This post[Cross-posted from Mormon Renaissance. We’re trying to get the discussion going over there, so if you do comment, it’d be great if you could post your comments on that blog instead. Or on both blogs, I guess. :)]
I used to think I knew my stuff when it came to Mormon literature. I’d read the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites books as a kid, came across Charly as a teen, and had heard of The Work and the Glory. That was all there was, wasn’t it?
It’s almost a little embarrassing to admit that my cramped perspective lasted until not too long ago. That narrow vision began expanding when I heard about books like Maurine Whipple’s The Giant Joshua, Nephi Anderson’s Added Upon, and Virginia Sorensen’s A Little Lower Than the Angels. Browsing through the LDS fiction shelves at both BYU Bookstore and the Harold B. Lee Library confirmed the staggering reality that not only was there a body of Mormon literature out there that I’d never even heard of, but it was even somewhat substantial. Novels, short stories, poetry, plays — a whole microcosm of literature from a Mormon perspective, and I’d had no idea it existed. None.
It’s like digging around in the attic, unearthing a family history, and learning about ancestors I didn’t know I had. This is my heritage. And now that I’m becoming more and more aware of how many branches there are on this literary family tree, I feel my heart turning towards the fathers — a yearning to read the novels and plays and poems of my spiritual forebears.
But, as in doing genealogy, desire isn’t enough. I still haven’t read Whipple or Anderson or Sorensen. Or most of the Mormon fiction out there, for that matter. Being a Mormon who loves books, I should find it easy to muster up the desire to read these Mormon classics…shouldn’t I?
It seems to be a lot like reading the classics in general. I want to, but it’s ten times harder to pick up a classic than it is to pick up something published a couple years ago. Sure, the classics are good for me, but they take more effort. And so the natural man in me swerves away and skates down the path of least resistance — and I end up reading “easier” books.
But it’s not just that. I seem to have a subconscious conviction that Mormon literature just isn’t as good as the rest of the world’s literature. That with only so many decades of life on earth and so many books to read, my time is better spent elsewhere. And I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that way.
Now, while we certainly have room for improvement, I think this inferiority complex has got to go. It’s keeping us in shackles, both as readers and as writers. How are we going to produce our own Miltons and Shakespeares if we keep thinking we’re not as good as everyone else?
Not everyone feels that way, certainly, but most Mormon literature is the underside of an iceberg, and most Mormon readers seem to gravitate toward the literature of the world at large. It should be the other way round.
