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IRREANTUM
EXPLORING MORMON LITERATURE

MAGAZINE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR MORMON LETTERS

SPRING 2001 • $3.00

Robert Kirby, Mormon humorist and novelist

Fiction and essays by Lee Allred, Elouise Bell, Ann Edwards Cannon,
Matt Crosby, Helynne Hollstein Hansen, and Donald R. Marshall
Poetry, reviews, literary news, and more
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 2
IRREANTUM
MAGAZINE OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR MORMON LETTERS
E D I T O R I A
Christopher K. Bigelow . . . . . . . Managing editor
Gideon Burton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Associate editor
Tory Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Fiction editor
Harlow Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Poetry editor
Tracie Laulusa . . . . . . . . . .Assistant review editor
A M L
Cherry Silver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .President
Gideon Burton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .President-elect
Marilyn Brown . . . . . . .Academic conference chair
Jana Erickson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Board member
Gae Lyn Henderson . . . . . . . . . . .Board member
A M L
Lavina Fielding Anderson . . .AML ANNUAL editor
Terry L. Jeffress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Webmaster
Jonathan Langford . . . . . . . .AML-List moderator
IRREANTUM (ISSN 1528-0594) is published four times a year
by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML), P.O. Box
51364, Provo, UT 84605-1364, (801) 714-1326, www.xmis-
sion.com/~aml/irreantum.htm. © 2001 by the Association for
Mormon Letters. Membership in the AML is $20 for one year,
which includes an IRREANTUM subscription. Subscriptions to
IRREANTUM may be purchased separately from AML member-
ship for $12 per year, and single copies are $4 (postpaid). Adver-
tising rates begin at $50 for a full page. The AML is a nonprofit
501(c)(3) organization, so contributions of any amount are tax
deductible and gratefully accepted. Views expressed in IRREAN-
TUM do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or of
Spring 2001
L S T A F F
Marny K. Parkin . . . . . Speculative fiction coeditor
and AML-List Highlights editor
Scott R. Parkin . . . . . . Speculative fiction coeditor
Todd Robert Peterson . . . . . . . . . . . .Essay editor
Jana Bouck Remy . . . . . . . . . . . . . Review editor
Edgar C. Snow Jr. . . . . . . . . Rameumptom editor
B O A R D
D. Michael Martindale . . . . . . . . .Board member
Carol Quist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Board member
Neila Seshachari . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Board member
Kathleen Woodbury . . . . . . . . . . .Board member
S T A F F
Scott R. Parkin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Awards chair
Benson Parkinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Listowner
Melissa Proffit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Secretary
AML board members. This magazine has no official connection
with or endorsement by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints.
IRREANTUM welcomes unsolicited essays, reviews, fiction,
poetry, and other manuscripts, and we invite letters intended
for publication. Please submit all manuscripts and queries to
irreantum2@cs.com. If you do not have access to e-mail, you
may mail your text on a floppy disk to IRREANTUM, c/o AML,
P.O. Box 51364, Provo, UT 84605-1364. Except for letters to
the editor, submissions on paper are discouraged. Upon specific
request to irreantum2@cs.com, we will send authors two com-
plimentary copies of an issue in which their work appears.
2 IRREANTUM
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IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 • Volume 3, Number 1
C O N T
Editorial
“He That Sitteth in the Heavens
Shall Laugh”: The New Mormon Humor,
Edgar C. Snow Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
News of the Association for Mormon Letters . . 5
Interview
Robert Kirby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Essays
Surprise, Surprise! Reflections on the Oxymoronic
Question of Mormon Humor, Elouise Bell . . 19
MIA: Missing in Action,
Ann Edwards Cannon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Fiction
The Chastening, Helynne Hollstein Hansen . . . 25
Checkmating Elder Kirkland, Matt Crosby . . . 31
May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,
Donald R. Marshall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
For the Strength of the Hills (Part Two),
Lee Allred . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Poetry
Missionary’s Lament, Richard Johnson . . . . . . . 5
Untitled, Tony A. Markham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Don’t Say It, Beth Hatch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
A Father’s Love, Paul W. Sexton . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Resurrected Spring, Linda P. Adams . . . . . . . . 23
Wrong Way, Katie Parker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
An Argument, Katie Parker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Educated Woman, Laraine Wilkins . . . . . . . . 36
Mimesis Upended: A Reluctant Nod to
Mr. Wilde, Sharlee Mullins Glenn . . . . . . . 62
IRREANTUM
E N T S
Raison D’Etre, Sharlee Mullins Glenn . . . . . . . 62
Love’s Lungs, Gideon Burton . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Nacho Hell, Gideon Burton . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Around Here All the Poets Have Already Left,
Dennis Marden Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
Reviews
When Are We Taking Ourselves Too Seriously?
Patricia T. Coleman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
A review of Elouise Bell’s Only When I Laugh
Freshly Peeled Air, Katie Parker . . . . . . . . . . . 66
A review of Anne Bradshaw’s Terracotta
Summer
Whose Best-Loved Line Is It Anyway?
Edgar C. Snow Jr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
A review of The Best-Loved Humor of the LDS
People
Falling Toward Heaven, Christopher K. Bigelow . .69
A review of John Bennion’s Falling Toward
Heaven
Sung with Vim, Vigor, and a Delicate Tongue,
Harlow S. Clark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
A review of Edgar Snow’s Of Curious Work-
manship, Peggy Fletcher Stack and Kathleen
Peterson’s A World of Faith, and Robert Kirby’s
Provo Daily Herald article “Dressing Like a
Mormon Guy for Only $39.93”
Selected Recent Releases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
Mormon Literary Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
AML-List Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84
3 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 4
E D I T O R I A L Smith, as reported by Joseph Knight (see Dean
“He That Sitteth in the Heavens Shall
Laugh”: The New Mormon Humor
By Edgar C. Snow Jr.
To many non-Mormons, the idea that there
might be such a thing as Mormon humor isn’t
taken very seriously. Consider, for instance, the title
of an Associated Press article appearing in the New
York Times on July 9, 1999: “Mormon Humor? Get
Serious.” You’d think it would be easier to prove the
historicity of the Book of Mormon than to prove
the actuality of Mormon humor. Yet, through inter-
views with several Latter-day Saints and a brief
review of Deseret Book’s The Best-Loved Humor of
the LDS People, this article demonstrated some-
thing wholesomely funny going on in the contem-
porary Mormon experience, something we intend
to showcase in this special Mormon humor issue of
IRREANTUM.
To Mormons, on the other hand, it should come
naturally to suspect there’s something funny about
Mormonism. For instance, who among us has not
laughed at or told at least one J. Golden Kimball
story or two? Also, consider Elder James E. Faust’s
recent First Presidency Message, “The Need for
Balance in Our Lives” (Ensign, March 2000, 2–5).
It is an invitation, among other things, to cultivate
a sense humor in our lives. And in our admonitions
to follow the prophet, have we given sufficient
thought to President Hinckley’s own renowned use
of humor?
Similarly, the Prophet Joseph had a hearty sense
of humor, one of the many reasons he was beloved
of his people. Anecdotal evidence suggests Joseph
was a man who loved to belly laugh. One of Joseph’s
contemporaries said about him: “Joe had a jovial,
easy, don’t care way about him. . . . He used to
laugh from the crown of his head to the soles of his
feet, it shook every bit of flesh in him” (Dean
Jessee, “Joseph Smith’s Reputation,” Ensign, Sept.
1979, 59). In fact, the first known bit of humor
in the history of the Restoration occurred during
the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. Joseph
Spring 2001
Jessee’s transcription published as “Joseph Knight’s
Recollection of Early Mormon History,” BYU
Studies, 17:1), displayed some very rough Will
Rogers-esque humor while discussing the golden
plates. Says Knight about the incident:
So that night we all went to Bed and in the
morning I got up and my Horse and Carriage
was gone. But after a while [Joseph] Came
home and he turned out the Horse. All Come
into the house to Brackfirst [breakfast]. But
no thing said about where they had Bin. After
Brackfirst Joseph Cald me into the other
Room and he set his foot on the Bed and
leaned his head on his hand and says, “Well I
am Dissopinted. “Well,” say I, “I am sorrey.”
“Well,” says he, “I am grateley Dissopinted; it
is ten times Better then I expected.” Then he
went on to tell the length and width and
thickness of the plates, and said he, “they
appear to be Gold.” But he seamed to think
more of the glasses or the urim and thummem
then he Did of the Plates, for, says he, “I can
see anything; they are Marvelus. Now they are
written in Caracters and I want them trans-
lated. (38)
Okay, okay, I didn’t say it was completely hilari-
ous. Joseph’s early sense of humor was unpolished.
As he said about himself, Joseph’s sense of humor
was a “huge, rough stone rolling down from a high
mountain” and becoming more polished by smash-
ing into other rocks on the way down.
A writer no less than John Greenleaf Whittier
called the mature Joseph the “Yankee Prophet” and
said Joseph had “knocked out for himself a window
in the wall of the nineteenth century, whence his
rude, bold, good humored face will peer out upon
the generations to come” (as quoted in Hyrum
Andrus, Joseph Smith, Prophet, Seer, 138). Joseph
enjoyed humor so much that on at least one occa-
sion he had to defend his own laughing. He was
tugging and wrestling with “the boys,” and some
humorless members of the Church, while tugging
at their heavily starched collars, openly wrestled
with Joseph’s apparent light-mindedness. His
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Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 5
defense was to tell the story about the hunter who
would not keep his bow strung at all times, lest it
lose its spring (see Hyrum Andrus, Joseph Smith,
Prophet, Seer, 18).
It’s with great pleasure that I invite you to enjoy
the offering of Mormon humor collected, discussed,
and reviewed in this issue. Sit back and let Robert
Kirby, Elouise Bell, Ann Edwards Cannon, and their
fellow Mormon humorists help you unstring your
bow and exercise faith in Brigham Young’s declara-
tion: “I sometimes think God must enjoy humor,
and that he won’t be strict in reckoning with a
humorist” (The Essential Brigham Young, 241).
P O E T R Y
Missionary’s Lament
Why upon their heads must men impress
Their balms and grease and scientific finds?
The hair is not a sign of soul or heart,
Nor does the covered pate improve the mind.
Oh! No! ’Tis but a parasite that preys
Upon the blood of man, that could be spent
Much better in a thousand other ways.
But find the man without, who does not hope
For cover on that bald and shiny spot.
Or find the one who has, and yet can hope,
Whose hopes are not to have but to have not.
—Richard Johnson
This poem, written in 1950 during a high school
English class, was purchased by the Saturday Evening
Post. “If they published it, I never saw it, nor was I
notified,” says Johnson. “They paid me fifteen dollars.
I didn’t cash the check, either. I had it framed on my
wall till I left on my mission—never saw it again.”
IRREANTUM
A M L N E W S
President’s Message: A Healthy Heartbeat
At the February 24 annual meeting of the Asso-
ciation for Mormon Letters, long-time secretary
Steven Sondrup recalled a time in AML history
when the organization seemed nearly defunct
because of few members and low finances. Happily,
now an upward trend is strengthening the AML in
both those areas and in public cognizance as well.
The AML literary awards are gaining increasing
value. This spring you frequently encounter book
advertising that emphasizes the AML awards. The
Church News acknowledged the special award from
the AML to President Gordon B. Hinckley for his
nationally published book of essays Standing for
Something. Deseret Book asked permission to apply
the AML seal to two award winners they publish:
Margaret Blair Young and Darius Gray’s novel One
More River to Cross and Patricia Holland’s devo-
tional collection The Quiet Heart.
The AML rotates board members, officers, and
staff members. Our board taps into large sectors
of the reading, writing, publishing, and scholarly
communities. Currently serving are faculty mem-
bers from BYU and Weber State, a publishing
manager, technical writers, novelists, homemakers,
and computer experts. This diversity invites multi-
ple viewpoints and talents. A great energy comes
from this group of volunteers. I feel privileged to
serve one year as president.
Perhaps the AML’s most important function is to
promote literary networking. Some of that takes
place on e-mail through the discussion group AML-
List, with its reviews of new publications and idea
exchanges. Other networking occurs in writing
groups and at conferences. The AML web page
aims to advertise current meetings and their topics.
This vibrant publication IRREANTUM circulates
recent creative work and introduces our literary
personalities.
The annual meeting—to be held next year on
March 2—promotes scholarly discussion and com-
mentaries on Mormon writing past and present. In
addition, a fall writers’ conference brings together a
5 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 6
faculty of writers and publishers for practical how-
to sessions. That conference, like our annual fund-
raising lecture, features distinguished authors.
Expect announcements shortly of guest speakers
at AML events. Test out the AML’s revised web page
at www.xmission.com/~aml. And stay connected with
us through AML-List, our e-mail address at irrean-
tum2@cs.com, and letters to P.O. Box 51364, Provo,
UT 84605-1364. We value your contribution.
—Cherry B. Silver
Call for Papers for AML Annual Meeting
The topic of next year’s annual AML gathering,
to be held on March 2 at Westminster College in
Salt Lake City, is “Walking the Cultural Tightrope:
Mormon Writers and Their Audiences.” Confer-
ence chairman Marilyn Brown invites paper pro-
posals at wwbrown@burgoyne.com or 125 Hobble
Creek Canyon, Springville, UT 84663.
Deadline Extended for IRREANTUM Fic-
tion Contest
The deadline has been extended to July 31 for the
first annual IRREANTUM fiction contest. All contest
entries must relate to the Mormon experience in
some way, either explicitly or implicitly. As long as
an entry doesn’t exceed 8,500 words, any fictional
form will be considered, including short stories and
excerpts from novels, screenplays, and play scripts.
Any fictional genre is welcome, including literary,
mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, histori-
cal, and horror. The first-place author will be
awarded $100, second place $75, and third place
$50 (unless the judge determines entries are not of
sufficient quality to merit awards). Winners agree to
give IRREANTUM first publication rights. To facilitate
blind judging, entries should be submitted with a
removable cover sheet that includes the author’s
name, address, telephone number, e-mail address,
and manuscript title—the author’s name should
appear on no other page of the manuscript. Stories
should be double spaced in easily readable type.
Entries will not be returned. Submit manuscripts by
July 31, 2001, to IRREANTUM’s fiction editor, Tory
Anderson, P.O. Box 445, Levan, UT 84639.
Spring 2001
New AML Board and Staff Members
The AML is pleased to welcome three new board
members and a new secretary. Board member
Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury has published six
speculative fiction stories and heads the Science
Fiction and Fantasy Workshop. Board member
Jana Erickson manages an imprint at Deseret
Book. Board member Neila Seshachari is a profes-
sor at Weber State University. Secretary Melissa
Proffitt is a homemaker and writer.
We release with a vote of thanks board members
John Bennion, Cory Maxwell, and Tessa Meyer
Santiago, as well as two staff members, Brandi
Rainey and Darlene Young. The AML is currently
searching for a new treasurer; to inquire about the
position, please e-mail us at irreantum2@cs.com.
AML Awards
At the AML’s annual conference held on Febru-
ary 24, 2001, at Westminster College in Salt Lake
City, the AML presented awards in several cate-
gories. Following are the complete award citations.
Award in Criticism: Benson Parkinson
The Association for Mormon Letters presents a
special award in criticism to Benson Parkinson for
AML-List.
The first award established by the Association
for Mormon Letters in 1978 was in the category of
criticism, and no activity can be considered more
central to the mission and vision of this body than
enabling meaningful conversations. As Wayne
Booth has said, Mormonism “will never attain a
great artistic culture until we have achieved a great
critical culture.” That critical culture is indeed devel-
oping, and it has grown exponentially in recent
years due to the pioneering vision and indefatigable
efforts of Benson Parkinson.
Back in 1995, before e-mail became so widely
used, Benson foresaw the utility of establishing an
online conversation about Mormon letters and in
May of that year inaugurated AML-List. Since that
time, hundreds and hundreds of scholars, students,
Church members, and the casually interested from
6 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 7
all over the world have become part of an online
community dedicated to analyzing the aesthetic, cul-
tural, pragmatic, and spiritual aspects of Mormon-
related literature. The membership of the Association
for Mormon Letters has swelled as a direct conse-
quence of AML-List, and our meetings now reflect
the influx of many younger writers and critics and
the broader variety of literary genres represented by
AML-List subscribers. For all but two or three days
of the year when our live events take the fore-
ground, AML-List is the Association for Mormon
Letters. It has become a clearinghouse for news
about LDS literature, a resource for budding writ-
ers, a forum for literary experts and lay readers, and
a vehicle for announcing and promoting readings,
book signings, conferences, and online resources of
interest to AML members.
The guiding force behind the list has been Ben-
son Parkinson. As moderator of the list until last
year, Benson not only solved many technical prob-
lems, especially before e-mail became more estab-
lished, but he also read every post to the list—
literally thousands—to screen out both digressions
and diatribes, continually reminding the partici-
pants of the goals and texts central to this body.
AML-List could have had a shorter and less mean-
ingful life if it had not been overseen by a well-read,
good-natured, and articulate critic who knew how
to tame this novel medium and turn it to account.
Benson established regular columns, including
outlets for news, bibliographies, new creative writ-
ing, and especially reviews. To date, some 400 reviews
have appeared on AML-List, most of which were
made possible through the mediation and editing
of Benson Parkinson. The AML’s literary quarterly,
IRREANTUM, was born out of the vision and the
community of personnel Benson Parkinson has
fashioned over the last five years. As Robert Hogge
adumbrated in his recent AML presidential address,
the Association for Mormon Letters has been reborn
electronically, and Benson Parkinson has been the
midwife to that great renewal.
IRREANTUM
Award in Devotional Literature:
Patricia T. Holland
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in devotional literature for 2000 to Patricia T.
Holland for A Quiet Heart (Deseret Book, 2000).
On a beautiful day, Patricia T. Holland sat over-
looking the Sea of Galilee, wondering whether life
should be as hard as it was and worrying that she
had not succeeded in her stewardships. As she felt
the healing rays of the sun, she seemed to hear
Heavenly Father whisper to her, “You don’t have to
worry over so many things. The only thing that is
truly needful is to keep your eyes toward the sun—
my Son.” Against the backdrop of experiences such
as this, Sister Holland leads the reader of A Quiet
Heart on a search for wholeness and holiness.
Sister Holland soothes the troubled mind, encour-
aging the reader to “turn a few things down and
turn a few things off ” in order to seek solutions
and comfort from the one true source. With
warmth, wisdom, and humor, she explains that joy
will only be ours when our actions and our aspi-
rations match God’s plan for us, not God’s plan for
somebody else.
Her honesty about her feelings and her willing-
ness to discuss personal challenges assure readers
that their own challenges can be met with courage
and serenity. With her friendly style, she inspires
readers toward more consistent spiritual strivings
without making them feel more frenzied and guilty.
She invites readers to feel and enjoy the Lord’s love
for them. “Rest in that love. . . . Let it relax, calm
and comfort you.” A Quiet Heart is the quintessen-
tial inspirational book. It leads readers gently, qui-
etly, and steadily toward having hearts filled with
charity—for themselves, for others, and for God.
This thought-provoking and well-crafted work
instills peace and hope in its readers and leaves
them with Sister Holland’s stirring reassurance that
“God will not fail or forsake us.”
Award in Drama: Margaret Blair Young
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in drama for 2000 to Margaret Blair Young
for I Am Jane (produced for the Genesis Group,
March 2000).
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Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 8
Jane Manning James was one of our most remark-
able pioneer ancestors. She was a woman of tremen-
dous courage and faith, and she survived personal
tragedies that would have destroyed many. And she
was black, a former slave. The fact that she was a
convert to Mormonism, a pioneer, and a Saint makes
her a compelling subject for drama; the fact that
she was African-American gives her story resonance
and power far beyond the facts of her life history.
Margaret Young, together with her writing part-
ner, Darius Gray, has begun to explore the sad
legacy of LDS race relations in what promises to
be a groundbreaking trilogy of historical novels
called Standing on the Promises, book one of
which, One More River to Cross, was recently pub-
lished by Deseret Book. Now, with I Am Jane,
Young has taken the same body of research and cre-
ated a theatrical event of the first rank.
Using gospel music from the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries and employing a free-flowing
theatrical style that moves the story through time
and space, I Am Jane is an exciting piece of theater.
Although the writing is direct and eloquent, Young
has made the difficult choice to mute her own
strong, poetic voice and give us instead the voice of
her subject. The play’s title is no accident; I Am
Jane is clearly intended as a tribute to a remarkable
subject, instead of the subjective vision of a master-
ful artist. And, as such, the play becomes a vehicle
not only for Jane James’s testimony but also the
vehicle through which we hear the testimonies of
our living brothers and sisters.
The written texts of plays are merely the blue-
prints for performances, and a fine play needs to be
seen and heard, not merely read. This is doubly
true for I Am Jane. One cannot mention the power
and impact of this text and not mention the dedi-
cation and commitment of the members of the
LDS theatrical community, black and white, who
have sacrificed to present it in so many venues.
I Am Jane is a wonderful play. But by bringing
together present and past, black and white, broth-
ers and sisters, this play becomes more than a work
of art. It becomes an act of goodness.
Spring 2001
Award in the Essay: Gordon B. Hinckley
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in the essay for 2000 to Gordon B. Hinckley for
Standing for Something (Times Books, 2000).
Once in a great while, a book comes along that
makes such a significant contribution to our cul-
ture that it really needs to be recognized in a
significant way. This past year, Latter-day Saints
witnessed an unimagined phenomenon as the pres-
ident of the Church wrote a book that ended up on
the New York Times bestseller list. That book,
Standing for Something, is a forthright, unflinching
call for society to return to its moral moorings.
In a day of rationalizations and redefinitions
regarding family and morality, here is a book that
says, without apology, that married couples ought
to stay married, that parents have actual responsi-
bilities to teach their children, and that the way to
find happiness and personal freedom is to embrace
such values as integrity, civility, and hard work.
That President Gordon B. Hinckley would say
such things is no surprise to anyone in our culture.
That a national publisher would produce his book,
that Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes would write a
foreword for it, and that hundreds of thousands of
people across the country would buy copies of it—
those are unforeseen and unprecedented events.
President Hinckley has always been an opener of
doors, and Standing for Something has opened new
doors for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints in ways that will affect the world’s view of us
for years to come. It has built a bridge between
Zion and New York, demonstrating that Mormon
views and Mormon writings are welcome in the
national culture.
Award in Film: Richard Dutcher
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in filmmaking for 2000 to Richard Dutcher
for God’s Army (Zion Films and Excel Entertain-
ment Group, 2000).
When considering Richard Dutcher’s film God’s
Army, the immediate temptation is to focus on this
film more for what it seems to herald than for what
it actually is. Since LDS filmmaking has now so
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Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 9
clearly taken such a major step forward with the
release of God’s Army, cinema can now be said to
have joined the conversation with our culture that
so many LDS novelists, playwrights, poets, and
essayists have been engaging in for generations.
God’s Army seems to presage a movement, a renais-
sance, in which Richard Dutcher, in the best LDS
tradition, plays the role of pioneer.
And yet we ought not allow the God’s Army event
to overshadow the film itself. It’s such a lovely, inti-
mate film, a film of understatement and modesty.
A powerful miracle scene is treated quietly, without
intrusive underscoring or acting histrionics. A prayer
scene is accompanied not by violins or choral angels
but by the simple sound of a car engine sputtering
to a start. The camera work is unobtrusive, and yet
the camera is always in the right place, and the
lighting convincingly captures the shabbiness of
missionary apartments.
Dutcher’s writing has the same understated com-
plexity as we find in the best fiction of Doug Thayer
or John Bennion. His characters are rich, multifac-
eted, and multidimensional. Dutcher’s missionaries
are believable both as young men and as God’s ser-
vants, easily confused and yet also idealistic, given
to practical jokes but also capable of great faith.
The story of the making of God’s Army, the
struggle to raise funds and to find a distributor, is
in many ways as inspirational as the film itself.
God’s Army is a fine and an important film, but it
was also a commercial success. That may be the most
encouraging thing about it. And so, the Association
for Mormon Letters honors not only a remarkable
piece of LDS writing but also the work of a pro-
ducer of courage and tenacity, a director of vision
and imagination, an actor of sensitivity and insight,
and a marketer of creativity and skill. It is not hyper-
bole to declare God’s Army the most remarkable and
important film in the history of Mormon letters. It
is a pleasure to honor this extraordinary movie.
Award in the Novel: Margaret Blair Young and
Darius Aiden Gray
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in the novel for 2000 to Margaret Blair Young
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and Darius Aiden Gray for Standing on the Promises:
One More River to Cross (Deseret Book, 2000).
In One More River to Cross, Margaret Young and
Darius Gray have created a haunting, beautifully
written, carefully documented story that describes
the lives of black Saints in the early history of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Pioneer stories often neglect these Saints of
color. This novel reminds us of their presence and
prominence among the early Saints, including close
association with the Prophet Joseph Smith and his
family. Many black Saints had only recently
attained their freedom, and they found some relief
in the company of the Saints. We would hope that
the early Saints had treated all men as equals, but
we learn that—like today—prejudice often appears
even among people who should know better.
In the fine people of One More River to Cross,
you find a strength and an integrity that served them
well in their long trek across the nation—escaping
from slavery in Maryland, joining the Saints in Illi-
nois, and traveling across the plains to the moun-
tains of Zion. You’ll likewise find a deep humanity
that extended beyond the boundaries of their own
culture to those around them, setting an example
for our growing, multicultural church today.
One More River to Cross is an important addition
to both Mormon and African-American literature,
with the story of a people who learned to reach
deeply within themselves to find a sense of purpose,
a sense of worth, that only the gospel of Jesus
Christ can bring.
Award in Short Fiction: Darrell Spencer
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
award in short fiction for 2000 to Darrell Spencer
for Caution, Men in Trees (University of Georgia
Press, 2000).
Writers judging writers. Whoever thought this
one up? As if one writer could judge another’s work
without bias. On the one hand, it’s easy to dismiss
something that doesn’t actually fall within your
own genre or violates one of the seven deadly sins
that you’ve taught against all these years. But when
the writer is particularly good and competes with
your own space, breathes the air that should have
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been yours, a writer-judge has to swallow pride and
say, “Damn, that’s good.” Because when you have
pulled apart all the critical edges and the center still
holds, what else is there to say?
So this year, the award in short fiction goes to a
collection that is totally without humility. You
might expect a writer to find one good metaphor or
image and play with it for awhile like a cat. No
economy there. You might expect a writer to have
one story out of a collection that easily leads the
pack. You might at least expect him to stumble
every once in awhile, please.
But not so. The language of this collection never
lets up. Every story is a downpour of image, a del-
uge of metaphor, a torrent of detail. In fact, it is a
flood of everything that the judge holds sacred. So
what else is there for the judge to do, but to fall and
be washed away, to struggle and then cling again,
and finally crawl, and gasp, and in a whisper with
that last breath of air say—“Awe. I could never have
written this.”
Lifetime Award: Richard Cracroft
The Association for Mormon Letters presents an
honorary lifetime membership to Richard H. Cracroft.
The problem with honoring Richard Cracroft is
that such an encomium deserves the eloquence and
good humor that he alone is most qualified to give.
To list his many contributions to Mormon letters
falls short of conveying his passion, his verve, his
back-handed satire and his front-loaded humor.
For Richard Cracroft has not simply been a scholar
advancing our field; he has been a captain boldly
leading us into it—organizing, quelling, and pre-
siding over the skirmishes that have kept Mormon
letters such an interesting panorama.
On one front Richard has been a literary scholar,
credentialed in American and Western studies, bring-
ing LDS literature under the legitimizing aegis of
those more established fields. On another front he
has been a popular and accessible critic, explaining
the history of LDS fiction to the Church at large
in the pages of the Ensign or guiding readers of BYU
Magazine to the best of current LDS literature. As
a kind of literary diplomat, Richard Cracroft has
for many years directed BYU’s Center for Christian
Spring 2001
Values in Literature, bringing LDS literature and
criticism into contact with larger, non-LDS audi-
ences through the journal Literature and Belief and
bringing together faculty and literary scholars from
across campus and the country through colloquia
and conferences aptly named “Literature and Belief”
and “Spiritual Frontiers.”
But Richard has been no literary pacificist. His
passionate loyalty to the Mormon faith and to a
conservative Mormon aesthetics has caused him to
speak out with typical lack of timidity against back-
sliding opinions and encroaching secularism. As he
concluded his year as president of the AML in
1991, for example, he issued a stirring call to LDS
writers and critics to return to the core values of an
LDS worldview. Whether or not Richard has suc-
ceeded in stemming the sophic tide of Mormon lit-
erature, his authentic Mormon voice has created no
enemies. To the contrary, it has always commanded
respect, as all great passion does, especially from
someone who so genially combines religious testi-
mony and literary acumen.
Richard has been justly called the father of mod-
ern Mormon literary studies, but we might even
call him its godfather—substituting for images of
violence the force of Richard’s constant good humor
and good will as he has presided over a dynasty of
contributions to our common cause. Not only did
Richard inaugurate the first courses in Mormon lit-
erature at BYU, but just prior to the founding of
the AML he edited (with Neal Lambert) the first
anthology of Mormon literature, A Believing Peo-
ple: Literature of the Latter-day Saints. That seminal
work has been repeatedly celebrated both for chart-
ing a course for future LDS literary studies and for
reviving genres and authors otherwise passed over.
That early work has paid off in a heritage of renewed
attention to the genres and figures that he and Neal
Lambert salvaged from obscurity. He has more
recently defended “home literature” and popular
genres, convincing literary scholars to take seriously
what mainstream Mormons are reading. Richard is
an advocate and a champion, a literate voice for
works considered by some as less literary, both in
the past and the present. He is a leader who rouses
and rallies his audiences from their stupors of
thought, motivating them toward more profound
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engagement of both their religion and its literary I N T E R V I E W

expression.
For his mediation and advocacy as critic, for his Robert Kirby
countless articles and presentations that have shaped
the field, for his inimitable eloquence and humor, Interviewed by Edgar C. Snow Jr.
and for his many years of tireless reading and writ-
ing on behalf of Mormon letters, the Association Robert Kirby was born in California in 1953 and
for Mormon Letters proudly confers upon Richard moved at age six with his military family to Zaragoza,
Cracroft honorary lifetime membership. Spain, where the family lived until 1962. Following
their return from Spain, the family lived at various
military installations throughout the western United
P O E T R Y States, eventually settling in Salt Lake City. Kirby
graduated from Skyline High School in 1971 and six
There once was a doctrine, Adam-God months later joined a military police company in the
The reaction to which was quite broad. Utah National Guard. From 1973 to 1975 he served
You’re free to deny it, an LDS mission to Uruguay, where he met Irene Jones
Swear at it or by it, of Calgary, Alberta, whom he later married in the Salt
Or dismiss it merely as damn odd. Lake Temple. After working as a stock clerk and a
carpenter, in 1978 he joined the Grantsville Police
—Tony A. Markham Department and in July 1979 transferred to the
Springville Police Department.
Tony A. Markham is a graduate of BYU and the While attending night classes at Brigham Young
University of Utah. He currently teaches at Delhi Col- University in 1983, Kirby was encouraged by an Eng-
lege in upstate New York and is working on his second lish professor to actively pursue writing. The following
novel. His first novel, The Jaxon Files, was published year he became a weekly columnist for the Springville
in 1996 by R.K. Books. To his knowledge it is the first Herald under the pseudonym of Mark Conroy. In
example of Mormon comic epic science fiction. 1988 he became a regular columnist for the Utah
County Journal, writing law enforcement humor
Don’t Say It under the pseudonym of Officer ‘Blitz’ Kreeg, and the
Don’t tell me next year he left law enforcement to accept a job as
to bloom where I’m planted editor of the Journal. During that employment he
or say published two novels, Brigham’s Bees (Cedar Fort,
in this place 1991) and Dark Angel (Cedar Fort, 1992; repub-
I should thrive. lished by Slickrock Books, 2000). A compilation of his
police columns was published as Happy Valley Patrol
Imagine in 1993.
a jungle-rot cactus. At the Journal, Kirby wrote a column titled “Five
How long can Kinds of Mormons,” which began his strange odyssey
a beached whale as Utah’s “oxyMormon.” Because he persisted in lam-
survive? pooning Mormons, he was fired by the Journal in
1994. He then freelanced for three years, writing for a
—Beth Hatch variety of newspapers and magazines, including the
Salt Lake Tribune and the Daily Herald in Provo.
Beth Hatch lives in Vancouver, Washington, where In 1997 he accepted full-time employment with the
she collects pictures of the BYU campus and fantasizes Tribune, where he currently writes several humor
about living in Provo again. columns per week.

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In collaboration with Tribune editorial cartoonist
Pat Bagley, Kirby has published four humor compila-
tions lampooning Utah’s dominant culture: Sunday of
the Living Dead (Buckaroo Books, 1995), Wake Me
for the Resurrection (Buckaroo Books, 1996), Pat &
Kirby Go to Hell (Slickrock Books, 1997), and Fam-
ily Home Screaming (Slickrock Books, 1999). Today
he commutes daily to the Tribune from Springville via
the Internet, and his frequent speaking engagements
are primarily on the subject of coping with life in
Utah. His wife, Irene, is his business manager and
owner of Slickrock Books. Kirby is currently at work
on a book about Utah’s murdered police officers. His
website is located at www.kirbybooks.com. When an
IRREANTUM editor stood in line next to Kirby at a Provo
Blockbuster recently, Kirby asked if Irreantum was the
name of a really irritable Book of Mormon prophet.
Snow: Can you elaborate on how, when, and
where you aspired, or were foreordained, to the
calling of Mormon humorist?
Kirby: I’m not sure. My scholastic and employ-
ment record would indicate that I’ve always been
something of a smart aleck, especially where organ-
ized behavior is concerned. The Mormon humorist
part came later, most visibly when I started lam-
pooning the Utah culture as a columnist for the
Utah County Journal, sometime around 1992. One
day this light went on in my head, a sudden burst
of understanding about the legitimate side to the
behavior that once got me suspended or fired. I’m
not suggesting any sort of spiritual confirmation
but rather that I finally realized that I’d been given
this left-handed way of looking at things for a rea-
son. Better yet, there was a necessary place for it
within the Mormon experience. There’s also the
possibility that one too many Sunday school les-
sons drove me around the bend. If that’s true,
maybe this is just what keeps me from taking a gun
to church. However, judging from the feedback I’ve
received over the years, there are a lot of fellow trav-
elers out there.
Snow: I heard you say once that President
Hinckley all but set you apart for your position
as Resident Fool at the Salt Lake Tribune.
Spring 2001
Could you comment on that and your experi-
ence at the Tribune?
Kirby: I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was
set apart. It might imply that I have President
Hinckley’s blessing or endorsement for what I write.
I don’t. I prefer it that way. As the Lord’s anointed,
President Hinckley has no business lurking out
here on the lunatic fringe with the likes of you and
me. But you’re probably referring to the time my
stake president talked to me about a column I
wrote in which I claimed I could beat up President
Hinckley. I didn’t say I wanted to. I was simply
responding to readers constantly asking me if I was
afraid of Church leaders. In fairness, I also said I
could beat up the Pope, Mother Theresa couldn’t
take a punch, and Billy Graham was sick and there-
fore no real threat. So why would I be afraid of
Church leaders? Anyway, the long and short of it
was that my stake president thought that particular
column was a bit irreverent. He’s probably right.
I mean, I freely admit to being more than a little
crazy. I ended up talking by phone with the general
authority who brought the offending column to
the attention of the stake president. It was all in the
best of spirits, but they wanted me to know they
were concerned about me going too far. As my eccle-
siastical leaders, they were perfectly within their
rights. They asked me to be more careful. I said I
would. On the off chance that President Hinckley
was offended, I wrote him a letter of apology. I said
I wouldn’t write stuff like that anymore, but I still
thought I could beat up the Pope. I got a letter
back from one of his secretaries two weeks later
telling me that the president wasn’t offended and
wishing me luck.
I would like to point out that my stake president
is a good man. He’s the stake president because he
has talents in that area. That said, he’s told me that
he finds some of what I do to be vulgar and light-
minded. I’m not offended by that, and I hope he’s
not offended by the fact that I find some of his
behavior incredibly boring. We have different senses
of humor. His particular sense of humor probably
serves him very well in his capacity as a stake pres-
ident. I think it’s safe to say that I wasn’t sent here
with the expectation that I would become a stake
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president. If I had to use his sense of humor to
balance the talents and traits I have, I’d probably
kill myself.
A lot of Mormons behave as if God grades on the
curve. Too often we use other people as the stan-
dard by which we measure our worthiness to God.
You and I weren’t put here to fashion ourselves after
President Hinckley. In addition to it being a colos-
sal waste of time, it’s contrary to God’s plan. God
made us as individuals, and our job now is to
become the best people we can be, individually. I’m
on a rant here. Next question.
Snow: President Hinckley is widely recog-
nized as a charming man full of good humor. I
often refer to him as “prophet, seer, revelator,
and humorist.” How do you see his humor
affecting Mormon culture?
Kirby: I don’t see his sense of humor changing
what Mormons laugh at now, but rather I think it
will change how hypersensitive we are to ribbing
from other people. His sense of humor is very
much a self-deprecating one, and I think he’s done
a marvelous job of helping us shrug off a lot of that
martyr mentality we’ve packed around since Nau-
voo. If you want to be a player in the world religion
business, you can’t go around sulking because
someone thinks you’re a bit odd. Humor has this
way of making you OK with being odd. On a Utah
level, Mormonism can be stressful. Not only does it
require a lot from its members, but there is a great
deal of internal pressure—both imagined and real—
to maintain appearances. Humor goes a long way
toward alleviating the pain of realizing that not
only can you never be perfect, but everyone already
knows that you aren’t.
Snow: You had a dog once as a missionary
companion. Tell me about that experience. Was
it a pilot program in your mission?
Kirby: Toward the end of my mission in Uru-
guay (1973–75), I adopted a stray dog. We weren’t
supposed to have pets, but I wasn’t a very obedient
missionary. I kept the big rules but didn’t let the
smaller ones get in the way of what I wanted to do.
My junior companion at the time was Carl English
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from New Jersey. The dog in question was a large
German shepherd and greyhound mix we called
Lurch. The town was San Jose de Carrasco. Tough
place. Nobody wanted to hear from us. We had a
lot of doors slammed in our faces and quite a bit of
name-calling. I got bored with all this, which is a
bad thing for me. I get into trouble when I get
bored. One day I put a white shirt, tie, nametag,
and pair of gym shorts on Lurch and took him out
tracting. The responses were nothing less than
amazing. People didn’t know how to handle a four-
legged Mormon missionary. They weren’t ready for
humor coming at them from that direction, and it
caught a lot of them pleasantly off-guard. It wasn’t
long before people started watching for us. They
quit calling us names. I think they finally realized
that we were human. Sharing humor does that.
Elder Lurch didn’t catch on as a pilot program.
The assistants to the president came out and told
us to quit dressing up the dog as a missionary, and
we more or less complied. But they also told us to
get rid of Lurch, to which I responded, “Or what?”
Neither one of them was big enough to make that
happen. Lurch stayed with me until I went home,
at which point I turned him over to Elder English,
who passed him along to the next missionary. As
far as I know, he was still there a year later.
Snow: I believe you once mentioned that
Twain’s Roughing It is perhaps your favorite book.
I see a kinship between Samuel Clemens, that
“Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” and you,
our own “Wild Humorist of the Wasatch Front.”
I’ve heard others suggest you are the Mormon
Dave Barry. Which do you prefer, and why?
Kirby: Twain is the absolute supreme commander
and high overlord of American satire. I read Huck-
leberry Finn the first time when I was eleven and
have worshipped him ever since. Any similarities
between Twain and myself are high sacrilege, so
quit it. Roughing It is one of many favorite books.
What I liked about it was the part wherein Twain
recounts his visit to Salt Lake City. It was a humor-
ous, even punishing, account of Mormon-dominated
early life and a pleasant switch from the corporate
spin on Mormon history that I was used to.
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As for Dave Barry, I met him the last time he was
in Salt Lake. He’s every bit as funny in person as he
is in print. If I had to choose between being like
either of them, it’s probably Dave. But I hope I’m
cutting my own trail in this business, which per-
haps goes without saying. I mean, really, how many
religion humorists are there? There certainly aren’t
enough Mormon humorists. Pity, actually. I think
the gospel is the most interesting when it’s cast in a
humorous light. I’m much more encouraged by
stuff that makes me smile.
Snow: Which humorists or other authors have
influenced you most, and why?
Kirby: Humorists would be Patrick McManus,
P. J. O’Rourke, James Thurber, Lewis Grizzard, and
Erma Bombeck. Authors, probably Robert Lewis
Taylor, Pat Conroy, Harper Lee, Levi Peterson,
Martin Cruz Smith, James Lee Burke.
But inside the Church, I would have to say that
the greatest influences on me have been cartoonists
Cal Grondahl and Pat Bagley, particularly the early
Grondahl cartoon books published by Sunstone.
One day I picked up Freeway to Perfection and very
nearly killed myself laughing. Nothing about Mor-
monism was the same for me after that. It was so
much better, so much fuller. I believe that there are
people, some of them future leaders, who have
remained faithful because Cal gave Mormons a
safety valve. It’s unfortunate that his contributions
aren’t recognized more. [Editor’s note: The Associa-
tion for Mormon Letters recognized Calvin Grondahl
with the 1983 AML award in humor.]
Snow: A recent Newsweek article (“The Sci-
ence of Laughs,” October 9, 2000) reports
that “laughter evolved from the heavy breathing
that accompanies something like playful
wrestling” and that “ritualized panting—laugh-
ter—then might have come to represent the
playful activity itself, signaling ‘I’m enjoying
this.’” Do you have a theory of humor? Why
people laugh? Why Mormons laugh?
Kirby: There are so many positive physical ben-
efits to laughter that it’s a wonder laughter isn’t
included in the Word of Wisdom. It boosts your
Spring 2001
immune system by activating T lymphocytes and
natural killer cells that destroy invading organisms.
It increases gamma-interferon, a disease-fighting
protein, and best of all it triggers a flood of beta-
endorphins. Free drugs, woo-hoo. I think most
people laugh simply because it’s a pleasure to do so.
It’s certainly a better alternative than screaming.
I think Mormons laugh—at least within the con-
text of the Church experience—because if we
didn’t, we’d go nuts. This is particularly true in
Utah, where pressure to measure up or conform
can be severe. If anything, I think this is the secret
to whatever success I’ve had at this. I didn’t create
the demand. I’m not even all that original in my
style. If anything, I’m probably simply brazen enough
to write what so many others are thinking. Lots of
us have suffered at the hands of gospel Nazis. If it
wasn’t a strict parent, it was an unimaginative sem-
inary teacher or overly dogmatic bishop. Laughing
at certain things is our way of getting rid of the
guilt that we have been taught is the primary vehi-
cle of the gospel, something that is so much a part
of being reared in any religion. It’s a way of saying
that you don’t have to be just another cow in the
herd in order to be Mormon. Face it—ninety per-
cent of church is moo stuff. Like humor, the true
beauty of the gospel lies in its simplicity.
Snow: Is there a distinctive Mormon sense of
humor? Can or should Mormon humorists cre-
ate a “style of our own”?
Kirby: Since control or correlation is such an
indelible part of Mormonism, I think some people
would love it if there were a distinctive or approved
Mormon sense of humor. That would make it safe
for them. But I’m not sure where you would look
to find humor that is particularly Mormon. Other
than the occasional chuckle elicited during a
general conference talk, there’s no official Church
endorsement of humor. A couple of years ago,
Deseret Book published Best-Loved Humor of the
LDS People, a book so singularly unfunny that it
ought to be at least a misdemeanor to own a copy.
What wasn’t lame was not singularly Mormon—it
borrowed heavily from other faiths, with only slight
changes in casting to make it Mormon. If this is
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our best humor, what we as a people find the fun-

niest, it’s no wonder people think we’re anal. As for
creating our own style of humor, that’s something
that happens on its own. Humor is whatever makes
you laugh, a natural process that fails when you
force it or try to corral it.

Snow: I heard you once admonish an audi-

ence to “hold to the ironic rod.” Could you
explain that doctrine?
Kirby: For me, irony is the greatest teaching
tool. The psychological world has two poles: the
way we want things to be, and the way they really
are. Irony is everything in between, particularly any
attempts by us to correlate one with the other. The
most important lessons life teaches us are the ones
we learn by accident, usually at a time when we’re
clueless as to what’s happening. Mormons are ripe
for irony because we’re so sure we have all the
answers that we can remain oblivious to many of
the questions. Unfortunately, life then has to teach
us that we’re stupid before it can teach us how to be
smart. If you look at life with a sense of irony, it
doesn’t hurt so much when this lesson comes.
Snow: I’m over-generalizing, but ironic wit
seems to characterize American humor in the
’80s and ’90s, rather than the wacky gags or
physical humor common in the ’60s and ’70s.
I suspect the cause is the rise of comedians such
as David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld, among
others. Irony rules. It’s hip. It permeates our
media, from Sprite commercials making fun of
the idea of a commercial while pretending
they’re not trying to sell Sprite, to Alanis Mor-
risette warbling about irony itself, causing liter-
ary types to argue among themselves whether
she’s using the term irony correctly. Will irony
eventually become unfunny, to be followed by
some other flavor of humor?
Kirby: I think irony will always be with us
because it is so completely human. It’s old, at least
2,000 years. I think the Savior was using irony
when he told everyone to stop worrying about the
sliver in their neighbor’s eye and pay attention to
the plank in their own. The beautiful thing about
ironic wit is that it’s such a Christ-like form of
humor. George Orwell said it best: “The aim of a
joke is not to degrade the human being but to
remind him that he is already degraded.” It’s a gen-
tle way of preparing us for the entire point of the
gospel: namely, that we can do something about it.
Snow: One could argue that, in order to
endure, great works of tragedy must contain
“comic” relief, while great works of comedy
must contain “tragic” relief. Generally, do you
think that’s true, and specifically, is that true for
the subset of the general category of comedy
that is plain old humor?
Kirby: I think the two are inextricably linked.
Laughter and crying are closely related. Both are
necessary coping mechanisms. They’re also natural
contrasts, which is another great rule of life. You
can’t appreciate something without it having some
kind of opposing or countering force. I think it’s
fair to say that much of my humor about religion
stems from having my faith destroyed by black and
white thinkers in the Church. I had to rebuild my
belief in the face of those same people, and humor

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was the best mechanism for coping with them.
Even when they are made up of good people, large
groups are dangerous to individuals. The bigger the
group, the lower the collective IQ.
Snow: Some Mormon authors believe that
inspiration plays a part in their artistic creation.
Do you ever feel that you write inspired humor?
How do you come up with funny things to write
about or funny ways to write about things?
Kirby: I told you, I’m crazy. But other than that,
I’m very much a product of my environment. I
sometimes get feedback from Mormons angry about
something I’ve written. Generally, it’s e-mail or let-
ters from people complaining that I’m being too
irreverent or too punishing. Some contain the
accusation that I’m thwarting God’s plan by giving
people the wrong idea about Mormonism, that I
might even drive members into inactivity. I don’t
think so. Disaffection from the faith was a problem
long before I showed up. Only about 40 percent
of Mormons in the United States attend church
regularly. If we had to blame this inactivity on a
particular type of Mormon, I very much doubt that
we could blame it on humorists. If you asked inac-
tive Mormons what drove them away from the
Church, they aren’t going to say that it was because
someone made them laugh. I’m guessing that it’s
the overly starched Mormon who does the major-
ity of the alienating. I know they’ve inspired me to
do what I do. I wouldn’t have known what kind of
Mormon I was if they hadn’t been themselves. And
for that I thank them.
As for coming up with funny things to write
about, it’s easy. I go to church. The basic Mormon
ward is such a condensed experience of antipodal
human behavior that something’s always happening.
Snow: Speaking of inspiration, Mormon
authors frequently note they are inspired by
Orson F. Whitney’s observations that we will yet
have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own. Will
we ever have Twains and Thurbers of our own?
Kirby: Sure. The Church is growing. It’s inevitable
that we’ll have great humorists and lampoonists.
Spring 2001
Look at the advances in other artistic endeavors.
Twenty years ago, there never would have been a
Hollywood movie like Richard Dutcher’s God’s
Army. Prior to him, films about Mormons came
largely from apologists or antagonists, neither of
which was a realistic view of us. You’d have to be
blind not to recognize Richard as the first in a long
series of movie directors to credibly tackle the Mor-
mon experience on a national level. Is it the great-
est film about Mormons that will ever be produced?
No. But it’s definitely a terrific sign of the times.
Years from now, I predict that Dutcher will be
regarded as the first filmmaker to bring Mor-
monism out where audiences could see us for what
we really are. There’s nothing for Mormons to be
ashamed of in God’s Army and loads of stuff to
be proud of, namely that we’re human beings first
and Mormons a much distant second. Frankly, this
is something that escapes a lot of Mormons.
As for humorists of world stature, certainly we
will have them. Humor is an art form, and art
grows with society and culture. So it stands to rea-
son that as the Church grows, so will our art. Just
as Grondahl inspired me, I hope I’ve turned on a
light for someone else, hopefully someone
smarter.
Snow: Your first three humor collections
(Sunday of the Living Dead, Wake Me for the
Resurrection, and Pat and Kirby Go to Hell)
were targeted toward the Utah and Latter-day
Saint audience. Could you elaborate on the
audience for your current writing? It appears
you are now aiming broader than Mormon cul-
ture and the Beehive State, as evidenced by your
recent collection Family Home Screaming,
which deals with general family themes.
Kirby: Family Home Screaming was a definite
shift away from a primarily Mormon theme. My
daughters were growing up, and I wanted a collec-
tion of columns that were inspired largely by the
experience of raising them, or how not to do it.
I also wanted something for a wider audience. The
first three books targeted Mormon life, but life is so
much bigger than just that. I think Mormonism
will always be a part of what I write, but it’s not
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everything there is to write about. For this reason,
one part of the interview with Richard Dutcher
in the autumn 2000 of IRREANTUM troubled me.
Dutcher said Mormon writers who eliminate Mor-
monism from their work are either ignorant or
cowardly. Now that’s a bold statement from some-
one who no doubt would reject any outside
attempt at dictating what type of films he should
make. As a writer, I’ll write whatever I’m moved to
write. If my next book has nothing to do with Mor-
mons, that’s my business. You go where the story
takes you. I wouldn’t include Mormonism in my
work just because I’m a Mormon.
Snow: You’ve written one novel, Dark Angel,
which was recently re-released. How has that
been received? I also recall you wrote a short
story about a missionary that appeared in Sun-
stone (the story, not the missionary). Do you
plan on writing more fiction? How about
hymns? Did you know we used to spell it hims
until Carol Lynn Pearson made us change it?
Kirby: Actually, it’s more like hums. Most Mor-
mons don’t know the words to the songs in the
humnal. I love fiction. You can create the world any
way you want it to be. It’s a wonderful opportunity
to play God and to learn that the job isn’t easy. Dark
Angel is doing moderately well, with great empha-
sis on “moderately.” This is partly due to the fact
that although the book is about Mormons, it is not
directed at the LDS audience. As the title suggests,
the book contains darker elements. It was originally
published in a heavily edited format that I didn’t
like. That was in 1991. When I reacquired the rights
last year, we put out the unabridged version.
The short story in Sunstone (July 1999) was
“Letters from the Field,” a collection of fictional
journal entries from an elder laboring in South
America. In the course of these entries, you see him
change from an arrogant nineteen-year-old with all
the answers to someone who just wants to be of
service. Yes, I plan on writing more fiction, but I’m
not sure that it will be in the LDS market. By the
way, Dark Angel was my second novel. The first was
Brigham’s Bees, a historical mystery that is now out
of print.
IRREANTUM
Snow: When does wholesome humor become
the unwholesome “light-mindedness” warned
against in the Doctrine and Covenants? What
constraints do you feel writing Mormon humor?
Kirby: First, I think everything has a humorous
side to it. Everything. If you haven’t laughed out
loud in the middle of a personal prayer, then I don’t
think you are living the full gospel experience.
I believe that God has a ripping sense of humor and
that he communicates to us through every one of
our emotions. With respect to public humor, the
trick is in knowing what you can and should share
with other people. When I began the newspaper
column, I knew that I would cross the line from
time to time. Not because I wanted to, but because
no two people can agree on exactly where the line
is. D&C 63:64 says, “Remember that that which
cometh from above is sacred and must be spoken of
with care, and by constraint of the Spirit.” But
everything in this life comes from above. The entire
experience was orchestrated by God. So, which
parts are okay to laugh at? The part where you trip
and fall down? The part where you trip and fall down
in church? The part where you trip and fall down
while passing the sacrament?
Snow: You mention in your column you get a
lot of mail. How many pounds per week? Does
it distract from your work, provide a constant
supply of new humor material, or both?
Kirby: I get a lot of feedback. Depending on
what I’ve written, the response ranges from eighty
to one-hundred-fifty e-mails and letters per week.
It’s gone as high as six hundred. Typically, less than
five percent of this feedback is negative. Surpris-
ingly enough, most of that comes from non-Mor-
mons. There are more than a few anti-Mormon
bigots in Utah, people who think that being in the
minority relieves them of any obligation to basic
human kindness or decency. All you have to do to
attract the attention of people like this is say that
you’re a Mormon. They’ll tell you all about women
and the priesthood, Mountain Meadows, and Clas-
sic Coke vs. New Coke. My favorites are the Born
Agains. They’re the Dobermans of Christianity.
Love your fellow man even if it kills him.
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As for angry Mormons, hearing from them lets
me know that I’ve hit the mark. Usually it’s from
someone so utterly humorless that they’re arrogant
enough to think that making fun of them is the
same thing as mocking God. I find this to be
almost hysterically funny. Maybe that’s what makes
their anger so easy to tolerate. Being reviled by
some people is a necessary part of what I do. On a
personal level, it lets me know who I am. André
Gide said it best: “It’s better to be hated for what
you are, than loved for what you are not.” I don’t
think I’ve ever written something that someone
somewhere didn’t find offensive. No matter what
happens, someone will always find a way to take it
too seriously. What’s amazing about this feedback
is that people would actually presume to change
what I think by insulting me. Weren’t they paying
attention in Sunday school?
But the vast majority of feedback is positive.
Some of it has left me humbled. A woman once
told me that my column was the only thing that
brought a smile to her father’s face in the last few
months of his fight with terminal cancer. I still have
a hard time thinking about that without getting
choked up.
Snow: Do you think you will ever hear the
words “Welcome to the humor session of gen-
eral conference”? What’s the future of Mormon
humor? Any advice to the fledgling Mormon
humorists out there?
Kirby: I hope not. Official endorsement would
be the death knell for Mormon humor. As for
advice, do what comes naturally. It’s in you. Go
find it. When you do, don’t be afraid to point it out
to other people. Some of them won’t like it, but
that’s OK. They’re a big reason for doing it in the
first place.
Snow: Twain suggests there will be no humor
in heaven. In your book Pat and Kirby Go To
Hell, you and your cartoon collaborator, Pat
Bagley, went to hell and back, whether in the
body or not you probably cannot tell. Will there
be Mormon humorists in the celestial kingdom?
Terrestrial? Telestial? Outer darkness?
Spring 2001
Kirby: Yes, in all of them. Pat Bagley, who illus-
trated the four humor books I wrote, has already
had his calling and damnation made sure. He’s
going to outer darkness. I’m a telestial spirit and
proud of it. I think what Twain was expressing was
his fear that heaven will be very much like church.
If it is, why would anyone in their right mind want
to go there?
P O E T R Y
A Father’s Love
When all his love goes for No. 1,
what’s left for No. 2?
Well, No. 2 is love’s issue, so
what’s left for No. 3?
Well No. 3 has got all of me, so
what’s left for No. 4?
Well, No. 4 is easy to adore, so
what’s left for No. 5?
Well, No. 5’s made us all alive.
—Paul W. Sexton
Sexton dedicates this poem to “five of my greatest
blessings, who are now giving me grandblessings.” He
has taught every grade level from kindergarten to
graduate school and is currently employed as an asso-
ciate professor of Spanish. “These days I live with my
dear wife and the youngest of the original five, who
fills our home with beautiful music and ambitious
plans for her future.”
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E S S A Y to walk normally and safely along his path, but
Surprise, Surprise! Reflections on the
Oxymoronic Question of Mormon
Humor
By Elouise Bell
On a slow news day recently, an Associated Press
writer called around asking an assortment of folks
to comment on “Mormon humor.” He sought out
theorists, humorists, apologists, DeGenerists, and
the entire Farley family. Who knows what prompted
this topic; maybe the editors were planning a small
Oxymoron Feste: Mormon humor one week, mili-
tary intelligence the next, the wit and wisdom of
George W. Bush thereafter. Whatever the motive,
the writer sounded out a few of us concerning
light-mindedness among the Saints.
When one gets a phone call like this, it rouses
the sleeping dog named Paranoia. The word entrap-
ment floats to the surface of consciousness. One
wonders if there is any truth to the rumors about
a committee called Testing the Members. So one
frets a bit, stammers, and mouths hearty platitudes
while having a cohort trace the call. At least that’s
what this one did; I haven’t checked with Bob
Kirby.
Trying to think on my feet—or, more accurately,
on my seat—I did formulate a theory that I continue
to mull over. Here it is, all dressed up as a syllogism:
Major Premise: Surprise is the central element in
humor.
Minor Premise: Mormons, as a cultural group,
are conditioned to turn their backs, cross the street,
and shake the dust from their shoes when they
encounter surprise.
Conclusion: Thus, the range of humor that Mor-
mons generate or respond to, at least in public, is
about as wide as a bolo tie.
Let’s examine these assertions more closely. Vir-
tually any comic situation involves surprise. Some-
times theorists use the word incongruity. It amounts
to the same thing: an action or a word violates our
expectation. In the classic example, a man walking
along suddenly slips on a banana peel. He expected
IRREANTUM
something intervened; something incongruous to
his expectation happened. He had a surprise. This
is a basic, very simple example of perceived humor,
yet that precise action has kept the television pro-
gram America’s Funniest Videos high on the charts
for an incredible stretch of time. In such instances,
the surprise is greater, and thus the humor is
greater, when the rest of the situation has some
formality or even pretension about it. Thus, the
man slipping on the banana peel will get bigger
laughs if he is dressed in a tuxedo or a top hat than
if he wears Levis. The woman whose bloomers fall
down around her ankles is more surprised if she is
dancing at a wedding reception than if she is mix-
ing up a batch of cookies in her kitchen. Peter
Boyle as Frankenstein’s monster in Mel Brooks’s
film Young Frankenstein is more delightful, more
genuinely comic, when he sings “Puttin’ on the
Ritz” and dances in a top hat and tails than if he
simply sat in a chair in his monster overalls and
sang “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.”
The incongruity is greater. The surprise is greater.
It is not only physical humor that depends on
surprise for effect. Take that great classic exchange
between Abbot and Costello known as “Who’s on
First?” Costello asks Abbot the names of certain
baseball players. As the audience, we are only
mildly surprised that a player is named Who. The
incongruity and humor grow out of Costello’s
inability to shift gears and accept Who as a name.
He persists in hearing it as an interrogative pro-
noun. We the audience are as surprised and amused
by his persistent rigidity as we are by the Roadrun-
ner’s persistent indestructibility in the Wile E.
Coyote cartoons.
It is the surprise element that pleases in good
wordplay. I don’t care for puns, but I admit to tak-
ing a small pleasure in a line that says, “A man went
to a store to buy a pair of eyeglasses. He entered the
store rather misty optically, but came out quite
optimistically.”
In the following bits of wordplay, notice how the
element of surprise operates. This list names new
breeds of dogs now recognized by the American
Kennel Club. We have a cross between a collie and
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a Lhasa apso that is called the collapso, a dog that
folds up for easy transport. We have a cross
between a pointer and a setter, which produces the
poinsetter, a traditional Christmas pet. And we
have a mixture of the spitz and the chow chow,
resulting in the spitz-chow, a dog that throws up a
lot. Consider that if I simply said to you, “My dog
throws up a lot,” the remark would not be funny. It
is the surprise in the wordplay that amuses.
How is a Mormon wedding different from a
non-Mormon wedding? At a Mormon wedding,
the bride isn’t pregnant, but the bride’s mother is.
Here we have a double surprise—recognizing a
truth that may not have occurred to us before, and
then encountering a generational anomaly, a mother
pregnant at an age when we don’t expect her to be.
When we turn to situational humor, the role of
surprise becomes even clearer. Disguises, mistaken
identity, lovers hiding in closets, all the schemes of
all the comedies back to the Greeks—they all turn
on surprise. It is the quick-change artistry of life that
can make us laugh, if we have the comic perspective.
The word humor traces back to the medieval
concept of body humours or fluids (blood, phlegm,
and green or black bile) that determined, as it was
thought, the human dispositions, the sometimes
surprising changes of mood and temperament from
person to person and from moment to moment.
I like to connect the words humour and human.
The link for me is fluidity. Human life is fluid,
changeable, incongruous, unpredictable, now one
way, now another, full of humours or varying dis-
positions, and, as a result—thank the heavens—
full of surprises.
But aye, there’s the rub. Culturally speaking,
Mormon folk do not take kindly to surprise. Mor-
mons hold firm beliefs about The Way Things
Should Be. We feel most comfortable, most safe,
and most praiseworthy when we neither create nor
encounter surprises. Why this should be so when
the founder of the faith, Joseph Smith, was a man
who surprised the world at every turn, I cannot say.
Be that as it may, the list of categories about
which Mormons avoid even the appearance of
surprise is long and wide. We could cite samples
alphabetically:
Spring 2001
A—Architecture: When was the last time the
sight of a newly completed LDS ward house made
you say, “Wow!” or “Ah!” or even “Hmmm”?
B—Books: To be worth the paper they are
printed on, books must yield surprises. Mor-
monism itself began with the coming forth of one
of the most surprising books imaginable. One
might think such a history would produce a popu-
lation that welcomed the unexpected in literature.
One would be wrong.
Example: Years back, a colleague (and a supervi-
sor in the academic hierarchy) sent me a memo
praising a new book, Alice Walker’s The Color
Purple. I replied that I’d read the book and agreed
with his judgment. Might this not make a dandy
choice for a freshman English reading list? Back
with the speed and force of a divine thunderbolt
came a memo falling all over itself to insist that this
book would not, repeat not, be a good choice for
our freshmen because! Within the same man, the
private reader and the public paternalist collided.
Spare our students (and their parents) the surprises.
Example: A browsing parent telephoned a cer-
tain dean directly from the BYU Bookstore to
protest a book she had found on the shelves. Now,
that bookstore has dealt with the censorship issue
since the day it opened for business. But the book
this mother faulted caused unusual consternation
in the deanery. She was surprised and shocked, she
fumed, to see a book titled The Black Stallion.
Clearly her shock was too great to permit her to
read the book, which, as you probably know, is a
children’s tale about a boy and a black horse. I don’t
think I really want to know what the sister thought
the book was about; I’d be too shocked.
C—Clothing: It is, of course, the total absence
of sartorial surprise that renders Mormon mission-
aries identifiable at five hundred yards anywhere in
the world. But it is not missionaries alone in Mor-
mondom who eschew the new, the different, or the
unexpected attire. Fashion dicta are elegantly unam-
biguous in Zion. For men: “Any shirt as long as it’s
white,” and for the women, “Heavenly Mother
wears floral prints.”
D—Doctrine (including also Teachings, Hypothe-
ses, Speculations, etc.): Mormons feel about their
20 IRREANTUM
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views on all matters remotely relating to creed
as Boston women were said to feel about their
hats. Someone once asked a Back Bay matron
where the ladies of her circle bought their hats.
Replied the disdainful dowager, “We do not buy
our hats; we have our hats!”
In a Sunday school class in Orem, Utah, one
Sabbath, a good brother guided us through the les-
son manual in a most expedient and unequivocal
manner. At one point, I ventured a comment, cit-
ing an example of a certain point—there was no
dabbling in precepts, I assure you—and as I remem-
ber, one or two others in the audience then made
one or two mild emendations to my comments.
The entire ad-lib insertion took no more than three
or four minutes.
The following week, the teacher prefaced his les-
son by announcing that these Sunday school les-
sons followed the Sunday school manual and were
not to become the subject of what he called “spec-
ulation” or “contention,” as had happened the
previous week. I was consumed with amazement.
Friends, I know contention when I hear it. I cut my
teeth on contention at my father’s knee, a knee both
gentile and Welsh. There had not been enough
contention in that previous Sunday school class to
fill a thimble for the smallest finger, I assure you.
Indeed, nothing that I heard or said was in any way
novel or original. Not one high priestly eyelid had
fluttered open during the entire mini-discussion.
Yet somehow the teacher’s early-warning radar had
detected the possibility of surprise on the perime-
ter, and a reproof was issued betimes.
E—Education: In a BYU archeology class, the
professor was setting forth variant explanations for
some recently unearthed artifacts. These were excit-
ing discoveries, and scholars had controversial inter-
pretations thereof. Doctor So-and-So thought thus;
Doctor Von Whosit insisted on another conclu-
sion; Professor Thing saw the matter yet a third
way. At that point in the lecture, in the back of the
classroom a hand began waving in distress. When
called on, the student wailed, “But Professor Myers,
what do we believe?” You see, that is the problem
with education. The word education comes from the
root “educare,” meaning “to draw out,” the premise
IRREANTUM
being that the teacher draws out wisdom and
understanding that already exist somewhere within
the student’s mind or soul. But teaching done in
that spirit can, sometimes, draw out surprising
questions, anomalies, minority views. Far safer,
think some, to put in, rather than to draw out.
F—Feminists: You knew this was coming, right?
We are talking about humor here, and one of the
most delightful matrixes for humor is the light bulb
joke. All kinds of groups tell light bulb jokes about
themselves and thereby illuminate their own per-
ception of themselves. In seeking out light bulb
jokes, I have had wonderful experiences with nurses,
honor students, Native Americans, football players,
and many other groups. The package always yields
both surprise and insight. (How many honor stu-
dents does it take to change a light bulb? Just one,
but she’ll need an extension of the deadline. How
many BYU football players? Again, just one, but
he’ll expect a tutor and four hours of credit for
doing it.)
Now, if we had world enough and time, I would
ask you to tell me light bulb jokes about Mormon
feminists. Since we have not such time at our dis-
posal, I will tell you a few. How many Mormon
feminists does it take to change a light bulb? First
alternative: three. One to change the light bulb,
one to take a picture of the occasion for the Relief
Society scrapbook, and one to write up an account
for the ward historical report. Second alternative:
Just one, but afterwards Carol Lynn Pearson will
make a one-act play of the event. Third alternative:
Two, one to put in the new light bulb, and one to
make the old light bulb into a Christmas ornament
with gold paint and glitter. (Don’t act surprised:
there are feminists in the Relief Society, after all!)
Fourth alternative: None. This is a correlated light
bulb and should not be changed without permis-
sion from the stake president. When a change is
authorized, a deacon will come and change it for
the sisters.
G—Genealogy: Happily, while genealogical inves-
tigations may indeed produce surprises, what might
disturb a model Mormon family in a son or hus-
band—the lifestyle of a horse thief, say, or piracy as
a hobby—is usually considered just a charming
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idiosyncrasy in a great-great-grandcestor. I did get
both a surprise and a laugh on one genealogical
occasion. I was doing my one-woman show based
on the life of Mormon midwife Patty Bartlett Ses-
sions, who had fifty-some grandchildren from one
son and apparently many hundreds of great-grand-
children. Preparing in my hotel room in Logan,
Utah, a few hours before the presentation, I
received a phone call. A man on the other end
asked if I was doing the program about Patty Ses-
sions, and when I said yes, he proudly told me he
was one of Patty’s ancestors. After a pause, I asked,
“Where are you calling from?”
H—History: Historians have handed us a host
of surprises in recent years, and for many in the
Mormon subculture the shocks have been disturb-
ing. If I understand correctly, the current direction
asks historians to write only “faithful history.”
Since any historian must pick and choose among
the facts and possible explanations, the best course,
we are told, is to choose those bits and pieces that
are faith promoting and leave the others to rot on
the vine.
Personally, I rather favor the view that one
scholar expressed about Shakespearean study, when
asked if he thought a certain director had “got it
right” in his production of a particular play.
Replied the scholar, “We will always get Shake-
speare wrong, one way or another, but the chal-
lenge is to get it wrong a new way each time.”
Well, enough of examples. Back to the precept.
Which, in case I have rambled too long and you have
forgotten the precept, is this: The Mormon subcul-
ture has traditionally conditioned itself to prefer
the known to the unknown, the scripted to the
spontaneous, the tried to the tryout. And by dis-
tancing itself from the surprising, this culture also
distances itself from most humor, which turns on
irony and the snap of the startling. What Mormons
accept in the public venue as humor could more
accurately be called a sort of amiable jocularity.
I conclude by taking a quick look at a famous
Mormon anecdote, all the more cherished because
of its rarity. This is the story of Elder J. Golden
Kimball preaching the funeral service of a good
brother up in Idaho. Elder Kimball had been waxing
Spring 2001
elegiac for some time, when he was greatly sur-
prised, not to say shocked, to see sitting in a back
row of the congregation the very man he thought
was dead and in the featured casket. Elder Kimball
turned sharply to the ward leadership on the stand
and shrilled, “Bishop, just who the hell is dead here
anyway?”
Now, there are at least three surprises that make
this joke funny to Mormons. First, there is the sur-
prise of the man presumed dead found among the
living. Well, that is not a dangerous surprise, there
being no mention in handbook or manual about
unintentional mistaken identity. But the second
surprise, and much more treasured for its rarity, is
the appearance of the word hell in a joke told in an
LDS setting. Publicly, Mormons keep a tight lid
on language. When the lid pops off, as it does in
this joke, the surprise releases a kind of stored
tension, and the resulting laughter reflects that sur-
prise. Finally, and perhaps most to the point, to
hear the word hell attributed to a general authority
of the Church, about which group jokes, ironies,
puns, witticisms, and cartoons are rather rigorously
discouraged, is a major surprise, perhaps a major
release of tension. And it is responsible for the
much beloved status of that rather simple anecdote,
generation after generation.
May I emphasize that all the foregoing theory
applies to the Mormon subculture in its mainstream
manifestation, in its approved publications and from
its public podium, in its sanctioned meetings and
in its image as constituted for mass consumption.
As for sub-rosa Mormon humor—ah! That is alto-
gether another matter and a topic for altogether
another exploration.
Elouise Bell taught in the Brigham Young Univer-
sity English department for thirty-five years and served
as associate dean of general and honors education. She
is the author of Only When I Laugh, the editor of
Will I Ever Forget This Day?, a former columnist for
the Salt Lake Tribune, and a contributor to Harvest:
Contemporary Mormon Poems. She has been honored
for teaching (Karl G. Maeser Award), service (Susa
Young Gates Award and Utah Woman of Achieve-
ment Award), and writing (Society of Professional
22 IRREANTUM
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Journalists and Association for Mormon Letters). She
now teaches part time at Coastal Carolina University.
Her new book, Madame Ridiculous and Lady Sub-
lime (Signature Books, 2001), is described as follows:
“One of Mormonism's favorite humorists, Elouise
Bell, a retired BYU professor now living in South
Carolina, finds irony in life's little absurdities. She
gives a bittersweet reminiscence of her late, reclusive
father, relates her funniest night at the opera, remem-
bers a magnificent watchdog, and reminds us of a
common humanity.”
P O E T R Y
Resurrected Spring
Dogwood petals
Float to the ground,
Pale pink carpet
Under the tree,
Morning after
Easter.
—Linda P. Adams
Linda P. Adams lives in Jackson County, Missouri,
with her husband of twelve years, five young children,
a dog, and three cats. She graduated from BYU in
1990. Recently her work has appeared in Limestone
Circle and Friction magazines. Her first novel, Prodi-
gal Journey, was released in July 2000 by Cornerstone
Publishing and won Cornerstone’s Fiction Book of the
Year Award. The sequel is expected by fall 2001.
IRREANTUM
E S S A Y
MIA: Missing in Action
By Ann Edwards Cannon
I get a pretty good aerobic workout whenever I
go to sacrament meeting because I sit on the back
pew and wrestle with guys. I’ve been doing this for
years. My husband, Ken, and I have five sons, and
while they are pretty good kids—no prison records
yet—they hardly ever want to be in church, which
is why you can usually find me brawling on the
back bench with boys each Sabbath morning. My
husband used to help me out. In fact, we made a
pretty decent coed tag team, he and I. Then one
day they made him the bishop while I wasn’t look-
ing. This means he gets to sit on the stand and
catch up on his sleep while—hello—I sit alone in
the congregation and take my morning exercise by
putting kids in hammerlocks.
In fact, that’s exactly what I was doing in church
last week—taking down lippy boys and pinning
them hard to the floor—when I became aware of a
strange hush descending upon the congregation.
I looked up (sweating, as well as panting hard) and
noticed people were staring expectantly at moi.
“Stand up,” whispered a friend on the bench in
front of us. “They just called you to be in Young
Women.”
Me? Be in Young Women? I had no idea that was
coming. You’d think you’d have a little lead-time
when you sleep with the bishop. But no. I have to
hear stuff over the pulpit. Just like everybody else.
Oh well. C’est la vie. Que sera sera. Hey-nonny-
nonny. Such is life. Whatever.
“Why did Ken call you to be in Young Women?”
someone asked later. “I thought you were pretty
happy in the Primary.”
“Oh,” I said, “he just wants me to get in touch
with my feminine side again.” It’s been awhile,
frankly. And it’s been awhile since I’ve been in the
Young Women program, too. I really hope I like it
better this time.
Here’s the deal. I hated Young Women when I
was a teenager, although we didn’t call it that. It was
23 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 24
“Mutual.” Then it was “MIA.” Then it was some-
thing after it was “MIA,” but I always ended up
calling it “Mutual” because that’s what we called it
when I was a Beehive. Just like I still call our
church the “Mormon Church,” because that’s what
we called it when I was also a Beehive. (I hate it
when people start messing with names, by the way,
and I believe we shouldn’t be allowed to do it. We
don’t change the names of our children twenty
years down the road when—hello—we realize we
gave them stupid names popularized by characters
on soap operas during our childbearing years. We
shouldn’t be changing other kinds of names, either.
Too, too confusing for mentally exhausted moms
like me.)
So anyway. I hated Mutual. “Oh whine, whine,
whine,” a guy friend said to me when I mentioned
this fact. “Women like you think they had it so very
rough at church. But things weren’t exactly a bed of
roses if you happened to be the type of Mormon
boy who didn’t like scouting or basketball but
preferred blowing up toilets in the men’s restroom
instead.”
“Okay,” I said back. “That may be totally true, but
at least you weren’t forced to sit with your boyfriends
in a classroom swathed with tablecloths being told
to hang onto your virtue for dear life like that was
the only, only thing that mattered about you.”
I’m sure I heard other things in Mutual. I know
for a fact that a lot of good, strong, intelligent
women like my mother worked very hard to make
Wednesday nights an important and meaningful
experience for the snotty adolescent girls they were
assigned to look after.
But whenever I think of Mutual, I mostly remem-
ber the relentless chastity lessons. The chewed gum.
The soiled cloths. The boards with the nail marks.
And I remember the smoldering resentment I felt
about the fact that it seemed you were valiant only
if you wanted to be a wife and a mother, that you
were valuable only if you were a virgin. Which I
was. Oh my. I was such a little virgin. But I was
more than that, too. And that’s what I wanted peo-
ple at church to see about me. Which they did, of
course. Obviously my experiences growing up female
in the Mormon Church were tender and sweet
Spring 2001
enough to keep me tight within the fold as a grown
woman. So really there’s just no use being a drama
queen over the things that were said and not said in
a young girls’ classroom. Still. I’ll be interested to
see what we tell our daughters these days when I
start going to Mutual again.
I mean MIA. I mean Young Women. Or what-
ever we’ll be calling it next week.
Ann Edwards Cannon (class of Provo High ’74) is
the author of seven books, two of which—Amazing
Gracie and The Shadow Brothers—were named
Best Young Adult Book of the Year by the American
Library Association. (What’s a Mother to Do? is her
first book for grownups.) She is a columnist for the
Deseret News and writes for Dialogue: A Journal of
Mormon Thought, Exponent II, New Era, Parent
Express, Teen, and This People. She is the daughter
of Wyoming rodeo queen Patti Louise Covey and Utah
State University linebacker LaVell Edwards—which
may explain a lot. She and her baseball-historian hus-
band, Ken, live in Salt Lake City and have five sons.
According to a bumper sticker on the family minivan,
she once dated Jimi Hendrix, but she says that part is
a lie. The rest is real.
P O E T R Y
Wrong Way
.instead way this
it hid and out chickened I
but world my to people transport
magically would that poem beautiful
a write to wanted had I
—Katie Parker
24 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 25

An Argument F I C T I O N
There had been a large dinner,
but The Chastening
that luscious, scrumptious-looking By Helynne Hollstein Hansen
devil’s food cake
looked so delicious, Late one autumn evening, not long after Robbie
so inviting, Gibbons had been called as branch president, some
that my mouth said, college students who rented a house in his neigh-
“I want it!”
borhood had a little too much to drink. They were
My stomach said,
new and didn’t know their neighbors, and some-
“No, thank you.”
how they wandered over to Robbie’s front yard and
But my mouth said,
calmly, numbly urinated on the bushes outside his
“It would be a pleasure
for that marvelous dessert daughters’ bedroom window.
to pass between these two lips Robbie didn’t let this slip by, of course, but he
and the dark, sweet taste could never tell anyone exactly how he handled the
to slowly spread over this tongue. situation. The most he ever told members of the Red
It would be like a bit of heaven.” City Branch was that a little of his “gentile lan-
guage” came out when he caught the guys stagger-
My stomach said thoughtfully, ing away.
“I guess there’s room for it down here.” If the truth were told, as it was occasionally by
Robbie’s wife, Tess, to her counselors in the Pri-
My mouth eagerly devoured the cake. mary presidency, the urinating incident was not the
It was heaven, only occasion in recent months when this “gentile
but only for a moment. language” had slipped out. Because he was active
not only in the Church but also in the commu-
The last bite slipped down my throat nity—on softball teams, in the PTA, and in the
and into my stomach. Kiwanis—incidents did come up when he had
My stomach said, been known to use colorful expressions or even pop
“I don’t want this anymore. Can I send it back?” a cocky ballplayer in the eye. It would not have
My mouth said, been so unusual in the rough-and-tumble ranching
“No. Let’s have another piece.” county were it not for the fact that Robbie, despite
And my stomach said, his cowboy earthiness, was trying ever gamely to
“No. Prepare for delivery!” represent himself as an exemplary member and
leader of the LDS community.
I finally had to go on a walk His full given name was Bob Alan Gibbons. Not
to shut them up and stop the fight Robert, just Bob. Somehow, though, he had picked
but up the name Robbie in the military—specifically,
the cake was still waiting while jumping from choppers into rivers over Nam—
when I returned. and it had stuck. Tess, his in-laws, and his cowork-
ers at the Fish and Game Department called him
—Katie Parker Robbie, and until they got used to saying “Presi-
dent Gibbons,” so did all forty active members of
Katie Parker has a B.A. from the University of the Red City Branch in northwestern Montana.
Oklahoma and lives in Salt Lake City with her hus-
Not that it was hard to say “President Gibbons,”
band and son. Her work has appeared in the New Era
because Robbie was a diligent, orthodox branch
and Westview.

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Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 26
leader—almost too orthodox, in some members’
opinions. At thirty-eight, he was one of the youngest
presidents in the history of the branch. A convert
of ten years, he was enthusiastic, demanding, and
straightforward about how he expected the branch
to run—sometimes downright brash.
During the particularly harsh December of Rob-
bie’s first year as branch president, one of the local
pine ranchers needed some extra help cutting his
Christmas trees. Floyd Buzby, the elders quorum
president, suggested a committee should be called
to go help cut the pines.
“Hell,” said Robbie, right in the middle of priest-
hood meeting. “We don’t need no committee. Let’s
go chop some trees.” He pointed jerkily into each
startled face. “Floyd, Randy, Grover, Brad, Tim.
Meet me here Saturday morning at eight, and at
least two of you bring your trucks.”
They did, and two hundred trees were cut and
hauled to town by the Mormon volunteers in three
hours’ worth of twenty-below-zero temperatures. If
any of the other five elders were unhappy about
Robbie’s volunteer system, nobody ever said so—at
least not to each other.
Red City Branch members did concede to one
another in muted tones and away from the branch
building that Robbie could take a couple of lessons
in tact. No one ever denied, however, that his basic
kindness and gentility in attitude and service fit
snugly enough into the one-of-a-kind niche of bish-
opdom. The members, almost without exception,
were fond of him and eager to please, including the
small branch choir, which regularly performed
“God of Our Fathers” because they knew it to be
President Gibbons’s favorite hymn.
Robbie’s appearance did take some getting used
to for those who were new to Red City’s small group
of Mormons. He conducted sacrament meeting in
jeans, cowboy boots, a string tie, and the kind of
cotton shirts that snap up the front instead of but-
ton. His rather voluminous black mustache was
another small indulgence he allowed himself in
his otherwise spit-and-polish rodeo look. And then,
there was nothing much he could do about the
anchor tattoos—souvenirs of the Navy—that
adorned each of his forearms. He usually wore long
Spring 2001
sleeves, but not always. After all, his arms were still
muscular and hairy enough that the tattoos weren’t
that obvious. Also, Robbie couldn’t help but think
secretly that the tattoos still looked pretty good.
None of that mattered to members such as Sister
Lila Boone, age eighty-six, who received regular vis-
its from Robbie and his counselors at the Red City
Nursing Home. Robbie gave her the last priest-
hood blessing of her life, and he and first counselor
David Joost were standing at the foot of her bed the
night she quietly passed away.
It didn’t matter to the sister missionaries either,
who, whenever they came up from Missoula, always
received comfortable beds, simple but satisfying
meals, and an evening or two of warmth and laugh-
ter in the cozy, earth-tone home of Robbie, Tess,
and the five rambunctious young Gibbonses.
And it didn’t matter to the startled, yet reluc-
tantly admiring, members of the Red City Kiwanis
Club, who each had received at one time or another
a copy of the Book of Mormon from Robbie’s own
hands, with his own dedication scrawled within.
Robbie still hadn’t given up on talking about the
gospel to his parents in Great Falls or his rather
worldly, divorced brother in Denver, but his most
enthusiastic missionary efforts were right in his own
circle of fellow fish-and-game workers and ballplayers.
Robbie Gibson was as down-to-earth as the next
guy, most Red City locals agreed. How could he
be so much like the rest of them and at the same
time so different—so dedicated to his family, so
uninterested in beer and other pleasures, so pas-
sionate about this church of his? Most puzzling of
all, how could he, who knew exactly what kind
of guys they were, be so determined to get them
interested in his religion?
“Come on over to our house,” was Robbie’s
byword to anyone in or outside of the branch who
seemed bewildered, needy, or heavy laden. Tess cheer-
fully laid the table with sandwiches, stews, pancakes,
or whatever she could put together and opened her
willing ears and heart to her husband’s endless
stream of lost or curious souls. “There is almost
never a time when we don’t have someone else here
for dinner besides the kids,” she once told Betty
Joost with just a touch of wistfulness in her voice.
26 IRREANTUM
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If Robbie’s efforts, like all missionary work in
Red City, had yet to yield any baptisms or other
tangible success, at least his unabashed vocal and
social approach had created a significantly higher
profile for the heretofore obscure LDS religion in
the town.
Tess loved Robbie with a tender, weepy kind of
adoration, although he could exasperate her at
times—lots of times. She also confided to her
counselors that her love for her husband was almost
scary, so much did he mean to her, and she could-
n’t help but fume over the admiring looks and flir-
tatious ways of certain other sisters of the branch.
Nevertheless, if a few women gave Tess reason for
jealously and agitation, Robbie never did. It just
wasn’t in him.
By mid-September, leaves began to turn red and
orange in the high Red City Rockies, frost had to
be scraped each morning from windshields, and
Robbie entered his second year as branch president.
By the time the Red City members had crowded
around the TV set in the meeting house to watch
the satellite broadcast of October general confer-
ence, the elders were already starting to wonder
about another tree-cutting episode that might well
fall on the coldest day of the year.
That winter, however, the Christmas season
brought a more disturbing concern to the Red City
Latter-day Saints. For years, the branch had partic-
ipated in the local Christian churches’ Christmas
crafts bazaar held in the town hall the first Saturday
in December. The previous year, however, the Mor-
mons had been relegated to the basement of the
hall while all the other Christian churches in town
sold their goods in the gymnasium. The pastor of
another church, who had been put in charge of the
bazaar, had hinted that since the Mormons were
not really a Christian church, they should not be
allowed full participation.
Robbie, Tess, and several other vocal members of
the branch had risen to the missionary challenge.
They sent letter to other churches with the name
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
clearly printed on the stationery. They arranged a
meeting with the pastor in charge of the bazaar and
leaders of the other churches and explained to them
IRREANTUM
with all their natural enthusiasm the LDS doctrines
on Christ. At first the pastor seemed moved, but
ultimately he wouldn’t budge. The Mormons did
not see Jesus Christ in the same way as other more
traditional Christian churches, he said. Therefore,
if the Red City Mormons insisted on being in the
bazaar, they would have to be in the basement. So
Robbie reluctantly agreed to instruct the Relief
Society sisters to set up their crafts and baked goods
downstairs. “Hell, it’s better to be in the basement
than not to be in the bazaar at all,” President
Gibbons had said to Veda Woodward, the young
Relief Society president. “It’s a missionary opportu-
nity that we can’t give up.”
Veda had agreed and urged all the sisters to pre-
pare their usual crocheted, embroidered, and quilted
craft items, plus the plethora of holiday goodies.
Her homemaking counselor, Eva Allman, who,
with her two married daughters, was one of the
most respected quilting experts in the county, was
miffed at the basement location but contributed to
the usual production and gathering of homemade
goods to sell. When the day of the bazaar had
arrived, Robbie had stopped by the town hall to
make sure adequate stacks of Book of Mormon
copies and missionary pamphlets were set out on
the basement tables as well.
The upshot of that year’s bazaar was that the Red
City holiday shoppers, who were used to flocking
to the Mormon tables each December, crowded the
basement, to the detriment of the other churches’
displays upstairs. The Red City Branch ended up
not only drawing the crowds away from the main
floor but also selling the largest amount of goods
and making the largest amount of money of any of
the other churches.
Several copies of the Book of Mormon had been
sold or given away as well. Most interesting of all,
the experience had the unexpected effect of creating
for the branch some secular, but sympathetic, sup-
port among Red City citizens because of the unfair
way in which the Mormons had been treated.
No one was more pleased about this than Rob-
bie, although he instructed the members over the
pulpit at the next sacrament meeting to be sports-
manlike about their triumph. The members took
27 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 28
the advice to heart, and even Eva Allman, who had
sold two lone-start quilts at five hundred dollars
apiece and donated a substantial part of that to the
branch budget, felt humble and grateful, although
she couldn’t help but snicker a little on the inside.
When October rolled around the next year, Rob-
bie put on his best cowboy hat, made what he
thought was an admirable effort to tone down the
satisfaction he felt, and strode to the parish of
the pastor who was once again chairing the inter-
church bazaar. “Well, pastor,” Robbie boomed with
a smile, “can The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-
day Saints count on a space this year in the Christ-
mas bazaar?”
The pastor, who had sat back down at his desk
after shaking Robbie’s hand, rose again from his
chair and looked solemn and just a little haughty.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Gibbons,” he said, “but I’m afraid a
few things have changed since we talked about this
last year.”
“What do you mean?” asked Robbie steadily, man-
aging with an effort to keep from inserting the hell
into the middle of his question.
“I mean, Mr. Gibbons,” said the pastor evenly,
“that we have already discussed the fact that your
church does not espouse Christian doctrine in the
same spiritual way that we other churches know to
be theologically correct. Therefore, we believe any
further participation by your group in a Christian
church bazaar would be inappropriate. We hope
you understand our decision.”
Robbie, who had turned beet-red, struggled to
speak calmly. “No, I don’t understand it,” he said.
“Or, if I do understand it, I understand that you’re
just plain pissed—” He started over. “That you’re
just mad that our members have always made bet-
ter sales than any of the other churches, or that us
being there makes people start asking questions
about our church and reading some of our materi-
als. I think you’re being just plain ornery, and I for
one ain’t going to stand for it.”
“Mr. Gibbons,” said the pastor with an icy clam,
“I’m sorry if you’re upset, but this is not my decision
alone. The other church leaders will back me up on
it. You simply must not plan to participate this
year. We do not expect to see your people selling at
the bazaar. No space will be reserved.”
Spring 2001
With a motion like a giant magnet being pulled
from a refrigerator, Robbie turned around and
walked from the pastor’s office, but he turned again
and paused at the door. “Pastor,” he said brightly,
“my church ladies and I will see you bright and
early December fourth with our goods. If there isn’t
a space saved for us at the hall, we’ll make one.
Have a nice day.”
When the word leaked quickly through the
branch about the pastor’s attitude, the indignant
Saints split down the middle as to what should
be done. Some wanted to burst upon the bazaar
just the same as Robbie had promised the pastor
they would do. Others were insulted to the point
of wanting to boycott the bazaar completely and
forever.
Bella Angeletto, whose husband was inactive and
one of the wealthiest ranchers in the county, thought
the LDS members should go on record as saying
they would never even wish to be a part of a bazaar
that had already relegated them to the basement
and had refused to recognize them for who they
really were. “What do we need with those other
churches anyway?” she huffed. “We can just hold
our own bazaar and show them all up!”
Robbie entertained the idea of holding a Mor-
mon Christmas crafts sale the week before the
interchurch bazaar and discussed it with Tess, then
with Veda and her two counselors. He pointed out,
however, that the Mormons should not give any
suggestions of truth to the idea circulating in the
town that Mormons were not truly a Christian
church. The community bazaar was the rightful
place to be, he said, and that’s where the Red City
Branch should plan to go.
Veda blinked back the tears. “The sisters have
already spent two homemaking meetings making
bazaar items,” she said in a quivery voice, “but I
don’t want to cause any trouble in the community.
It wouldn’t be good for our missionary efforts.”
In the end, Robbie persuaded the branch women
to plan on the interchurch bazaar as usual and,
when the designated date came, to exert a peaceful
but determined entrance into the town hall. “The
community members will all come in our support,”
he said heartily. “If they want us to stay, who can
28 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 29
tell us to leave?” Still, he promised Tess, Veda, and
other doubtful faces in the Relief Society that
the Mormons would come in peace and, if neces-
sary, turn and leave in peace without causing any
trouble. However, to Robbie’s dismay, Veda’s docil-
ity about his suggestion to crash the bazaar was not
shared by his own counselors—Dave, who was a local
merchant, and second counselor Grant Marsten,
a young, married college student—or by his elders
quorum president.
“Just what is going on here?” Robbie’s irritation
with his counselors and with Floyd was ill-con-
tained at the next PEC meeting. “Just what do I
have to do to get some support for what needs to
be done?” Robbie set aside the bazaar question for
the moment and backtracked to the previous August,
when the membership records for nine new college
students had rolled in. Not one of those students
had yet been out to church.
“Your class could be three times as big as it
is,” Robbie fumed at Floyd, who doubled as a
Wednesday-night institute teacher.
“We called all those students and invited them
to Sunday meetings and institute,” said Floyd,
more meekly than defensively. “They all have home
teachers, too. It’s just that none of them are inter-
ested in getting involved in the Church here. I’ve
known that for years. You just can’t get most stu-
dents to come out.”
“I told you that sometimes you just have to go
to the dorms on Sunday mornings and get those
people out of bed,” Robbie persisted, thumping his
desk with his fist. Floyd, who could be persuaded
to chop down pine trees in double-digit, sub-zero
temperatures, had no intention of dragging college
students from their dorm beds on Sunday morn-
ings. It wasn’t that he didn’t admire Robbie’s deter-
mination; it was just that that was the sort of thing
he simply couldn’t do. He was sufficiently abashed
by Robbie’s visible aggravation, however, to prom-
ise to go along with him on the bazaar. “Robbie,
you’re the branch president, and I support you,”
Dave added. “I just hope this works out.” Grant
nodded his support but looked pale. Over the next
few weeks, the branch kitchen filled with more and
more boxes of items to sell at the bazaar.
IRREANTUM
• • •
Saturday, December fourth, dawned sunny but
bitter cold. At 7:30 A.M. the electronic time-and-
temperature monitor at the Red City Bank regis-
tered twenty-seven degrees below zero as Robbie,
David, Floyd, and several of the other brethren
hoisted folding tables and chairs from pickup trucks
and carted them into the town hall, their breath
puffing out in great clouds in front of them as they
worked. Veda and her two counselors, plus Tess
and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Megan, fol-
lowed with boxes and sacks full of crafts and treats.
Representatives from several of the other churches
were busily setting up their displays in the gymna-
sium, and already most of the floor space seemed
taken, so Robbie motioned his group downstairs.
The Mormons trekked with their materials to the
basement, snapped on the lights, and exchanged
smiles that testified memories of last year’s selling
success.
Gratefully, the members unburdened themselves,
unfolded table legs, and began uprighting the fur-
niture for their displays. Cloths were on tables, and
the room was beginning to look almost the way
it had the previous year, when there was a voice at
the door.
“Mr. Gibbons, I thought I had made myself
clear.” The pastor’s voice was subdued, but his face
was red and twisted with a venomous look. Robbie
took a step toward him. “Pastor, look,” he began.
“We’re down here where we can’t hurt any . . .”
“Leave!” The pastor was shouting now. “I told
you your church has no place in a Christian church
bazaar. Now leave!”
For a split second, Robbie honestly tried to turn
the other cheek. In fact, he thought of doing it lit-
erally, of inviting to pastor to actually hit him, in an
effort to defray the other man’s anger and bring
him to reason. Somehow, though, he found himself
feeling a little too much the way he had felt when
he caught the college guys urinating in his bushes.
“You son of a bitch!” cried the representative of
the LDS Church in Red City, Montana. “We ain’t
going to be pushed around this way!” The pastor
looked alarmed and took a couple of steps back-
wards. “We’ve earned the right to be here!” Robbie
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Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 30
fumed. “The public wants us here, and . . .” Red
faced and shaking, Robbie paused to draw a breath.
“And we’re Christian, dammit! We’re more Christ-
ian that you’ll ever be!”
The pastor’s instincts kicked in all at once, and
he tried to duck, but not quite in time. Robbie
lunged for him with an outstretched fist and caught
him on the side of the nose. The pastor plopped to
the floor on his backside, shaking his head in a
befuddled way. He put his hand to his nose, then
looked horrified at the blood that had oozed onto
his fingers. His appalled look settled on the LDS
branch president. Robbie, who had immediately
snapped to his senses, reached out a hand to help
the pastor up, words of apology already stumbling
from his lips, but the pastor brushed him aside and
drew himself up. “Mr. Gibbons,” the pastor said
in a voice barely audible but still shaky with anger.
“I trust I will never see you or any of your people
at this event again.” He turned and headed up
the stairs.
Tess and Megan were instantly at Robbie’s side,
each one stroking a shoulder. The other members
advanced and reached out to him, but he backed
away. The silence that followed seemed endless and
unbearable to the sorrowful members, who, at that
point, wanted nothing more than to support their
branch president. Actually, only about one minute
passed before Robbie softly said, “Let’s go.”
When the stake presidency came up from Mis-
soula, they were kind and cheerful and said noth-
ing more than that they thought the time had come
to bring some changes to the branch presidency.
None of the Red City members asked questions,
sought explanations, or volunteered any informa-
tion. Their silence was less a show of respect for the
stake leaders than for the branch presidency as it
most recently had stood.
In April, as the spring sun finally began to melt
away some of Red City’s most stubborn patches of
snow, there was an agreement among the branch
leaders to call Robbie into the elders quorum pres-
idency. It was a small quorum, but Floyd had had
only one counselor for several months, and he
really needed more help. Robbie thought about it.
He even prayed about it. But in his next interview
Spring 2001
with President Dave Joost and the stake presidency,
he still couldn’t make a commitment. During the
months that followed, he came to church, but not
so regularly anymore. And, as much as he nour-
ished and cherished his testimony in the privacy of
his own soul, he couldn’t still the small, nagging
ennui that lay in the back of his mind and the dull
ache that persisted deep within his heart.
And sometimes late on those Sunday nights
when the stake presidency from Missoula had vis-
ited the branch, keeping most of the other male
members in meetings all afternoon, or when the
sister missionaries were now safely quartered at
Bella Angelleto’s ranch house, or when the nine
branch choir members had sung “God of Our
Fathers,” Robbie, with his body pressed against
Tess, Robbie, the cowboy, Robbie, the Vietnam vet
who jumped out of choppers into rivers, and Rob-
bie, the former President Gibbons of the Red City
Branch, would draw a shuddering sigh. And, on
occasion, he would creep outdoors to the side of
the garage to a hiding place in the snow and seek
solace in a way he had not for many years—with a
six-pack of Coors—while he reflected on his own
kind of chastening.
Helynne Hollstein Hansen is an associate professor
of language at Western State College in Gunnison,
Colorado, and a former visiting professor of French at
Brigham Young University. She received her Ph.D. in
French from the University of Utah. She is a former
staff writer for the Deseret News and Church News.
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F I C T I O N Elder Kirkland had come into the mission like a
Checkmating Elder Kirkland
By Matt Crosby
One cold morning, in the front room of a small
apartment, on the east side of a small town, at the
north end of a small mission, Elder Kirkland tried
to kill his companion. He didn’t like the way he
made his cornflakes. The attack, and the fray that
ensued, caused enough clamor that the landlady
phoned the mission home and, in a state of severe
agitation, begged the secretary to send help before
she was forced to call the police. The secretary
passed the information on to the assistants, who
made a quick phone call, and twenty minutes later
the local zone leader was knocking on the two eld-
ers’ door.
“It’s open.”
The zone leader entered to find the apartment
decimated and the two elders lying spent and bat-
tered in the living room.
Inquiries were made, interviews were conducted,
questions were asked, and explanations were given.
The following story emerged.
• • •
Their first morning as companions, Elder Kirk-
land sat in the front room eating his cornflakes.
Elder Fetcher, his new companion, was in the
shower. Elder Kirkland was the older of the two
missionaries but the new arrival to the area. Look-
ing quietly around the apartment, he could see that
his work was cut out for him. Dirty shirts were
strewn from one end of the apartment to the other,
while clean ones hung from a clothesline strung
across the front room. Church books and investi-
gator records were scattered wherever there was
space. Blue planners were everywhere.
He sighed. It was going to be a long haul with
this one.
He had helped reform plenty of elders, but this
was a severe case. The area had not baptized in over
a year. The records were a mess. It was going to
take a real concentrated effort to get things back
on track.
IRREANTUM
thunderbolt. He baptized three people his first
month in a mission that rarely saw more than fif-
teen baptisms per missionary in their entire two
years. Everyone knew he was going to be A.P. It was
only a matter of time. Elder Kirkland feigned apa-
thy, but he knew it too.
First, however, there was this one assignment.
Elder Fetcher had been out four months. He was
not a model missionary. It wasn’t that he was par-
ticularly disobedient or lazy, just remarkably indif-
ferent. There was no urgency about him, no fervent
desire to work or to baptize. Elder Fetcher just
wanted to do his time and go home.
President Stanford sent Elder Kirkland to the
area with a charge.
“I have an assignment for you, Elder.”
“Yes, President?”
“I want you to help Elder Fetcher. I want you to
turn him around.”
“Yes, President.”
Elder Kirkland didn’t intend to let President
Stanford down, and the night before the transfer he
prayed fervently that he might be successful.
“I know there is a great missionary in Elder
Fetcher just waiting to come out, Heavenly Father.
Please help me to show him the way. Please help
me to be a great example. I know that with Thy
help we can bring him around.”
Now here he was, his first morning in the new
area, and he could see he would need all the help he
could get.
Elder Kirkland heard the shower shut off, and
Elder Fetcher arrived in the kitchen, partially dressed,
a few minutes later.
“Good morning, Elder Fetcher.”
“Good morning.”
“We’re going to have a great day today.”
“Sounds good.”
Elder Fetcher grabbed a bowl and a spoon and
sat down at the table. He used both hands to cen-
ter the bowl in front of him, then he placed the
spoon at its side.
“Listen, Elder,” said Elder Kirkland, “I had a
thought.”
“Okay,” said Elder Fetcher. He set the box of
cornflakes, the sugar, and the milk in a semicircle
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around his bowl. Then he took a deep breath and
cracked his knuckles.
“I know that usually we would have personal
study and companionship study this morning, but
instead we’re going to take some time to clean up
the apartment.”
Elder Fetcher poured a few cornflakes in his
bowl, followed by a sprinkle of sugar and a splash
of milk.
“What do you think?” asked Elder Kirkland.
“Sure, whatever,” said Elder Fetcher. He poured
a few more cornflakes in his bowl and topped them
off with a sprinkle of sugar and a splash of milk.
“I just think that the Spirit will be a lot stronger
in a clean apartment.”
A few cornflakes, a little sugar, a splash of milk.
“What do you think?”
“Sure, yeah.” A few cornflakes, a little sugar, a
splash of milk.
“We’re going to have a lot of success in this area.
We’re going to turn this place around.”
A few cornflakes, a little sugar, a splash of milk.
“Elder?” said Elder Kirkland.
“What?” said Elder Fetcher. He put the cap back
on the milk and picked up the spoon.
“Do you always make your cornflakes like that?”
“Yup.” He took a bite, and a deep breath came
through his nose as he sat back in his chair, chew-
ing with satisfaction.
Their first week they tracted nearly fifty hours
and did what work they could with the members in
the area but didn’t teach one first discussion. There
were few people who would listen. Every night
Elder Kirkland prayed for success and for help in
reforming Elder Fetcher.
There were also the beginnings of tension in the
relationship. Elder Fetcher was not taking to some
of Elder Kirkland’s reform measures. On their first
afternoon together, an incident arose when Elder
Kirkland announced they would not be taking a
lunch break. Elder Kirkland had not taken a lunch
break since he had come into the mission, and he
spent the better part of fifteen minutes attempting
to bring Elder Fetcher over to his way of thinking,
but Elder Fetcher knew his rights. He was going to
Spring 2001
take a lunch break, and not just any lunch break—
he was going to take an hour lunch break. Elder
Kirkland tried to overrule him, but he was quickly
referred to the white handbook, which specified an
hour lunch break was to be taken, and had to
relent. A similar incident arose at dinnertime, with
a similar result. And so, every day at mealtime,
Elder Kirkland stood in the park and street con-
tacted while Elder Fetcher sat on a bench and ate.
Elder Kirkland was not accustomed to being
overruled. He was not accustomed to losing. He
had been captain of the football team and a starter
for the basketball team. He was accustomed to hard
work. He was accustomed to success. He had a
quick smile and a pleasant disposition, but he cou-
pled them with a peculiar intensity. He wore out
companions faster than he wore out shoes. Several
had begged the mission president to be transferred
away because they couldn’t match his drive. He was
a young man who got his way. He was polished. He
was efficient. He was polite. He called men sir and
women ma’am, and what he set his mind to you
could consider done.
Elder Fetcher wasn’t impressed. He regarded Elder
Kirkland with sarcasm and selective tolerance. He
was willing to go along for the most part, but there
were certain concessions he wasn’t going to make.
He wasn’t going to be disobedient, but he was
going to take what was coming to him. Elder Kirk-
land could be as vigorous as he liked, as long as it
didn’t rob Elder Fetcher of his God-given rights.
Two of those rights were lunch and dinner.
The fact that Elder Kirkland couldn’t win the
meal-skipping debate was an annoyance, and it was
only the first of several. On one particular occasion
during their first week together, a dispute arose
over the brisk pace at which Elder Kirkland trav-
eled between doors.
“Easy Tex,” said Elder Fetcher, “who made the
jump to light speed?”
“Elder,” said Elder Kirkland, “President Spencer W.
Kimball said that if you knew what he knew, if you
saw what he saw, you would run between houses.”
“And have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Seen what he’s seen.”
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“No.”
“Then slow down.”
That was the way things went. And every morn-
ing there were the cornflakes. A few cornflakes, a
little sugar, a splash of milk. Elder Kirkland watched
with silent fascination.
“How long have you been making your corn-
flakes like that?”
“I dunno.”
There was another item of contention. Elder
Fetcher was a bit of a chess enthusiast. He owned a
small chess set, and every night he would play him-
self a game of chess before he went to bed.
“You shouldn’t be playing chess, Elder,” said
Elder Kirkland. “It isn’t P-day.”
“It relaxes me.”
“Well, find something to relax you that doesn’t
break the rules.”
“Where does it say I can’t play myself a game of
chess?”
“You should write in your journal.”
“I already have.”
“You should read your scriptures.”
“I read them this morning.”
“I don’t think playing chess is going to make you
a better missionary.”
“I don’t think it’s going to make me a worse
one.”
“I think you should put that game away.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t feel good about it.”
“Well, then you should be grateful it’s me play-
ing and not you.”
Elder Kirkland couldn’t win the battle, and he
resigned himself to giving Elder Fetcher the silent
treatment every night at chess time. Elder Fetcher
didn’t notice.
When the two had been together almost a week,
Elder Kirkland made a startling announcement.
“Elder, we’ve been working for a week and haven’t
had any success. I’ve decided we should skip P-day
tomorrow.”
They had just finished tracting for the night and
were on the street, walking home.
IRREANTUM
“I’m sorry,” said Elder Fetcher, “I could have
sworn you just said we were going to skip P-day
tomorrow.”
“I did.” said Elder Kirkland.
“And did hell freeze over?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hell must be frozen over for you to even sug-
gest that.”
“You ought to be willing to do it, Elder.”
“I am willing. When hell freezes over.”
“It will show the Lord how serious we are about
baptizing.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I’m serious.”
“Forget it. Read your white handbook. We’re
supposed to take a P-day every week.”
“Quit referring to the white handbook every
time you want to be lazy. There’s nothing wrong
with working extra hard to show the Lord you
mean it.”
“Well, actually, maybe I’m wrong.”
“Okay then.”
“If hell freezes over, there’ll be no reason to skip
P-day. Guess you’re out of luck all around.”
Elder Fetcher laughed and walked away, leaving
Elder Kirkland to wonder how he was going to pull
this companionship together.
That night, as he sat writing in his journal, an
idea struck him.
Maybe, he wrote, I’m not being enough of a friend
to Elder Fetcher. If I’m going to help him, I’ve got to
love him more. I’ve got to develop our friendship. I
think that since tomorrow is P-day, I’ll offer to play
him a game of chess. I used to be pretty good at chess,
and I know he likes it. Maybe that will be something
we can build on.
The next day, Elder Fetcher was happy to oblige.
He set up the pieces and let Elder Kirkland take the
first move. For the first time he began asking Elder
Kirkland questions about himself. Yes, Elder Kirk-
land had played chess before, and yes, he liked it,
and yes, he was pretty good at it, and no, he didn’t
want to take that move back, and no, he didn’t want
his queen back, and no, he didn’t want a hint, and
yes, he knew he was in check. As it happened, they
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played six games, and as it happened, Elder Kirkland
lost all six times.
Whether baptizing or playing a game, Elder
Kirkland was not in the habit of being beaten.
He didn’t like anyone to be faster, he didn’t like
anyone to be funnier, and he didn’t like anyone to
be smarter. With each loss he became more deter-
mined to win the next one, only to lose again.
For what it was worth, the token worked. Elder
Fetcher’s attitude toward Elder Kirkland improved
dramatically. He even seemed genuinely happy to
go tracting that night.
But there was a cloud over Elder Kirkland. He
rarely spoke for the next three days. Elder Fetcher
asked him several times if he was all right, to which
Elder Kirkland responded curtly in the affirmative.
Each night, Elder Fetcher sat playing himself a game
of chess while Elder Kirkland wrote silently in his
journal. He watched Elder Fetcher and the chess-
board out of the corner of his eye but said nothing.
On the night of the third day, Elder Kirkland
finished writing in his journal earlier than usual.
Elder Fetcher was playing his usual game of chess.
Elder Kirkland sat watching him and fidgeting
with his pen.
“Well,” he finally said, “I’m all done writing
in my journal. I guess I’ll just go to bed a little
early tonight. Do you want to have companionship
prayer?”
“Sure,” said Elder Fetcher. He set down his game.
When they had finished praying, Elder Fetcher
went back to his game, but Elder Kirkland lingered.
“Hey, Elder Fetcher,” he said, shuffling his feet,
“do you want to play a quick game?”
“Tonight?” said Elder Fetcher.
“Sure. I mean, if you want to.”
“It isn’t P-day.”
“Well, I know, but I’m done writing in my
journal, and we don’t have to be in bed for twenty
minutes.”
Elder Fetcher smiled a little. “Sure, I guess.”
One game became two, and two games became
three, and Elder Kirkland went to bed an hour and
a half later wondering how he was ever going to
beat Elder Fetcher.
Spring 2001
“You know,” he said the next morning at break-
fast, “I really don’t like the way you make your
cornflakes.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s stupid.”
“I like it.”
“Why can’t you just mix them around like every-
body else?”
“They don’t get mixed evenly.”
“How evenly do cornflakes need to be mixed?”
“Is something wrong, Elder Kirkland?”
“Never mind.”
Elder Kirkland was more sullen that day. He did-
n’t seem to have any enthusiasm for the work. That
night he even stopped to eat dinner with Elder
Fetcher. They sat on a park bench together eating
hamburgers from a local fast-food restaurant.
“It’ll come to you, y’ know,” said Elder Fetcher.
“What will?” said Elder Kirkland.
“Chess. You’ll get it eventually.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t get too
upset about losing. Chess doesn’t come overnight.”
“I’m not upset about losing. I don’t even care
about chess.”
“Are you sure? Because you’ve been really salty
the last few days.”
“It’s because I’m concerned that we’re not
baptizing.”
“I see. Well, I’m sure it’ll pick up,” said Elder
Fetcher. He patted Elder Kirkland on the knee.
“What do you say we get back to work?”
They played chess every night that week and ten
times on P-day, and with each game Elder Kirkland
grew more desperate for a win. All he could think
about was chess. At night when he closed his eyes,
all he could see was pawn to E4 and knight to C3.
During the day between houses, all he could think
about was his next game. How would he open?
What would he do? What would it take to beat
Elder Fetcher just one time? Every night he would
lose again and every morning have to sit and watch
Elder Fetcher layer those cornflakes as if he didn’t
have a care in the world.
“You need to keep your pieces in the center
more,” said Elder Fetcher one morning as he
34 IRREANTUM
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prepared his cornflakes. He was just working on his
second layer.
“Huh?”
“I think you’ll find you can control the game
better if you keep all your pieces in spots where
they can control the middle of the board.” A few
cornflakes, a little sugar, a splash of milk.
“I don’t need any chess advice.”
“Well, I know, I mean you’re really coming along.
You’re twice the player you were a few weeks ago.
There were a couple times last night I really had to
think about what my next move was going to be.”
A few cornflakes, a little sugar, a splash of milk.
“I don’t need encouragement,” said Elder Kirk-
land, “It’s just a stupid game.” He watched the
bowl of cornflakes grow.
“I understand,” said Elder Fetcher. “It was just a
suggestion.”
Weeks passed. Elder Kirkland continued to lose.
They didn’t baptize that month. It was the first
month that Elder Kirkland had gone without a bap-
tism, and it sent a shockwave through the mission.
President Stanford called and gave the two elders
stern pep talks, but productivity did not increase.
“It’s not like you don’t have lots of talents too,”
said Elder Fetcher one day as they walked between
houses. “I mean, you’re a real legend around here.
Maybe chess just isn’t your bag. Maybe baptizing
isn’t mine. People just have different skills.”
“For the last time, Elder Fetcher, stop giving me
advice about chess. Maybe if you’d spend a little
more time thinking about missionary work and a
little less time thinking about chess, we’d be having
some success.”
“I’m just trying to make you feel better,” said
Elder Fetcher.
“You concentrating on the work would make me
feel better,” said Elder Kirkland, and they walked
on in silence.
“Father in Heaven,” he said that night as he
prayed, “there’s only one thing that’s going to save
this companionship. I’ve thought about the games.
I’ve thought about the moves. I’ve studied it out in
my mind. Please bless me with the inspiration to
know which move is the best one. I know that as a
team we can beat Elder Fetcher.”
IRREANTUM
The next night Elder Kirkland waited an extra
five minutes to make his opening move, but there
was no burning in his bosom, and he lost again.
“What’s that?” asked Elder Fetcher the next
morning.
“It’s a bowl of cornflakes.”
“I know it’s a bowl of cornflakes. What is it
doing in my place?”
“I made it for you.”
“Why?”
“I wanted you to try a bowl that was made the
normal way.”
“My way is a normal way.”
“Don’t dump it out!”
“I’m sorry, Elder Kirkland, but I know how I like
my cornflakes.”
The days came and went, and nothing changed,
only that it got worse. It began to become clear
that Elder Kirkland was never going to beat Elder
Fetcher. Finally, one night, toward the end of their
second month, as another game came to an end,
Elder Kirkland reached his breaking point.
“Why do you always have to be so smug when
you say ‘checkmate’? It’s the tone of your voice.
Why do you always have to be so arrogant?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You see! There you go again, ‘What are you talk-
ing about?’ Like you’re so innocent. I hate this
game. I’m sick of it!”
“Maybe it just isn’t your game.”
“Maybe you should shut up!”
“I think you’re taking this too seriously. It’s just
a game.”
“You see, there you go. Look how arrogant you
are. It’s easy to be smug when you always win. I’m
sick of your attitude. I’m sick of the way you talk
down to me. I’m sick of you offering to let me take
moves back. I’m sick of your advice, and I’m sick of
your cornflakes. I hate the way you make your corn-
flakes. Every flake that hits your bowl is like a ham-
mer pounding on my brain. I can’t take it anymore!”
“You’re going to have to get used to the way I
make my cornflakes. That’s the way I like them.”
Elder Kirkland was silent for a moment, and then
a peculiar serenity seemed to come over his face.
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“No, I’m not,” he said, “because you’re never P O E T R Y

going to make them like that again.”
“I hate to disappoint you, Elder.” Educated Woman
“You won’t.”
They went to bed in silence that night and with- An educated woman
out companionship prayer. Heavy tension filled the wouldn’t sleep in her clothes,
room, and when morning came it had not left. The eye a Harley man,
two elders sat up in bed when the alarm went off. forget to pay the water bill,
Neither moved. Neither spoke. They rubbed the pick up her daughter at the wrong school,
sleep out of their eyes and stared ahead at the wall. neglect her rosebush,
Finally Elder Kirkland turned and spoke. eat chocolate cake for breakfast,
“You will not layer your cornflakes this morning.” feed a mad stray dog,
“Elder Kirkland, I’m sorry, but I’ll layer my wonder if she’ll be homeless in a year.
cornflakes every morning for the rest of my life.”
“Not today.” An educated woman
The morning proceeded as usual. Elder Kirkland would take the garbage out
showered, and while Elder Fetcher showered he sat each Wednesday morning
down to his own bowl of cornflakes. He ate slowly (Tuesday night on a good day),
and carefully. As he ate, he stared ahead. By the sing each Sunday hymn
time Elder Fetcher arrived at the table, Elder Kirk- in a well-modulated voice,
land was working on his second bowl. Elder Fetcher fill the gas tank when half full,
sat down without looking at Elder Kirkland. He arrange for a babysitter a week ahead,
carefully centered his bowl and set down his spoon. attend the charity ball,
He set the cornflakes, the sugar, and the milk in a and carefully wipe her fingers
half circle around his bowl. There was a moment’s of cheese-cracker residue
pause, and then Elder Fetcher began. A few corn- on a linen napkin,
flakes, a little sugar, a splash of milk; a few cornflakes, paper if necessary.
a little sugar, a splash of milk; a few cornflakes, a
—Laraine Wilkins
little sugar, a splash of milk.
The landlady was jarred awake by a shriek and
Laraine Wilkins is currently a Ph.D. candidate in
the sound of a bowl hitting the wall. By the time the
German literature at Harvard University. She holds a
zone leader arrived, the apartment had been
B.A. and M.A. from Brigham Young University.
destroyed. Elder Kirkland lay against the wall, and
Though she has lived most of her life in Utah, she
Elder Fetcher was sitting a few feet away.
claims Idaho as her home state. She is a single mother
“I’m not mad at you, Elder Kirkland,” he was
who finds her time spread among such diverse activi-
saying. “I’ll bet President will transfer you away,
ties as bench-sitting while her 11-year-old daughter
and you know, I think that’s the best thing. You just
approximates John Stockton moves on the basketball
need to get away from all this chess. All this chess
court, engrossing herself in Nazi movies (she’s section
and all these cornflakes.”
leader for a big undergraduate course on mass culture
in Nazi Germany) or Paul Celan’s poetry, and finding
Matt Crosby graduated from Skyline High School
creative ways to get five-year-olds to keep their shoes on
in Salt Lake City and served in the Australia Sydney
during Primary class.
South Mission. An English major, he lives in Orem,
Utah. This is his first published story.

Spring 2001 36 IRREANTUM

Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 37
F I C T I O N I mean I sometimes wonder if we really realize what
May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You
By Donald R. Marshall
October 29, 1968
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I don’t supose you ever heard of me but “Elder”
Marloy Tippets who is from here in Mink Creek
Idaho which I don’t supose you know much about
either said he was your companion for awhile or
your supperviser (sp?) or something like that and
that you was a real “neat” kid and probly wouldn’t
mind getting a letter or two from some body back
home so I thought I would give it a try.
How are things in Cuba Ohio? I bet its really
“neat.” What’s it like being on a mission. “Really
neat” I bet. Marloy sure spoke highly of you. He
sure is a riot. We could of died laughing at his
experiences.
Well I know your probly too busy to even read
this not to mention how many girls you probly write
to all ready. So you don’t really have to answer this.
If you don’t want to that is. Well I better close for
now. Don’t forget to write. “That is if you want to.”
Yours truly,
Floydene Wallup
P.S. Do you have any pictures you could spare?
November 15, 1968
Dear Floydene,
I couldn’t decide if your letter was a joke or not
because old Elder Tippetts he sure was a joker and
I wouldn’t put nothing past him if you know what
I mean. What I mean is, is your name really Floy-
dene Wallup? Don’t take offence but I mean its not
the commonest name in the world. That is, not to
me, I mean.
This is really an experience for me. I mean who
would of ever thought I would be almost two thou-
sand miles from good old Boulder, Utah. Things
sure are different out here. I mean its quite a hum-
bling experience to be somewhere where Mormons
are a minoratie. Boy it sure strengthens your testi-
mony fast. I think oft times we take it for granite.
IRREANTUM
we have.
Tell old Elder Tippetts to get on the stick and
drop me a line or two. I mean I am anxious to hear
how it feels being home off of his mission.
Well, be good and write again soon. We sure do
like to get letters out here.
May the Lord bless you,
Elder Calbert Dunkley
P.S. Here is a picture. It isn’t very good but you can
get the general idea.
P.P.S. You wouldn’t happen to have a photo of your-
self would you.
P.P.P.S. I was wondering if I might inquire just how
old you are.
November 17, 1968
Dear Elder Dunkley,
You said write soon so how is this for writeing
soon. I just got your letter and I thought I would
sit right down and answer. Boy that picture of you
was really “neat.” You look at least 25 but I took it
that you and Elder Tippetts was about the same
age. Or am I wrong. His sister Nilene said he was
just 21 but “you know how he is.” He don’t look a
day over sixteen. Or act it either. But he sure is
a riot. I took it from your letter you was more of
the “serious type.” What is your opinion. Do you
have any other pictures? How tall are you? Is your
hair really as dark as it looks? And what color are
your eyes. You asked how old I am, well I am a sen-
ior this year. And I don’t mean in collage neither,
“ha ha.”
There’s no news here. I just go to school every
day and come home and make bedspreads. I think
a girl ought to prepare for the future. What is
your opinion. I can hardly wait until you write
again but I guess you probly have a lot of girls to
write to. I don’t know if its any of my business or
not but just tell me one thing do you have any one
speical girlfriend or do you just “play the field” as
they put it.
Don’t forget to write.
“Love ya,”
Floydene
P.S. Here’s a snapshot of I and my girlfriend Miggy
I am the cutest one naturally “ha ha.” I guess you’ve
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got so many pictures of girlfriends you won’t have
room for this one. If you don’t want it you can send
it back. Or throw it away. Maybe you can use it to
scare away evil sperits “ha ha.”
December 3, 1968
Dear Floydene,
We have sure been busy. I have changed com-
panions and we have been transferred to Okalida,
Ohio. My new companion is Elder Quilby from
Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and I can tell you
one thing it sure is a humbling experience to be a
senior companion to such a swell guy.
Well, you asked some questions. I am twenty
years old and thanks a lot about that part about me
looking twenty five. Was that suppose to be a crack
about me loosing my hair or what. Anyway I have
brown hair and sort of blueish eyes and I am six
foot three and three quarters. Now let’s hear about
your vital stastistics. I mean how tall are you, ect.
ect. if you look anything like your picture you are
sure some dish. If you’ll pardon the expression. Do
you have any other pics of just you alone?
As for being the serious type I guess I never
thought much about it. I mean I like a good joke
now and then if that’s what you mean but I think
we ought to look at the serious side of life too. If
I’ve learned one thing on this mission it has been to
look for the things that are eternal and true and
praiseworthy and lasting and eternal. If you know
what I mean. I think you have a good idea to plan
for the future and more girls should do the same.
But tell me do you ever make anything besides bed-
spreads. I mean like dish towels, ect. ect.
Well, be good.
May the Lord bless you,
“Elder” Calbert Dunkley
December 5, 1968
Dearest “Elder” Dunkley,
Boy was I thrilled when I got your letter. I’ve
wrote to a “lot of guys” before believe me but when
it comes to writeing to you I just can’t help but feel
this is something “SPEICAL.” Your letters are so
wise. I’ll bet you must of went to collage before your
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mission right? Tell me all about it. When Marloy
first told me about you I just thought you’d be a
“good kid” and all but I never knew the half of it.
Marloy said it’d be good for me to write to you and
boy he sure hit the nail right on the head. Your let-
ters are better than a Sunday school lesson. I just
wish I had half of your knowledge. But I think that
if I had someone like you to incourige (sp?) me I
could just be a different person. I all ready am in
fact. Miggy Borup who is the other girl in the pic-
ture with me asked me the other day how come I
was so happy lately and I told her it was probly on
account of this “kid” I was writeing to and I’m sure
it was no lie. I’m just as different as night and day.
I just wish we didn’t have to wait between letters
because you have a way of pulling me out of the
dumps and making me want to strive to really be
some body. I can’t wait until you come home from
your mission. I just look at your picture every
night and wish the time would go by fast. Linda
Rae Moody is going with Lonnie Shroters (sp?)
parents to meet him after his mission but I guess
you’ll have so many girls there to meet you that I
wouldn’t have a chance. How are you comeing
home? By bus or plane or what. I don’t mean to
sound anxious or anything “ha ha.” Don’t wait too
long before writeing.
Love Ya,
Floydene
P.S. I am sending two boxes of candy to prove to
you I got more up my sleeves than bedspreads. The
one kind of went to sugar but the other one turned
out just about right. Hope you can tell which is
which “ha ha.” You don’t really have to eat either
one if you don’t want.
P.P.S. I almost forgot my vittle stastistics “as you
put it.” Well I don’t know as that is something a girl
is supose to tell but lets just say I’m short and sweet
“ha ha.” Seriously I am five foot four in my stock-
ing feet and nice and huggable “ha ha.” And you
can get all the other details from my picture except
as I have said I have changed a lot since we started
writeing.
P.P.P.S. By the way what are your plans after your
mission.
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December 7, 1968
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I could of died after I wrote you that last letter. I
hope it got lost in the mail but it probly didn’t as
nothing lucky like that ever happens to me, believe
me. Anyway, I’d just give any thing if I knew you
hadn’t of read it yet. But I just know you have. So
don’t hate me too much, okay? Promise me you’ll
tear it up. How is the weather there. All we ever get
is snow snow SNOW. Do you like to ice skate. I’ve
learnt a lot about you already but everytime I seal
up a letter I can think of a whole lot of things I
never asked. Maybe that’s why two people need a
whole eternity to get to know each other “ha ha.”
Don’t take me serious, okay? And remember to tear
up that letter cause I was just “goofin.” But I really
do think you’re a “great guy” in my opinion. I bet
you’re a real good missionery. Don’t forget to write.
“Love ya,”
Floydene
December 27, 1968
Dear Floydene,
I sure been busy. I would of sent you a Christ-
mas card but we was about the busiest we have ever
been, no lie. I suppose you think I’m a real rinky-
dink (if you’ll pardon the expression) for not
acknowledging the candy you sent. But to tell the
truth, Floydene, I never got it. But don’t worry as
I’m sure it was just the Christmas rush and all if
you know what I mean. I’m sure it will catch up
with us one of these days. And as you noticed we
have moved. I have been transferred again to Cal-
cutta, Ohio, and after only three weeks in Okalida.
My new companion is Elder Worley and is he ever
a great kid. It is a humbling experience to be a sen-
ior companion to someone who has the knowledge
of the gospel he has, I’m telling you. He gave a talk
at a baptism we had last week and it just spoke to
each and every one of us. No lie, all of us come
away from there feeling like we had truly had a
spiritual feast.
Floydene, my mission will not be over for nearly
seven months. I mean who knows what will hap-
pen between now and then. In the meantime do
you realize we’ve got a whole slew of things to find
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out about each other for instance how do you feel
about keeping the Sabbath day holy and who is
your favorite rock group, ect. ect. And for instance
we have been writing for five or six weeks now and
it has just barely come up about me having went to
college and all. Yes, I had the privilege of attending
the college of Southern Utah for two quarters and
I am planning on getting more schooling just as
soon as I am finished here as I think nothing is
more important than an education. Well, I better
close. Be good and write whenever you have time.
May the Lord bless you,
Elder Dunkley
P.S. Are you sure you put the address right on that
candy?
December 29, 1968
Dear Elder Dunkley,
You’ll never know how thrilled I was to get your
letter at long last. I thought you must of give me up
for good. I was so blue all Christmas I just didn’t
know what to do. I wrote you three different letters
and Mama wouldn’t let me send a one of them.
I even had you a package all ready to send and she
tried to talk me out of that too but I’m sending it
any way so happy new year and by the way did you
ever get my candy?
What’s it like out there in Calcutta, Ohio. I bet
its “really neat.” It is just cold here. Nothing to do.
Marloy has went in the army as you probly know
and so there’s not much doing around here. Not
that he ever took us out or anything but boy he
sure kept us laughing. What a riot.
You asked about keeping the Sabbath day holey
and the answer is yes I definitely think so don’t you.
Although I supose a little TV never hurt nobody.
Especially if it is a relig. program or something on
the “serious side” like September Divorce did you
see it boy was it ever good. To tell you the honest
truth I never use to take church and that stuff
very serious but since I started writeing to you
nobody can hardly believe what a changed person
I am. You also asked about my favorite rock group
boy did that ever get a laugh. You’d have to know
the whole story but my uncle Fred teaches geology
(sp?) and so when Mama read your letter she said is
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he interested in rock collections too or what. I could
of died. I sure hope her intelligence don’t run in the
family “ha ha.”
As for your question. I don’t have any speical
favorites. I like them all. Esp. Spider Snyder and
the Black Widdows. They play Saturday nights at
Fish Haven during the summer but I have only
went twice and both times was with Miggy “big
deal” but I am sure Mama would feel different
about it if I was to go with a return missionery
“hint hint.” Don’t take me serious.
Your right about how much we got to learn
about each other. For instance what is your favorite
food. I love all kinds, esp. stuff that is really differ-
ent don’t you I mean like peetsa (sp?) and other
Mexican things even if Mama can’t stand it. Well
what else do we need to know about each other.
And by the way if you’ll think back it is not “as you
put it” five or six weeks that we started writeing but
is exackly two months today. And I should know as
I’ve kept every letter you ever wrote. In order.
If you don’t think I’ve changed you ought to of
seen how I wrote letters before we started. I could-
n’t hardly think of anything to put down on paper
other than just hello how are you goodbye that’s all.
But look at this one for instance. I have been write-
ing this book “ha ha” since supper. It just seems like
now things just flow out. Thanks to you. You just
bring it out of me I guess. I could just go on for
ever but I better close. I don’t want to put you to
sleep “ha ha.” I just live for your letters. WRITE
SOON!!!
Love ya,
“Deenie”
P.S. Remember my girl friend Miggy that was in
the picture with me well she asked me to ask you if
you had any good looking companions that might
want to write to someone. “Just for kicks.”
January 13, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Your package came and boy was I surprised. Elder
Worley bet me you made it by hand and I said the
way you knock off those bedspreads I wouldn’t be
a bit surprised. I wasn’t sure what it was at first but
Elder Worley said he was pretty sure it was a dirty
Spring 2001
clothes bag. That was a good idea because we sure
do have the dirty clothes. Ha Ha. I mean being on
a mission sure isn’t like the good old home life. Also
thanks for the poem you imbrordried on the back.
Did you make it up yourself. No offence, but there
is one line that is just a little hard to make out.
What are the fourth and fifth words on the third
line. I mean the line right after “Proclaiming the
gospel far and wide” that goes “With a heart
BLANK BLANK unable to ever be denied”?
I’m beginning to wonder what happened to that
candy you sent. We have been very busy but we all
took a day off last Saturday and went to Lake Erie.
I saw something you would like (I hope) which
would probably look real good with your bed-
spreads. So I sent it. Let me know if you like it.
As for someone for your friend Miggy to write to
that is a difficult question. I mean Elder Worley for
instance thinks his girlfriend Diane is going to wait
for him and you can’t tell him different. And I
haven’t showed her picture to anybody yet because
you got to admit she does have a “slight problem.”
And with someone of your dimensions standing the
side of her it sure don’t show her off to any advan-
tage if you know what I mean. But there is one
Elder in our district I have thought of. He is sort of
hefty hisself and so might not mind. Just for kicks,
anyway, you said, right? How good of friends are
you with this here Miggy anyway? Don’t let her
read this but have you ever thought of tackfully
suggesting to her in a sort of sisterly way I guess
that she might try going on a diet or something.
I mean she doesn’t have such a bad face as far as I
can tell from the picture but you got to admit
that she’s not exactly what you might call another
Rockelle Welch if you get what I mean.
I have to prepare a lesson on love and charity so
I better close. Be good.
May the Lord bless you,
Elder Dunkley
January 29, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I guess I’ve wrote at least six letters an tore them
all up. I don’t hardly know how to put this as of
course I haven’t had the “collage training” you have
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but maybe you would just as leave not hear from
anyone who don’t look like some “Rockelle Welsh.”
I never would of thought you was so picky but I
guess I forgot you have went to collage. “Big Deal.”
But just let me ask you this way, did you ever stop
and think that a person might had just as good a
testimony of the gospel even if they was “as you put
it” a little “hefty.” Well I guess I better close so you
will have time to write to all your movie star girl
friends. “BIG DEAL.”
Sincerly,
Floydene J. Wallup
P.S. Your package came. I supose you’d rather have
it back to send to some other dish “as you put it.”
February 3, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Excuse the postcard but I am in a hurry. I guess
I never should of brought it up about Miggy being
a little on the heavy side. It was just because of the
fact that in comparison to you she didn’t hardly
stand a chance. If you know what I mean. But I’ll
still keep my eye open for someone to write to her.
I mean if she’s your friend I’m sure she’s a swell kid.
Hope you didn’t tell her what I said. I apologize for
being such a big mouth.
Sincerely,
Elder Dunkley
P.S. Keep the package. I meant it for you.
February 9, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
You never knew it I guess but I am the one in
that picture that you must of thought was “as you
put it” my HEFTY friend Miggy. So I guess you
might as well write to her from now on because
she’s a lot more like your Rockelle Welsh than I’ll
ever be. Or ever care to be. So you can just write
and tell her how darling she is yourself if you want
to because I and Miggy are not on speaking terms
these days as she seems to of went and got about as
high falooting (sp?) as some other people I happen
to know. You can keep the snapshot if you want
just cut OFF the hefty one “as you put it” and
throw it away if you haven’t all ready did it. Do you
want back all your letters and your post card and
IRREANTUM
that pillow cover from Lake Eery. I am sorry to of
wasted all your time when you could have been
writeing to some of your “cuter” girl friends who
are not “as you put it” so hefty. And as for “going
on a diet” did you ever stop and think that maybe
I have tried as I am a full-fleged member of the
Tops Chapter of Mink Creek Idaho but of course
that wouldn’t interest you because I have a long
way to go before I would ever look like Rockelle
Welsh. Don’t bother to answer this as I am sure
your time is too preicous to write to someone as
dispicable as me.
As ever,
Floydene J. Wallup
February 15, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Boy do I feel awful. To say nothing of humble.
I am sure you must have misinterpreted my mean-
ing. I mean what I meant was that said girl in said
photograph could of stood some improvement in
the weight aspect. That is to say a girl of her obvi-
ous qualities shouldn’t let a little thing like a few
pounds keep her from fulfilling her potential. Let
me put it another way, and I mean this: Said girl
would be nothing short of beautiful if she just lost
a little weight. And I mean it, Rockelle Welch or
anyone like her better watch out if said girl lost a
pound or two and that includes Bridget Bardow.
And that’s all I’ve got to say.
I suppose you’ll never want to hear from me
again and I can’t say as I blame you, but I’ll always
remember you as somebody that is sure a notch
above the average if not right up there among the
cream of the crop. And if you just keep up your
good qualities you are sure to go far in this world.
I hope the Lord will bless you each and every day
of your life.
Sincerely,
Elder Calbert Dunkley
February 17, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I guess I’m the one who should feel awful. And
don’t think I don’t. I should of knew that nobody
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with a testimony like your could have been so
PICKY “as I put it.” I guess I just jumped to con-
clusions. But lets let by gones be by gones, okay?
Forgive and forget, “as Mama puts it.” Boy was I
ever sick when I come to my senses and realized
how I almost brokeoff with one of the swellest per-
sons that ever lived. I did do the awfulest thing
though. I hate to tell you and I wouldn’t except I
want another picture of you so bad. I just did
something terrible. Forgive me will you. I hope you
have another picture because I just loved that one.
Did I ever tell you that it reminded me a little bit
of that one guy on Mission Impossible. Boy I can
tell you it sure was a strength to me in time of need.
And now I need it more then ever.
By the way, although I don’t supose you’d be
interested, said girl “as you put it” has already lost
three pounds this week and it’s only Thursday. And
what’s more I never should have sent you that
crummy old picture anyway on account of the
shadows of the porch and that lawn mower make
me look bigger than I ever was and besides that you
wouldn’t of recognized me if you’d of saw me on
the street. From that picture I mean. SEND IT
BACK! If you haven’t all ready threw it away. I’m
going to have a better one taken as soon as my hair
grows out. My school pictures was just terrible (in
fact every body’s was just awful) but I’ll send a
“good” one just as soon as I have one taken. I can’t
promise anything exactly “fantastic” but you can
judge yourself weather you want to keep it or
“throw it away.”
In case you never got that candy I made I am
sending you some fudge. It is a new resapee (sp?)
and also I am sending some Hawayan Peekaboo
Delite cookies. And I am trying a fruit cake and if
it turns out I’ll send you one. Just don’t move until
all this gets there okay? Well I better close. Write
soon.
Love ya,
Floydene
P.S. Don’t forget to send a picture. “Okay?”
P.P.S. At the rate I’m going I could probly really
loose a lot of weight if I really thought it might be
“worth my while.” What do you think.
Spring 2001
March 8, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Boy have we ever been busy. I know I should of
written to thank you for those things you sent. Boy
we sure appreciate things from home. But we have
sure been busy. As you can see we have moved
again. My companion here in Waterloo, Ohio, is
Elder Finlayson. He is sure a great guy and a bless-
ing to work with. There’s one thing I can say
beyond a shadow of a doubt and that is that you
sure get the cream of the crop out here. It is really
a humbling experience and a pleasure indeed to
work with some any fine and outstanding Elders.
I have made up my mind to read all I can and
improve my vocabulary, ect. etc. as I certainly have
a choice group of fine and outstanding young men
to emulate from.
As I say we sure have been busy. But I sure
haven’t forgot about all the kindness you have
shown me. I can tell you I sure envy the lucky guy
who gets you for a wife because you sure must be
some cook. Maybe I shouldn’t bring it up but it
would be best not to pack cookies in an Axion box.
But they was sure good though. Keep up the good
work in loosing weight.
Well, I guess I got to close. Be good.
May the Lord bless you and keep you,
Elder Dunkley
P.S. Don’t worry about the stuff getting here even
though we’ve moved. A box of coconut deals was
forwarded here just yesterday. But did you send the
fruit cake? We didn’t get that.
March 10, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I was never thrilled so much in my entire life as
when I got your last letter. Boy I sure thought I had
“goofed.” I just about decided I was never going to
hear from you as long as I live which sometimes as
blue as I felt didn’t seem like it was going to be too
far off. But your letter sure did life my sperits. Now
I’m back on my diet again. For a while there I was
just so blue I kept eating and gained back more
than I had lost but now I know where we stand I
can promise you I’ll stay on it like you asked and
not disappoint you again. I don’t know if I’ll ever
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be another Rockelle Welsh “as you put it” but I’m
going to try with all my mite for the best I can do
which if you were telling me God’s honest truth
might not be so bad. I can tell you one thing for
sure no body’s ever made me try harder to really
be some body. Or made me feel like I really had
a chance.
I just hope all my “goodies” don’t keep you from
thinking about your work. But don’t stop envying
“as you put it” the lucky guy that gets me. Maybe
you might even have a chance yourself “ha ha.”
Only kidding of course.
I am still waiting for that picture. Do you realize
you will be coming home in just five months.
Sometimes if I think about it I can’t hardly stand
it. I just hate this school year and wish it would
end. Do you realize that the dances at Fish Haven
will be started by the time you get off of your mis-
sion. How far is it from Boulder Utah to Mink
Creek Idaho?
Write as soon as you can. I need your letters
so bad.
Love ya,
Deenie
P.S. That fruitcake didn’t turn out. But I’m trying a
carrot and tomato soup cake that’s suppose to be a
snap and not go stale too fast. To say nothing of
cheap. Or I guess I should say economcial “as
Mama puts it.”
April 3, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
It has been twenty eight days since your last let-
ter. I am trying not to be discouraged as I know you
would of wrote if you was not so busy. Your not
that kind of a person. But I thought you might
be interested to know the latest which is that said
girl has lost seven pounds and still losing. I even
have to get new clothes now. I made some but they
didn’t turn out.
I sent for this book on food that’s good for mal-
ing and it tells how to wrap them and all that.
Mama thought I was crazy but I know how you like
to get stuff from “back home.” I never even asked
you this but do you have a mother. Its funny some-
times the things I think of that I don’t know about
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you and yet I feel I know you better than any body
in the world. How can that be. I’ve never felt so
close to any one in my entire life. Please write
because I just die when I don’t hear from you.
What would you think if I didn’t write for 28 days.
Even a post card or anything “when you get a
minute.” How much would it be to call Mink
Creek. My number is 852-3197 anyway “if you
ever feel the urge.” I would probly just die if I heard
your voice.
I don’t even know how it sounds.
Please write please write please write please
right soon.
I love you,
Deenie
April 19, 1969
Dear Floydene,
This will have to be short because we are the
busiest we have ever been. I and Elder Whittle are
third in our district for giving the most investigator
discussions in one month. We are trying for first
place this month. I guess that’s all the news.
You had better not send any more food until I
write again because we might be moving any day
and I wouldn’t want any of those delicious things to
get lost. Boy how could we be so lucky. But don’t
send any more for awhile.
That sure is good news that you are loosing
weight. I’ll bet all the guys in school are fighting
over you, right? Keep up the good work.
Well I better close for now. Be good.
May the Lord bless and keep you,
Elder Dunkley
April 21, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
I am sending this air mail speical delivry so you
get it before you move in case you are about to move
like you said. I also have some things all ready to
send to you. Lemon Nut Cheers and Barley ByeBye
Puffs. How does that sound. Be sure to write back
real soon and tell me where to send them because
I all ready got them boxed and everything. And
you would never believe the things I have planned.
If you don’t think its hard staying on a diet and
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trying to think up things to send to my missionery
you better think twice. But I would do any thing
for you. Sometimes I think I would even strave.
I know you are busy but could you please try to
send that other picture I asked you for I never told
you this but that time when we “broke up” I was so
mad I just crumpled your picture up and threw it
in the corner then when I tried to straiten it out
it was just all crumply and I did the awfulest thing.
I tried to iron it. Now half of your face is stuck on
the bottom of Mama’s old flat iron which I have
hid because I just can’t bare to have Mama clean
you off until I get a new one. So now I have told you
I supose you will probly think I’m just crazy but
would you please send me one. Even a little one.
And don’t forget to write on it. PLEASE.
Every time I write to you (and you would never
believe the letters I have wrote but didn’t dare send)
I just want to call you Cal so bad. Some times to
myself I even call you Callie. Did anyone every call
you that. I know you are supose to be called Elder
but do you realize your mission is going to be over
in 103 days and I have to get use to calling you
some thing besides Elder don’t I.
Oh Cal, if you only knew how much your letters
mean to me you would probly never have time to
do any thing but write write write every single day.
I don’t know whats happening to me but I just hate
school and Mama has just been awful and your all
I have and Cal I love you more than you’ll ever
know. I just wish you was here right now.
Do you realize you have never told me how you
really feel.
My heart aches for you
Deenie
April 29, 1969
Hi Floydene,
I just have time for a post card because we are so
busy. Guess what we made second in the district.
Floydene, I hope you are going out with a lot of
guys because three months is a long way off and
who can tell what might happen.
And please don’t send any more cakes and candy
airmail. Thanks for the mittens you nitted. They
will be handy next fall.
Spring 2001
May the Lord bless and keep you,
Elder Dunkley
May 14, 1969
Dear Elder Dunkley,
“Long time no hear” so they say. Marloy was
home on leave after his basic training and asked
about you. I could of probly dated him if I’d of
wanted but I been going with this other kid. As if
you’d be interested.
I don’t blame you if you never speak to me again.
I am so embaraced (sp?) by all those letters I wrote
you. I don’t know what was the matter with me.
I was just blue I guess. It was the junier prom and
all and I guess I could of probly went but then
Miggy got a date (with Larry Blutz “Big Deal”) and
I just didn’t feel like it. I sure made a lot of bed-
spreads last winter. Not to mention other things.
But around in March I guess it was I just didn’t
even feel like doing that. I was sick for awhile too.
As if you’d be interested.
Anyway school is almost out and will I be glad.
I always thought my senier year would be “neat”
but was it ever awful. Except now. I been going
with this kid from Preston. He don’t go to church
or anything but he’s a “nice kid” if you know what
I mean. I guess he’s what some people might call “a
little on the wild side” but at least he don’t smoke
anymore. So he says. Well, I guess I better close.
I been so busy but if I get a chance I will send you
some fudge or some thing soon.
Love ya,
Floydene
May 29, 1969
Hi Elder Dunkley,
I am incloseing my graduation anouncement. As
if you’d be interested. Anyway, I finely made it. At
least “I hope.” Graduation is not till next friday.
I am sorry I have not had time to send you any
thing yet. This kid I been going with is so jelous
you wouldn’t believe it. He would probly kill me if
he knew I was still writeing to you. But the way I
figure it its my own life isn’t it. But we sure have
had some fun times. Mama just can’t stand him but
as I say I guess its my own life isn’t it. So I usually
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have to sneak out and meet him at the A and W in
Preston or somewhere.
Well I guess you are probly about as busy as
I am. Dances start out at Fish Haven right after
decoration day. Which means I will have to go to
the grave yard with Mama to put flowers on my
father’s grave. I supose I should feel sad or some-
thing but I don’t on account of I never even seen
him. But in the afternoon this kid named “Cliff ” I
told you about said he’d take me on his moter cycle.
Well write if you get a chance.
Love ya,
Floydene
P.S. If Miggy does get a camera for graduation I will
ask her to take a picture of me. You would never
believe how I have changed. I lost so much weight
when I was sick. And I’m letting my hair grow out
as he said he’d kill me if I didn’t.
June 5, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Thank you for the announcement. I am sending
you a book that I sure was impressed with. (I sup-
pose it is not correct to end sentences with a prep-
asition but it sure sounds funny the other way if
you want my honest opinion.) Be sure and read
this book though because it contains some out-
standing messages that are indeed inspiring and
uplifting. And be sure to tell me what you think.
Especially tell me what you think about the one on
preparing your selves for the temple and how
important eternal marriage is. I sometimes think
that oft times we under estimate the true impor-
tance. I know I never really understood until I
come out here. But I sure know now.
Floydene I don’t hardly know how to put this
but I have been praying about you and I don’t
know if it is right for you to go with that boy. How
old is he and is he a member and are you sure he is
the one you would want to take you to the temple.
I hope you are giving it a lot of serious thought.
And have you prayed about it.
Floydene I hope you will understand my con-
cern for you. Please don’t go and do nothing you
may one day have to be sorry for. I mean it is
important to think of the eternal end of it. Have
you talked with your bishop.
IRREANTUM
I have hardly thought of anything else for a week
or so.
I want you to know I am sincerely concerned
about what happens.
Elder Dunkley
June 13, 1969
Dear Floydene,
I will never forgive myself if I don’t write and try
to express how I feel. I mean I have been hoping
you would write every day but there has been noth-
ing. Is it that you haven’t wrote at all or have you
put the wrong address on it.
Floydene I can’t stress enough what I feel in my
heart. Every day I have thought about it. And I
can’t help but feel that I have been to blame. If so
forgive me. I never thought that I could be so con-
cerned about someone I have only become close to
in letters but I feel beyond a shadow of doubt that
I have not give you the kind of help and under-
standing I should of. If your life is ruined because
of me I will never get over it.
Floydene if you get this letter please sit right
down and answer it by return mail.
Floydene I have did a lot of thinking and I have
been simply amazed at all the things you’ve did for
me this past year. I know I should be sorely chas-
tised as I never once showed appreciation like I
know now I should of. I doubt that there was ever
a missionary that lived that was ever as blessed as I
was. And didn’t know it. Floydene I know I didn’t
half deserve all the things you sent. It just makes
me sick to think of all the ingredients you must of
bought. To say nothing of the stamps. Floydene if
I have failed you I will never forgive myself. When
I reread those letters you wrote me in March and
April I just feel like a heal. Nobody ever wrote me
letters like that before.
Floydene it is late at night and I just have not
been able to sleep because of you. I mean I can’t
hardly look at that dirty clothes bag without think-
ing how I have probably really messed things up.
I pray that it will not be too late. I mean you are
still young and have such a future ahead of you.
You need a chance to go to college and become a
sweet young bride and mother.
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Floydene please reassure me it is not to late.
From one who cares with all his heart,
Elder Calbert Dunkley
“Cal”
June 16, 1969
Dearest Cal,
Was I ever thrilled to get your letter. I just should
of knew every thing would work out all right.
I guess I’m just about the happist girl in the world.
I can tell you I sure learnt my lesson. Cliff and me
had some good times all right but I wouldn’t trade
all five times I met him at the A and W for one of
the letters you wrote me since school ended and
that includes the time at the grave yard too.
I would of answered you sooner but we had to
go to Minidooka as my aunt took sick and needed
someone to take care of the kids. Boy was they ever
a handful. Talk about busy. And cook all the meals
besides. But I guess it was good practice “ha ha.”
I was going to write you right after Cliff and me
“broke up.” It was the day before decoration day.
But was you ever right he wasn’t really “my Type.”
But I wish we wouldn’t of broke up until after dec-
oration day as I was really looking forward to that
moter cycle ride. I guess you don’t have one do you.
Anyway when I come home there was not only
one letter waiting for me but two and was I ever
thrilled. It couldn’t of happened at a better time I’ll
tell you that. To say nothing of the book. Believe it
or not I am all ready on page 43. I don’t understand
it all but I can tell you one thing it sure does make
you stop and think.
I am mixed up about what your plans are. I want
to “reassure” you “as you put it” that it is NOT to
late and I will wait faithfully as I have never felt this
way about anyone else. And that includes Cliff. But
as you mentioned collage I am wondering if you
think I ought to get a semester behind me first. Or
what do you think. Nobody could of imagined me
going to collage a year ago. Or even a month. But
like I said I’m as different as night and day. Are you
going to the BYU or back to that Collage of South
Utah or whatever it is, I hear the BYU is getting so
big and you got to be real smart to get in. Have you
ever thought of Ricks. I mean its close. I wonder if
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it is to late to try and get in. I would be scared
to death. But with your brains to support me and
incourige me who knows what might happen.
I might even get a collage degree and be “as you put
it” your sweet young bride and mother besides.
Let’s put it this way I would be scared out of my
wits to go to the BYU or anywhere else but I am
yours and you hold the priesthood and whatever
you say I will do it.
Yours forever and more my darling,
Your Deenie
June 21, 1969
Dear Floydene,
Excuse the post card but we have been awful
busy. I think I am going to be transferred again.
Floydene I think we both ought to pray about
things.
May the Lord bless you,
Elder Dunkley
P.S. Thanks for the cookie-like things.
June 26, 1969
Dearest Cal,
I have read the part about temple marrage and it
just thrills me to reread your letter where you talk
about me becoming your wife and mother “as you
put it.” I just live for your letters. I kind of hoped
you would of wrote more before now. It has been
thirteen days not counting your post card and I can
hardly wait. But I know your busy. I hope every-
thing is “all right.” Now that you will be getting off
of your mission in nineteen days I all most count
the hours. How about you.
I have planned some thing good to send you
every day left of your mission. When is the last day
I should send some thing to you so you will be sure
and get it and what do you want for the last day to
celebrate. You choose because I want it to be some-
thing speical. You never stated a prefrance. I kind
of like those brasilyan beauty Bongo bars. What is
your opinion.
I have almost memorized your letters. I love the
part about how close we have became. Isn’t it
the truth. But sometimes I am not sure I remember
how you look. Do you know the only picture I
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have of you is still the one on the bottom of our old
flat iron.
The dances have started out at Fish Haven. I
probly could of gone but every body knows I’m
waiting for my missionery. I keep telling myself
only nineteen days only nineteen days. Should I
meet you or what? I hope every thing is “all right.”
I am so crazy about you I could die. I love you
with all my heart and sole.
“Your bride to be”
Deenie
July 16, 1969
Dear Floydene,
This is a postcard of main street in Dodge City,
Kansas. I am on my way home. With my parents.
I will not get time to see you this summer because
I have to get home and get right into school. My
grades were not good enough for BYU but I’m try-
ing a couple of junior colleges. Maybe we will both
get to BYU some day. Who knows. If you see me
on campus and don’t say “Hi” I’ll never forgive you.
Be good. Hope everything is all right.
May the good Lord bless and keep you,
Your brother in the gospel,
“Elder” Calbert Dunkley
Donald R. Marshall earned the award in fiction
from the Association for Mormon Letters for his book
Frost in the Orchard in 1978. He is an emeritus pro-
fessor of humanities at Brigham Young University,
where for years he oversaw the International Cinema
program. “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You”
comes from The Rummage Sale, recently reprinted in
the Mormon Literary Library series by Tabernacle
Books (1999). He and his wife, Jean, live in Provo,
Utah.
IRREANTUM
F I C T I O N
For the Strength of the Hills (Part Two)
By Lee Allred
[Part one of this story appeared in the winter
2000–2001 issue of IRREANTUM. The story thus far:
Johnston’s army has spent three winters at Fort
Bridger, trying to force their way down Echo Canyon
to Salt Lake City. The Mormons have been able to
hold them off with the help of mechanical guns, simi-
lar to Gatling guns, created by Jonathan Browning.
General Johnston is trying again, with the help of new
rapid-fire mechanical guns. The Agar guns are the
charge of Captain Peck, whose sister had “run off ”
with the Mormons.]
The column wound for miles back through the
narrow switchbacks of Echo Canyon. There were
few wagons, even fewer spare oxen. Johnston had
ordered them slaughtered, butchered, and salted
down. There simply wasn’t enough forage; it’d all
been set to the torch by the Mormons. Most of the
horses had been sent back with Stuart to Ft. Leav-
enworth. Johnston saved a few for a small number
of cavalry vedettes and a few more to pull the
artillery pieces, but none to pull the carriages of
the Agars. Captain Peck and his men pushed and
pulled the gun carriages toward Salt Lake City like
some grotesque parody of the Mormon handcarts.
Ferguson eyed the walls of the canyon suspi-
ciously. The south face was green with brush and
scrub and deceptively smooth and sloping. You
didn’t realize until you tried climbing how steep it
really was. The barren north face was different
entirely. The north face rose in a sheer vertical line.
It seemed almost as if the rough blocks of yellow
sandstone formed the battlements and ramparts of
a castle wall.
“I don’t like it, Cap’n,” Ferguson grunted as they
heaved the gun carriage out of a muddy rut. “I don’t
like it at all.”
“You think I do?” Agar mopped his brow with
the filthy remnants of his once-frilly handkerchief.
Sweat stained and soaked his dirty, ill-fitting blue
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tunic. “We’re sitting ducks down here—and Mor-
mons all around ready to let fly any moment now.”
Ferguson spat. “No they ain’t—that’s what I
don’t like!” He jerked his head toward the north
cliff wall. “This is where we ran into an ambush the
last time down—and so far, nothing. Not so much
as a peep from the Mormons.”
“Hmpf. How can you tell?” Agar asked. “I can’t
tell one part of this canyon from the next.”
Ferguson spat again. “Simple.” He pointed to
the next bend in the canyon. “See up ahead where
the canyon narrows. See how the yellow sandstone
turns reddish.” Agar nodded. Ferguson’s eyes nar-
rowed. “Every time it narrows, every time there’s a
spot in the canyon that’s good for settin’ up an
ambush, the canyon turns red. Red as blood. If ’n I
was a superstitious man, I’d say it was a sign for us
to do the smart thing and turn back.”
“Reckless talk, Rufus.” Peck was pushing along
with them, as tired and sweaty as the meanest pri-
vate. “Johnston could have you shot for less.”
Ferguson’s parched throat gave a dry cackle.
“Happens I ain’t a superstitious man, Cap’n. Besides,
Uncle Albert won’t get the chance to shoot me—
the Mormons’ll get me first. They’re up to some-
thing, I tell you. I can feel it. We’re most of the way
down the canyon now; we haven’t seen hide nor
hair of ’em.” He eyed the canyon walls again. “I
don’t think there’re any up there. And I don’t like
that at all.”
Agar huffed. “I, for one, do like it a lot better
that way.”
The carriage wheel hit a rock, and the gun almost
toppled over. Only the quick action of Peck and his
men saved it. It took several tense moments of
grunting and heaving to right it. One man col-
lapsed after the effort. Peck detailed another to
carry him until he revived. Johnston had given
orders to leave all fallen men where they lay and
press on regardless, but this Peck refused to do. He
didn’t believe much in the camp tales about what
the Mormon Danites did with prisoners, but he
wasn’t going take a chance on leaving helpless men
alone after the sun set.
They struggled on with the gun carriages, short
two men now. On they pushed, trying to keep up
with the rest of the column.
Spring 2001
“As—important as—these guns—are to John-
ston,” Ferguson puffed, “you’d think—he’d assign
us—more men to—uhng!—push!”
Shortly the grade sloped a bit more downhill, not
enough to cause more work trying to keep the car-
riage from running away but enough to ease the load.
Ferguson was still nervously eyeing the canyon
walls. Agar, having caught his breath a bit, said,
“Maybe we caught the Mormons by surprise. I dare
say the thing they least expected Johnston to do
after they burned our wagons was for us to make a
mad dash down the Echo.”
Ferguson grunted. “Might be some truth in
that.” A corner of his mouth found the energy to
turn up slightly. “I know it took me by surprise.
Usually our Second Napoleon’s a bit more plod-
ding in his reckless abandon. Cold molasses is a fair
way of puttin’ it.” He hocked and spat. “This is the
fastest forced march I’ve ever been on. If it weren’t
for the wagons an’ our artillery, I swan we’d be
making this trip at a dead run all the way. Faster,
ev’n, than the last time we run back up the Echo
with our tails between our legs.” He eyed the
canyons, his face suddenly grim. “Do or die, I can
tell you one thing. I ain’t running agin. I’ll stand
and die like a man ’fore I let the Mormons chase
me back to face another Bridger winter.”
Peck raised his head and looked down the
canyon, noting landmarks. “You’ll get your chance
soon, Rufus. At this rate, we’ll be to the breast-
works in two days.”
“Two days ain’t soon enough to suit me an’ my
aching back.” Ferguson grunted as the wheel fell into
another rut. “Agar,” he growled, “next time your
uncle builds a gun, tell him to make it lighter, eh?”
Johnston halted the troops in broad daylight just
around the bend from the breastworks. The Mor-
mons had fortified that very narrow stretch of canyon
back in ’57, before the shooting had started, and
they’d had three years to improve on those fortifi-
cations. Twice before Johnston had fought his way
down the Echo, and twice before the Mormons’
defenses at the breastworks had stymied him. The
mouth of Echo Canyon was just beyond the breast-
works, however—tantalizingly close—and if they
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could just win through, they could march down
what looked to be a wide valley beyond and follow
the Weber River to the Great Salt Lake itself.
There was still no sign of the Mormons.
Peck had his men make camp, which meant very
little, as they didn’t dare start any fires for fear of
Mormon snipers on the walls of the canyons, nor
had they any wood to do so if they dared. The men
could only unroll their bedrolls, chaw dejectedly on
their salted horsemeat strips, and soak their sore
feet in the crisp water of Echo Creek.
Peck left them there, soaking their feet, and
walked over to the canvas tent being set up for
Johnston. The tent flap was open.
Johnston bent over his collapsible table, poring
over a map of the canyon. His cronies, those of
them left—Butler, Francher, and Willis—were also
standing around the table, grim-faced. The half-
rations and tomorrow’s planned attack had them all
on edge—enough so that they were actually argu-
ing with the general. “It’s impossible,” Ben Butler
was saying, mopping his shiny, bald head with a
handkerchief. “We’ve less men and cannon than the
last time we tried, and look what happened then.”
Seeing Peck standing there, Johnston motioned
him inside the tent.
Butler pointed a pudgy finger at Peck. “Instead
of a frontal assault by my infantry, why doesn’t Peck
use his new miracle guns to break through?”
“All three of them?” Peck asked. “Their only real
worth to us is their shock value—if we can surprise
the Mormons with them. Wheeling them out in
front of the breastworks in plain sight isn’t much of
a surprise.”
Butler turned red. “You’re a coward, that’s all.”
“Oh? And who stayed at the Napoleons and cov-
ered the retreat last year? And who was the first one
to run back up the canyon?”
“Mormon-lover!” Butler spat. “Just like the rest
of your family!”
“That will be enough,” Johnston said. He
stretched upright and rubbed his tired kidneys.
“Much as it pains me to admit it, Peck happens to
be right about the Agars. Throwing them in front
of the breastworks would be like shoveling snow
into a furnace.”
IRREANTUM
Butler snorted. “Then I repeat: what good are
they?”
Johnston didn’t answer. Instead he pointed to the
map of the canyon. “Gentlemen, why is it we are
having such difficulty getting down this canyon?”
There were a few snorts and chuckles. “I asked a
question, gentlemen. I’d like an answer. We have two
and a half regiments of Army regulars, a well-drilled
artillery battery, and even a fair amount of cavalry.
All that’s stopping us is an untrained Mormon rab-
ble. Why can’t we get down this canyon? Ben?”
“If it pleases the general,” Butler said sarcastically,
“because the cussed canyon’s too narrow.”
Johnston nodded. “Exactly. We may have the
edge in both quantity and quality of troops, but a
few men armed with a mechanical repeating rifle
can hold off an entire army.”
The glum-faced Missourian spat on the floor.
“You ain’t telling us nothin’ new here, general.”
“Ah, Francher, but I am. If the Mormons can use
the canyon against us, why can’t we use it against
the Mormons?”
Francher laughed sourly at that. “They ain’t the
ones anxious to git down the canyon—we is.”
Johnston pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit
it. “But what if they were. What if we were to make
them ‘anxious’?” He blew a smoke ring. “Gentle-
men, the Mormons are only human. Echo Canyon’s
as narrow for them as it is for us. It’s high time we
started using that little fact of nature.”
He pointed at the map to a spot just around the
curve from his army’s camp. “This long, straight
stretch of canyon here is the breastworks. Just
beyond that is this small hill the men call ‘the Plug’
because it sits in the middle of the canyon and
plugs it like a cork in a bottle.”
Francher hooked his thumbs in his suspenders
and spat on the ground again. “Tell us sumptin’ we
don’t already know. Me an’ my boys, we’s the one
who scouted out that map for you.” He jabbed a
thick callused finger at the map. “Yup, that’s the
Plug. An’ just a mite ways past it the canyon ends,
on account of the Echo flowin’ into the Weber. We
knew that three years ago. Thems Mormons got a
whole camp around that Plug: stables, kitchens, mag-
azine bunkers. All the comforts of home—everything
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they need to keep them breastworks manned agin
us. Nothun’s changed, ’cept maybe the Mormons
have built a few more outbuildings around the
Plug, maybe dug in a little better. Even if we did get
past the breastworks, the Plug’d still stop us cold.”
“So a few Mormons with Brownings sitting on
the Plug could still bottle us up, is that what you’re
saying?”
Francher stretched his suspenders and let them
snap. “That’s just exactly what I’m saying, general.”
Johnston smiled. “And what if a few of our troops
with Agar guns were sitting on the Plug instead?”
A stupefied look slowly crept over Francher.
Butler’s fat chins gobbled up and down. “Why,
the breastworks would be completely cut off! They
couldn’t fight their way down the canyon any bet-
ter than we could. Pretty soon, they’d run out of
food—”
“—and, what is more important, ammunition
for those ‘miracle guns’ of theirs,” finished Johnston.
He snapped his fingers. “And that would be that.”
Butler frowned. “But . . . how are we going to
get the Agars on the Plug? It’s impossible.”
Johnston just smiled like a canary-fed cat and
hooked a finger at Peck.
Peck stepped up to the map table. “The Austri-
ans thought it was ‘impossible’ for the French to
haul heavy artillery up St. Bernard’s Pass in time for
the Battle of Merango in 1800. Napoleon proved
them wrong. We can do the same to the Mormons.”
He pointed to the map. “I’ve proposed to General
Johnston that we haul the Agars up the south wall
of the canyon. It’s steep, but not nearly as vertical
as the north wall. And it has a few trees for block-
and-tackle work.”
Butler looked unconvinced. “And how will you
manage to simply ‘haul’ the guns up the wall of the
canyon?”
“The same way Napoleon did. Disassemble the
gun carriages. Hollow out logs, put the guns in
the logs, then drag them like sledges up the slope.
Carry the ammunition and the dissembled carriages
by hand.”
He pointed at the map again. “Skirt the ridge of
the canyon wall, stay on the other side of the slope
to keep out of sight. March to about here. There’s
Spring 2001
a relatively gentle slope to the canyon wall here
next to the Plug. Run down the slope, take the Plug
by surprise, set up the Agars, and hold out until
you force the breastworks and join up with us.”
Johnston nodded. “A classic textbook military
maneuver, gentlemen.”
Butler was unconvinced. “Textbook maneuver?
What’s to say the Mormons are reading the same
text? What’s to stop the Mormons from preparing
themselves against another Merango? They’ve
planned for just about everything else.”
Peck shook his head. “Brigham’s a shrewd old
bird—I’ll give him that—but ‘prophet’ or not,
there’s one thing we have that he hasn’t: a West
Point military education. I’ll match my de Jomini
against his Book of Mormon any day of the week—
and twice on Sunday.”
“Butler’s right. Seems to me like they’d be a’wait-
ing for us to flank them like that,” Francher said.
“Seems to me like they’d put some lookouts up on
the hill or something like that. I know I would.”
Johnston took a long drag on his cigar and blew
another smoke ring. “Not if they were convinced
we were planning to make another frontal assault.”
“Which we ain’t stupid enough to do.”
“Which is precisely what we are going to do—
and make our preparations for it quite obvious.
Butler, I’ll expect you to lead that.”
“Suicide!” Butler almost screamed. “I tell you a
frontal assault is suicide!”
Johnston fixed his cold stare at him. “And it’s
suicide—slow suicide!—if we don’t get past the
Echo and into Salt Lake before our food runs out.
It’s either take the breastworks now while we still
can or starve to death. This is the only plan that
will work.”
“If it’s so great a plan, why didn’t we try it last
year? Or the year before that?”
Peck snorted to himself. That’s precisely what he
was asking himself. He’d presented this same plan
two years ago when he’d first requested mountain
howitzers. Johnston, however, insisted on attacking
his way: straight down the canyon like a steer head-
ing down the chute to the stockyards.
Johnston took his cigar out of his mouth and
stared at the smoldering end. “Without these new
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Agars it simply wouldn’t have worked. Couldn’t have
held the Plug with rifles or cannons. Not enough fire-
power, not a high enough rate of fire. Between their
Brownings and those five-shot slide rifles of theirs,
the Mormons would have had us for breakfast.”
“Maybe,” Butler muttered, “you just weren’t des-
perate enough to try it before.”
Johnston studied his cigar. “Maybe.” He stuck it
back in his mouth. “I’m certainly ‘desperate enough’
now, as you put it. If the men want food they’re
going to have to fight their way to it.”
“McClellan—” Butler whispered. Johnston
silenced him with a withering glare.
Major Willis, who’d kept quiet through all this,
finally spoke up. “I realize I’ve not fought the Mor-
mons the way the rest of you have. On paper, it looks
as if this plan should work.” He looked up at John-
ston. “But, general . . . can it? Will it really work?”
A cold smile crossed Johnston’s face. “My solemn
word.”
• • •
It was over an hour before Peck could return to
his men.
“Rufus, I need you to gather up as many axes as
you can find, and men fit enough to use them.”
Ferguson got to his feet, grunting a bit from the
effort. “That’s going to be no mean trick, Cap’n.
The axes’ll be easy to find; fit men’s a whole differ-
ent fittle of fish.” He looked at Agar. “Git up, Agar.
You’re a fit ’un.”
Agar stood up. “I’m not sure how much wood
we’re going to find around here to cut. Just sage
and scrub, and it doesn’t burn.”
“There’s some decent-sized trees up the canyon a
ways. I’ve been keeping an eye out for them. I want
trees big enough so that when they’re hollowed out,
you can set a Agar gun in.”
Agar cleared his throat. “Cap’n, in spite of the
occasional ruts, broken axles, and busted wheels, I
do believe that the guns will be easier to haul in the
carriages than in those logs.”
“Not where we’re going.” He titled his head
meaningfully up the slope of the south canyon wall.
Ferguson took off his cap and rubbed his hair.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Cap’n. That’s impossible.”
IRREANTUM
“That’s what the Mormons think, too. And so
has Johnston for the last three years. I’ve finally
managed to convince him otherwise.” He gave them
a rough outline of the plan. “We’re leaving as soon
as night falls. Johnston wants us in place by dawn.”
Ferguson eyed the canyon wall again. “I’m
thinking, Cap’n, that Uncle Albert’ll need to give
us a few more men to lug those guns up that slope.
In fact, I’d feel a mite better if we had some mules.”
“Johnston said he’s giving us the Missouri irreg-
ulars,” Peck said.
Ferguson spat. “Personally, I’d prefer the mules.
They’re smarter, smell better, and ain’t half as mean,
ornery, or stubborn as them Missourians.”
Agar’s stomach growled. “Mules would eat less,
too.”
• • •
They started up the slope at dusk. A thin screen
of Missourians scouted the way ahead to watch for
Mormon ambushes. The rest of the Missourians
and Peck’s men grunted and heaved on the ropes
fastened to the log sledges. The last few men carried
the dismantled gun carriages, axles, and wheels like
two-legged pack mules up the slopes behind them.
They managed to drag the logs up to the top.
After that, the going got far easier. They skirted the
summit ridge, just below the crest on the other
side, so as to keep just out of sight of any watchers
across the canyon on the north wall.
As they reached the spot directly across from the
breastworks, the Missourians all let go of the ropes
and flopped down to rest. Peck grabbed their leader
up by the scruff of the collar and whispered as loud
as he dared, “What do think you’re doing? Get back
on the ropes and pull.” He hauled him to his feet
and gave him a shove in the direction of the ropes.
The Missourian tripped and fell. He picked him-
self up with an insolent air. “Say, ain’t this where
we’re diggin’ in at? Them Brownings’re right across
there, ain’t they?” For all his bluster in camp about
wanting to avenge his ‘kinfolk,’ he didn’t seem too
eager about it now.
“Quiet, Francher,” Peck whispered savagely. “Sure
the Brownings are across from us, but if all we
wanted to do was directly assault the breastworks,
we could do that from the canyon floor.” Peck
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explained the plan again. Comprehension slowly
crept over the man’s sullen face. Sheepishly, he got
up and picked up his ropes and started pulling
again. His men followed.
A few hundred yards later, Peck signaled them to
stop. Below them lay the Plug. The place seemed
almost deserted, though. No campfires burned, and
there were no sentries apparent at all.
Ferguson said he still didn’t like it. It looked like
a trick. Peck told him to be quiet.
Peck called his men together. “That,” he said,
pointing at the Plug, “is our objective. We take that
and the breastworks are cut off. Then it’s only a
matter of time before Johnston can punch through
past them. Once he does that, the rest of the
canyon’s no problem at all and we follow the Weber
River and march right down to Salt Lake City.”
He motioned to Agar and Francher to follow
him. They crawled over to the slope and stared
down. “Here’s the plan: we’re going to go down this
spur—slope’s a bit gentler here. Francher, have a
third of your men spread out in front. You’re our
infantry screen. The rest of your men and mine
help drag the guns and carry the ammunition down
as fast as we can to that small ridge near the bot-
tom. Meanwhile, your screen will make for those
gun revetments as fast as you can. After the guns
are down, the remaining two-thirds of your men
will join the assault on the Mormon position.”
Francher chewed on a twig and thought about it.
“Going to make the devil’s own noise dragging them
logs down. Wake up the whole Mormon camp. I’d
feel a sight better if them fancy guns of yours were
set up before we made for the Plug.”
“Can’t be helped,” Peck shrugged. “We’ll do this
just like they do Conastogas going down a moun-
tain pass. I’ll have a couple of men on ropes pulling
the logs forward and the rest on ropes pulling back
to keep the logs from running away on us. We’ll set
up the guns on that small ridge near the bottom.”
He turned to Agar, “What I need to know from
you is how fast you can unship your guns and get
them going once we reach that ridge.”
Agar rubbed his chin. “You want me to get all of
them in place at once, or just one at first, then the
rest later?”
Spring 2001
“Just one. I want to be able to pin down any
Brownings they may have down there. Set up the
others as soon as you can.”
“Three minutes for the first one, provided you
have Ferguson helping me, but I can’t guarantee
more than a lick and a promise in setting it up.
Can’t promise too stable a base to get set up on.
Won’t be very accurate.”
“Just as long as you can spray ’em with bullets
and force them to keep their heads down and pre-
vent them from spraying us. Their sheer surprise at
being on the receiving end of a mechanical should
more than make up for our lack of accuracy. I hope.”
“So do I.”
• • •
Just before dawn Peck’s men quietly readied the
block and tackles. They lowered the log sledges as
far down the slope as they could without making
noise. They still were a couple hundred yards away
from the small ridge. As the dim light of false dawn
lit the mountaintops, Peck signaled Francher’s men
to creep down the hill.
With everyone in position, the men waited, poised
for Peck’s command that would send them sliding
down the steep slope in a desperate race for the
revetments.
Ferguson sidled over to Peck. “I’ve done some
blame fool things in my time, Cap’n, but this is the
blamed foolest.”
“I was just thinking along those lines myself,
Rufus.” His voice sounded tight, strained.
Ferguson hacked softly. “Throat’s too joe-fired
dry to even spit. Figgurin’ with all them buildings,
there surely has to be several hundred of them
down there.”
And how many of them would turn out to be
friends of his sister? Or family? Peck shook his head
clear. He couldn’t think about that now. “All the
more reason for us to get to the Brownings first.
It looks like they’re all tucked in those buildings
fast asleep.” Peck watched the minute hand of his
pocket watch crawl toward the fatal minute and
tried not to think who it was inside those cabins.
“Now!” he whispered, signaling to the men.
Francher’s men advanced down the steep slope.
Peck cursed. They were starting to run, just what
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he’d told them not to do. They started sliding and
stumbling on the loose rocks, knocking several of the
smaller ones free. The rocks started rolling down
the slope, creating small landslides and making a
devil of a noise.
Fuming, Peck turned back to the Agar guns. The
three log sledges began to slide down the hill, pick-
ing up speed. Ferguson was trying to get those on
the ropes to slow down. He hissed, “Pull, you Mor-
mon lovin’—”
“She’s comin’ loose!” The tackles on the far sledge
groaned and popped. There was a sudden snap and
the twang of a rope giving way. The sledge, sud-
denly free, wrenched the remnant end of the rope,
yanking to their feet the men still holding on. The
sledge began sliding faster and faster downhill,
pulling along with it hapless men still caught up in
the ropes. Men screamed and huge rocks crashed
down the hill as the sledge rumbled ever faster.
Then it hit a small bump and went flying into the
air. The sledge landed with a crash and threw the
Agar gun out. The metal gun caromed off rock out-
cropping after outcropping, tumbling over and over.
It reached the bottom with a horrible crash and
groan of rending steel. The wooden sledge thudded
and splintered on top of it.
Peck stood transfixed, horrified. The noise had
to wake up the Mormons, and Peck’s men were
nowhere near in position. He had led his men into
a slaughter. He started shouting orders for his men
to hurry, but Peck knew it was hopeless. The Mor-
mons only had to run to their gun pits before Peck
could set up his Agar guns and it would be all over.
Peck waited for the Mormons to boil from out of
the buildings.
He waited. They didn’t come.
The Missourians reached the bottom of the hill
and swarmed up over the gun pits and into the
camp. And still the Mormons didn’t come.
Francher yelled up at Peck. “They’ve gone! They’ve
all pulled out. Wasn’t nobody manning the Plug.
Nobody at all.”
Peck couldn’t believe it. They had done it. They
had taken the Plug. For three years, Johnston’s Army
had been butchered trying to take the canyon and
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now, without firing a shot, Echo Canyon was theirs
and beyond it, Salt Lake City.
He sent in men to make sure the buildings were
as deserted as they seemed.
It took only a couple minutes for Ferguson to
return and report, “They’ve pulled out, Cap’n. Ain’t
no food, ain’t no ammo, ain’t no nothin’. Them
buildings are picked cleaner than a dog’s bone.
Completely empty of anythin’.”
Peck still refused to believe it. “It’s impossible.
Where did they go? The Mormons wouldn’t have
abandoned their strongest position for no reason
at all.”
“Maybe they found out about my uncle’s guns,”
Agar said with a grin.
A commotion started among some of the men
nearby.
“Now what?” Peck said wearily, turning.
Ferguson spat slowly and deliberately. “That.” He
pointed toward the western sky, down the Weber
River Canyon. The western sky was nothing but a
black haze of smoke as far as they could see. White
flakes of ash began drifting down, covering them
like the first snowflakes of winter. “They’ve done
just like they said they would if we ever made it
past ’em. Burn the place to the ground. That’s Salt
Lake, Cap’n. That’s Salt Lake City a’burning.” He
spat again. “And, I reckon, just about the entire rest
of the territory as well.”
Francher let out a whoop. “It’s Bobby Lee, I tell
ya! Just has to be. No other thing it could be.
Bobby Lee and the rest of the Army marched in
from California and gave it to the Mormons but
good. The war’s over, I tell ya. It’s over. We won!”
Peck looked at Francher. “Have we? When we
get to Salt Lake and it’s burnt to the ground and
there’s no food to be had for a thousand miles,
tell me again about how we’ve won.” He looked
back at the smoke. “It’s not over, Francher. It hasn’t
even begun.”
• • •
Johnston lost no time celebrating his Echo
Canyon victory. He marched his men through the
Echo and down the Weber Canyon toward the Great
Salt Lake. As they marched, one thought echoed
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over and over in Peck’s mind. No army in the world
could have forced their way past Brownings down
the crag-lined walls. The Weber was the Echo all
over again, only longer and steeper.
They passed through, out of the Weber, past the
huge rock formation called Devil’s Slide, and into
the Great Basin, within sight of the north shores
of the Great Salt Lake. And the land between the
lake and the mountains was as lifeless as that dead,
dead sea.
Up and down that thin corridor of land, as far as
the eye could see, there was nothing but black soot
and ashes. Not one home stood, not a barn or
building. Not a foot of lumber, a stick, a tree, a sin-
gle blade of grass or hay—not one thing had been
left to Johnston’s Army that would burn.
They could see below in the lower Weber Valley
entire towns, each nearly identical, each neatly laid
out in the same grand sweeping design of perfect
grids, streets broad enough to easily turn a wagon
and a full team of oxen round—all of them empty.
Devoid of a living soul. Burnt to the ground until
only the brick chimneys stood, and even most of
those pulled down. Farms and fields surrounding
each town were just as dead, the intricate web of
canals and irrigation ditches destroyed.
The men staggered on for a few pitiful yards.
Dead ground crunched underfoot. Each step loos-
ened puffs of gray ash. Soot and smoke filled the
air. High up on the slopes of the Wasatch, the forests
still burned.
Most eerily of all, there was no life in that land.
No livestock, no animals in the blackened waste.
Only the lonely, mocking cry of the gulls circling
above the dead lake gave any sign of life.
Johnston called a halt to a column that could go
no farther. He summoned his officers. As they
gathered around him, Johnston’s old Texan cavalry
buddies brought him his horse. Johnston mounted
up and looked down on his officers to address
them. “Men, I will be leading our cavalry south
into Salt Lake City as fast as possible, where I hope
to secure what foodstuffs remain before the Mor-
mons can burn them all.”
Amid the muttering, Butler snorted. “I’d say
you’re too late by half.”
Spring 2001
“That may be, but it’s less a fool’s errand than
you may think. As some of you are aware, Buchanan
has sent the rest of the Army to attack the Mor-
mons from California. Ulysses S. Grant is march-
ing up from the south, aided by a squadron of
gunboats up the Colorado. Robert E. Lee is march-
ing over the Sierras, through Donner’s Pass, and
straight across the salt flats. My plan was that those
diversionary attacks would draw off troops from
the Echo; they’ve succeeded beyond my wildest
hopes. They’ve panicked the Mormons, allowing us
free passage into their heartland; now we must
finish them off by securing their capitol.”
He paused as if he had expected applause. The
men didn’t want a city. They wanted food.
“And what if there isn’t any Mormon food left?”
Butler asked.
“Then we will link up with the two diversionary
columns, each one of which will have plenty of
food to see us through.”
“Carrying it over the salt flats?”
Johnston ignored him. “As I am doing this, you
will continue your march on foot to Salt Lake City,
foraging for food along the way.”
“What food?” came the cry. The knot of officers
tightened around Johnston’s horse. The horse skit-
tered back.
Overhead, a seagull cried. A flock of the birds
wheeled past.
Johnston pointed up at them. “There’s your
food. That should see you through to Salt Lake
City.” He spurred his horse forward. His cavalry
officers rode after him, kicking up the soot-blacked
dust in their wake.
Wearily, Peck and the other soldiers could only
follow on foot. There was simply nothing else they
could do.
• • •
They were just a few miles north of Salt Lake
City now. Peck’s crude maps called the area Davis.
Salt Lake City lay just around a mountain spur to
the south. Peck and a handful of his men were
tramping wearily toward it. Agar was a bit farther
back with his two remaining guns. Other small
clumps of soldiers, scattered up and down the val-
ley, vainly looked for something to eat as they stag-
gered south.
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Ferguson hacked, his mouth too dry to spit.
“Cap’n,” he said, “remember when I said I wasn’t a
superstitious man?”
Peck nodded.
“I think I’m beginning to git that way.” Ferguson
raised his face to look up at circling seagulls.
“Thems the birds that saved the Mormons from
the crickets. It’s beginning to get to me. Reckon we
look to them like another rampaging horde of
crickets, the way we’re scattered about foragin’ off
the land. I’m dreamin’ of them at night, Cap’n.
Huge seagulls that carry me off like a cricket.”
Peck laughed, then coughed at the effort. His
throat was just as dry. “This time, we ‘crickets’ are
eating the gulls.”
“Cap’n!” Danby called from up ahead a way.
“Come quick!”
Peck shuffled over as fast as he could, drawing
his Navy Colt as he ran. Danby was standing on
the edge of a small gully that had been washed out
by the spring rains. Down in the gully, hidden from
sight, was a horse that had fallen in. The horse had
broken its neck in the fall; it was quite dead. Still
alive, however, was its rider, his legs pinned under
the horse’s deadweight. The man was barely con-
scious. He looked up and saw Peck and his men
and stretched his arm, trying to grab the rifle that
lay in the sand just beyond his reach. Peck imag-
ined that if the man had been able to reach his rifle,
he would have shot himself long beforehand.
“No telling how many days he’s been down there,”
Peck said.
“True enough.” Ferguson pushed back his cap.
“I don’t think that horse is going to be good eatin’,
Captain. Looks might puffy to me.”
Peck shot him a look. “Never mind about the
horse. Let’s get that man up out of there.”
After some heaving, they got the man out. Both
his legs were crushed and one was obviously gan-
grene, from the smell. They gave him some water
to try to help him come to.
Ferguson motioned Peck aside. “Cap’n, what are
we goin’ to do with him? We don’t have enough
food or water for ourselves to be wasting on some
Mormon who’s as good as dead anyway. You should
have just left him lay there.”
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The man chuckled sourly as he slowly opened his
eyes. “That,” he said, “is an accurate assessment of
this entire war. You should have let all of us just lay
here.” His chuckle slid into a weak choking cough.
Peck looked at the man, then looked at Fergu-
son. “He seems plenty alive to me. Rig some sort of
litter. We’ll carry him along as we go.”
“Cap’n—the men are too weak to carry around
a half-dead Mormon—”
“Then carry only the half that’s still alive, but get
moving.”
“Yes, sir,” Ferguson muttered, glaring at the
wounded Mormon.
• • •
The prisoner’s name was Reddick. He was an
officer in the Mormon’s Nauvoo Legion. Peck
couldn’t question him much beyond that. The man
slid in and out of consciousness as they carried him
in the litter. Even when he was conscious, much of
the time he was delirious with fever.
Peck’s weary men reached the small spur. They
plodded up the rise for their first look at the Salt
Lake Valley.
The desolation of the small farming communi-
ties to the north had been bad, but nothing Peck
had ever seen prepared him for what he saw now.
In the middle of a land that grew nothing but sage
and knee-high scrub, near the shores of the dead
lake had lain a bustling, living, breathing city of
twenty thousand souls. A shining metropolis rising
from the midst of the wilderness. Nothing remained
now but its charred skeleton. Peck could see from
the perfect square grids of city and farms the exact
demarcation between sterile desert and the lands
the Mormons had tamed, lands that now lay torched.
Reddick rose up in his litter and said with a husky
voice, “You should have seen it when it was alive.”
Peck whispered, his voice raw, “Johnston prom-
ised this: this is surely a hell if ever there was one.”
Of all things Reddick could have done, laughing
was not one Peck had expected. “It’s our turn now,
but yours is coming. Mark it well. This is your
future, too.”
Looking closer, Peck could see troops mulling
about in the dead city. Too many, to be sure, for the
small number of cavalry Johnston had taken with
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him. Mormons? “More likely General Lee’s,” Red-
dick said, coughing weakly. “He was right on our
heels as we evacuated the city. I’m afraid your Gen-
eral Johnston was several days too late to arrive
first—if that’s what he was trying to do.”
Ferguson spat, “That double-crossing Uncle
Albert. He knew! He knew! That’s why he goaded
us down the Echo so hard. He was trying to beat Lee
into Salt Lake. He didn’t want to end up the goat.”
Peck nodded, his face grim. “No, Albert Sidney
Johnston isn’t the kind of man who’s about to let
someone else have all the glory.” He let out a sour
chuckle. “Lee’s the hero and Johnston’s left with
nothing to show but three disastrous winters at
Fort Bridger.” He shook his head. “That’s one situ-
ation a dueling pistol isn’t going to solve for him.”
Peck ordered his men to start marching down
into the city.
• • •
In the center of the charred city stood untouched
two large buildings where Lee undoubtedly had
made his headquarters. “The Lion and the Beehive
Houses,” Reddick said. “Brother Brigham left his
houses intact.” He chuckled sourly. “He wanted to
leave Johnston something to burn, I guess.”
Peck suspected another reason. Young wanted to
give the invaders a small taste of what had been
here before they came. The clean, neat buildings
and lush shade trees stood in stark contrast, a
painful oasis in the charred destruction the Army
had brought upon the city. Peck shook his head.
“‘Johnston’s a sly one, but I’m Brigham Slick,’” he
muttered.
They were walking through scattered clumps of
tents now. The smell of Army cook fires tempted
them, but Peck was firm in having his prisoner
delivered to Lee as soon as possible.
They passed a large column of Mormon prison-
ers being marched west toward a makeshift prison
camp closer to the lake. The prisoners were as foot-
sore and ragged as Peck’s men, but despite every-
thing their spirits seemed higher.
“Boys from St. George,” Reddick said as they
passed, “I recognize some of them. Your General
Grant must have marched in from the south, as
well.”
Spring 2001
The prisoners seem to recognize Reddick. Some
of them saluted him. As Peck passed one group,
they straightened their shoulders and held their
heads high and began to sing.
At the hands of foul oppressors,
We’ve borne and suffered long;
Thou hast been our help in weakness
And Thy power hast made us strong;
Amid ruthless foes outnumbered,
who seek our mountain sod;
For the strength of the hills we bless Thee,
Our God, our fathers’ God.
Thou hast led us here in safety
Where the mountain bulwark stands
Thou hast made Thy children mighty
In the hills shaped by Thy hands;
Thou hast led Thy chosen Israel
to Freedom’s last abode.
For the strength of the hills we bless Thee,
Our God, our fathers’ God.
Peck turned to stare after them. “I know that
song,” he said. “My family’s Swiss Lutheran. That’s
not a Mormon song; that came from Switzerland.”
“The Saints are not the first people persecuted
for their beliefs,” Reddick said. “Nor shall we be
the last.” He started to cough weakly, then closed
his eyes. When Peck’s men arrived at the makeshift
hospital a few hundred yards farther into the city
and set the litter down, Reddick was dead.
• • •
Ferguson held out the plate to Peck. “Cap’n, you
best eat something,” he said, nodding at the hard-
tack and spoonful of beans. “Won’t be too long
before there won’t be nothing left.”
Peck didn’t answer. He only continued to finger
the chain of a small gold locket.
“Lee and Grant didn’t bring enough for them-
selves, let alone us. And the Danites still have our
supply lines choked off,” Ferguson continued. Still
Peck didn’t answer.
If only he hadn’t seen to Reddick’s burial himself.
If only the chain hadn’t broken and the locket
come loose from Reddick’s neck as they rolled him
off the blanket into the shallow grave. If only Peck
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hadn’t picked up the locket and opened it and seen
the small photo inside.
Ferguson set the plate down. “Maybe they was
only sweethearts. Maybe . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Be kinder that way, anyhow,” he said gruffly.
“’Cause if he was married to her, chances are he was
married—”
Peck leapt to his feet, knocking the tin plate over
with a crash. The plate wobbled to a stop near his
feet. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it!”
Ferguson took a large chew from the last of his
tobacco. “What you’re thinkin’ is crazy. You didn’t
kill him, son. You did everything you could to save
him. Sight more than me. But even if you had
killed him—you’re a soldier an’ he was the enemy.
That’s your job.”
“Enemy? He was an American. He was my
brother-in-law. Is that what the Army is for?
Brother against brother?”
Ferguson lifted up the tent flap and spat outside.
“He was a Mormon, and that’s good enough for me.”
Peck looked at Ferguson, really saw him for the
first time in days. “You really hate them, don’t you?”
“Back in the Echo, it was just soldierin’. But
once we’d won, and once they’d lost . . . they should
have given up. But no, they’re still fighting, and
we’re starving, Cap’n. We’re starving. We’re starving
when we oughta have won.” He lifted the tent flap
again. “It’s become right personal now.”
Peck fingered the locket. “Yes it has.”
“Don’t you see, Cap’n? We’re gonna have to hunt
down every last one of them before they’ll give in.
Hunt ’em down like dogs. An’ that ain’t solderin’.
Not at all. They’ve taken my trade, my whole life . . .
my honor and made me kill it, the same as they
made you kill—” He bent over and picked the
hardtack out of the dirt. “Cap’n, I’m ashamed of
myself. Ashamed I hate any man because of this. If
I can learn to hate his kind, then maybe I’m capa-
ble hating my own kind and that scares me, hatin’
and fightin’ my own. That Reddick feller and I, we
should have been friends the way you and me are,
’stead of the way I feel t’wards him now. You can do
something about it, Cap’n. You’re a good talker.
They’ll listen to you. Both Lee, on account of he’s
a fair man, and maybe the Mormons, on account
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of your sister.” He nodded toward the makeshift
graveyard and the newly planted cross. “That’s what
he would have wanted.” He scuffed his boot over
the beans splattered on the dirt floor. “Not this.”
• • •
Robert E. Lee sent for Peck the following day.
Sentries standing outside the porch of Brigham
Young’s Beehive House saluted Peck, and he entered.
An orderly ushered Peck straight into Lee’s office.
The large room must have been Young’s study. Once
elegant furnishings were soot-stained. Books and
mementos of the former owner lay haphazardly
pushed aside to make room for the general’s charts
and maps and other implements of command.
Lee was behind the desk, trying to catch up on
the never-ending Army paperwork. His heavy,
dark-blue tunic lay draped over the back of a chair.
He wore a plain gray vest over a white shirt. With
his pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his
nose, the gray-haired Lee looked every bit the nick-
name he’d picked up from his students at West
Point: Granny Lee.
Peck stepped into the room. Before Peck could
salute, Lee rose from his chair, walked quickly
around the desk, and took Peck by the hand,
pumping it up and down. “Good to see you,
‘Cadet’ Peck.” Lee’s eyes twinkled warmly. “Good
to see you.”
“Good to see you, too, general.”
Lee waved him to sit down. “I was sorry to hear
about . . .” He looked at Peck, then cleared his
throat. “I imagine this feels a might bit better than
the last time I had to call you into my office. You
could have been first in your class if you’d just
learned to get along with your superiors.” He
frowned. “Albert Sydney tells me . . . well, to put it
politely, that you’re impertinent and, shall we say,
argumentative?”
“Only,” said Peck, flushing, “when he’s wrong.”
Lee snorted. “Which, I’d wager, is probably most
of the time.” Lee rifled through some papers and
extracted a sheaf. “I have here Albert Sydney’s plan
he sent to Washington to use the Agar guns to flank
the Mormons’ position in the Echo.” Peck’s face
darkened. “Secretary Floyd has suggested Johnston
be given some sort of decoration for his brilliant
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plan.” Lee dropped the sheaf noisily on the desk
and sat back in his chair. “Sometimes justice is not
just blind, but mulishly wrongheaded as well. I
know about Johnston’s ‘brilliant plans’: they consist
entirely of repeated, hasty frontal assaults on the
center of a fortified position. I also know which of
my former cadets received superior marks on his
paper on artillery tactics at Merango.”
Lee scooped up the papers and shoved them into
a desk drawer. “Johnston will get his commenda-
tion, nothing I can do about it. No sense fighting a
war you can’t win. But you’re getting something
that I think you’d appreciate more. I’m transferring
you out of Johnston’s command and assigning you
to my personal staff, major.”
“Th-thank you, general.”
“I should thank you. We used your plan at Don-
ner’s Pass. We couldn’t have broken through any
other way.” A hardened look came over him as he
remembered the battle. “A horrible business, that,”
he said softly. “Our Agars against their Brownings.
It is well war has grown so terrible, else we should
be too fond of it.” His voice became firm again.
“At any rate, I’ll be needing men on my staff who
understand these new weapons. I don’t mind being
told I’m wrong when I’m wrong”—Lee looked at
Peck sharply—“provided it’s done judiciously.”
“I understand, general.”
“Don’t worry; you’ll get plenty of chances to
learn judiciousness.” Lee leaned back in his chair
and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I thought I
understood war. Meet the enemy, grapple with his
armies, defeat him. We’ve crushed the Mormon
army, captured their capitol, and we’re no closer to
winning than we were when we started.”
Lee shook his head. “Heaven knows I don’t under-
stand these Mormons at all. I doubt anybody does.
Did I tell you we found their half-built temple?”
He pointed out the window at a large walled square
nearby. “They’d torn it down, buried the granite
blocks, then plowed over them to make it look like
some sort of big cornfield inside an adobe wall.
We’d put up tents and were camping on top of it
until Johnston finally forced a prisoner to tell us
where it was.” He snorted. “More of Johnston’s idea
of how to pacify the natives. He’s got the temple
Spring 2001
blocks dug up now and on display like some game
trophy.”
There was a loud knock at the door, and an
orderly burst inside. He wheezed as if he’d been
running. “Begging the general’s pardon,” the orderly
said, “the Mormons have sent someone in under a
white flag to parley.”
“White flag?”
“Yes, sir.” The orderly paused to catch a breath.
“And, sir, it’s Porter Rockwell.”
Lee reached for his coat. “Go and find General
Grant,” he said to the orderly. “Bring him here at
once. And General Johnston, too, if he’s not off rid-
ing after Mormon stragglers.”
Peck stood to leave. “You’ve work to do—”
“You’re staff now. You stay put,” Lee said as he
slowly began to fasten the buttons on his tunic. He
looked up and smiled wryly. “I may need someone
to tell me I’m wrong. Judiciously, of course.”
• • •
The room seemed to shrink when Porter Rock-
well strode into it. Smelling of buckskins and sage
and sweat, Rockwell filled the entire room. He was
large and barrel-chested. His unkempt hair flowed
down his back and twined around his front to tan-
gle into his beard. But it was his booming voice and
piercing eyes Peck noticed first. No wonder those
who met him ascribed supernatural powers to him.
He seemed less a man than an elemental force.
Grant, seated in a chair to the side of Lee’s desk,
mumbled a curt greeting to Rockwell through the
cigar clenched in his teeth. Johnston simply glared.
Rockwell paid no more attention to them both
than he did to Peck. It was Lee he’d come to see.
From the tales Peck had heard about the so-
called Danites, Peck had half-expected Rockwell to
swagger in with a clutch of bowie knives and flint-
lock pistols thrust through his belt like some back-
woods highwayman. The only visible weapon
Rockwell had brought in with him was his unholy
self-confidence. The Mormons had been whipped
as thoroughly as any people ever had, and still they
acted as if they’d won. From his stance, one would
have guessed that it was Rockwell who was issuing
terms here today.
Was this what had attracted Peck’s sister to the
Mormons? Did they all have this utter certainty of
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their place in the universe? Peck thought of old
Jim Bridger boasting of stopping Rockwell at the
mesa. Bridger might as well have tried holding back
the Mississippi with a wave of a hand. Peck looked
at the others. Only General Lee seemed unmoved,
unperturbed.
Lee wasted no time in initial pleasantries, which
seemed to suit Rockwell just fine. “You realize, of
course, Rockwell, that I cannot allow your people
to reach Canada. Washington will insist that you be
stopped before you reach the border. You know I
have the troops to run you to ground. It would be
better for your people—better for all concerned—
if your people would come back on their own,
peacefully.”
Lee rose out of his chair and walked over to the
window. “The papers back east say we’re out here
putting down a rebellion.” He turned to Rockwell.
“We both know otherwise. This war was never about
you Mormons or Utah. You know that; I know
that. It’s about slavery and Kansas and trying to
take the nation’s mind off the problem that is tear-
ing us apart. You Mormons were only a scapegoat.
This war was fought to buy time so the auction
blocks could continue.”
Johnston drew himself up from the velvet-
cushioned chair he had sprawled in. “General Lee,
your being a Virginian and all, I must say I am
shocked to hear you say that. The states have a per-
fect right to self-governance. They have a right to
their own peculiar institutions.”
Rockwell laughed, his voice booming off the
walls. “But we don’t ours? At least us Mormons
enter our ‘peculiar institution’ by free consent—
we don’t require chains or whips. We have no auc-
tion blocks.”
Johnston sniffed. “Utah isn’t a state.”
“Not from our lack of trying. For thirteen years
we’ve asked Washington for statehood. Met the
requirements for statehood a dozen times over.
Three separate statehood petitions were before
Congress the very day Buchanan declared us ‘in
rebellion’ and ordered your army here. Twice the
number of troops sent in to quell ‘Bloody Kansas,’
I might add.”
“You’re rebels. Stinking treacherous Mormon
rebels.”
IRREANTUM
“‘Rebellion?’ We’re begging Congress for state-
hood while half of Congress is talking secession
themselves!”
“Enough!” Lee paused and gazed out the window.
“Tell Brigham Young, tell your people to surrender,
return, and rebuild. Please.” He pointed at what lay
outside. “This valley—you can’t let it be left like . . .
like that.”
Rockwell chuckled sourly. ‘You want it rebuilt,
old man? Find somebody else. You’ve seen our canals
and dams. You’ve seen the desert they’re holding
back. Takes an entire community, working as one
mind, one heart, to make a desert blossom like
that. Something you’ll never understand. Us Saints
were the only people alive who could’ve worked
this land. Nobody else wanted this basin. So we
took it. And then, after we made something of it,
suddenly you folks all want it. Same old story for
us. Well, we’re shut of it. We won’t have it. This
basin was dead when we got here. It’ll stay dead till
we come back. If we ever do.”
“You may not be given a choice.”
Rockwell laughed. “You may not be in a position
to bully us around.” He pulled a folded-up news-
paper from under his buckskin jacket. “My out-
riders have choked your supplies off so tight, you
probably haven’t received the word yet, have you?”
He looked at Johnston. “No, you haven’t. Thought
I might bring it to you myself, seeing as how
Brigham’s just a little too busy right now to enter-
tain all the company staying here in his house.”
He tossed the paper over to Lee. It landed on the
desk, facedown. Lee started searching his pockets.
“I’ll save you the trouble of reaching for your spec-
tacles, old man,” Rockwell announced. “South Car-
olina has seceded. The Union is dissolved.”
Like marionettes all connected to the same
jerked string, Peck and the three generals rose from
their chairs. Lee scrabbled for his reading glasses.
“The shooting hasn’t started yet,” Rockwell added.
“But it will. The federal government will send its
troops, just as it did here. You folks are going to be
too busy shooting at each other to worry about us.”
Lee read rapidly, his lips moving in shock. Fin-
ishing, he dropped the paper to the desk and put
his face in his hands.
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Johnston snatched the newspaper and read for
himself. Grant walked over to a small book cabinet
that once must have held Books of Mormon and
the like and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a set
of glasses. He poured himself a drink and stiff-
wristed it in one gulp.
Peck remembered the dead Reddick’s words to
him: It’s our turn now, but yours is coming. That day
was already here.
“You realize, of course, that it won’t be just
South Carolina,” Johnston said, positively buoyant.
“If the North forces her back into the Union, then
state rights won’t be worth that.” He snapped his
fingers. “No, sir. The rest of the South will have no
choice but to join alongside of her. Hand me some
of that, Sam,” he said to Grant. Johnston poured
himself a glass of whiskey. “It’s a glorious day,
Bobby Lee.” He hoisted his glass. “Here’s to the
South and a glorious new nation!”
“This?” Grant roared. “This from the man who
not two minutes ago was taking such a high moral
tone against ‘treason’ and ‘rebels’?”
“This is the South we’re talking about!”
Rockwell burst out laughing. “So. All this high-
sounding talk about loyalty and rebellion! Turns
out this entire war was really only about hatred and
bigotry and the fear of anybody different from
yourselves.”
Lee sighed. “I’m afraid, Mr. Rockwell, that this
parlay is ended. My men and I have matters to dis-
cuss that don’t concern you.”
“Oh, but they do, General Lee. They do.” Rock-
well said. “It was the fight we put up that put the
backbone in your secessionists—and it was our
defeat that panicked them. More importantly, we
hold the key to your future as much as you hold
ours. I imagine your troops will be recalled back
east to fight your new war. But do you really think
you can march back home, back through the Echo,
if we decide not to let you? We can let you be, or
we can bottle you up and let you fight here among
yourselves.”
“There’s a third choice,” Grant growled. “You
claim you’ve always been loyal. Prove it now. Come
to the aid of the Union.”
Spring 2001
Rockwell only laughed. “We tried that route
back in the Mexican War. You promised us state-
hood then. We’ve since learned better.”
“The South can offer you better than that,”
Johnston said. “Complete independence! The inde-
pendent nation of Deseret—with the original
boundaries you petitioned Congress for.” Grant
glared at him.
Rockwell shrugged. “You see? It does concern
us.” He stood up. “But you’re partly right. You
folks have things to discuss among yourselves.” He
paused at the door and turned, grinning. “Let
Brigham know what you decide.” He paused again.
“Oh, and General Johnston—how did that speech
of yours go? We could hear you quite plainly from
up on the mesa. Something about ‘the erection of a
government neither loyal nor acknowledging any
allegiance to the federal government?’” He laughed
again and left.
• • •
Johnston ground a fist into his other hand.
Grant snorted. “Rather galling, is it? Finding out
you’re the same stripe of traitor?”
“It galls me only to have to give the Mormons
what they want.”
“Perhaps,” Lee said simply, “if you hadn’t shot
Governor Cummings in that pointless duel, this
war here would have been prevented and the new
one we face would never have happened.”
Johnston thumbed his chest. “Don’t lay this at
my feet, Bobby Lee. It was only a matter of time
before the South had to break away. The North
keeps pushing and pushing till they get what they
want. Just like the Mormons did. Just like Kane
and Cummings tried to do.”
Grant drained his second glass. “And you,
Robert? What is it you plan to push for? Have you
made your choice yet?” He pointed at the paper.
“The newspapers are calling for you to take com-
mand of the federal armies, you know.”
Johnston’s mouth fell open. “You can’t be seri-
ous. You’re a Virginian, Bobby Lee. Virginia’s bound
to side with us, not with the Yankees. You wouldn’t
fight against Virginia?”
Lee bowed his head. “No, I could never raise my
hand against Virginia.”
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“Don’t you see, General Lee,” Peck burst in.
“That’s just what you’d be doing if you join the
rebellion.”
The generals all turned to look at the mere major
they had all forgotten about. Peck was out of line
and knew it, but he didn’t see the faces of three
scowling generals, he saw the faces of Ferguson,
and young Danby, and Reddick. “You told me to
tell you when you’re wrong. Well, sir, you’re wrong.
You’re the hero of Donner’s Pass. You don’t have to
follow the choice Virginia makes; Virginia will fol-
low yours.”
“You overrate my influence, son.”
“And you underrate it, sir.”
Lee pursed his lips. “How would I betray Vir-
ginia by defending her?”
“The South isn’t going to invade the North, but
the North has to invade the South to win. If Vir-
ginia sides with the South, the battles will be
fought in Virginia. In the Shenandoah. In Rich-
mond. In Arlington.”
Johnston laughed. “Bobby Lee, you can’t prevent
Virginia from choosing the South, no matter what
this Yankee says. My solemn word on that, Bobby
Lee. My solemn word.”
“Your word isn’t worth quite what it was five
minutes ago,” Grant snapped.
“General Lee, do you want Virginia to end up
looking the way it does outside that window?” Peck
asked. “Do you want a war of brother against
brother, father against son?”
Grant nodded at Peck. “Robert,” he said slowly,
“you’ve seen now what making war with guns like
the Agar means. Imagine an Echo Canyon or a
Donner’s Pass across the width and breadth of the
nation. Is that what you want for Virginia? For
the nation? It’s your choice.”
Lee was silent for a long time. “You all seem to
think I should be allowed a choice.” They nodded.
“If I am to be allowed a choice, then the men must
be allowed their choice as well.”
“And the Mormons?” Peck asked.
Lee turned to him and sighed. “The South can-
not claim self-governance in one breath and deny it
to the Mormons in the next. Nor can the North
afford to continue to fight one war here and one
IRREANTUM
with the South. I imagine they’ll end up with what-
ever they decide they want—statehood, or inde-
pendence.”
Grant flung his cigar on the floor and crushed it
under his boot. “They can stew in their own juices
for all I care.”
“I think that’s what they’ve been wanting all
along,” Peck said softly.
Lee got up and walked again to the window.
“I feel as if I have the fate of a nation resting on my
shoulders. Or the fate of three.” He sighed. “This
new war we’re about to fight will still be over the
same questions this unfinished war here is being
fought over. Who holds the higher allegiance: one’s
people or one’s nation? Do you have the right to
live in a manner your neighbor finds morally repug-
nant? Does he have the right to prevent you from
doing so?”
“Depends on which side is right,” Johnston said.
Grant knocked back another whiskey. “Depends
on which side is wrong.”
“In a war where both sides have Agars and Brown-
ings,” Peck whispered, “does it matter?”
Lee fell silent. At length he asked Peck to help
him on with his jacket. “I want to see that temple
lot again. I want to see whether those granite blocks
lying there are the unfinished foundation of a new
nation, or the tombstones of a foolish, lost cause.”
Outside the window, flags were flying, brass
bands playing. Thousands of boots were tramping.
Tramping off to another war.
Lee Allred won first prize in L. Ron Hubbard’s
Writers of the Future contest for his story “For the
Strength of the Hills,” which was also a finalist for
the 1997 Sidewise Award for Alternate History. He
has another alternate history story that will be appear-
ing in a future issue of IRREANTUM. His latest publi-
cation, “The Greatest Danger,” was included in
Drakas! and was the subject of his essay in the last
issue of IRREANTUM. He has twice cochaired Life,
the Universe & Everything, BYU’s symposium on sci-
ence fiction and fantasy, and has conducted SF and
genre fiction sessions at Association for Mormon
Letters conferences.
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P O E T R Y granting me what Grandma never had—

the prejudice of education.
Mimesis Upended: A Reluctant Nod to Mr. Wilde —Sharlee Mullins Glenn
How did she see peaches,
never seeing a Cezanne? Raison D’Etre
This mother of my mother They say the closest
who passed to me, across a generation, distance
her own deep-burning need for Beauty. between two
points
Or so I’m told. is a straight line
“You remind me of your grandma,”
my mother used to chide as she coaxed me But tell me—
from pages abloom with Renoirs and Monets. in real life
“Only she loved honeysuckle and Indian paint- does anything
brush.” travel like that?
I don’t remember. water ripples
I knew her only when she was old light undulates
and her mind was gone sound moves in waves
and she waltzed with strangers in her ruby robe
and sang, “Have you seen my new shoes?” Perhaps experience too
is best transmitted
How did she see flowers, not straight on
knowing no O’Keefe to lead her but through a twist,
deep into the sultry depths of poppies? a loop, a spiral
This daughter of desert basin who journeyed once
as far as Blue Bench—one day’s ride. Such convolution,
some think,
“You’ve got your grandma’s eyes,” great-aunts is called for,
peer out from afghan barracks and decide. makes more sense;
But I know better. hence,
She saw unaided (unencumbered?)
She saw direct, all by herself. Poetry.
I can’t. —Sharlee Mullins Glenn

How would I see orange without Albers,
thick-crusted bread without Vermeer,
eyes without Eakins, light without Turner,
my own still bath-wet form reflected
without hosts from Phidias forward?
Proud fashioners of Art (of life?)
These benefactor-thieves,
bestowing their vision while robbing my own,
Sharlee Mullins Glenn lives in Pleasant Grove,
Utah, with her husband and five children. Her work
has appeared in The Southern Literary Journal,
Women’s Studies, Wasatch Review, BYU Studies,
and The Gospel and Applied Christianity. She is
also the author of several books for children. “Raison
D’Etre” was originally published in BYU Studies
34:4 (1994–95).

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R E V I E W S just for me. I suppose that, like Elouise, I too am a
When Are We Taking Ourselves Too
Seriously?
A review of Elouise Bell’s Only When I Laugh (Sig-
nature Books, 1990)
Reviewed by Patricia T. Coleman
[Editor’s note: This review was originally presented
at the Association for Mormon Letters annual meeting
on January 26, 1991.]
The publication of Elouise Bell’s Only When I
Laugh is happy news indeed for those of us who
have, over the years, enjoyed her columns in Net-
work. It is especially happy news at this time of the
year when we have just been through the holidays
and, in typical Salt Lake City fashion, are in the
midst of what may turn out to be a rather extended
temperature inversion. Suffering as we all are right
now from what Elouise Bell calls “afterburn”—that
complex of mopping-up chores that accompany so
many otherwise pleasant activities, like Christ-
mas—I discovered that January in Utah is just the
time to make this book my constant companion.
For Elouise Bell not only knows when to laugh, she
knows what is funny—at least to people like me.
She seems to understand better than most people
that humor—really important humor, that is—is
profoundly serious.
By that, I don’t want to suggest that her humor
is black, depressing, or sardonic. On the contrary,
she understands that humor is best when it is a
kind of gentle, self-correcting wisdom born of pen-
etrating self and social analysis. Her language
moves from the precise to the broadly suggestive,
exploring, as all good humorists do, the nuances of
hyperbole. I do not think that it is saying too much
about the essays in Only When I Laugh to say that
they are therapeutic: indeed, her lively self-depre-
cating style reminds us when we are not taking our-
selves seriously enough as well as when we are
taking ourselves far too seriously.
On every page and in every essay in the collection,
I found myself: it was as if Elouise had written this
IRREANTUM
Mug-wump, a “person [according to the essay by
the same name] who sits with ‘mug’ on one side
of the fence and ‘wump’ on the other” (4), an inter-
esting discovery for a woman who, only in Utah,
can be safely called a feminist. This discovery follows
upon a very recent visit to London where, having
declared that I was indeed a feminist, I found
myself under verbal assault by three or four other-
wise quite civil English gentlemen who, having just
read Germaine Greer’s observation in the London
Times that no real feminist ought “to consider it a
good day until she had insulted six men,” quite
naturally assumed that my brand of feminism—
I call it “Utah feminism”—was identical with, God
save us, English academic feminism, Oxford-style.
The shock of that experience sent me back for
comfort to Elouise’s “Mug-wump” essay. Here she
reminded me that we are all of us fence sitters of
one kind or another, that being a fence sitter is
more than just political expedient (especially in for-
eign countries); it is also philosophically necessary
because we are always, if we are thinking people,
amending our positions on the basis of new insights.
She also reminded me that we are all seeking the
same things—like freedom from pigeonholing, free-
dom even from misdirected verbal assaults; we just
do it under different names and guises.
In another essay, Elouise reminds us:
The problem with Nice isn’t that it’s some-
times wimpy; the problem is that Nice can be
dangerous. More crimes have been committed
behind the mask of niceness, than behind all
the ski masks worn to all the convenience
store stickups ever perpetrated. (40)
I remember what “nice” meant when I was in
college. It was how we described the girl for whom
we were trying to arrange a blind date. The guy
would ask, “Is she pretty?” To which we would
respond, “She’s great, a really nice girl. You’ll like
her.” Of course, if she had been pretty, we all knew
that we would have said, “She’s great, really pretty.
You’ll love her.” At Holy Names College, “nice” was
the blind date kiss of death, and the men from
St. Mary’s College knew that. Elouise reminds us:
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Nice flies under false colors, wants the reputa-
tion of the gentle dove without the wisdom of
the wise serpent. It is the Great Imposter, hav-
ing none of the power of Virtue but seeking
the influence thereof. Nice is neither kind,
nor compassionate, neither good nor full of
good cheer, neither hot nor cold. But, being
puffed up in its own vanity, it is considerably
more dangerous than luke-warmth. (46)
I suppose what we Holy Names women ought to
have said to the St. Mary’s men when they asked us
if so-and-so were pretty was, “You’d better be
awfully handsome because you are really very shal-
low.” What Elouise knows is that niceness is more
than just blind-date politeness. It “edits the truth,
dilutes loyalty, makes a caricature of patriotism. It
hobbles Justice, short-circuits Honor, and counter-
feits Mercy, Compassion, and Love” (41).
She also seems to know, better than most of us,
what other words do. All this time I thought our
household was the only place in the world where
zucchini is a swearword in July and August. I have
heard my children say, “Do we have to have the
Z-word for dinner again tonight?” And I have felt
vaguely toward neighbors who drop off sacks of unre-
quested zucchini on my doorstep as I do toward
students who want to know if we are doing any-
thing important in class today. In fact, I consider
unrequested zucchini a kind of Mormon terrorist
activity, subtle maybe, but profoundly effective.
Actually, Only When I Laugh is a collection of
observations about words—all kinds of words—
and what these words do and do not mean, what
they do and do not do. And in each case, we get a
whole new perspective on our language. For exam-
ple, I’m with Elouise on the word patriotism. If we
can have “patriotism,” why not “matriotism”? If
patriotism is about the world, Elouise tells us,
matriotism is about the earth (17–19). Remember
her? She’s the thing that we have to save first,
because the world won’t be worth saving if the
earth is dead.
And I’m with her on a few other things, too.
When was the last time you really read the name of
an apartment building, a lipstick, or a car? You
Spring 2001
can be sure that the building called Hillside Pines
Terrace Gardens (and in which I lived when I first
came to Utah) is none of the above. In fact, it is
quite comfortably situated on nearly level ground
near the corner of P Street and Third Avenue.
I guess Mr. Tracy didn’t think “Nearly Third
Avenue” or “Still on P” were good enough names
for his apartment complex. I know that the lipstick
I use—Midnight Mocha Madness—is much more
like Hardy’s description of life than it is like any
kind of madness: neither life nor my lipstick are
going to deliver what they incipiently promise, else
I might expect tonight an evening of passion in
Paris rather than what is to be my fate—a set of
freshman themes. And cars—there’s something
else, Elouise, to look at. Did any of you ever drive
a Reliant? Was it?
Like Elouise, I, too, am tired of newspeak,
whether it comes out of the mouths of my daugh-
ters or my vice president. In “Liberating the Lan-
guage” (81–83), Elouise points out that in a world
where Danish pastry becomes just plain Danish,
chaos is not far behind. What, for example, are we
to do with the term rubberstamp? Does “He’s just a
rubberstamp” become—oh, well, never mind.
Not too many years ago, as I was driving a car-
load of junior high school girls home after school,
I heard one say, “Well, Emily, good-bye; it’s been
real.” I inquired of my daughter, “Real what?”
You can guess her response. Nevertheless, I was
undaunted. I wanted to be part of the group. She
was, after all, my first child, and one wants to do
the ridiculous when one doesn’t understand the con-
sequences. So the next time we dropped Heather
off, I turned to Heather and said, “Good-bye
Heather; it’s been.” I figured that if less was more,
even less was the most. Wrong. Of course, the
trouble with trying to be like other people, espe-
cially those younger than you, is that you never
know where to stop. Apparently I had left too
much out. That’s pretty much how I feel when I
order a Danish and get a pastry. What I really want
when I order a Danish is not a Danish pastry but a
Danish man.
Elouise Bell reminds us throughout her collec-
tion about the power of the word—abused power
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and underused power. As she herself points out in
the same essay, “Mark Twain said that the differ-
ence between the right word and the almost right
word was the difference between lightning and the
lightning bug” (82). Or, in my case, the difference
between the pastry and the person. It is in that light
that you must read “Greeting Cards,” especially if
you feel about them as I do. I figure that there must
be an inverse relationship in the real world between
fresh, crisp language and income. And as a Catholic,
I’m convinced that a just God has a special kind of
purgatory for the perpetrators of all that awful pas-
sionless purple prose passing for poetry. Do you
know how much people get paid to write the
insides of those cards? A lot. Do you know how
much anyone in this audience ever made off his or
her words? Not much, I expect. Anyway, tired of
reading those “warm fuzzies” (as my children call
them) that you find on the typical store-bought
greeting card? Tired of a world in which you not
only don’t have to write what you want to say, you
don’t even have to think it? Great, get in line
behind Elouise and me. But as Elouise tells us, we
don’t have to settle for imitating California, where
people are now hiring themselves out to hold the
hands of the dying elderly who find themselves
abandoned in rest homes. As Elouise says, you
should “care enough to send your very self ” (86).
She scoffs at trends—those tony trends—like
being color analyzed (“Call Me Indian Summer,”
97–99). You remember color analyzing: it’s what
the rich people who aren’t smart enough to know
what colors look good on them and who have too
much time on their hands do to find out just what
colors do, in fact, look good on them. Those of us
in academe will love this essay. We don’t make that
kind of money, and we don’t have that kind of
time. And we’ll love anyone who points out to us
the ludicrous behavior of that affluent leisure class
which we scorn chiefly because we do not belong.
But why not? In a world where people pay perfectly
good money to find out that they are a “Spring”
and not an “Autumn,” Elouise suggests that we
ought to have more options than just the four sea-
sons. Elouise says she thinks of herself most of
the time as a “Monday Morning” (98). Personally,
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I’m a “3:05 Weekdays.” That’s the time I own
between the junior high carpool and the elemen-
tary school carpool and which I reserve for writing
in my cheap Osco Drugstore imitation Franklin
Dayplanner the things which I should have done
but didn’t before 3:00 and ought to do but proba-
bly won’t after 3:00.
But underneath all this, as underneath all her
insights, are important and profound truth. We live
in a world of power ties and padded shoulders.
I think I agree with my father: the world was a far
more interesting place when things other than
shoulders were padded. Elouise wants us to know
that we live in a world which dresses for success and
which worries about it. We live in a world where
women are actually beginning to believe that men
won’t take them seriously in the corporate market-
place if they are wearing open-toed shoes. Someone
ought to tell those women that men won’t, for the
most part, take them seriously in the corporate
marketplace even if they are wearing combat boots.
Someone ought to tell them that being a liberated
woman is more than the right to wear padded shoul-
ders and become the CEO of some semi-ethical
business. And someone ought to tell the men who
are wearing all those power ties to take them off; a
lot of us think men are already too scary.
In fact, the world we live in is already too scary,
and it takes someone like Elouise to make that
clear. She reminds us that we don’t listen to what
other people say. We don’t listen to what is said to
us. We don’t even listen to what we say. We have
only to look at Elouise’s essay “The Meeting” to
appreciate her penetrating wit. She turns accepted
Mormon clichés—indeed, any clichés of custom
and thought—upside down and inside out. And
her language in doing this is eloquent. In her mar-
velous parody of the church meeting, she reports
that Sister Amanda Ridgely Knight will discuss
“The Role of Man: Where Does He Fit in the Eter-
nal Plan?” and Sister Alice Young Taylor will lecture
on “Three Important Men from Church History”
(13). Now, I’ve never been to a Mormon meeting,
but I have been to my share of Catholic ones, and
I am here to tell you that we Catholics haven’t yet
come up with three important women in church
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history. In short, this parody, while clearly a Mor-
mon parody, is a lesson to all of us who are prod-
ucts of and participants in patriarchal religions.
I especially liked the discussion of “What We Look
For in Boys We Date” (13). I know in my high
school, in a course called “What Boys Look For in
Girls They Date,” we were told that every man
wants to marry a virgin. What I wanted to know
was why, then, all the boys I knew were so busy
every weekend de-virginizing the population.
Elouise’s kind of humor doesn’t settle for easy
one-liners or take cheap shots. She understands the
power of language; and even when the wit is sharp,
it is elegant.
Patricia Truxler Coleman joined the Juan Diego
Catholic High School faculty in September of 2000.
She taught at Westminster College for 30 years as a
professor of English. Dr. Coleman has been the recipi-
ent of more than ten Utah Humanities Council grants
over the past 30 years and has lectured widely on her
favorite subjects: Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thomas
Hardy, E. M. Forster, and T. S. Eliot, and regional
American women writers. In 1995 she established the
Jane Austen Society of Utah, a chapter of the Jane
Austen Society of North America, and has served as
president and director of the Utah chapter for the past
six years. Dr. Coleman is married and the mother of
three daughters and three stepsons.
Freshly Peeled Air
A review of Anne Bradshaw’s Terracotta Summer
(Bonneville Books, 2000)
Reviewed by Katie Parker
When I think of LDS historical fiction, I natu-
rally think of pioneer stories. Or stories of the
Restoration and the subsequent persecutions. Or
anything else leading up to and including the exo-
dus to Utah. I don’t think of LDS historical fiction
as set in the United Kingdom in 1963. Yet this is
the setting of Anne Bradshaw’s novel Terracotta
Summer. And this alone makes it an intriguing
book to pick up.
Terracotta Summer spans three major storylines,
involving three young adults in the family of
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Daniel and Rosie O’Shea. The O’Shea family is
LDS and lives in Manchester, England, but moves
to a farm in Northern Ireland during the course of
the book. Incidentally, a sequel, Chamomile Winter,
is already announced at the back of the book. This
indicates that, while this particular novel is only
184 pages long, we should expect to see some
groundwork laid here for future books.
The oldest son, Ken, is nineteen years old and is
serving for two years as an LDS labor missionary in
Scotland. In this capacity, he spends his days help-
ing to build new chapels for local congregations.
He doesn’t proselyte, and he is allowed to date,
which opens the door for a romantic subplot. But
he also must face anti-Mormon sentiments and
violence in the area.
The most interesting storyline revolves around
Patrick, Ken’s younger brother. He’s about a year
younger than Ken, but he’s not interested in serv-
ing a labor mission and performing hard physical
work. Neither does he want to move with his fam-
ily to Northern Ireland. Instead, he finds an office
job and a room in a flat and announces to his fam-
ily that he’s moving out on his own. In our society,
this is normal for many eighteen-year-olds. But in
the O’Shea’s time and place, the legal and expected
age to leave home is twenty-one.
I initially felt impatient with the heartbroken
responses of his parents; after all, Patrick is only
trying to do his best. He isn’t out to cause trouble
but simply wants to grow up and live his own life.
But Patrick’s stubborn desire to do everything com-
pletely on his own eventually does get him into
some messy situations, including inadvertent
involvement in the political unrest in Ireland. Here
Bradshaw believably portrays Patrick’s progression.
He doesn’t mean to get into trouble but just isn’t
quite firm enough in his convictions to stay out of
it when it presents itself. In the following passage,
Patrick confronts a group meeting covertly in his
own flat:
“Come on Patrick,” another man shouted.
“Show us your colors. Who do you side with?”
Patrick felt dryness round his lips. From
the looks of the crowd he knew he’d better
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give them the answers they wanted. Taking a
sip of beer he began shakily. “From what I’ve
read about the history of Ireland, my sympa-
thies rest firmly with the Catholics. I . . .”
“You Catholic then?” A rugged man near
the front interrupted.
Patrick shook his head.
The same man spoke up in disbelief. “You’re
Protestant and siding with the South?”
“No, I’m not that either,” added Patrick,
noticing an immediate wary undercurrent. “I’m
a Mormon, and . . .”
There was a sudden uproar of questions.
Liam stood, raising his hands for silence.
“You’re no Mormon, lad,” his voice was slip-
pery soft, his eyes as hard as frozen bullets.
“I’ve read about that church. Makes more
sense than others apart from one thing—
their health code. They refuse alcohol.” He
was pointing a finger at Patrick. “So you’re a
liar or a waverer. We don’t trust either.”
“Wait,” shouted Patrick, fear in his voice as
the crowd moved toward him, threatening.
He rushed on, “I’m not a liar. I . . . I want
to help . . .”
The last thing he saw as he went down was
Josh’s face leering above him, surrounded by
grappling arms and savage sounds. (104)
The third storyline involves Ruth, Daniel’s
twenty-one-year-old sister. She’s a nonmember who
was orphaned at the age of eleven, lived in an
abusive environment for five years with Daniel’s
brother Gerald, and ran away at the age of sixteen.
During the book, she is sailing to America, where
she hopes to begin a new life. On the ship, she finds
herself involved with some drug smugglers as well
as with Frank, a nice Mormon guy.
Of the three storylines, Ruth’s is the most forced.
The other two stories follow naturally from the
given circumstances, but Ruth’s drug deal crisis
seems to be more of a James Bond type of setup (in
other words, set up). The storytelling isn’t quite as
smooth here, either. Frank, the nice Mormon guy,
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understands Ruth and her problems a bit too eas-
ily, without her really explaining anything. This
would make more sense if it came to light that he,
too, has experienced or seen abuse and its effects
firsthand. However, no such revelation occurs here.
But he does launch into testimony and spiritual
lectures quite often. Ruth is initially rather cold to
him and to others around her (an effect of the
abuse, we’re supposed to understand), but people
want to be friends with her anyway. And on page
six she tells her life story to a man she doesn’t know
and doesn’t trust. It may be convenient to the pro-
gression of the story, but it’s not consistent with
the character.
Still, the writing itself is generally good. Brad-
shaw writes descriptive prose skillfully, as evidenced
in passages such as “They set off, hunching into the
morning mist, their footsteps echoing in the freshly
peeled air” (82), or “She was middle-aged with
black hair scraped into a bun, reminding Patrick of
a clothes peg puppet he’d had as a child” (31).
Bradshaw sometimes takes her descriptions to
extremes, describing several changes of clothes and
providing strong physical descriptions of a few
characters who appear only once. But, with these
few exceptions, her descriptions are brief, vivid,
and welcome.
Bradshaw grew up in the U.K. and lives there
currently, so her prose abounds with British vocab-
ulary. This is generally more charming than prob-
lematic for American readers. But there were a few
punctuation problems that I caught, including two
places where quotation marks were completely
missing. There were also a few sentences that didn’t
seem to be quite grammatically correct. (I let these
slide, though; I attributed them to British gram-
mar.) Also, the character of Elder Johns is referred
to once as “Brother Johns” (which is perhaps rea-
sonable) and once as “Elder Thomas” (which is
not). Another flaw that I noticed was the scene
where someone is reading the Ensign. The book
takes place in 1963 and the Ensign didn’t appear
until several years after that.
Still, if there have to be flaws, I’d rather have
them come through this way instead of in the
storytelling itself, and the storytelling here is far
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superior to many other books that I’ve read in the
LDS market. The story as a whole is interesting and
well told. Terracotta Summer is, truly, a breath of
“freshly peeled air.” I’ll be looking for the sequel,
Chamomile Winter.
Biographical notes on Katie Parker appear after her
poetry earlier in this issue.
Whose Best-Loved Line Is It Anyway?
A review of The Best-Loved Humor of the LDS
People (Deseret Book, 1999)
Reviewed by Edgar C. Snow Jr.
Mormon humor, believe it or not, was the topic
of an Associated Press article appearing in the New
York Times on July 9, 1999, entitled “Mormon
Humor? Get Serious.” This article featured inter-
views with Elouise Bell and Robert Kirby, the
reigning queen and crown prince of Mormon humor
practitioners (just as in Elizabethan and Victorian
England, there is no king yet—if anything, I con-
sider myself the janitor). It also featured the then
newly released Deseret Book title in its “Best-Loved”
series, The Best-Loved Humor of the LDS People.
The teaser for this AP article was, of course, the
apparently ridiculous assertion that Mormon humor
even exists. It’s like saying that there’s such thing as
an Amish mafia (wait, there was an Amish drug
ring busted about a year ago; I heard it on NPR:
“Brother, wouldst thou partake of a nickel bag?”).
In my own elders quorum, about a year ago we
discussed whether Mormons had no sense of humor
and took themselves too seriously, especially con-
sidering some of the pronouncements in the D&C
about loud laughter and such. The prospect that
Mormons didn’t have a sense of humor wasn’t very
amusing to us. We pondered the question deeply;
several members of the quorum even flipped des-
perately through the Topical Guide and Bible Dic-
tionary for answers but were found wanting. And
since no one had a copy of McConkie’s Mormon
Doctrine, we were left for the moment with a stu-
por of thought. Then intelligence (whether pure or
not I leave to you) stroked my mind, and I then
asked the following questions:
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When was the last time anyone had a really good
belly laugh during a Catholic mass?
Are Buddhist or Muslim jokes funnier than
Mormon jokes?
Have you ever seen a copy of a text titled The
Best-Loved Humor of the Jehovah’s Witnesses?
How frequently would you chuckle at the droll
wit of a Baptist minister while he’s literally trying to
scare the hell out of you at a revival?
Do Pentecostals ever crack wise in tongues?
How many amusing anecdotes are shared during
a typical Quaker meeting, even if someone speaks?
I’m sure my defensive questions would have given
us more comfort had it not been for the weakness
evident in some of our religious competitors (okay,
okay—Catholics and Jews do have a well-devel-
oped humor tradition). With a collective sigh, we
returned to the topic of the lesson.
In its favor, it should be noted, I guess, that the
subject of this book review carries the currently
theologically correct name “LDS People” rather
than “the Mormons.” However, in the argument to
prove the existence of Mormon humor to a hostile
world, this book might be necessary, but it is not
sufficient. It’s not that Best-Loved Humor isn’t
funny; some parts are tolerably amusing. But the
collection is arranged for the convenience of some-
one researching a talk or lesson in church, and, as a
result, doesn’t really lend itself to the enjoyment of
gratuitous humor at your leisure. It’s similar to
taping The Late Show with David Letterman and
watching it the day afterward in the bright sun-
shine while eating breakfast—it’s just not as funny
as when you’re sitting semiconscious in the dark,
which, actually, may be the best way to read this
book. I recommend the dust jacket for the second
printing carry the label: “WARNING: Do not read
while operating heavy machinery.”
Best-Loved Humor, at best, should be viewed as a
correlated topical guide to Ensign-worthy humor-
ous jokes and anecdotes. The more I think about it,
in fact—and I’m not accusing anyone of plagia-
rism—this book looks suspiciously like a collection
of amusing anecdotes and jokes that were edited
out of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues.
The biggest problem with Best-Loved Humor is
that some of the funniest parts have nothing to do
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with Mormonism in particular, weren’t written by
Mormons, and have likely never been quoted in
any Mormon meeting (unless by the editors) before
they were compiled into this book. Yet, to their
credit, the editors of this book anticipated my
cranky comments by suggesting in the introduc-
tion that any such passages in their book will even-
tually become best-loved by the Saints, presumably
through the self-fulfilling prophecy marketing
strategy of encouraging people to quote such pas-
sages in Mormon meetings until they become best-
loved. In fact, in order to fulfill that prophecy, I
even quoted the book last week in my Gospel Doc-
trine class—people groaned; the ones who were
awake, that is.
Finally, one last gripe about Best-Loved Humor:
I secretly wish I had come up with the idea myself
to write this book first. I give it two and a half
golden plates (out of five).
Ed Snow is a partner in the Atlanta office of an
international law firm. His collection of humorous
essays, Of Curious Workmanship: Musings on
Things Mormon, was recently published by Signa-
ture Books. He is married and blessed with three chil-
dren who laugh at all of his jokes.
Falling Toward Heaven
A review of John Bennion’s Falling Toward Heaven
(Signature Books, 2000)
Reviewed by Christopher K. Bigelow
My favorite Mormon novel-reading experience
is when I’m held in some suspense about whether
the author believes or disbelieves Mormonism. It’s
perhaps an unbalanced way to read, with too much
emphasis on the author pulling levers behind the
curtain rather than on the work itself, but some-
thing about our Mormon emphasis on conformity
encourages that way of reading. We can’t help ask-
ing, Is this author true to the faith, on our team, a
temple recommend holder? Unfortunately, that kind
of suspense is not available very often, since most
Mormon fiction is published with battle lines already
drawn by virtue of the publisher’s reputation, if
nothing else.
IRREANTUM
John Bennion’s novel Falling Toward Heaven
offered me some delicious suspense related to what
the author’s real motives were in exploring Mor-
mon characters and themes—and I’m afraid it’s
impossible not to have ulterior motives of either
proving or disproving Mormonism when dealing
with such charged material. I commenced this
reading experience knowing that Bennion is an
English professor at Brigham Young University—
but he’s in BYU’s most troublesome department,
where several cultural wolves in sheep’s clothing—
real or imagined—have already been ousted. In
addition, I was fully aware that the publisher is
Signature Books, which is not known for publish-
ing fiction as propaganda to affirm the faith.
Bennion’s novel is basically a love story between
Howard Rockwood and Allison Warren, whose con-
flicting beliefs about religion, homeland, and gen-
der roles complicate their relationship. Their last
names could be symbolic: Rockwood is a Mormon
tied to the Utah ranchland and Mormonism of his
polygamous forefathers, while the rootless Warren
functions spiritually in an unpredictable, unmap-
pable maze of passageways formed by human caprice,
especially her own. For me one of the novel’s cen-
tral questions is, How extensive a warren can the
heathen, clawed Allison carve into the solid elements
of Howard’s beliefs, culture, and family? While read-
ing, occasionally I feared the rock and wood would
slow Allison down and eventually freeze her, but
she manages to keep scrabbling to the end, though
with increasing consciousness of a possible ultimate
destination. For me, she’s the novel’s most interest-
ing and compelling character.
The first seventy-odd pages take place during the
final weeks of Rockwood’s mission to Houston,
starting when he meets Allison at an outdoor pub-
lic event and ending when he ditches his homeward
flight moments before departure and shows up at
her apartment to commence a relationship, which
includes premarital sex. Rockwood’s faith at the tail
end of his mission is typified by his telling a neigh-
bor a few weeks before his mission ends, “Never
pray. It’s like the monkey giving three wishes: you
always get something you don’t want.” Then, full of
confusion about Allison and troubling news from
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home, he slips alone outside to sit by a “festering
bayou” and ponder his challenges:
He felt as dazed as a stunned deer—knocked
on the head first by a woman who had no
place in his universe, then by his mother who
had quietly become an apostate, and finally by
his father’s failing body. He imagined God as
an ancient patriarch, so hassled by all his heav-
enly wives and children that he turned anar-
chic, actively culturing chaos on earth. God
should not leave his children in doubt. The
universe should be sure and safe. If he could
just stop believing, he thought, his confusion
would disappear.
In Richard Cracroft’s paper titled “God-Finding
in the 21st Century: Alan Rex Mitchell’s Angel of
the Danube and John Bennion’s Falling Toward
Heaven,” which he delivered at the AML’s annual
conference on February 24, 2001, he says the fol-
lowing about the novel’s first portion, with which I
agree: “I’m afraid that for many Mormon readers
this will be the end of the book—or of any book
that begins with the sexual transgression of a Mor-
mon missionary. But walking out at this point is
like exiting the Passion Play in protest at the
heinous crucifixion of Jesus. As in any Salvation
Journey, the fall is only the beginning of the story.”
The novel’s middle portion takes place in Rock-
wood, Utah. Howard and Allison stop to visit
Howard’s parents on the new couple’s way to
Alaska, where Allison has taken a job as a computer
programmer in the oil industry. In Utah they face
pressures stemming as much from Howard’s family
traditions and desires to make the family ranch his
life’s work as from religious conflicts. In phantas-
magoric scenes of imagination and hallucination
brought on by his ancestral home, Howard faces
down ghosts of both ancestry and theology and,
to paraphrase his own words, rebukes the stern
patriarch god of his youth and drives a stake
through his heart.
Later, on a return trip to Rockwood during
which Howard undergoes Church discipline, God
takes on new characteristics in his mind:
He pondered the being (imagined whisper,
impulse, psychological force?) which he had
Spring 2001
named Grandmother God. . . . Her voice was
nothing like the voice of guilt which he could
only name patriarchal, after his stern male
ancestors. But both were imagined voices, he
knew. He hoped that the sporadic gifts of
spirit which had swept uninvited through him
would some day add up to a truer voice.
After acknowledging to himself that the Grand-
mother God is “the voice of his mother made
larger,” Howard realizes she has taught him
that church was not a room of answers, but
a pathway of questions. Answers fell like
sloughed-off skin behind him. He hoped that
he could next learn that Grandfather God was
not an impossible mix of modern business-
man and Old Testament patriarch. Howard
knew that prayer was a form of eternal calcu-
lus, a way of making closer and closer estimates
of God’s person-ness. But for the first time
since he was a child, he had faith in the process.
Talking to Allison later about his evolving concept
of God, Howard says, “Since seeing that the God I
had imagined had flaws of my own making, of my
culture’s making, I started to feel that God might
be more like my mother’s father, a wise and kind
man. My mother says that he never raised his voice
to her. He had a round Danish face and he grew
apples.” Howard’s efforts to understand God are in
the same vein as Frank’s in Levi Peterson’s The
Backslider, which are rewarded by a Cowboy Jesus.
Howard wants Allison to give up Alaska, marry
him, and ranch with him, but she wants nothing to
do with it. While visiting Rockwood, she encoun-
ters a natural spring where archeologists are remov-
ing the bodies of long-dead Goshutes, including a
mother and infant. This burial pool becomes an
image and symbol of Allison’s spiritual journey, as
well as a foreshadowing. One of the archeologists
tells her: “We can’t find a bottom to this pond, the
roots go so deep. They may have thought of the
pool as a passageway to the next life. Reborn in this
heavy mineral water, salty as the ocean.” During a
subsequent trip to Rockwood, Allison returns to
the pool: “Rimmed by gray alkali, containing water
hot enough to melt the snow, the pool looked like
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an evil egg, an eye. Babe, she said to herself, don’t
get superstitious on me. Death was no channel
to anywhere. The heart stopped beating. Con-
sciousness and identity were illusions of evolution.”
When Howard finds her bathing in the pool, she
tells him it’s the only baptism she’ll ever agree to.
Later, after Allison faces a burial pool of her own in
Alaska, she seems more open to Howard’s ideas that
there is more to this sphere than what is physically
on the surface and that death is not the end. Over
the course of the novel she gradually allows herself
to become entwined with Howard and, while stop-
ping short of embracing his religion, she seems to
realize she doesn’t have anything better to offer.
Even still, she refuses to let him ever slip into the
old patriarchal mode of his ancestors.
This is a novel for those who seek spiritual
adventure in their fiction rather than spiritual secu-
rity—in other words, it’s a literary novel as opposed
to a popular novel. Readers of faith-affirming pop-
ular Mormon fiction have their reward, but in both
word and deed Bennion champions the moral
value of more complex, challenging, open-ended
fiction. In a 1997 BYU Studies article, he wrote:
“The literary novel is an experiment in existence, in
being. It is moral, not because it spells out answers
and defines abstract principles, but because it
requires moral decisions in a fictional universe that
approaches the complexity and ambiguity of the
universe we find ourselves in.” Bennion is a believer
in Mormon doctrine, but he is obviously not a
believer in the aspects of Mormon culture Allison
helps save Howard from.
In an e-mail exchange, Bennion shared some
insights about the novel’s background. He started
writing it during his Ph.D. program at the Univer-
sity of Houston, and it became his 950-page disser-
tation novel. “The germ of the novel was probably
my longstanding unhappiness about my father’s
alcoholism,” Bennion says. “Because he was still alive
I couldn’t use that subject matter, so I chose another
sin, adultery. Sounds silly, but that’s how my mind
worked. Originally I experimented with a young
man returning from his mission to find that his
father was having adultery with a woman he home
taught. I then thought, Why not put both the
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goodness of the young man and his father’s sin in
one person? Then I had Allison converting, but one
of my teachers suggested that having a non-Mor-
mon in the book would give me the opportunity to
explain Mormonism to her and to non-Mormon
readers. I gave her the name Allison after the lusty
woman in the “Miller’s Tale” by Chaucer. I gave
Howard a traditional Bennion family name. The
question of the novel then became, Could these
two people, so different from each other, grow
toward a true marriage?”
When I followed up with Bennion about why
information related to Mormonism seems to be
woven into the narrative as if it were written for a
non-Mormon audience, he said:
I sent the book in its various drafts to about
twenty national publishers before Signature
was good enough to take me on. I revised it
for Signature through a couple of drafts, but
I’m happy that it still has that general tone,
because we assume too much about ourselves.
As Pauline Mortensen has said, the audience
of a piece is determined by the blank spaces in
the work, what is assumed. When we assume
too much, we as writers offend those on the
fringe and outsiders, which I want not to do.
While this is probably not the literary novel that
will finally crack into the Mormon fiction main-
stream currently dominated by Deseret Book and
Covenant, I hope it’s another step in the right
direction. A believing Mormon can walk away
from this novel with inspiring, even faith-promot-
ing ideas about how life’s excruciating dilemmas
allow us to fall toward heaven, like Adam and Eve
did. Though “literary,” the novel is a pleasure to
read, with swift, economical prose, lively pacing
and dialogue, and colorful images and events. My
only quibbles are with some comma usage and with
some dialogue that seemed a little too self-aware
and elliptical. Frankly, I wish a publisher as cultur-
ally polarized as Signature hadn’t published this
novel—I wish it had been published by some new
Mormon publisher carving out territory for intelli-
gent, faithful readers dissatisfied by both the fore-
gone conclusions of popular Mormon fiction and
71 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 72
the excessively nonplussing fiction of the literary
elite. Irreantum Books, anyone?
Christopher K. Bigelow has a bachelor’s degree in
professional writing from Emerson College, Boston,
and a master’s degree in creative writing from BYU.
He writes marketing copy for a nutritional company,
teaches writing at Utah Valley State College, and is
writing a missionary memoir. He is the cofounder of
IRREANTUM and serves as managing editor.
Sung with Vim, Vigor, and a Delicate
Tongue
A review of Edgar Snow’s Of Curious Workmanship
(Signature Books, 1999), Peggy Fletcher Stack and
Kathleen Peterson’s (illustrator) A World of Faith
(Signature Books, 1998), and Robert Kirby’s Provo
Daily Herald article “Dressing like a Mormon guy for
only $39.93”
Reviewed by Harlow S. Clark
While I like quotes, I don’t like to memorize
quotes, or anything else. In fact, I only know
2 phone numbers: home and work. And I
can’t tell you my home number without push-
ing number pads on an imaginary phone sus-
pended in the air. Someone once said (I can’t
remember the quote) that the mind is a room
you fill with furniture you’re going to use, and
the rest you put in the attic. Some rooms are
sparsely decorated, others are filled to the
brim with furniture so close together you can
hardly move around, covered with assorted
knick-knacks from the Franklin Mint placed
on doilies. The room of my mind is piled high
with discarded wads of paper, a chair, and
little post-it notes telling me where to look
things up.
—Edgar Snow
Sounds like the room I write in, except the wads
of paper are books and newspaper and knicks and
knacks like a shelf I rescued from someone’s garbage
can, which would mount nicely in the space above
where the door swings open. And somewhere in
Spring 2001
that pile of books is my copy of Of Curious Work-
manship. Not where I last saw it every time I
glanced over there for weeks and months. I’m
beginning to think the other books kidnapped it
and passed it from shelf to shelf to laugh over this
or that passage, or over Snow’s recommendations of
what books to put in a 72-hour survival kit, or
what the gift of tongues really is. (Think cow.)
The post-it notes telling us where to look is an
image of one thing referring to another, or remind-
ing of another, and that’s how the book works. Ed
Snow takes familiar phrases and shows them in
unfamiliar ways. He considers the gift of tongues,
and how he’s never spoken in tongues, and gradu-
ally muses his way to a gift someone gave him on
his mission: cow tongues.
Or he wanders through the old MIA songbook,
which included unintentionally provocative song
titles, like Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Tit Willow.” Or
he muses about how we sing in our congregations,
compared to how the Swiss Saints in his mission
sang. Here’s the opening to “With Vigor and Vim”:
The other evening we were listening to a
Primary Songs CD on our car stereo in order
to put our kids to sleep when I thought I heard
the lyrics, “Sing out with vigor and phlegm,”
causing me to wonder aloud whether these
words had been translated directly from the
old German language primary songbook Die
Kinder Singen I knew from my Swiss Mission
days. My wife politely suggested the word was
“vim,” whatever that meant, causing her to
wonder whether I needed a hearing aid. No
doubt it gave her a Father’s Day gift idea.
When we got home I searched for a defini-
tion of “vim” in that great repository of infor-
mation every Mormon in the ’70s looked to
before giving a talk—not Mormon Doctrine,
but Webster’s Dictionary. Do you remember the
days when orthodoxy could be measured by
whether the opening line of your “2-1/2 minute
talk” was either (a) a Mormon joke (The Pope,
Billy Graham and President Kimball were
fishing one day when . . .), or (b) the definition
of your theme pulled out of the dictionary,
72 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 73
followed by (c) an unattributed theft from
Golden Nuggets of Thought, a treasury of short
talks each of which could conveniently be
read aloud in about 2-1/2 minutes?
He goes on to muse about our lack of vigor in
singing; we sing much too delicately, so it may
seem strange in the review title to suggest this book
sings with Vim, Vigor, and Delicacy. But it does.
There’s a lot of laughter here, a lot of foibles, but
for all the foibles, and the vigor of the laughter, the
humor is surprisingly gentle.
I was going to write, “surprisingly gentle com-
pared to Robert Kirby’s caustic humor,” but caustic
isn’t the right word to describe Kirby’s humor. Off
and on for the next day I kept wondering how to
describe it. Roughhousing is a word that comes
to mind. Kirby is not particularly gentle, but he’s
not being rough to beat people up, just full of vim
and vigor.
Other words that come to mind are relentless and
satirical. I was looking for a Kirby column in the
Provo Daily Herald archives (www.harktheherald.com)
and didn’t find it, but came across this one, “Dress-
ing like a Mormon guy for only $39.93,” which
begins: “A while back, I was in the Church Office
Building trying to get to the roof to take a picture
of the top of angel Moroni’s head for a Sunstone
article. I mean, he looks gold from the street but
you never know. He could really be a brunette.”
Note how Kirby sets up his satire poking fun at
Sunstone, and people’s perceptions of Sunstone, and
sets the stage for some misadventures trying to get
to the roof.
But he gets distracted by the way other passen-
gers are dressed and starts musing about how to
dress like a Mormon guy:
For starters, you’ll need a tie tack, something
that discreetly proclaims your inner self and
keeps your tie from hanging in casseroles at
ward eats. Most LDS males opt for a minia-
ture of the Salt Lake Temple, angel Moroni,
Eagle Scout award, or a paper clip. The most
original tie tack I’ve ever seen on a Mormon
was in a photograph of Elder J. Golden Kim-
ball. His tie tack was a molar. Incidentally,
IRREANTUM
this is the only Mormon fashion trend ever
started by a General Authority that failed to
catch on.
Kirby moves on to a sharper observation as he
moves down the body, poking fun at both Mormon
approaches to fashion and Mormon militancy:
Mormons are more conscious of price than
they are of brand names. “Two for one” means
more to us than Armani, who, if asked, most
Mormons would say was a Book of Mormon
prophet. Next up are shoes. Gucci is out (see
Armani reference). So are Birkenstocks and
Bass Weejuns. As a rule, Mormon guys prefer
to be shod as if they were about to cross the
plains again. Wing tips or mailman shoes are
big. Combat boots may be allowed in some
Montana wards, but definitely nothing
two-toned or with tassels.
There’s a lot of sharp satire in Kirby’s work,
much sharper than this piece, some of it. So much
that some people miss the testimony in his work.
(Not my spellchecker, though. It suggests choirboy
as an alternative to Kirby.) The column I was look-
ing for talks about his last few days before his mis-
sion and starts out as a humor column but contains
a serious reference to Jesus saving his soul, which
brought back that lovely moment in Brigham’s Bees
where the polygamous uncle is dying of lung can-
cer and utters his last word, with great love and
savor, apparently a greeting, “Lord!”
Ed Snow’s humor is not so sharp—rather, as the
subtitle suggests, it is “Musings on things Mor-
mon,” like the difficulty of correcting a typo when
you’re engraving on metal plates. Enjoy it, and if
you can afford the horrendous price, buy another
one for the ward chorister, and ignore that reviewer
behind the curtain complaining that Signature
prices its literary offerings as if it doesn’t expect
them to sell, prices them as if they were books of
poetry from small presses that had to recoup the
printing costs with relatively few sales, like Alicia
Suskin Ostriker’s The Crack in Everything, Pitt
Poetry Series, U of Pittsburgh Press, $12.95, or
Tess Gallagher’s Amplitude (216 pages), Graywolf
Press, $14.95.
73 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 74
I say ignore that ranting reviewer even as he
points out that Ostriker and Gallagher have national
reputations but their books ranked 313,202 and
367,754 on www.bn.com on the Ides of March,
100,000 behind Snow’s (219,663), so someone
must be buying it, so maybe they could lower the
price on the second printing—but, of course the
fact that people are buying it proves the price does-
n’t deter buyers, so they won’t.
Ignore, I say, ignore that ranting reviewer who
tries to make his case that Signature doesn’t think
this book will sell by pointing to Peggy Fletcher
Stack and Kathleen Peterson’s A World of Faith,
which is only $5 more than Of Curious Work-
manship, even though by all accounts hardbound
books with full-color illustrations are much more
expensive than 132-page paperbacks. Indeed, in
the national press hardbound children’s picture
books sell for just $1 more than Of Curious Work-
manship (for example, Rick Walton and Jimmy
Holder’s Pig, Pigger, Piggest, and Laura Numeroff
and Felicia Bond’s If You Give a Pig a Pancake).
A World of Faith costs 25 percent more than most
children’s hardbound picture books, but it’s also
twice as long, 64 leaves instead of 32. Clearly
Signature thinks this book can compete on the
national market.
Rant on, rant on, reviewer—how does it rank
at Barnes and Noble? (72,823, and BN gives it a
20 percent discount, which it doesn’t give Snow’s
book). Oh, wait, there’s a transition coming.
Humor testifies that people are human and
humane enough to laugh at themselves. Humor is
also a way of telling the outside world you exist as
a culture with the foibles and mores and strange-
ness of any culture. Religion also testifies that a
group is human, a distinct culture. But if humor is
sometimes full of phlegm and vigor, so is religion.
If humor sometimes wounds, religion sometimes
counts other religions as an offense, destroying in
tongues of fire or fiery mortar shells temples and
statues and mosques and synagogues (gog, magog,
synagogue, cinemagogue) that may have stood
hundreds of years as someone’s expression of faith.
There is another way of testifying about a cul-
ture’s belief in God—setting it among other cultures
Spring 2001
of belief and showing how the cultures together
make up A World of Faith. That this is Stack and
Peterson’s rhetorical stance is clear to people who
are familiar with religious polemics. For example,
an astute reader of book covers, say of Walter Mar-
tin’s The Kingdom of the Cults, or Anthony
Hoekema’s The Four Major Cults, will note that
they’re all here, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists,
Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Indeed,
all the Native American religions in the book,
including Hopi, are religions the polemic writers of
the immigrant Protestant religions would consider
non-Christian, or heretical, or not mainstream.
But if there’s a satiric edge to that last paragraph,
there’s no satiric edge to this book. It’s a gently spo-
ken celebration of the ways people all over the
world worship their creator. Stack and Peterson
have the good grace to dignify each religion, to let
each speak through its own symbols and let each
speak as a tradition of faith, a tradition that reaches
toward God, or responds to God’s reaching arms.
(Look at the border on the front and back covers;
can you spot the Mormon symbols?)
Each religion, from Amish, Baha’i, and Baptist
to Unitarian, Yoruba, and Zoroastrian, has a two-
page spread with a picture illustrating people and
places from that tradition, and a border showing
the tradition’s symbols and motifs, a two-paragraph
account of the religion, and a caption about the
illustration. Here’s the first paragraph about the Hopi:
In the beginning, say the Hopis, human
beings lived underground, far below the sur-
face of the earth. But they were crowded and
constantly tripping over each other. So they
made their way up through three different lev-
els until they found a hole in the earth’s sur-
face. They climbed through the hole to see the
sky and breathe the air. This world was the
Fourth World. God told the humans that this
world was not easy like the other three. It has
height and depth, heat and cold, beauty and
emptiness. Humans must choose the good,
God said, and carry out the plan of creation.
Then God left them, with only spirits or
“kachinas” to guide them on their journey.
74 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 75
Kathleen Peterson’s illustrations have the same
beauty that made her illustrations for The Stones
of the Temple such a fine companion (a helpmeet)
to J. Frederic Voros Jr.’s lyrical celebration of Salt
Lake’s childhood. The illustrations here show a
detail that bespeaks not only study of other cultures
but also a love and respect for what is sacred in
those cultures.
The Pleasant Grove library has three or four
copies of this book, and I have probably checked
them all out over the past several months as a way
of prodding myself to write this review. I like to
boost their circulation, too. I worked off a traffic
ticket there once and found that if a book is out on
a table you don’t reshelve it before scanning the
barcode so that it becomes part of their circulation
stats. I like to put a few books on the table every
time I go. I don’t know if it has a copy of Of Curi-
ous Workmanship, but if my other two or so thou-
sand books ever get through passing it amongst
themselves I’ll finally shelve it and consider it well
circulated.
I’ve been keeping my copy on the lip of the phi-
losophy shelf, essays, rather than with humor in the
other room, where it wouldn’t constantly remind
me I have a review to write, so I suspect the philoso-
phers have made off with it. Thinking’s hard work,
and I hope it gives them enough rest that they can
sing with a bit more vim. I’ll ask them when we
meet. After I drop by St. Peter’s Deli first and pick
up some tongue.
Harlow Clark is a freelance writer who reports the
Lindon city council news for the Pleasant Grove
Review (www.newutah.com), writes features for
NewUtah! and the Provo Daily Herald, and in his
spare time does business research and writing for a
high-tech company within walking distance (three
miles), but he uses a car because even though he has
some life insurance Donna thinks it’s not sufficient
and the road there is just too busy to walk. Along
about this time of year Harlow starts imagining his
garden and resolving that this year the weeds shall
have no dominion.
IRREANTUM
Selected Recent Releases
Bell, Michele Ashman, Love Lights the Way
(Covenant, $14.95). For Ashlyn Kennsington, the
happiest day of her life—the day she would marry
the man who had swept her off her feet—was a dis-
aster. Left at the altar, Ashlyn is heartbroken and
soon transforms into an insecure recluse. When her
best friend offers the opportunity to spend the
summer on the Oregon coast, it seems like the per-
fect escape. Soon the attention of an attractive
stranger, Sebastian Jamison, helps Ashlyn feel like
her old self. Intrigued by a large, abandoned Victo-
rian home overlooking the ocean, Ashlyn decides
to restore it and turn it into a B&B. But it seems
that everything goes wrong. There is a fire, and then
Sebastian begins acting strangely and disappears.
Bessey, Sian Ann, Forgotten Notes (Covenant,
$14.95). After four years of nursing school, Sarah
Lewis has returned home to her tiny Welsh village
of Pen-Y-Bryn to live, work, and entertain audi-
ences with her gifted harp playing. She loves the
peace and beauty of her village but finds her seren-
ity shattered by the arrival of two Americans—Iris
Pearson and her handsome son, Brian—looking for
answers about their infamous ancestors. The disap-
pearance of Glyn Jones and Mary Williams from
the village in 1881 has been the subject of specula-
tion, rumors, and outright lies for over 100 years.
When the Pearsons arrive claiming to be Glyn’s
and Mary’s descendants, some old questions are
answered, but new, painful mysteries emerge. Sarah
is intrigued by and then attracted to Brian—until
she discovers he is a Mormon. Torn between the
horrible things she’s heard about his religion and
her growing affection for Brian, Sarah decides to
help him with his search.
Carter, Ron, Prelude to Glory, Vol. 4: The
Hand of Providence (Deseret, $22.95). It’s the
summer of 1777, and flamboyant British general
John Burgoyne has been sent by King George III to
command a force of some eight thousand British
and German troops in the war raging in the rebel-
lious American colonies. With little understanding
of the rugged, heavily wooded terrain he will have
to cross, and taking for granted the help he enlists
from the ferocious Mohawk Indian tribe, Burgoyne
75 Spring 2001
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 76
assembles an elaborate camp and begins his march
on Fort Ticonderoga. When the Americans aban-
don the strategically located fort without firing a
shot, it looks as though Burgoyne is well on his way
to accomplishing his purpose and achieving mili-
tary glory. What he hasn’t foreseen is the determi-
nation of the American forces. Under the heroic
leadership of General Benedict Arnold, the upstart
Americans claim an unlikely victory in the decisive
Battle of Saratoga, which changes forever the his-
tory of the world.
Gardner, Lynn, Opals and Outrage (Cove-
nant, $14.95). For Bart and Allison Allen, a vaca-
tion is just what the doctor ordered—literally. As
top-secret agents in the anti-terrorist organization
Anastasia, this newly married couple needs some
time off. But with a harried phone call, the vaca-
tion is over. Bart and Allison learn that Islamic fun-
damentalists are in the States, and they aren’t here
to see the sights.
Hughes, Dean, Children of the Promise, Vol.
5: As Long As I Have You (Deseret $22.95). In the
final volume of this series, Hughes presents a pic-
ture of what life was like for an ordinary LDS fam-
ily, the Thomases, at the end of World War II. The
family is slowly coming back together at home in
Salt Lake City. But that doesn’t mean all is well in
Zion. President Thomas is ready to fulfill his dream
of a vast business enterprise run by his children.
But, as Sister Thomas tries to make him see, the
children may have different plans.
King, Beverly, Picture Perfect (Covenant,
$14.95). At the age of sixteen, Jillian Taylor won a
beauty contest and left her family, her home, and
her church to go to New York to become a model.
She never looked back. Eight years later—washed
up and broke—Jillian is ashamed to admit failure.
When her father dies unexpectedly of a heart
attack, she has to borrow money for plane fare to
go home. Although her world has completely fallen
apart, Jillian is determined to keep up appearances.
Her old boyfriend, Randy Prescott, is delighted to
see her. But his cousin Luke is less enthusiastic.
Luke has always thought Jillian was superficial;
worse, she turned her back on her father when he
needed her. Worried she will break Randy’s heart
again, Luke warns Jillian to leave town.
Spring 2001
Nunes, Rachel Ann, This Time Forever
(Covenant, $14.95). Mickelle Hansen never real-
ized marriage could be so challenging. Her hus-
band’s epilepsy has caused him to become cynical
and verbally abusive. But with love in her heart and
strength from her Heavenly Father, Mickelle is
determined to make her marriage work.
Poulson, Clair, I’ll Find You (Covenant,
$14.95). When she was six years old, Jeri Satch wit-
nessed her best friend, Rusty Egan, being kid-
napped by a menacing stranger. As the old green
car sped away with Rusty inside, Jeri screamed, “I’ll
find you!” This promise had haunted her for seven-
teen years. As years passed, thoughts of Rusty were
never far from Jeri’s mind. And she never ceased to
watch for the one thing that would identify him—
his unforgettable blue eyes. Meanwhile, a muscular
inmate named Randy Moore wasn’t sure how he
knew the attractive young woman staring at him.
But the name she murmured—Rusty—sent a
shiver down his spine and made long-forgotten
memories claw for the light of day. But he didn’t
have time for this. With only months to go before
his parole, all Randy could think about was the
half-million dollars he had hidden, and the serial
killer who would soon be on his trail.
Stansfield, Anita, A Star in Winter (Covenant,
$12.95) Shayne Brynner has tried everything to
make his marriage work. His wife, Margie, only feels
well enough to shop incessantly and go to lunch
with her friends. Buckling under Margie’s extreme
credit-card debt, Shayne is forced to sell their home
and move the family into an apartment. Enraged,
Margie leaves the family. Eight-year-old Scotty
Brynner is having a noticeably difficult time coping
with the problems at home. When he misses school,
Helen Starkey, Scotty’s caring and sensitive teacher,
decides to visit the apartment. When she learns
of the family’s plight and the father’s demanding
job, she offers to watch the children after school.
Shayne is grateful for the help, and a close bond
develops quickly between Helen and the children.
When his marriage ends, Shayne’s feelings toward
Helen deepen beyond gratitude.
Staheli, Don, and Barrett, Robert T., The
Story of the Walnut Tree (Deseret Book, $16.95).
76 IRREANTUM
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 77

Inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley’s Nacho Hell

account, The Story of the Walnut Tree tells a tale of
The ancient Mayas fried their mash of maize,
how the wisdom, nurturing, and vision of the
creating crispy strips of crunchy corn.
prophet of God, the “man who loves trees,” trans-
Upon an altar, smoking fires ablaze,
formed a struggling walnut tree into the pulpit of
tomato and cilantro slush was born:
the Conference Center. With lessons reflecting
the Holy Salsa, hot to feed the gods,
President Hinckley’s lifetime of teaching his chil-
was slathered on the chips with shouts of glee
dren and grandchildren, this narrative tells of the
a taster slave would have to beat the odds
potential inherent in all God’s creations.
as jalapeños melt him to the knees.
Yorgason, Blaine M., Hearts Afire, Vol. 3:
A vat of rude Velveeta, spiced and warm
Curly Bill’s Gift (Deseret Book, $22.95). It’s
would through a trough be splashed upon the mix.
1881, and the plight of the Saints sent to colonize
The priestesses of munching would perform,
southeastern Utah weighs heavily on LDS apostle
cavorting like a mass of colored sticks.
Erastus Snow. Enduring heat, drought, wind, failed
Today, no takeout fetched from Taco Bell
crops, and chronic poverty, the embattled citizens
could match the brimstone of that nacho hell.
of Bluff Fort are also plagued by Indian depreda-
tions and an infestation of vicious outlaws. At the —Gideon Burton
heart of this struggle to survive are Billy and Eliza
Foreman and their infant son, Willy. Nearly para- Gideon Burton teaches Renaissance and Mormon
lyzed by her fear of an evil Indian, Eliza also battles literature at Brigham Young University, where he is an
poor health and discouragement. Matters are made assistant professor of English. He currently serves on
worse when her husband, Billy, has to seek employ- the editorial board of IRREANTUM and as president-
ment away from the fort. He signs on as a cow- elect of the Association for Mormon Letters.
puncher and is turned over to Curly Bill Jenkins for
initiation into the world of bucking broncos, herd-
ing cattle, and roping.

P O E T R Y

Love’s Lungs
Back then balloons were not an easy matter.
In ancient times they had to kill a goat,
extract its large intestine (or its bladder),
some lumberjack would huff, the ball would bloat.
Today, some weakling florist turns the gas,
and presto, a bouquet of mylar orbs!
Farewell those rites of manhood to be passed
when gifts so swelled no time nor sweat absorb.
True valentines their own balloons must fashion,
must find a cow or rhino to dispatch,
must find the guts to well express his passion,
to show his love that florist’s met his match.
She’ll know your love by just how well you blew:
believe me, this procedure’s tripe and true.
—Gideon Burton

IRREANTUM 77 Spring 2001

Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM
M O R M O N
L I T E R A R Y
S C E N E and called Clyde’s writing “sculpted prose.” The
Books
• Martha Nibley Beck, last year’s winner of an
AML award for her memoir Expecting Adam:
A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic,
has released a new self-help narrative based on her
personal consulting services. A Publishers Weekly
reviewer called Finding Your Own North Star:
Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live “cheerful
and perceptive but too long” and noted that Beck’s
voice is “light, down-to-earth, and refreshing.” The
reviewer continued: “By far the most fascinating
material is on how to read warnings from the essen-
tial self: low energy, lapses into illness, forgetful-
ness, addictions, Freudian slips, and mood swings.
She advises steering toward the correct path by
eliminating negative influences and practicing elab-
orate self-esteem exercises. A section on navigating
change weighs the book down, while suggestions
for dealing with serious emotions like grief and
anger are somewhat breezy. In the end, however,
the numerous self-quizzes, exercises, and chances to
laugh will allow many readers to overlook these
weaknesses.”
• Orson Scott Card’s novel Sarah, the first vol-
ume in his Women of Genesis series published by
Deseret Book, was recently reviewed by the Jerusa-
lem Post. “When a noted science fiction author—
and practicing Mormon—uses the Bible as the
basis for a novel, the result is a kind of fiction that
some Orthodox readers might opt to leave on the
shelf,” the reviewer begins. But he concludes, “This
book stands on its own as a fine work of fiction
rather than as a devotional tool. It is an impressive
tribute to contemporary feminism.” In other Sarah
news, Publishers Weekly reported that mainstream
science fiction publisher Tor has picked up mass-
market rights to the novel.
• Mormon writer Mary Clyde’s short story col-
lection Survival Rates, which won the Flannery
O’Connor Award and was published in hardback
by the University of Georgia Press, has been released
Spring 2001
Page 78
in paperback by W. W. Norton. Booklist described
the collection as “finely crafted short fiction that
explores the aftermath of life-threatening events”
New York Times Book Review said, “Clyde has an
exquisite sense of humor” and “this collection [is]
as good as they get.”
• Entertainment Weekly reported that rap star
Sean “Puffy” Combs is suing AML member Mikal
Gilmore because Combs alleges Gilmore contracted
to cowrite Combs’s autobiography for $325,000
but failed to start work on it. The book, intended
for Ballantine, was canceled early last year because
of nondelivery. Gilmore is the author of a memoir
titled Shot in the Heart that revolves around his
brother, executed Utahn murderer Gary Gilmore.
• Darius Gray, coauthor with Margaret Young
of Deseret Book’s black pioneer novel series Stand-
ing on the Promises, has gained nationwide media
attention for his involvement in the LDS Church’s
release of a CD containing the world’s largest repos-
itory of African-American genealogical records,
drawn from the nineteenth-century Freedman’s
Bank. Deseret Book publicist Tom Haraldsen told
Publishers Weekly that, while the historical fiction
trilogy’s first volume was marketed only regionally,
the company is now considering a national market-
ing plan. Released last September, the trilogy’s first
installment, One More River to Cross, has exhausted
its initial 7,000-copy print run, and 4,000 more
copies have been printed. Nearly 1,000 copies were
handed out to media personnel and African-Amer-
ican dignitaries attending the Freedman’s Bank CD
press conferences. The second volume of Standing
on the Promises is scheduled for release in February
2002 during Black History Month.
• Gerald Grimmett’s recently released novel
The Ferry Woman: A Novel of John D. Lee and the
Mountain Meadows Massacre was called “great” by
Salt Lake Tribune critic Martin Naparsteck. Told
through the voice of Emeline Buxton Lee, the
young, fictional 16th wife of John D. Lee who helps
him run Lee’s Ferry, the novel is “great because of
the richness of Grimmett’s language; because of the
grand, at points biblical sweep of his tale; because
of his insight into the psychology of Emeline, whom
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he manages to portray as richly individualistic and
real, but also as a metaphor for Mormon culture;
and, mostly, because of his courage in confronting
the most discomforting episode in Mormon his-
tory.” Brigham Young does not order the massacre
in this account, but he is portrayed as selfish and
corrupt, according to Naparsteck. Grimmett is a
St. George, Utah–based journalist and freelance
writer, and the novel is published by Limberlost
Press of Boise, Idaho.
• LDS author Violet T. Kimball won a 2001
Spur Award for her book Stories of Young Pioneers:
In Their Own Words, published last year by Moun-
tain Press Publishing Company. The book, which
relates the experiences of young pioneers traveling
through the West in the mid-nineteenth century
and was written for young readers, is Kimball’s
second title; her first book was Mormon Trail: Voy-
age of Discovery. Past winners of the Spur Awards,
which are sponsored by the Western Writers of Amer-
ica, include Larry McMurty for Lonesome Dove and
Michael Blake for Dances with Wolves.
• Clair Poulson’s romantic mystery I’ll Find You,
published by Covenant and involving a main char-
acter who is a prison inmate, sold out its 6,500-
copy first printing within a month of release.
Poulson, a former police officer and current county
judge in Utah, says he’s “witnessed firsthand the
struggles of prisoners, and I have seen ones who
could be reformed. Remarkable changes can hap-
pen when prisoners are touched by the gospel and
the right example.” Covenant marketing vice pres-
ident Robby Nichols describes Poulson as “the LDS
version of John Grisham.”
• Publishers Weekly recently ran two articles related
to Mormonism, one about Mormon book publish-
ing and the other about Mormon influence on sci-
ence fiction and fantasy. A feature article titled
“Mormon Publishing Comes Into Its Own” esti-
mated the Mormon publishing market at $100 mil-
lion annually and revealed some Mormon-market
sales figures, including 40,000 copies for David
Woolley’s Pillar of Fire (Covenant), two million for
Gerald Lund’s nine-volume Work and the Glory
series (Deseret Book), 400,000 for Dean Hughes’s
five-volume Children of the Promise series (Deseret
IRREANTUM
Book), and 500,000 for Chris Heimerdinger’s
seven-volume Tennis Shoes among the Nephites
series (Covenant). An article about the connection
between religion and science fiction and fantasy
included a large sidebar titled “The Mormon
Link,” which identified two reasons for the Mor-
mon connection: “Their idea of God as a highly
developed man—and not an ethereal, supernatural
being—is the kind of highly evolved hero much of
science fiction is founded on,” and “Much of their
history has painted them as ‘aliens’ to the American
mainstream.”
Drama
• Playwright Julie Jensen, who has identified
herself in the media as a nonpracticing Mormon
and who authored the plays Two-Headed and Last
Lists of My Mad Mother, has received a $25,000
grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
and a $100,000 grant from the National Theatre
Artist Program. During a residency at the Salt Lake
Acting Company (SLAC), she will develop a new
play exploring the struggles between early Mormon
settlers and the Goshute tribe and examining the
modern-day proposal of some tribe members to
store nuclear waste on their reservation. Jensen’s
latest play, Cheat, has been the subject of recent
readings in New York and New Jersey.
• Tim Slover’s new play Hancock Country, based
on events surrounding Joseph Smith’s martyrdom
at Carthage Jail, was recently given a staged reading
by the New Renaissance Theatre Company at Salt
Lake City’s new Rose Wagner Center for the Per-
forming Arts. “I have shied away from Mormon
history,” Slover said, “probably because I’m too close
to it, but I have attempted to write a play that is
both educational and entertaining, and I have tried
to give full weight and value to both the Mormon
and non-Mormon views in Illinois during that
period.” The play was commissioned by R. Don
Oscarson through his Discovery Grant program,
which aims to help produce locally written works
with the potential to eventually move beyond
Utah’s Wasatch Front.
• Boston businessman Greg Carr, who was raised
LDS in Idaho, recently completed construction of
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the Market Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The 110-seat, state-of-the-art performance house in
Harvard Square will serve as a venue for “offbeat
theater productions.”
Film
• Despite earning only about $12,000 in five
years on movie-related efforts and failing to reach
the screen yet, print heavyweight Orson Scott
Card has several cinematic irons in the fire, includ-
ing three projects he said “should all go before the
cameras this year.” Dogwalker, adapted from a Card
short story, is set in New Orleans, Louisiana, “in a
bleak but all-too-plausible future about twenty
years from now. Sometimes called a ‘cyberpunk
Midnight Cowboy,’ Dogwalker points a new direc-
tion in science fiction film, away from huge action
flicks with mind-numbing budgets and toward more
intimate films about human relationships twisted
by technology.” A film based on his novel Home-
body will be a “ghostly romance,” and a film based
on his novel Feed the Baby of Love will be an “adult
love story.” My One and Only, Card’s film for the
Mormon audience about four women at BYU, has
been easier to finance, Card said, because of the
success of Richard Dutcher’s God’s Army. His hopes
remain alive for a movie based on his novel Ender’s
Game, which he said “will be made when a studio
has the courage to fund a film without stars. Even-
tually it will happen, when the right director is
found. It could come together next month, next
year, or 10 years from now.”
• Richard Dutcher’s new film Brigham City pre-
miered in about 60 western U.S. cities in April.
Dutcher, who wrote, produced, and directed the
film, plays a small-town sheriff and Mormon bishop
who uses every possible resource to find a serial
killer. According to Dutcher, the murder mystery
serves as the skeleton of the plot, while the meat of
the story is how deeply religious and sheltered char-
acters deal with the horrific crimes. In contrast with
the $300,000 budget of Dutcher’s last movie, God’s
Army, which grossed $2.6 million, Brigham City
was made with a $1.2-million budget. Noting the
film’s “supremely powerful climax that surely qual-
ifies as one of the tensest communion services ever
Spring 2001
put on film,” a Daily Variety reviewer called
Brigham City “a more artful, philosophically daring
work” than God’s Army and “the happiest marriage
yet of the disparate propagandistic and narrative
influences inherent in the subgenre of ‘religious’
cinema.” Describing the performances as “impec-
cable” and the movie as an “engrossing” mix of
piety and humility with murder and mystery, a
New York Times reviewer wrote, “Brigham City, like
God's Army, may proselytize for the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, but Brigham City is also
an example of concise, skillful filmmaking.” Two of
the film’s least admiring reviews appeared in the
LDS-owned Deseret News and the LDS-targeted
online Meridian Magazine. The film’s PG-13 rating
caused some controversy, and a TV deal to televise
Brigham City has reportedly been made.
• Richard Dutcher announced that his next
movie will be a $10 million biography of Joseph
Smith, which he termed “the Mt. Everest of LDS
filmmaking.” The film has a working title of The
Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith Jr., and Dutcher
has begun scouting locations in New York and the
Midwest and plans to start shooting this fall for a
possible 2002 holiday season release. He has been
developing the script for six years and has sought
the input of Columbia University–based LDS
scholar Richard Bushman. Dutcher noted that the
film is completely independent of the LDS Church
and would probably be rated PG-13. Because of
the relatively large budget, Dutcher said, the film
must appeal to a crossover audience, not just LDS
viewers. “Joseph Smith’s story is relevant and impor-
tant not only to the Mormon people but to Amer-
ican history and even world history,” Dutcher said.
• Mitch Davis recently finished directing a film
titled The Other Side of Heaven, based on John H.
Groberg’s Tongan missionary experiences recounted
in Groberg’s memoir In the Eye of the Storm (Deseret
Book). The film is a coming-of-age story about a
boy from Idaho who gets sent to a Tongan island,
where he is the only white person and must learn
how to survive and to love and relate with the
islanders. The movie, produced by high-powered
Hollywood producers and LDS members Gerald
Molen and John Garbett, is scheduled for release
this fall. More than 600 people were involved in
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making the movie, including many Hollywood insid-
ers, but only a handful were LDS. In a review for
Meridian Magazine, Kieth Merrill wrote, “Do not
mistake The Other Side of Heaven as having any-
thing at all to do with the recent buzz about ‘Mor-
mon cinema.’” He continued, “It is a full-blown
Hollywood feature film that will easily play to the
world, ‘in every movie center’ as Spencer Kimball
foresaw.” For more information about The Other
Side of Heaven, go to www.othersideofheaven.com or
eyeofthestormthemovie.com.
• Jongiorgi Enos, copresident of Pacific Island
Films and a producer, director, and screenwriter, is
planning to direct a $2.5-million, feature-length
film titled The Long Walk of Patience Loader. Seen
through the eyes of Patience Loader, a young
woman in her twenties, and drawn from actual
pioneer diaries and journals, the film will trace the
1,300-mile journey of the Martin handcart com-
pany in 1856 and feature actual Mormon history
sites. The film’s premier is tentatively scheduled to
take place in Salt Lake City during the Olympics in
February 2002.
• After winning the Hugo Award last fall for his
Galaxy Quest screenplay, Mormon writer David
Howard recently won the Nebula Award for
Galaxy Quest. The Hugo Awards are voted on by
fans, and the Nebula Awards are voted on by mem-
bers of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America. Orson Scott Card is the only other Lat-
ter-day Saint known to have won both awards.
• Bryan Lefler, an illustration major at Brigham
Young University, won best picture and best director
for his film War Play at the Eclipse Film Festival in
St. George, Utah. The film, which explores the
mind of a young boy who participates in make-
believe war games but is unable to separate his imag-
ination from reality, was also featured in this year’s
SlamDance Film Festival, which runs in tandem
with the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
• LDS Church member and former television
sportscaster Ray Lines is drawing worldwide atten-
tion for his video-editing business CleanFlicks
(www.cleanflicks.com), which has offered bowdler-
ized versions of more than 160 videos for rent and
also edits copies of videos owned by individuals.
IRREANTUM
“I want my kids to see great films,” Lines told the
New York Times. “But I don’t think teenagers, and
adults, for that matter, need to see all that sex
and hear curse words and see all that blood and
gore.” Motion picture industry representatives
warn that such editing activity may violate trade-
mark and copyright laws, especially with regards to
movies offered for rental. CleanFlicks posts a list of
18 movies it will not edit “because of theme, over-
all message, and number of edits in the movie.”
The list, which is as interesting for its omissions as
its inclusions, includes Pretty Woman, Liar Liar,
Blair Witch Project, The Story of Us, Addicted to
Love, American History X, Caddyshack, Eyes Wide
Shut, Basic Instinct, Show Girls, Gross Pointe Blank,
Primary Colors, Rounders, Payback, Election, Ana-
lyze This, Return of the Dragon, and Face Off.
• Preston Hunter’s Adherents.com website
includes an exhaustive page about virtually every-
thing related to Mormon filmmaking past and
present (www.adherents.com/movies/lds_film.html).
Recent news about current projects includes the
following: Production is scheduled to start in June
for The Singles Ward, a romantic comedy about a
congregation of college-aged LDS singles that will
be filmed in Salt Lake City and Provo. A big-screen
adaptation of Jack Weyland’s best-selling Mor-
mon romantic-comedy novel Charly is in the
works by Kaleidoscope Pictures. LDS Battlestar
Galactica creator Glen Larson is working on a
revival of the popular 1970s science fiction series.
LDS fantasy novelist Tracy Hickman and wife
Laura Hickman are shopping around Witch-
weaver, a screenplay about an unusual duo of con
artists—a priest and a fake witch—who visit dif-
ferent towns and pretend to burn her. LDS
producers Jerry Molen and Robert Starling are
behind On My Honor, a biographical epic about
Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the international
Scouting movement.
• A team of professional LDS filmmakers is plan-
ning a series of epic Book of Mormon movies for
the large-screen IMAX format. The first movie,
Safe Passage, will depict the exodus of Lehi’s family
from Jerusalem to the promised land and is targeted
for release in mid-2002.
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• Ampersand Films recently announced the pro-
duction of Handcart, a feature film chronicling the
courage and faith of a young family as they endure
the hardships that befell the Martin Handcart
Company and its rescue. The film is scheduled to
be released to theaters on July 24, 2002.
Online
• Meridian Magazine (www.meridianmagazine
.com) has issued a call for submissions for its new
poetry page. Poets are invited to submit one to five
poems at a time in any form to poetryeditor@merid-
ianmagazine.com. Poets are asked to include the
poetry text both in the e-mail message and as a
Word attachment, type their first and last names in
the subject line, and include a brief biological state-
ment, including where they are from.
• Marny Parkin announced that the URL to her
bibliography of Mormon speculative fiction has
changed to home.earthlink.net/~marnyparkin. The
site features authors’ awards, links to reviews, and
recommended reading.
• Dallas Robbins has launched a new moder-
ated e-mail discussion list called LDS Alternative,
where people can discuss alternative Mormon peri-
odicals such as Sunstone, Dialogue, Exponent II,
IRREANTUM, and Journal of Mormon History. The
list’s scope includes related symposia and confer-
ences, research requests, the culture of the LDS
intellectual community, and its impact on the LDS
Church and membership. Robbins expressed his
hope that “enlightening discussion can take place
in a spirit of charity and respect.” To subscribe, visit
groups.yahoo.com/group/lds_alternative.
• In the spirit of satirical newsweekly The Onion
(theonion.com), a new website at www.deserettri-
bune.com is offering parodies of Utah and Mormon
news. Recent headlines have included “Truce
Declared Between Warring Jews and Mormons,”
“Hatch Files for Moral Bankruptcy,” “Porn Czar
Targets Barnes & Noble,” “Mormon Church Plans
IPO,” “Commandos Storm Jordan Temple,”
“Snoop Doggy Dogg Converts,” “Church Sells
Main Street to Saudis,” “Church Welcomes Pri-
mate Membership,” “NAACP Study: Utah Sucks,”
and “Utah to Annex Tonga.”
Spring 2001
Miscellany
• In a recent Chicago Tribune interview, Orson
Scott Card confessed he had been unable to write
during the preceding five months due to the death
of his 17-year-old son from complications of cere-
bral palsy. He also discussed watching his prema-
ture daughter die on the day she was born in 1977.
Asked about his priorities, Card replied, “To be as
good a father as I can to my children” and to “try
to be a good husband to my wife, a good Mormon,
and after that, that’s when I start trying to be a
good writer, which is pretty far down the line.” He
continued: “A lot of interviewers find it amusing or
strange—and I’ve had this surprisingly often—but
they’ll assume that since I’m a writer of fiction, I
must have left the church because you can’t actually
be writer or intellectual and some kind of artist and
believe in one of these ‘primitive religions.’ But in
fact, I’m a believing, practicing, active Latter-day
Saint and make no bones about it.” During the
interview, Card said he’s normally a Democrat but,
because of Bill Clinton’s influence on the party,
voted for George W. Bush in the recent presidential
election. He also revealed that more than half his
writing each year is usually not science fiction.
• Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was the subject of
a recent New York Times profile about his songwrit-
ing efforts and politics related to online music.
After years of writing poetry, Hatch began writing
songs in 1995 and has since released nine albums.
His technique for writing is to come up with a song
title and then pen the lyrics. “I’m not saying that
God speaks through me,” Hatch said, “but he can
inspire.” He distributes most of his music over the
Internet and has spent about $95,000 on his music
efforts so far, recouping only $65,000. Asked about
controversial rapper Eminem, Hatch said, “I don’t
like his message. I don’t like his lyrics. But still,
there is a genius to it.”
• Deseret News columnist Jerry Johnston
recently won his second Wilbur Award for out-
standing religious columns. “Jerry somehow consis-
tently puts a subtle but impossible-to-ignore touch
on his column that makes reading it both enter-
taining and enlightening,” said Deseret News man-
aging editor Rick Hall. “But, amazingly, you don’t
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realize that until you’re done. The delivery is so soft
that you’re finished reading before you know you’ve
been hit. But there’s no doubt about what he was
trying to say. It’s clear that he gives his writing as
much attention as his message. And, somehow, nei-
ther overshadows the other.” Johnston, who has
been active in the AML, has written two books:
Spirits in the Leaves and Dads and Other Heroes.
The Wilbur Award is presented by the Religion
Communicators Council.
• Speaking to a group of 2,000 prospective mis-
sionaries, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the LDS
Church’s First Quorum of the Seventy quoted
Harry Potter’s teacher from the fantasy novel Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. “It is our
choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far
more than our abilities,” Elder Uchtdorf quoted.
• Billed as “a five-day workshop for aspiring
writers on the art of publishing books for children
and teenagers,” BYU’s second annual Writing for
Young Readers Workshop will be held July 16–20.
Scheduled faculty members include Laura Torres,
Rick Walton, Helen Ketteman, Claudia Mills,
Carol Lynch Williams, Alane Ferguson, Louise
Plummer, and Joan Bauer. For more information,
visit ce.byu.edu/cw/writing.
P O E T R Y
Around Here All the Poets Have Already Left
You’ve got to be something else to be a poet:
attorney, accountant, acupuncturist,
analyst, anomaly, auditor, a jerk,
another of whatever it is you ain’t.
You’ve got to love something else to be a poet:
“a lifelong love affair with language,” hmm?
The poem’s the words that linger on your tongue
after you can’t lick them into shape,
the taste of salt and bitter and good hot blood,
thick enough to make you wash your mouth.
IRREANTUM
You’ve got to have something else to be a poet,
some interest in the world your speech addresses;
a place to go, a place to come from, somewhere
that isn’t the only place you’re comfortable.
Quires of words, reams of words, whole forests
singing like the ghosts of Mt. St. Helens,
all that paper wasted to trap a score.
There’s nothing else you have to be a poet:
only speech, and only until you utter,
and then the unutterable is gone, and leaves
you only the husk, the text, the rind, the print.
You’ve got to be someone else to be a poet,
to pad around the house unshaven, unwashen,
unkempt, and unprepared to earn a living,
let alone ever letting a living earn you.
You’ve got to be somewhere else to be a poet:
around here all the poets have already left,
and anywhere you go they’ll still be leaving.
Can’t make your own; who’d tell you what they
mean?
You’ve got to keep something else to be a poet,
caged: a skunk, your soul, what no one wants—
till they can’t stand to see you have that much fun.
You’ve got to care less about what you’re going to get:
a sore throat and an ear for your own voice—
and, if you’re lucky, a voice for your own ears.
—Dennis Marden Clark
Around here, Dennis Clark has already left, out
practicing random beauty with the senseless axe of
kindness.
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A M L - L I S T black heritage mean to you? (And should you cap-
H I G H L I G H T S
Compiled by Marny K. Parkin
AML-List provides an ongoing forum for broad-
ranging conversation and a stimulating exchange of
opinions related to LDS literature. One especially
rich topic during November, December, and Janu-
ary was how to portray faithful LDS characters and
why. Read on for a sampling of the sentiment on
this and other topics. If you find yourself champing
to chime in, send an e-mail message to majordomo@
lists.xmission.com that reads: subscribe aml-list. A con-
firmation request will be sent to your e-mail address;
follow the directions to complete your subscrip-
tion. AML-List is moderated by Jonathan Langford.
Addressing Race in Mormon Literature
Linda Adams (Nov. 15): So my dilemma as a
writer is, how do I create believable black characters
in my work, without sufficient personal experience?
Where do I go to further my education, to learn
the things life hasn’t naturally given me the oppor-
tunity to know (yet)?
I don’t know where to turn to glean more infor-
mation and knowledge on what it is like, what it
feels like, to be black in America today (and Mor-
mon). I can imagine what it might mean in the
future (since the series is set in the future), but
the future grows out of the present and people in
our day would be my characters’ “ancestors.” I need
to know their history so that their experience res-
onates truthfully with today’s readers. I have a good
imagination, but that doesn’t make up for accurate
information.
I don’t know how or if I could approach the issue
with the smattering of acquaintances I have. I would
absolutely hate to offend anyone. How can I com-
municate my absolute respect while asking stupid
questions? Things a child might ask—these are
things I need to know. Details from how do you
work with black hair (you know, what types of
products do you use, different from what I do), for
instance, to the greater questions of what does your
Spring 2001
italize black or not? Is one way more PC than
another, or more preferred? Oy.)
D. Michael Martindale (Nov. 17): If you don’t
mind the blind leading the blind (my experiences
with blacks is about as good as yours), I would
think that only the most obnoxious people would
be offended by questions from someone who sin-
cerely wants to understand. If you just tell them
you’re an author that will be writing about some
black characters and you want to get it right,
I would think most people would be honored that
you asked them. People like to feel like experts and
share with others what they know.
Annette Lyon (Nov. 17): So here’s the question,
which I think piggybacks on Linda’s: Once we
know enough to write about the culture believably,
how can we do it without offending those readers
who belong to that culture? I worry, because there
are a handful of hypersensitive people out there, ready
to think any white person is prejudiced—that any
negative would be construed as a blanket statement
or an attack. Do we ignore those people and hope
for the best? I’m thinking of an experience my
brother had in basic training. (He is one of the least
prejudiced people I know, and several of his close
friends are black.) One morning he and a black
man were shaving, and the black man was inspect-
ing several ingrown hairs in his face. “Man, that’s
really gotta suck,” my brother said. Instead of see-
ing sympathy, the other man saw prejudice. He
turned on my brother and let out a several-minute
spew about how he was proud of his heritage, etc.
If an innocent comment can incite that kind of
response, I can only imagine the reaction from
someone looking for prejudice in a book—and
“finding” it. That’s one reason I haven’t tried writ-
ing about a black character yet. I don’t dare make
them less than perfect, and that’s not good writing.
Don’t give up, Linda.
D. Michael Martindale (Nov. 21): We ignore
those people. Someone will always be offended by
what you write. If you write the most bland, inof-
fensive stuff you can think of to avoid offense, some-
one will be offended that it’s bland and inoffensive.
You cannot win if you worry about offending
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someone. Do your homework, get it right, be fair
to the characters (all the characters, not just the
ethnic ones), then write, and the hypersensitive
be damned.
I recently met a black person who impressed me
greatly: Darius Gray. He has recommended that we
expand our literature to include people of other
races and nationalities. If I succumb to the fear of
offending the hypersensitive, I risk offending Dar-
ius because I pretend blacks don’t exist. Whose
opinion of my work would mean more to me, his
or those who are looking for any excuse to be
offended? Anyone who would be offended by my
honest effort to depict blacks or other races and
nationalities realistically is someone whose opinion
matters little to me. Pointing out mistakes I’ve
made in my attempt is fine. But taking offense at
every word—who cares about such a person?
Shaken Faith and Truth
Jacob Proffitt (Nov. 20): I think that it is
absolutely possible to have every word of a work be
true, and yet the message can turn out, if not actu-
ally false, at least misleading or misrepresentative.
Since we are a church that still holds to that old
hokey claim that Truth exists at all, this notion of
writing has some interesting connotations for us.
On the one hand, it is impossible to relate the
whole truth in any work less massive than, well,
something really massive. On the other, we do try
very hard to be honest, even claiming in annual
temple interviews that we strive for honesty in all
our dealings.
So for the Mormon market, the question becomes,
what are we willing to do in order to sell our work?
Are you willing to restrict your art to the dark ele-
ments in our society if that is what sells?
Personally, I’m tired of “modern realism.” I skipped
the rest of the latest [autumn 2000] IRREANTUM
fiction section because I read the first story and
found that, while it was well enough written, I
really dislike the faith-denuded Mormon experi-
ence narrative. I was afraid to try the next story for
fear it would be along the same quandary-loving
vein. I should tread lightly here as Paul Rawlins is
probably going to read this. I was engaged by his
IRREANTUM
story (“Faith of the Fathers”), but I kept waiting for
any character actions to be informed by LDS the-
ology. There was tradition there but no substance.
The father in the story didn’t do any of the things
that I would have as a father. I’m as tired as some
of you probably are of the blithe claim that “God
has called xxx home” and the determinism that
implies. But the other extreme of an absence of
godly intervention isn’t any more laudable.
The story itself may be real/true enough. The
father’s actions are plausible enough for an indi-
vidual. But the implication of the story (beginning
with the title) is that this is a general experience with
LDS faith, and that message is wrong. The gospel
has a lot to say about God, death, justice, purpose,
and comfort in mourning. The father in this story
did nothing at all to find any of it, understand any
of it, let alone communicate any of it to his obvi-
ously wounded daughter.
Certainly such a father may exist and may be my
next door neighbor who is active in the Church.
But the message is that this is a representation of
faithful fathers in the Church. I don’t think it is.
“Faith of the Fathers” is well written—well
crafted—but I’m not going to read any more of
these stories. And since that was the first fiction
story in IRREANTUM, I assume that it is representa-
tive of what the editors wanted to present, so I just
didn’t bother with the others. My apologies to
those authors, but I can’t handle the continuing
messages about my faith that are devoid of an
active, loving, comforting God anymore.
The most powerful message of the gospel is that
God does exist. He is real. And he wants, even
requires, a personal relationship with each of us.
That doesn’t mean that we are always happy, but
it really does mean that we don’t have to be
always sad.
Write all you want about shaking faith and people
learning that the tradition is not enough or that
common traditions just don’t hold up when reality
deals harsh blows. But don’t expect me to give you
my attention while you do. Frankly, I’m tired of
shaken-faith stories as a whole. But most particularly
I am tired of the ones that leave you at the bottom
of the lost-faith cycle with no resolution in sight.
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Darlene Young (Nov. 27): I think you are too
quick, Jacob, to throw words like “faithless” around.
Because a story did not increase your faith, or
because you failed to see how the characters in it
could be faithful and still not respond to problems
the way you would have, does not mean that it is a
faithless piece. (I also disliked your use of “repul-
sive,” but since it obviously repulsed you, I cannot
argue that point. I’m just sad that it seems that the
only reason it repulsed you is the same reason that
you called it faithless, which is a faulty label, IMO.)
I thoroughly enjoyed the story and didn’t see it
as faithless at all. I believe that faith is an acting
in the face of doubt, not just a knowing all the
answers. This man didn’t know how to help his
daughter. I, as a survivor of the death of a family
member, silently cheered when he did not give her
all of the trite, overused “scriptural” cliches that roll
so quickly off the tongues of well-meaning, “faith-
ful” Church members in the face of tragedy. Yes,
having a clear view of the eternal scheme of things
is comforting. Yes, the scriptures and prayer are
comforting. But grief is real, even to the most
diehard of believers, and it just isn’t helpful to be
told things like “God must have had a reason” and
“It’s all for the best” and “Don’t worry, you’ll see
him again” and “This life is but a small moment.”
This faithful man saw with spiritual eyes that some
griefs just have to be walked alone. I felt that he
made an extremely wise choice by giving his daugh-
ter space and then letting her see the honest truth:
that sometimes life just hurts.
This is not a lack of faith. This is seeing clearly.
All I can tell from your protests, especially when
you ask “Could we see the hand of God at all?” is
that the story was rotten because this father did not
respond the way you think a “faithful” father would
and because nothing else in the story intervened to
relieve this daughter of her pain. Is that what you
are saying? What sort of intervention, I wonder,
would have made this a “faithful” story to you? And
how realistic would this intervention have been?
For me and for many readers, a story that is not
shy about showing the true pain of life is a thou-
sand times more powerful in building faith than
one which feels preachy or too idealistic.
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Gae Lyn Henderson (Nov. 27): I just read the
story because of what Jacob had said about it. So I
thank him for bringing up the topic and directing
me to “Faith of the Fathers.”
Rawlins’s story touches me with the absolute
honesty of its voice. Why, when sudden and tragic
death occurs, do we as a culture tend to rush in
with easy answers: God wanted him to perform a
mission, it was his time, etc. This story points out
that sometimes life and death, from our perspec-
tive, are absolutely random.
I didn’t find this story “faithless” at all. It showed
a father filled with love, trying to respond authen-
tically to his daughter’s pain. It inspires me that he
would care enough to try to see it from her per-
spective, to not try to “fix” her feelings immedi-
ately, to not force an understanding upon her that
may take time to occur. Why do we think God put
us here in the first place? To have to face the diffi-
cult challenges, to try to find meaning in suffering.
I believe in a loving God who answers prayers.
But I have to say that I’ve had people tell me their
prayers were not answered. In fact, some of my
own prayers seem to go unanswered. In the tradi-
tion of my church and my belief system, I try to
understand that maybe the answer is “no,” maybe
I have to be patient, maybe God’s will becomes
apparent over time, maybe I’m asking for some-
thing that I shouldn’t have, maybe I am misunder-
standing the answer or not in tune enough to get
it, maybe I lack faith, and all the other ways we
explain such apparent lack of response.
So what do people do when they have that expe-
rience—the experience of not getting an answer? If
all their reading and the lessons in church tell them
that prayers are always answered, they may falter in
their faith. Perhaps stories that explore the unan-
swered prayer situation can actually help us deal
with that scenario if and when it occurs in our own
lives. Trying to listen to God’s inspiration, trying to
feel his will and figure out what his answers are—
these are some of the most common of human
experiences. To write about that struggle is to help
us all try to figure it out.
Fiction is, by definition, made up—not true.
But ironically, one of my criteria for whether or not
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fiction is worthwhile is its honesty. I want to trust
the story to tell me the author’s authentic experi-
ence of life. If the story tells me about what another
human being has experienced, then I think it has
value. How can I dismiss it and say that it is not my
experience and so I don’t want anything to do with
it? Don’t I have the obligation to at least listen to
this human voice that I have encountered and
to try and understand it? I may disagree, and I may
ultimately reject it as invalid. But perhaps in that
process I am enriched.
I want to read a variety of voices and perceptions
about the human experience. I don’t want to limit
myself to what I immediately agree with. On the
other hand, I can be overloaded quickly with “dis-
turbing” material. When I was a student at BYU
studying literature, I remember that during the
semester I read Steinbeck and Hemingway I started
to feel depressed—what I interpreted as their
“faithless” attitudes strongly affected me.
So nobody is forcing anybody to read something
he or she doesn’t want to read. I certainly don’t
want a steady diet of negativity, agony, or suffering.
But I think I grow a little when I choose to listen
to such voices and try to figure out how I feel about
them. What I term “good” literature offers me that
growth experience and that challenge.
Sometimes I think that “disturbing” fiction
demands to be discussed. In classroom situations
students have the opportunity to say why they
detest something and to analyze that reaction a bit.
Then they can hear someone else’s experience and
try to understand it. By the time the discussion is
over all parties involved are enlightened.
This list discussion is good for that reason,
I think.
Tracie Laulusa (Nov. 28): I don’t think Jacob
was asking for the character to supply easy or trite
answers. I think he was looking for the character to
act as a faithful Mormon should/would/could.
(Correct me if I’m wrong, Jacob.) Did the charac-
ter get on his knees and really pray? And if he did-
n’t, why not? Did he search the scriptures for
comfort and answers? And if he didn’t, why not? It’s
not so much a matter of finding quick answers, trite
answers, tough answers, or no answers; it’s about how
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Mormons are portrayed going about finding the
answers or working through life’s challenges.
This reminds me of a little discussion that took
place some time ago. It may have been triggered by
a post from a NY publisher looking for an epic
Mormon novel. Someone commented that we
needed literature that showed Mormons solving
problems and so forth without all the “praying”
stuff. That obviously is not a quote, but it is what
I understood the post to be saying. When reading
the post about the novel, I got the feeling that they
wanted a central Mormon character, but not the
religious part of being Mormon. How can you
write a novel about a believing Mormon woman
and not have her praying, going to the temple,
believing in God, feeling bad when she falls short,
repenting, attending RS or teaching YW or Pri-
mary, and on and on. It’s not that the character
should be perfect, or perfect in doing the right
things, or finding all the answers in nanoseconds.
But why would we want to portray an active,
believing Mormon not even trying to live the
gospel? Unless the point is to show the character as
a hypocrite.
Jacob Proffitt (28 Nov): I don’t want stories with
no suffering. I thought most of the suffering in the
story was perfectly valid. I had no trouble accepting
the pain and questioning of the daughter in the
story. I don’t even mind the jabs at all those oh so
facile answers people give in the face of tragedy. As
I stated in a previous message, I too am tired of the
too-easy answer that “xxx was called home” and
the imperious determinism that implies.
My problem is with the father, not the death or
the daughter’s trouble with it. This is supposedly a
faithful LDS father. He is the title character. This
story is about his faith and how it is representative
of the faith of all faithful LDS fathers. And yet we
don’t see him exercise any faith at all. He spends all
his time wringing his hands trying to understand
his daughter and suffering a crisis of faith that is
never adequately identified, let alone dealt with.
I have had crises of faith. I know what it feels
like. I have had times when my family is going
through things that I don’t understand and when it
is time for me to help and I’m not sure how. When
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this happens, it is time to get back to basics. It is
time for prayer, for study, and for paying attention
to your family. It is not time for turning inward
and taking stupid risks in the wilderness. Introspec-
tion is one thing, and important, but his daughter
is in crisis and it is time for him to come out of
himself and put all his resources into helping her.
Frankly, I wouldn’t have minded his little stunt
either, if it had lent him some sense and under-
standing enough to help. But it didn’t.
So to respond again to Darlene and Gae Lyn,
who found it an accurate portrayal of suffering and
grief at death, I did not have a problem with the
daughter. I had no trouble with the pain associated
with a death that makes no sense and is so very
tragic. My problem with this story is as a father of
faith presented with a story that purports to repre-
sent fathers of faith. I can understand him feeling
helpless. But his reaction to his own helplessness is
selfish and in the end of no assistance to the suffer-
ing of his daughter. So on that level, I found this
story repulsive. And faithless. Yes, that is a personal
response. Yes, I have no trouble with it being true
on an individual level. I don’t even have trouble
with the depiction of grief and loss. But on the level
where it supposedly represents me and a valid
response to the hurt of a child, it does not resonate
at all. It is not time to question your own faith just
because your child is in pain. If anything, it is time
to draw as close as you can to God so that you can
be there when it is time to be and back off when it
is time. It is in times of family crisis that you turn
to God, not your own problems.
Scott Tarbet (Nov. 30): I agree with [Jacob’s]
point, as far as it goes, that a story purporting to be
about the faith, the religious aspects of being a
Mormon, needs to have the gospel, God, and/or
the Spirit in it. But it is possible, and I hope some-
thing that we’ll begin to see more of, for stories
about Mormons to be about the way our unique
subculture operates and the way it affects our lives.
Stories about Irish Catholics don’t have to center
on how and when they pray, and I don’t think there
is any reason ours have to either. We have a unique
and interesting subculture, with tons of wonderful
stories to be told.
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Todd Robert Petersen (Dec. 14): Don’t get me
wrong—I’ve never asked that the gospel, God, or
the Spirit be central to all our stories. I don’t think
it is too much to ask for it to be present in those sto-
ries about faithful LDS people, though.
I agree with Jacob here, but add one caveat, one
that comes to mind as I think of Dickens’s A Christ-
mas Carol. The Cratchits are faithful, but on
Christmas Eve Mrs. Cratchit won’t drink to
Scrooge’s health. It is a tense moment. She’s not
showing much kindness, and it’s clear that this is
both a lapse on her part and something not out of
hand. In fact, we’d probably all be less like Bob and
more like his wife.
This is instructive, in this discussion, because it
shows that in the representation of the faithful, one
is obligated to also show their lapses, the times
when they don’t measure up to their own ideals.
When the faithful aren’t represented as human (and
all that means), they become untrustworthy to
readers, which makes faithful people suspect in the
eyes of all kinds of people.
Another example: in my favorite television show,
The West Wing, President Bartlett slaves over a deci-
sion to pardon a death-row inmate who is up for
execution. He and others in the White House seek
(and receive unbidden) spiritual advice from all
kinds of people—priests, rabbis, and the like—and
at the end the president realizes that he blew it and
receives confession from Karl Malden.
I think this is a good representation of a faithful
person who has blown it and must face the music.
The danger when asking for accurate representa-
tion of the faithful comes when that “accuracy”
(and I use this term in the guarded, cautious way of
the postmodernist) is sacrificed for romantic and
idealized notions of what the faithful are and what
they do.
The presence of the gospel, God, or the Spirit in
stories of the faithful must, I think, be done with
care in order to avoid the sense that the author is
evangelizing. It also needs to maintain a story’s
need for conflict. And in a more complicated sense,
sometimes stories of the faithful need to be about
those lapses of our interaction with God, when we
have forgotten to pray, to act with kindness, to
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interact with grace. Sometimes God is still there
even when we are not doing the right thing, when
we have neglected our duties and forgotten him.
I think that our literature should show those
moments as well. I mention this because I think
that this view is not shared by many readers, who
want to be edified by tales of churchy heroism (e.g.,
the savvy, in-touch home teacher is prompted to
bring his home teaching family a ham and some
gifts on Christmas, thus saving the father shame
and bringing joy and happiness on Christmas).
In literature, I am more interested in “evil and its
consequences”; however, in general conference, I
like something else—reprimand. I very rarely like
stories that simply end with “Prayers were spoken,
aloud and in silence. Tears were shed in that sweet,
sweet moment of profound and pleading prayer.
This home teacher listened to the Spirit and went
willingly, without waiting, to do his Father’s will . . .”
As it has been mentioned, some people like these
kinds of stories, but I do not. I want the story of
the fellow who did not go to visit one of his fami-
lies on Christmas Eve because he and his wife are
the only members in his family. The scriptures
aren’t really melancholy, but I kind of like being
melancholy sometimes. Literature can help me see
and understand this important aspect of being in
the world.
Mormon Dialogue
William Morris (Jan. 16): What I would like is
some help finding examples of well-written dia-
logue in Mormon fiction. I especially would love to
hear of examples that are not pioneer, or provincial
Utah speakers, but rather are post-WWII/contem-
porary and/or educated/urban/suburban Mormons
speaking. Anything come to mind?
Or to be more general: Does anyone have any
theories or observations of how “contemporary”
Mormons speak? What do they speak about? Do
they exhibit any linguistic patterns that mark them
as Mormon?
Barbara R. Hume (Jan. 17): One thing I’ve
noticed in the 30 years I’ve been in the Church is a
particular voice pattern when they read scriptures.
The voice starts low, then continues rising until it
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drops on the last syllable of the line. On the next line,
the pattern starts again. It’s a bit mind-numbing,
but for all I know it may be common to many
people not accustomed to the concept of trying to
read aloud with feeling. In the Southern Baptist
church that I came from, scriptures were read with
great feeling, especially the hellfire-and-damnation
passages! We loved those! What a Baptist preacher
could do with Second Nephi!
In general, I don’t think you’ll notice so much a
common linguistic pattern, since that is so influ-
enced by education level and regional dialect, as a
noticeable underlying belief system that comes
through in a person’s communication. I can’t help
noticing that the speech of many people today is
tinged—well, drenched, actually—in cynicism, sar-
casm, and despondency, while the speech of many
of the Mormons I know reflects a firm belief that
things will turn out all right in the end, no matter
how long it takes and even if matters won’t get
straightened out until the next life. The fact of that
life after this one has a soothing effect on despair.
Alan Mitchell (Jan. 17): In prayer and testi-
mony meeting, Mormons are always thanking God
for “the opportunity” to be here, to worship, to
have the gospel, for our callings, etc. I wonder if
this has to do with our concept of free agency—we
don’t thank God for making us Mormon or good
or smart or holy but for giving us that opportunity.
But aside from the Mormon speech patterns,
which I consider distinct from Utah speech pat-
terns, I believe most of the speech comes from the
local culture where Mormons reside. [My character
from Angel of the Danube] Barry Monroe speaks
mostly like a Californian, but with Mormon and
German nouns thrown it. And as most missionar-
ies would agree, no self-respecting California dude
would ever say “flip.” Only male missionaries from
the Intermountain region would say the f-word.
My working hypothesis is to use local culture
and throw in a few Mormon words and phrases.
And I am grateful for the opportunity to share my
thoughts . . .
LuAnn Staheli (Jan. 19): I’ve noticed a similar
phrasing difference (I’m originally from Indiana)
when people pray aloud in Utah. They seem to pause
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in similar places and not where a natural pause
would be in speaking. In other words, they don’t stop
at the comma breaks but more often between the
subject and the verb or between adjectives and nouns.
They also use words differently from their real
meaning, i.e., praying for moisture (dew, conden-
sation) instead of rain or snow with water content.
Annette Lyon (Jan. 22): It’s a small thing, but
reading some of the posts reminded me of a non-
LDS wedding my brother and his family attended.
The minister performing the ceremony frequently
said “Amen” throughout, and my little nephew (I
think about three at the time) kept calling out
“Amen” every time he heard it. Afterward, another
LDS person approached my brother and said, “Are
you LDS, too? I figured you had to be after listen-
ing to your son.” Most religions don’t have the
congregation repeat “Amen” after a prayer, so I
guess that’s a trait that makes us stick out a bit.
Spiritual Passion in Art
J. Scott Bronson (Nov. 28): I saw Savior of the
World the other night and have been mulling over
ever since how I was going to say what I am going
to say about it. It has certainly caused me to think
a lot . . . however, my thinking isn’t anything near
what I’m sure the producers want me to think.
They want me to be thinking about my savior and
. . . and I don’t know what else. A good friend is in
the show, and she got me tickets for a preview per-
formance. We’ve had a few discussions about the
play, and how it came about, and how it has
changed and lots of other things—mostly, how it is
to work for the Church on an artistic endeavor.
We’ve come to the conclusion that . . . well, we’re
depressed. The play (which is a term that can only
apply loosely to what this is actually, which is a pag-
eant, but it’s not grand enough for that either) was
written by committee. And the committee was
given specific parameters: a play about Christ in
which Christ does not appear, that is very heavily
reliant on the use of scripture—quote it as often as
possible—and some others that I have either for-
gotten or haven’t been told.
I wanted to like this play. I was excited to see
what the Church was going to do with this rather
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splendid new state-of-the-art 900-seat theater—
which doesn’t feel that big, by the way. For some
time now I have been hoping that at last, the Church
would head in a new and provocative direction in
the field of the arts. Not yet. The play was bland.
Nothing dynamic about it at all. The scenes that
had potential for that—Mary telling Joseph that she
is with child, the shepherds watching over their
flocks by night, the visitations of the angels—all
were static and emotionless. My friend, who’s in
the show, assures me that there was a little more
action, a little more emotion and conflict, before a
small committee made up of three of the Council
of the Twelve came to preview the show a few times.
Thereafter there were pages and pages of changes
every day for two weeks that stripped the play of any
kind of exuberance. The injunction was to make the
play more reverent. The angels were not allowed to
talk to the other characters any more with any kind
of lively feeling, rather they were to talk at the other
characters with flat, solemn attitudes.
My friend has had, generally, a positive experi-
ence working on the show, but she is very disap-
pointed in the way that things were handled in
producing the thing. She says that she is unlikely to
ever work for the Church again in the capacity of
an artist. As she would discuss with the director her
disappointment in the watering down of the script,
she got a lot of justification along the lines of “The
Church is not in the business of trying to produce
great plays; the Church’s mission is to save souls.”
It’s quite possible that Savior of the World may help
to save a few souls, but I can’t make myself believe
that a play that challenged my thinking and my
feelings about the Savior would be damaging to the
Church’s mission. In fact, I think it would probably
save more souls than what this one will do.
Here’s the thing that depresses me about the
Church producing mediocre theater: whether they
mean it to happen or not, the plays produced in
this theatre will be held up by a majority of the
membership of the Church as the standard to
which we should all look. I know what that will
do to the audience I am trying to reach with plays
like Stones. I will hear this kind of comment: “If
your play is worthy of a faithful audience, it would
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be done by the Church, wouldn’t it? If your play
is not one that could be produced by the Church,
it’s not a play that should be produced at all.”
I know this will happen; I’ve seen it happen. I have
heard those words.
Here is what I have been thinking ever since I
saw the play Friday night: When did exuberance
become synonymous with irreverence?
I am glad that all the seats for all the perform-
ances sold out within days, but I think a play
should be appreciated for its merits, not simply
because it was produced by the Church.
When did solemn become synonymous with
reverent?
When did boring become the ideal?
Neal Kramer (Nov. 29): Scott Bronson’s com-
ments on Savior of the World raise some very diffi-
cult questions.
One is the hope we all seem to have that our
work, and our sophisticated standards of aesthetic
excellence, will be accepted by either the official
Church or by the culture, and that that will some-
how imply acceptance by God.
I think we can have fruitful discussions about
acceptance by the culture and even by the official
Church (like being quoted or praised in confer-
ence, etc.), but I think the deeper fear that we
might be offending God is nearly and maybe com-
pletely impossible to talk about.
I will give one example.
Quite a few years ago now Franco Zeffirelli, a
believing Catholic and passionate artist, made what
I thought was a beautiful film about the life of the
Savior. Many of my friends didn’t like it because it
seemed too Catholic, i.e., it wasn’t true. I expect
that many Catholics disliked it because it wasn’t
Catholic enough. Others didn’t like it because they
don’t like Zeffirelli’s whole approach to film. Etc.
Etc. Etc.
I still believe that Zeffirelli achieved something,
though, that Mormon artists also hope to accom-
plish—he used his considerable skills as an artist to
praise God, to bear testimony of the divinity of
Jesus Christ.
I admire the attempt and hope that our efforts to
do the same may be pleasing to God, in all the ways
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we define “please.” I believe much of what we do is,
in this special sense, an acceptable offering.
I also suspect that that can happen in official
Church productions, where nonartists have the
final say in what actually appears on stage.
Scott Tarbet (Nov. 29): Folks, this is a huge
experiment fraught with risks that the Brethren are
undertaking, and certain of them are without a
doubt viewing it with a jaundiced eye. “Art” isn’t
correlatable, and what they are doing comes per-
ilously close to art. But it’s most definitely not
art—it’s missionary work and it’s perfecting the
Saints. We have to remember that if the experiment
is going to work, giving faithful LDS artists oppor-
tunities for Church service qua live-theater-but-
not-quite-art and exposing many thousands of
non-theatergoers to the live experience, broadening
still other opportunities, we have got to give it a
chance. If we as an arts community within the
larger LDS community rip it to shreds, this new
opportunity will become even more circumscribed
and may disappear altogether.
Kellene Adams (Nov. 30): We as writers/artists
are, generally speaking, a fairly opinionated and
confident group. Which is good; we have to be in
order to put our personal creations in the public
domain for scrutiny and criticism.
This drama, as well as much of the material out
there produced by LDS artists, stimulates emotion
and feelings in a great many people. People cry,
ponder, pray, even change their lives, as a result of
Jack Weyland books (I know, because I know some
of those people) and the Legacy film and even heav-
ily correlated material.
While we might not consider it great art (and it’s
good that we don’t, because we need to stretch and
push the envelope and offer people deeper and richer
stuff ), I think it’s important that we don’t diminish
or demean those people (who actually may repre-
sent the majority of LDS audiences) who are moved
and touched and changed by what we might call
milquetoast.
Now having said that, I feel like the list is one
place where LDS writers and creators ought to be
able to say what they think without having to care-
fully weigh words. I just wanted to share this one
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thought that has come to me repeatedly as I’ve read the last minute, and some of them had their feelings
the list. hurt. Now, you can’t say, “That’s the way things are
Steve Perry (Nov. 30): Presentations about the in the real world; they’ll just have to get used to it,”
life of Christ, especially his last week, are often called because we have already established that this pro-
“Passions” or “Passion Plays,” and for good reason. duction cannot be judged or criticized by real-world
I need that passion in my life—it takes a lot of standards, correct? That type of thing is unfortu-
spiritual passion to get my wife and I up to lead our nate and sometimes occurs. If my friend had any
four less-than-enthusiastic elementary and pre- real gripe, it was the way those types of things were
school children in reading and discussing the scrip- handled. And she came out all right, so her com-
tures every morning. (Luckily for us, the scriptures plaint was on others’ behalf. What I’m trying to
themselves and the heartfelt cries and admonitions reiterate here is that the “institutional bias in the
of prophets past are often passionate enough to Church against arts and artists” that you men-
help me discover some sparks of relevance for these tioned will be—I fear—fueled by this play, rather
recalcitrant youths I love.) than doused. I find that unfortunate. It saddens
I need that spiritual energy flowing into me as me . . . for myself, yes, and for every artist trying to
often as possible to keep me going. I long to con- gain favor in the eyes of their own community.
nect with it at church, though those moments are And the questions arise that I must seriously
less frequent than I’d like, despite my constant consider now: Is exuberance irreverent? Is the pas-
attempts. Most often the connection is found and sion in my work unsuitable in the eyes of God? Is
I am fed and recharged through spiritually passion- the tone of my crafted expression unworthy of divine
ate music (from all genres and most denomina- praise? Up until a week ago I thought the answer to
tions—almost never LDS recordings). Nearly as those questions was no. Now I’m not so sure.
often I find it in live theater well done. Less often I
find it through literature, though that may not be
the case for most of you on a literary list!
Eric D. Snider (Dec. 1): The problem is that the
Church isn’t touting this as a missionary tool or a
method of perfecting the Saints. They’re calling it
a theatrical production. I agree that you have to
judge a work by what it is . . . but what if the artist
himself is incorrect about what it is? Do we judge
Savior of the World by theater standards (which is
what the Church says it is), or do we judge it by
make-the-audience-feel-fuzzy standards (which is
what it actually is)?
J. Scott Bronson (Dec. 1): Many people coming
to see Savior of the World will think it’s great art.
That’s fine. My daughter loved it. I will not deride
their judgment. What I think is unfortunate is that
many people will also believe that great art is cre-
ated by committee with apostles making everything
“appropriate” in the end. Again, I am not saying
that the Church did anything wrong or under-
handed or anything like that. A little unorganized,
maybe—several people were cut from the show at

Spring 2001 92 IRREANTUM

Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 93

And Now for Something Completely In his “Book of Mormon Language” entry, Brian
Different: Announcing IRREANTUM’s Stubbs includes the word rameumptom in a dis-
cussion of the Hebrew roots of Book of Mormon
R A M E U M P T O M terms: “‘Rameumptom’ (Alma 31:21), meaning
‘holy stand,’ contains consonantal patterns suggest-
By Edgar C. Snow Jr. ing the stems /rmm/ramah/, ‘to be high,’ and
/tmm/tam/tom/, ‘to be complete, perfect, holy.’
IRREANTUM has been flooded with over 1,000 The /p/ between the /m/ and /t/ is a linguistically
requests to start up a humor column. As a conse- natural outgrowth of a bilabial /m/ in coluster with
quence, and in order to finally stop my repeated e- a stop /t/, such as the /p/ in /assumption/ from
mail requests from continually disabling the editors’ /assume + tion/, and the /b/ in Spanish /hombre/
mailboxes, IRREANTUM has created this, the Rame- from Latin /homere/.”
umptom column. Now, at long last, there is a per- So, there you have it. It is simply a natural out-
manent outlet for Mormon humor, a place reserved growth of Irreantum that we feature the column
for all five of the Mormon humorists to publish Rameumptom and thereby allow the bilabial colus-
their material from time to time. ter of Mormon humor hombres a place from which
Why Rameumptom, you might ask? If the term they can stand and wax humorous or satirical about
irreantum, meaning “many waters” (1 Ne. 17:5), Mormon culture in ways that otherwise might get
covers Mormon literature in general, then why not them stoned in testimony meeting, but ultimately
rameumptom, meaning “holy stand” (Alma 31:21), not excommunicated. When I say “stoned,” I mean
to cover Mormon humor in specif—what the!?! with rocks, something left ambiguous in the expla-
Chris Bigelow, managing editor of IRREANTUM nation by Brother Stubbs. After conducting my
and the man responsible for naming this column, is research I suggested to Chris the alternative col-
unavailable (read: won’t answer my e-mails) to umn title “Unstoned,” suggesting the same thing,
explain to me why he’s calling it Rameumptom. At but perhaps at the risk of being slightly confused
first, I was left to my own surmises and guessed he with another Mormon magazine that also pub-
just thought it plain sounded funny. I tested this lishes Mormon humor. But he never responded to
idea the other night on my two-year-old. She my e-mails.
thought it was humorous if I sang “Rameumptom” Please e-mail submissions for Rameumptom to
over and over again to the tune of “Shall the Youth edgarsnow@yahoo.com.
of Zion Falter?” replacing the “No” and “Yes” parts
with “-tom.” Try it: “Rameumptom Rameumptom
Rameumptom Rameumptom Rameumptom Rame-
umptom Rameumptom Rameump—tom.” The
bass part of the chorus works especially well, don’t
you think? This test was less successful with the
melody of “If You Could Hie to Kolob.”
Upon further reflection, I wondered if perhaps
our managing editor was attempting to elevate the
position of Mormon humor in Mormon letters by
including some of it in these hallowed pages of
IRREANTUM. Then I did a little research and learned
the following information from the Encyclopedia of
Mormonism that I think explains it all and no
doubt was considered by Brother Bigelow in his
editorial decision-making process.

IRREANTUM 93 Spring 2001

Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 94

Association for Mormon Letters

Order Form
( ) AML membership
Includes IRREANTUM subscription, a copy of the book-length AML Annual,
discounts to AML events, and support of AML efforts.
Annual dues: $20 ($15 for full-time students)

( ) IRREANTUM subscription without AML membership

Four issues: $12

( ) IRREANTUM back issues (prices include postage)

To view the complete table of contents for each issue, visit
www.xmission.com/~aml/irreantum/irreantum-back.htm
___ March 1999 ($3): Premiere issue
___ June 1999 ($3): Interview with Marvin Payne
___ Sept. 1999 ($3): Interview with Levi Peterson
___ Winter 1999–2000 ($3): Interview with Rachel Ann Nunes
___ Spring 2000 ($3): Interview with Margaret Young
___ Summer 2000 ($4): Interview with Dean Hughes
___ Autumn 2000 ($4): Interviews with Richard Dutcher, Robert Van Wagoner
___ Winter 2000–01 ($4): Interviews with Dave Wolverton, Mary Clyde
___ Spring 2001 ($4): Interview with Robert Kirby

Total enclosed: ______

Make check payable to AML and mail to:
AML, P.O. Box 51364, Provo, UT 84605-1364.

Name __________________________________
Address __________________________________
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 95

Looking for the lighter side of the gospel in action?

Check out Robert Kirby’s website at
www.kirbybooks.com.
Spring 2001 issue.qxd 6/5/01 10:33 AM Page 96

New from Signature Books

Of Curious Workmanship:
Musings on Things Mormon
By Edgar C. Snow Jr.

What reviewers are saying:

“If you gene-spliced Hugh Nibley with Steve

Martin, you would get Ed [Snow].”
—R.W. Rasband, AML-List

“Good-humored, good-spirited fun.”

—Richard Cracroft, BYU Magazine

“Snow’s wry voice reminds us of Mark Twain

and Garrison Keillor. . . . Curious workman-
ship indeed!”
—Elouise Bell, from the foreword