Tending the Garden: Essays on Mormon Literature (Essays on Mormonism Series)
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Book Summary Information
Editor: Lavina F. AndersonEditor: Eugene England
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1996-05
ISBN: 1560850191
Number of pages: 219
Publisher: Signature Books
Book Reviews of Tending the Garden: Essays on Mormon Literature (Essays on Mormonism Series)
Book Review: Good Critical Survey of Mormon Literature
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a long-needed anthology of classic essays of LDS literary criticism. It is divided into two parts: historical perspectives and explications of specific works. You'll find great stuff like Edward Geary's meditation on the "Mormon lost generation"; a lucid, beautifully laid-out historical overview of LDS literary history by Eugene England; and stirring essays by Bruce W. Jorgensen, Karl Keller and Tory C. Anderson arguing for an expansive, generous canon and against the ancient Mormon prejudice that depicting evil is the same thing as endorsing it. Two favorite essays are Eugene England's look at "non-Jack fiction" (including his definitive review of Levi Peterson's " the Backslider"), and Peterson's own "Juanita Brooks: The Mormon Historian as Tragedian." This essay is very close to my heart, as it delineates how history-writing can become art; and also movingly explains how the tragedian can transform our darkest moments into "experience for our good."
One flaw in this collection is, as P.J. O'Rourke once said of another book, "Its covers are too close together." This collection seems way too short at 219 pages. I would have enjoyed 100 more pages of the seminal essays listed in the preface but omitted in the text. Another flaw is the lack of new quality criticism from the most recent generation of LDS scholars. There is a post-modernist reading here of Terry Tempest Williams' "Refuge", written by C.K. Farr and Philip A. Snyder; however, I found it almost unreadable. In my view LDS criticism faces danger on the one hand from stultifying "theory" approaches that suck the life and the fun out of reading. On the other hand, there is danger (especially at Brigham Young University) from a demand for a kind of super-orthodoxy from LDS critics that precludes discussion of anything "controversial." (I really worry about who is going to replace the vigorous, outward-looking generation of Eugene England. Even the ever amiable, good-natured Richard Cracroft may be a dinosaur and not even know it; he's too honest about touchy parts of our past.) Perhaps we get a glimpse of the future at BYU in Bruce Jorgenson's story of the student who didn't want to discuss in class Anton Chekhov's "The Lady with the Toy Dog" because of its adulterous characters.
This book is a splendid record of our literary past. I just hope that in the future we can live up to the "faithful realism" that is the best of our tradition.
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