Monday, September 10, 2012

Good Literature Speaks to Adversity & Struggle

Earlier this year at a faculty seminar I made the comment that Mormon literature was yet to really be significant because it was too middle class. One colleague from the English department took exception and rattled off several works he thought were important. I quickly added that while I had been too sweeping in my comments I still believed that adversity and challenge is what makes good literture. If not, then all we write about is how well or not we fit into our institutions and/or our mainstream.

The same can be said about the intellectual pursuit. When we focus constantly on the personal we create small worlds around us that usually lead us to small ideas. I came from a generation that was engaged in large ideas but nevertheless there were people who still though small. We had civil rights, feminism, national liberation movements, Vietn Nam, the Cold War, the rise of conservatism, etc. and yet my brother would say years later, "where was I when this was happening?"

Real intellectual pursuit does not come in simply reading many books or engaging in unlimited academic conferences or literary discussions. It comes only when we put to use what we are learning and discovering. Now, you can't just have "zeal without knowledge" as one famous Mormon intellectual use to say, because then your learning might just be as inconsequential as that of the library couch potato. And without doubt a serious intellectual pursuit does require lots of quiet time in order to think and process what knowledge we accumulate.

But it also requires us to engage in the physical as well as metaphsycial world. It requires us to look deeply within us and then profoundly outside of us to see where we can serve a purpose. It means connecting what we write with what we see and feel and experience, and particularly with what we do. No doubt that not all that we do physically or even verbally makes us good with the written word, expands our mental capacity, or even makes us sprititually profound. But an indifference to that which swirls around us will surely guaranteed that we will not achieve any of the aforementioned.

When I feel detached, indifferent and insensitive, I realized that it is time to become involved with my students and my community in a different way, to expand my writing themes, attend different conferences or activities, and pay attention to those issues around me. More important I think of expanding my horizons and stretching my knowledge  so as to force me to look beyond my world. It can sometimes be about isolating myself--ala David Thoreau on Walden Pond--and at other times about rolling up my sleeves and doing something useful. That often means finding something to struggle over and to be challenged by.

One caution: struggle and adversity cannot simply be invented and they are anything but one-dimensional. That is one reason why Soviet writers and musicians rarely created any good art--though they played great music created by past Russian composers who did have much to write about adversity under the Czars. And one saw the decline of literature in Cuba soon after Fidel Castro came to power because it became all about promoting THE Revolution and not about the struggle and challenge of creating and defending the ideals--not the politics--of a revolution.

This happened to Chicano Movement-sponsored writing and music and is the reason why Chicano artists were the first to begin abandoning the Movement. As long as they were writing about struggle and liberation they were good. As soon as they started writing to promote the "institutions" within the Movement ideas dried up.

I wish I had been more explicit with the English professor that Mormon literature will get better when we start talking more about the struggles of people of color and women and less about "fitting in to" the faith. Or when our literature maturely depicts the struggle to transcend institutional limitations. It isn't all about dissident writing--thought some of it can be--but about the battles one confrtonts to remain faithful to an entity that like all other institutionalized ones has its particular needs and passions. That is what good religious writing has been about. Even that which promotes the faith.

Make no mistake, this kind of writing on any topic is painful and sometimes uncomfortable but it comes with the territory.

Next post: Can someone write good literature (or scholarship) without talking about pain, struggle or adversity?