Deseret News – A Motley Vision

Three posts on The House at Rose Creek by Jenny Proctor

In recent years, as a higher percentage of my reading has become decidedly “Mormon,” I have read very little published by Deseret or Covenant. I’m ashamed of my reluctance. In part I’ve been hesitant because although I hear that quality at these houses has grown vastly over the past years, I also once heard wide acclaim for Baptists at Our Barbecue by Robert Farrell Smith. And hoo boy but was that an unfunny disaster. (Sadly, this was before I started blogging every book I read, so I can’t get more specific than that.)

But as recent discussions attest (eg), coming into a genre without knowing its rules can lead to expectations failing to be met and a disappointment which might not be fair to the work under consideration (consider the recent Deseret News review I discussed here).

Why is why the first of these three posts will be: Continue reading “Three posts on The House at Rose Creek by Jenny Proctor”

In which Theric takes [minor] issue with a review in the Deseret News

I hope you’ve all seen this delightfully miscontstruing review of Jennifer Quist’s Love Letters of the Angels of Death. Generally, I’m happy to let wrongheadedness do its own thing, but a couple points seem to demand rebuttal and Deseret News hasn’t written back regarding my kind offer to do so in their pages. Continue reading “In which Theric takes [minor] issue with a review in the Deseret News”

Sunday Lit Crit Sermon: The MIA “Dramatic Clubs”

HoraceGWhitney I’ve written before about the once great status of Mormon theatre, and the infrastructure it once enjoyed. So I was pleased to find comments about the beginning of this infrastructure from Horace G. Whitney, longtime Deseret News editor-in-chief and the paper’s drama critic. In my opinion infrastructure, broadly conceived, accounts for much of what has happened in Mormon drama over the past century. Whitney, in the article below, describes a vision of how drama could operate under the MIA and ward amusement committees (which were roughly the equivalent of the recently disbanded ward activities committees, I assume).

Continue reading “Sunday Lit Crit Sermon: The MIA “Dramatic Clubs””

Sunday Lit Crit Sermon: Copyright and “Dramatic Clubs”

HoraceGWhitney Since I’m late getting this post up, I found a short statement from an Improvement Era article that I haven’t seen elsewhere. Where most of the statements we find from General Authorities and in Church magazines focus on the morality of the content of literature, urging Church members to select only the good, and writers and artists to create only the moral, this statement instead talks about the morality of how we use literature–specifically respect for the author’s rights. Fortunately, it is also a statement about something that is very relevant to today’s conversations about literature.

Continue reading “Sunday Lit Crit Sermon: Copyright and “Dramatic Clubs””

A Short History of Mormon Publishing: Commercial LDS Publishing Begins

The fourth of eight posts and an introduction. See also Part III, Part II, Part I, Introduction

The arrival of the transcontinental railroad to Utah in 1869 marked the end of a period of relative isolation for the LDS Church. It also came just at the end of a period of almost no Mormon publishing in Utah and the United States. Continue reading “A Short History of Mormon Publishing: Commercial LDS Publishing Begins”