore near you…

Paying Attention to the Words

Last Sunday, I attended a performance of Rob Gardner’s Lamb of God by the Minnesota Mormon Chorale and Orchestra. It was surprisingly good — pretty much professional quality.

Of course, me being a writer and editor, I can’t simply leave it there. And in fact there was one small detail of the performance that stuck in my mind, and eventually led me to this keyboard — in musing upon language and scripture, and how familiarity and easy readings can dull our perception.

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A lot of the burden of the story itself in this particular oratorio is carried by the narrators, who (among other things) speak all the actual words of Jesus. At one point, I recall, one of the narrators read that well-known verse from Isaiah:

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4)

He recited it in the standard way, more or less as follows (using italics to indicate emphasis):

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:4)

There’s a lot of sense in this delivery. It puts the emphasis on the important words, as we’re told we should do. At the same time, I think it also misses the point of this scripture, to a certain degree.

Never let it be said there isn’t irony in the scriptures, particularly the Bible. And this verse is one I believe is meant to sting. Let me propose an alternative reading of this verse and the one preceding, putting the emphasis where I think it perhaps is meant to be:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-4)

The story here is all in the pronouns. Note that the first verse isn’t that much different from how we might normally read it. But that second verse, ah, the difference it makes to emphasize all those instances of he and his and we and our, leading up to the culminating phrase that expresses in capsule form the paradox and miracle of the atonement: that we are (can be) healed by someone else taking our punishment for us. The message is even more powerful when approached from the context of the verses before those quoted, describing our rejection of the very Jesus who paid that price. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard read it that way.

Before writing this post, by the way, I did something I often do with the Bible: that is, read the verse while omitting words that are italicized in the King James Version, to see if my favored interpretation still makes sense. (I don’t know for sure what the italicization means, but I think I’ve read that it indicates words interpolated to make sense in English that didn’t actually appear in the original text.) While several of those pronouns do indeed appear to be added words, still I think my reading holds up pretty well:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:3-4; italicized words in the original KJV omitted)

So there you have it. No great moral, but an experience (in my view) in paying attention to the words, and the insight that can come when we do.

New Writing Rookie post

Hi all,

I’ve just posted a new “Writing Rookie” column (my first in two years!) over at A Motley Vision, talking about things I’ve learned (or not) over the last few years, and my current writing “method.” Rather than cross-post it here as I’ve done in the past, I’m choosing to lazily just put a link here.

I’d love any comments, either here or there. I’d love even more to feel like my novel is magically writing itself, but that doesn’t seem terribly likely…

Progress Report December 2013

It’s been a while since I posted here. One positive reason is that September, October, and November were all heavy months for me, workwise (good for paying tuition!). There wasn’t much to report in terms of my creative writing. And there always seemed to be other projects demanding what time I could spare (like, say, cooking food for my family). But work has slowed down a little, and a lot of the things I could be working on are more or less “on pause” for now. And I want to spend some time documenting the shifts in my thinking about my creative writing during the last few months.

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First, a quick recap on how I got to where I am. About 12 years ago, around the time I turned 40, I had a sudden sense that it was time to work on creative writing. This took me by surprise, as I had assumed this was one of those paths permanently not taken.

So I worked on several story ideas, including one idea for a large story (or set of stories) told against the canvas of a particular fantasy world. I did some worldbuilding and wrote a few chapters. It didn’t seem to be working, though.

I tried various things. I wrote a novella set in the same universe (and then was frustrated when everyone told me it was the first part of a novel, and when was I planning to write the rest?). I drew maps. I tried thinking about other stories set in other universes. Nothing seemed to work. And my pace of work was glacially slow.

Flip back to Christmas 2007 or so. By this point, I had more or less given up on my fantasy stories, so I decided there was no reason not to think about a modern non-fantasy Mormon short story idea that had occurred to me several years prior. To my surprise, I found the idea putting out new roots and shoots. It became No Going Back, my first (and so far only) published novel, about a gay Mormon teenager — hardly anything I had ever expected to write.

No Going Back came out in 2009. I spent much of the next year (to the extent that I had time to devote to creative endeavors) trying to promote it, while slowly thinking over what I might work on next. Eventually, I decided to try my hand again at sf&f.

And that’s where I’ve been for the last three years.

First, I tried working on a book about a teenage empath, set in a modern high school — on the theory that I might as well use what I had learned about writing contemporary teenagers. I had a lot of fun doing research for that one, and wrote over 100 pages. But my readers informed me that it was boring, and after taking a step backward, I could only agree.

Common advice to writers is to simply get it out on paper, no matter how ugly it is, and then clean it up later. But one of the things I had learned from my earlier writing efforts was that when I push myself to write something before it feels ready, I wind up regretting it. The trick is to keep working consistently on something. If one scene won’t work, switch to another scene. If you’re not sure about your story direction, do some worldbuilding. And keep coming back to it every day and putting in a little bit of time.

I should add that while this seems to be the way I most productively work over the long term, I find it difficult to sustain, because (a) it doesn’t feel like you’re making a lot of progress, (b) it’s frustrating, and (c) you keep starting and stopping. Really, it’s a lot like I clean (as my wife will tell you, to her frustration): I drift through the room and pick up one thing, go back and work on something else, go back and pick up something else, fill the dishwasher while talking with someone on the phone, wander into another room and do something there — all without setting any explicit goals or timetables, and (ideally) without anyone actually mentioning that I’m doing cleanup until it’s all over, least of all me. Because, you know, to think about it too much would jinx it, and we’re all just little black rain clouds with no intention of robbing the bees’ honey at all. Ambition, in short, is my enemy.

(Note that I’m not saying this is or should be true of other writers. In fact, I think it’s a pretty perverse way to be as a writer, and I’m not sure it’s possible to have a successful writing career this way. But I a pretty certain it’s where I am right now.)

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I spent several months trying to fix my teenage empath story, but couldn’t come up with anything that fit organically with what I was trying to tell and that also had the promise to add the requisite conflict and excitement. So I abandoned that story and moved on to another one, this time about a teenager from our world who makes his way into another one.

Something Dave Wolverton said a long time ago has taken on more meaning to me in my recent writing efforts: that any story you write should suceed on as many levels as possible for wide range of readers. Your characterization should work. Your action/adventure should work. Your plot should work. Your worldbuilding should work. Your writing style should work. Et cetera, et cetera. At some point in the process, you need to look at each element separately to see how each can be improved.

I used to think that was overly ambitious. I still think no single story can be good at everything, and readers tend to be attracted to writing that’s strong in the specific area(s) they care about. But practically speaking, I think Dave is right — and I think he’s especially right for me. I’m not the kind of writer who can simply follow my muse and let the story blossom on the other end of my pen/keyboard. Instead, the only way I seem to know how to write a story is by doing multiple things at once.

On a related note, I’m not sure I’m capable of writing a story that follows a single story line. Part of the success of No Going Back — speaking of success in terms of my success in completing it, apart from whether or not it was successful for my readers — was precisely because it was my kitchen-sink Mormon novel. Each main character had his/her own story arc; there was the personal, the political, attempts to depict what it means to be gay, attempts to depict what it means to be Mormon, a testimony story, a coming-out story — together with bits and pieces of other things (some of which wound up on the cutting-room floor). For me, a big part of the dynamic of writing came from trying to maintain the tension between and among all those elements and keep them moving forward.

Which may not sound terribly organic, but it felt alive. Maybe that’s partly because I tend to view life as many different stories constantly interweaving.

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My attempts at working on my new fantasy story (known as the “Ellsworth” story for reasons too obscure and irrelevant to be worth recounting) were going fairly well, if slowly. I was trying to build a world, create characters, generate a magic system, and develop a plot — all slow work. But using my “tinker a little here, tinker a little there” philosophy, it was at least going forward.

Then October hit. I was swamped with work. A work deadline meant I had to bow out of my monthly YA writing group. I was up to share something in November, but still felt like I was in the putting-pieces-together phase.

And I found myself wondering, again, whether this kind of writing was something I should even be spending my time on — in light of the evident fact that spending 3-4 hours a day on my writing (the minimum I think would be needed to make a successful career) doesn’t seem possible for me to do productively.

There are a lot of other things I could do with my writing. I’m a good nonfiction/informational writer — probably better than I may ever be at fiction. I’d like to help people with personal and family histories: something I think is more important than fiction in many ways. I’m constantly finding out about worthwhile writing and editing projects that could use my help — if I’m looking to do something that’s never likely to bring in money.

Balance against this the fact that I now find I miss creative writing when I go without it for very long. There’s part of me that wants to tell stories, if I can manage to do it without triggering all the issues I’ve been talking about here.

So I took a step backward. I quit my YA writing group (which I was mostly feeling guilty about). I re-evaluated, and told myself it was okay if I wound up walking away from my creative writing — that I wouldn’t insist on holding to a goal of becoming a creative writer. I called a hiatus.

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I’m tentatively back to my creative writing again: an hour or two a day (and often not that, but it’s my goal), working on whatever seems to make sense at the time. I’ve gone back to my original “big” fantasy story, on the grounds that I think I may be ready to try again and possibly do it right this time, and that if I’m not trying to plan a career trajectory I might as well work on the story I think is best and most important to me, which is this one. I’m no longer making predictions about where this will go, but hope I will manage to stick with it until the story’s done or I find something else I’d rather do with my time.

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Jonathan’s personal rules of writing, current version:

Don’t plan a writing career, but focus on writing.
Work on the story that’s most important to me, that I know how to write.
Chip away at it. Work a little every day.
Don’t get ambitious. Don’t push it.
Work on the part that comes naturally on a given day.
Realize that small efforts can add up.
Give my story the time and space it needs to prepare for writing it — even if the prep work sometimes seems like dumping gravel into a bottomless pit of quicksand.
Try to write a story that’s good in as many ways as I can make it.

Book of Mormon Tropes

Cross-posted at A Motley Vision website.

Wikipedia is a big time waster. (Not, I suspect, news to anyone here.) One thing leads to another, each article hyperlinking to another half-dozen, until before you know it, you’ve squandered another precious hour (to borrow a phrase from Tom and Ray Magliozzi) tracking down details of Urdu phonology, or something similarly abstruse. (Actually, I have no idea whether Wikipedia includes anything on Urdo phonology… wait… there is is.)

Ahem.

So, yeah, pretty much everyone who spends time surfing the Web knows how addictive Wikipedia can be, or YouTube. But I think I’ve now stumbled onto the mother lode, the heroin-mainlining of Internet addictions, at least for us devotees of the various literary/narrative media. I speak, of course, of TV Tropes, described on Wikipedia as

a wiki that collects and expands on various conventions and devices (tropes) found within creative works. Since its establishment in 2004, the site has gone from covering only television and film tropes to also covering those in a number of other media such as literature, comics, video games, and even things such as advertisements and toys.

It’s great fun. You look up a particular trope (e.g., “piano drop” or “large ham”), and read a description of the trope, where you discover a half-dozen other related tropes you have to check out. (Not to mention the great illustrating cartoons in a lot of places.) At the bottom are multiple examples in media ranging from comic books to Doctor Who episodes. Each of those instances gives a link as well, which allows you to find all of the tropes people have identified in, say, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Answer: a lot.) By the time I mustered the willpower to close my browser window, I had 153 tabs open.

I don’t remember where the impulse came from, but sometime during my trope-exploring spree, I happened upon an entry for The Book of Mormon. And what do you know? It’s actually pretty good. In fact, it’s one of the thought-provoking encounters with scripture that I’ve had recently. Which maybe says something about my lax spiritual state, but I prefer to see it as suggesting that looking at the scriptures from unusual angles can sometimes yield unexpected insights.

The nature of wiki-type sources, of course, is that what I cite today may not be there tomorrow. So I don’t really have any way of guaranteeing that the article you find will be at all similar to what I found — and not just because the reading experience varies with the eye/mind of the reader. With that caveat in mind, here’s what I found:

The article leads with a nicely even-handed account of the various views of the book’s origins, followed by a short discussion of its structure and themes. But the real fun starts comes with the listing of tropes. Here are some examples:

Angst Coma: Alma the Younger’s Heel Face Turn. After getting up to a lot of anti-church mischief, he goes into a “deep sleep” and has visions of angels and hears the voice of God. When he wakes up, he has had a change of heart.
Author Filibuster: While Mormon typically stays on-topic in his abridgment, there are a couple of spots where he puts in his own thoughts. The last book, written by Moroni, is essentially one long example of this trope. In his defense, the abridgement of the history was done, he had seen his entire country slaughtered around him and spent the last twenty years of his life on the run, so he had a lot to get off his chest.
Even Evil Has Standards: No matter how big of a jerk they are, nobody in the Book of Mormon breaks an oath. Nobody. Sometimes to the point of Honor Before Reason.

At least, not deliberately. Giddianhi the robber threatens the Nephites with destruction unless they join his robber band, and swears to spare or destroy them according to the decision they make. Neither happens because the Nephites end up destroying the robber band instead.
Well, almost nobody. King Laman broke an oath when he made war on King Limhi’s people, but he was justified, because he thought the daughters of his people were kidnapped.

So, yeah. Not precisely a fount of serious literary scholarship, but a lot of fun nonetheless…

A Rhetorical Review of The God Who Weeps

Givens, Terryl and Fiona. The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life. Salt Lake City: Ensign Peak (an imprint of Deseret Book), 2012. 160 pages. $19.99 in hardback, $11.49 Kindle. Reviewed by Jonathan Langford. Cross-posted at A Motley Vision website.

There’s been a lot of fuss about this little book, co-written by Terryl Givens, a professor of English at the University of Richmond, who is one of Mormonism’s most prominent current scholars and apologists, and his wife Fiona, whom I believe he has referred to as an unacknowledged collaborator on his earlier work, which has included such items as the seminal study The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy, published by Oxford University Press in 1997 (now available in an updated 2013 version); By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion, also published by Oxford University Press in 2003; and People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture, again from Oxford University Press in 2007.

I haven’t read those other books (though some are high on my list to read at some point), so I can’t compare the style of this book to Terryl’s earlier books. My assumption would be that this book is written in a less academic style, intended to appeal to a broader audience composed both of believing Mormons and non-Mormons with a potential interest in knowing what the basis is of Mormonism’s appeal to some of its thoughtful adherents.

Certainly the book succeeds in that. This is a book I think can be read and appreciated by Mormons and non-Mormons alike. In short: the book lives up to its hype. Paraphrasing the Pythons (but with less ambiguous intent), I can wholeheartedly recommend this book for those who quite like this sort of thing — which I think will include the bulk of literate believing Mormons, and many non-Mormons with a thoughtful and tolerant frame of mind. It’s already on my Christmas gift list for several family members. In fact, I just recently bought a copy for my mother, because I didn’t want to wait until Christmas to talk about it with her.

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The God Who Weeps is structured around 5 premises, each of which is the central theme of one of the book’s 5 chapters. As stated in the Introduction, they are:

God is a personal entity, having a heart that beats in sympathy with human hearts, feeling our joy and sorrowing over our pain.
We lived as spirit beings in the presence of God before we were born into this mortal life.
Mortality is an ascent, not a fall, and we carry infinite potential into a world of sin and sorrow.
God has the desire and the power to unite and elevate the entire human family in a kingdom of heaven, and, except for the most stubbornly unwilling, that will be our destiny.
Heaven will consist of those relationships that matter most to us now. (pp. 6-7)

All fairly standard stuff theologically, for Mormons, and not stated in a way that is likely to raise many Mormon eyebrows — even #4, though this is one that’s been interpreted variously by different LDS thinkers depending on whether they choose to emphasize the large majority who (in LDS theology) are destined for a kingdom of glory, or the rather smaller number who will attain exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Fiona at least, based on an excellent interview at A Motley Vision, appears to be a committed Universalist (i.e., one who believes that “God must have made provision to ensure that all His children were granted the opportunity to return to Him, not matter how long it takes”). And yet even if sometimes the Givenses go places Mormons don’t typically go in exploring their beliefs, and get there by less-trodden paths, their conclusions are pretty solidly founded on LDS scripture and basic Sunday School beliefs.

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There are several interesting things going on in this book, rhetorically speaking.

The most obvious of the Givenses’ purposes (in my view) is to explain to non-believing readers just why Mormonism might reasonably appeal to intelligent, thoughful people. The purpose isn’t to persuade any such readers to belief in Mormonism themselves, but rather to open-mindedness and acceptance: “Your belief isn’t mine, but I can see why you would believe, and why this has value for you.”

At the same time, the Givenses certainly get in their licks, in terms of pointing out ways that Mormonism makes sense of a lot of things that more mainstream Christianity doesn’t do as well with. In that respect, it’s like a more literate and urbane version of LeGrand Richards’s classic apologetic volume, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, though the style and rhetorical strategy are different. Unlike Richards’s biblical proof-texting, the Givenses combine personal perspective with quotes from a variety of thinkers, ancient, modern, and in between, theologians, noteworthy writers, and others, showing how some of the more distinctive Mormon beliefs align with the beliefs and ideas of thoughtful people from many different traditions, even when those ideas went against the dominant religious traditions of the day. In chapter 1, for example, they cite within a few pages Huck Finn, the agnostic Ivan from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Elie Wiesel, the Biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve, Sarah Edwards (wife of famed fire-and-brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards), and early Church Father Origen in support of a compassionate God bound as against the vengeful God of traditional orthodox Christianity.

It’s not about citing authorities to provide evidence, so much as it is about showing that Mormon thought and belief have a respectable pedigree, or at least family tree. At the same time, as a reader you can’t help but notice — indeed, the Givenses are at pains to point out — how much more satisfying Mormonism’s responses are in a number of areas that have a troubled history in Christianity and cultural history in general.

There’s something in our spirits which recognizes truth, regardless (or in spite) of upbringing: at least, that’s something most Mormons believe. This book, I would say, is based on that underlying premise. If the fundamental doctrines of Mormonism can be explained clearly and in their proper perspective, their underlying beauty and rightness will shine through for readers, whether they are intellectually persuaded or not. This is a book about the beauties of Mormon belief.

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And then there’s what’s going on for the audience of believing Mormons.

The God Who Weeps is not about finding common ground with mainstream Christian believers. Rather, it’s about celebrating Mormonism’s distinctiveness.

A key question for the Givenses is why, given the existence of a deity, he/she/it/they/gtst might deserve love and worship. This, they claim, is a question that is often unjustifiably dismissed by religionists, when in fact it is “entirely proper” (p. 14). While God’s reasoning may often be above what humans can understand, still “it makes little sense to recognize in our conscience a reliable guide to what is virtuous, lovely, and praiseworthy in the world where God has placed us, while suggesting He inhabits a different moral universe” (p. 19) — as has in fact been argued when attempting to justify such (in human terms) morally reprehensible orthodox Christian doctrines as Predestination, or the damnation of those who have died without hearing of Christ.

From here they go on to argue, in what I think is the central premise of their book (hence its title), that — in contrast with the abstract God of the Greek philosophers who could not be affected by human feelings and failings, lest He cease to be divinely perfect — in fact the defining characteristic of our God, the God we as Mormons find worthy of worship, is that He has chosen to make Himself vulnerable to us: to allow us and our fates to matter to Him. “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And it is not some kind of abstract untroubled love, but rather the kind of love which, in one of the most peculiarly Mormon of scriptures, causes God to weep because of the torment humans bring on themselves through sin (Moses 7:28-40). Christ’s empathy, “dearly paid for, each day of His mortal life, filled as it was with all the trauma an uncomprehending world could inflict on perfect innocence” (p. 27), was not the exception but rather represents a “vulnerability, [an] openness to pain and exposure to risk,” that “is the eternal condition of the Divine” (p. 32; emphasis in original) — a vulnerability the flip side of which is God’s joy in our happiness.

And in this anyone familiar with conventional Mormon sacrament meeting talks and Sunday School lessons will quickly see that the Givenses are presenting ideas which, while quite reasonable as a part of LDS doctrine, aren’t part of the way most Mormons describe our own beliefs to ourselves. Certainly a lot of this was stuff I hadn’t ever thought of before, or not in anything like this way. And yet it’s all so reasonable, so well presented, and (as the Givenses explain it) so consistent with core Mormon scripture and teachings that rather than seeming foreign, instead this feels — to myself at least — like I’ve simply learned more about what my beliefs really mean.

Which is, I think, part of the Givenses’ intent: to get us as Mormons to think more deeply about the implications of our beliefs, and at the same time better recognize the differences between what we think and believe and what mainstream Christians think and believe. We really aren’t mainstream Christians in terms of some of our core beliefs, and that’s a good thing. Those differences are part of why Mormonism can be a satisfying framework for thoughtful people who had been put off by contemporary religion.

Atheists often get a bad rap among many Mormons, but Mormonism has historically attracted some noteworthy adherents who, dissatisfied with what they saw as the irreconcilable problems of traditional religious perspectives, had turned away from religion and God entirely before finding in Mormonism an answer to those questions. Without wanting to doubt the sincerity of believers from many different traditions, it is also true (in my view) that people can be atheists for reasons Mormons should sympathize with. I doubt many LDS readers will have this reaction, but I personally was reminded of how reasonable it would seem to be an atheist if I thought about God the way that traditional Christianity talks about him.

Aside from the specific ideas the book presents, The God Who Weeps issues an implicit invitation and challenge not to leave the LDS Church without spending some time thinking about what the Church teaches and the value those teachings may have. I’m thinking here less about those who have issues with specific doctrines and practices than those (especially LDS youth) who have never really connected powerful to the doctrines in a personal way: the critical phase referred to as getting a testimony of our own. The Church has more to offer than you may think, this challenge goes.

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I can imagine some readers being put off by the Givenses’ style, which is allusive and suggestive as opposed to more formal and rigorous. People who are actively dissatisfied with Mormonism for whatever reason may feel that rather than deal with their objections straightforwardly, the Givenses have instead carefully crafted a sampler plate of things that look good while ignoring the ugly bits. But then, the purpose of this book is to explain the Givenses’ reasons for belief, not answer the objections of others. Personally, I like the style as well as the content, and I think a great many others will too.

Now if only Deseret Book will issue it in paperback…

2 Posts on Point of View

So what, you may ask, have I been doing the last month or so, since my “reinvention”?

Short answer: Many things (though not so many along the creative writing line as I’d like…). But one item I will advertise here, which is: I wrote two posts about point of view for the Association for Mormon Letters blog. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here. Feel free to read and comment!

Reinventing Jonathan: 2013

And why, you may ask, should I want to do that?

May. File late taxes. Send one spouse off to care for an ailing relative for the summer. (This isn’t a new occurrence, just an old one that has now become more or less routine.) Collect one graduating high school senior, one child home for a month from college, and one almost-teenager with no particular plans for the summer. Rinse and repeat.

June. Send out one set of columns. Send out a couple chapters of a new story. Attend one very cool-but-intimidating sf&f conference where about half the attenders are authors, editors, etc., who all seem a lot smarter than I will ever be. Send oldest child off to Wales for study abroad. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

Attend university orientation with child. Try (and fail) to help child get a job. Try to help children develop life skills. Moderate an online focus group or two, write up a couple of survey reports, do some other paid work odds and ends. Lather, rinse well, and repeat. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

Are you still surprised I’m interested in a reinvention?

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There are lots of things I could be doing: writing more columns, doing worldbuilding research, working on stories, volunteer editing, reading things on my should-read list. Cleaning up around the house. Cooking. Gardening. Engaging my children with various cultural/educational experiences. Family history. Organizing old files. Food storage. (And yes, there’s a rough hierarchy of descending likelihood at work here. How could you tell?)

And there’s a lot of them I should be doing. Many more than I am doing. The problem isn’t lack of things to do, but focus. Discipline. All That Stuff I’ve been whining about the lack of in my personal journals since I was in high school. Depressing, isn’t it, how our key weaknesses tend not to really change over time.

And I need to do something. Some things. More things. Different things. The right things. Something like that? Laziness only gets you so far — not technically true, since laziness actually gets you nowhere at all…

I’d like to be reading more. I’d like to be writing more consistently. I’d like to have a plan for helping my kids learn how to be competent adults, and a sense that my family is moving forward a more secure future. I’d like to have some alternative long-term avenues for earning money. Stay tuned here for more info.

Cat’s in the Cradle

Short one today.

I woke up this morning with a headache, which is one of the best conditions for writing something utterly unrelated to anything else I’m doing. So here goes.

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The first thing I did (after taking half a No-Doz generic substitute and fixing myself a cup of Pero) was to turn on my computer and Pandora station. The first song to come on was “Cat’s in the Cradle,” by Harry Chapin. For those of you who don’t know it, this song is about a man who’s too busy to play with his son while he’s growing up, and then later, when the dad wants to spend time with his son, the son is too busy to come visit: “You see, the new job’s a hassle and the kids have the flu, but it’s been sure nice talking to you, Dad.” The song ends with the dad coming to the realization that his son really had grown up just like him, as he’d said he would all those years ago.

It’s a sad, sentimental, heavily orchestrated, and terribly moralistic song. At least, that’s the way I took it back when I first heard it. And I think that’s how it was meant to be. But on hearing it again recently for the first time in a while (probably on a Pandora station), I found that my perspective had changed.

Listening to the song, I still feel a bit of that sharp message about not spending time on the most important relationships in one’s life. Mostly, though, what I hear is a father and son both reaching out to each other despite the busy-ness of their lives. I hear a father who cared about what was going on in his son’s life, even if he couldn’t always spend the time he and his son wanted. And I hear a son whose life is busy and terribly stressed, but who still talks to his dad on the phone to let him know what’s going on. All in all, I think I prefer that message.

And now I’d better get ready for church…