“Mormon Shakespeare,” Not the greatest, but I’m too cheap to pay the $30 a month for a Midjourney membership to make it better.
Occasionally you have an idea percolating in the back of your head that you intend to eventually develop and write out, only to find that somebody has already quite adequately made the argument, thus relieving you from the obligation to spend time to write it up. Such recently happened with a Substack piece I ran across. (And yes, Sam Bankman-Fried is not the paragon of moral or intellectual rigour, and according to Wikipedia the author of the article used to believe some nasty things, but if we insist that every good idea has to come from somebody who’s morally pure we’d never get anywhere.)
Because they’ve done all the groundwork I won’t rehash the arguments here, you should just read the linked brief article, but to summarize: the author makes a “Shakespeare is fake” argument. The old-school humanities used to posit that the past had objectively great, once-in-a-century writers and artists. The Mozarts, Dickens, Shakespearean, or Miltons that we all had to study in high school and college, when statistically there should be dozens if not hundreds of them in the world today given how few people had the option of being a Mozart, suggesting that the old-and-great sense that underlies much of the classic humanities is kind of an “emperor has no clothes” situation. (Interestingly, Mark Hoffmann kind of made this point when he composed and forged an Emily Dickinson poem which passed literary muster.) Like I have mentioned previously, I had a sense this was true when I finally admitted to myself that many of the “Great Works” weren’t so great and didn’t do what some claimed they did, but it was nice to see somebody flesh out the argument.
So what are the implications Church-wise of the “Shakespeare is fake” argument?
One of the favorite quotes in the Mormon arts and literature space is Orson F. Whitney’s quip that we will “have Miltons and Shakespeares of our own…In God’s name and by His help we will build up a literature whose top shall touch heaven, though its foundations may be deep in hell.”
Even without God’s assistance, by pure dint of numbers I suspect Orson F. Whitney’s prophecy has already come to pass. Elizabethan England had a population of 4 million people. I’m no expert on gender dynamics in Elizabethan England, but, channeling Virginia Woolf on this topic, I’m assuming women didn’t have much of a chance of making it in the playwright world, so cut that in half to 2 million people. Furthermore, only about half of men were literate, so cut that in half again to 1 million people. Plus even the literate men were barely surviving and didn’t have a lot of time or resources to long-hand write-up a manuscript, so now we’re in the hundreds of thousands if not tens of thousands. Finally, I doubt there were a lot of slush piles with hidden JK Rowlings back then. I may be wrong, but I assume you had to be even more tapped into the drama world than now to make it as a playwright. At the end of all the numbers, we’ve almost certainly had more than a few Mormon Shakespeares (and for music Mozarts, for art Leonardo Da Vincis). So where are they?
Of course, the “where are the Shakespeares?” question is intrinsically tied up with the “Shakespeare is fake” argument. The point of all this is that the phenomena of Shakespeare, Mozart, and Da Vinci is not one of miraculous, once-in-a-millenia talent, but rather of the sociological process of canonization by people who think it’s their right to canonize (famously, people didn’t really care for Moby Dick until one of the cool kids said it was great). Since Mark Twain Latter-day Saints have never been popular with the coffee-shop literati, so I doubt any work of Mormon fiction will ever win a Nobel Prize or become the Great American Novel no matter how brilliant. (While not Mormon fiction per se, even our writers that do make it have to deal with demeaning nose-holding by said elitist literati.)
So I suspect we have to engage in a sort of internal canonization process, which to some extent we’ve already done with both the highbrow and lowbrow, whether it’s The Giant Joshua or The Great Brain series (and yes, The Great Brain is technically early-Utah Catholic, but it’s Mormon enough I’m claiming it). Still, if the operating variable is number of people with the literacy, know-how, and spare time to engage in creative pursuits, we should expect more Giant Joshuas and Great Brains coming down the pike (but they’ll have to be shorter to accommodate our shrinking attention spans–ain’t nobody got time for The Giant Joshua anymore). I’m not terribly surprised that no Robert Frosts came out of the starvation years in early Utah (even if Great Works greatness is an artificial construct it requires at least some talent), but with a much larger and, if Utah is any indication, economically thriving population we now have the bandwidth. (As an aside, during a recent visit to Utah I attended a play at the new Hale Center Theater–wow, much more polished and professional than that charming but somewhat hole-in-the-wall local neighborhood Hale Center Theater in 1990s West Orem I remember).
In addition to the raw numbers, we can expect our arts and literature to become more developed because of the Flynn effect, or the empirical finding that people all around the world are becoming much, much more intelligent than their ancestors, if we assume intelligence has some kind of a causal relationship with cultural product quality (even if it’s not the whole thing). The reason for the Flynn effect is highly contested (economic development probably explains some, but not all, of it), but the fact is indisputable. More arguably, I’m convinced that popular culture is becoming more sophisticated and developed across time (e.g. cliched jump scares in horror films don’t do it for us anymore, although I do nostalgically enjoy a predictable Cheers re-run now and then). You add all that up together– more intelligent Mormon genre writers with extra time and resources to write combined with the more sophisticated popular culture environment, and I think we have the potential for a golden age of Mormon arts, cinema, and literature.
I’m not as engaged in the Mormon Lit scene as a reader as I want to be, but I can’t help but think we have some greatness coming down the pike even if I, like most other nonspecialists, rely on signals about greatness from others about whether a particular work is worth my time (although I still cannot for the life of me make it through the first ten pages of Harry Potter, so maybe my tastes are a bit heterodox). I suspect the problem at this point is culling the mass of manuscripts and selecting and drawing attention to the brilliant gems that are already out there (everybody is working on a book, and if you’re not then you’re lying). In terms of the arts, I appreciated that the Church committee on the new hymnal was open minded enough to consider original works because, again, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t have a Bach or two or ten in our active membership, and once you take away the historical experience I aesthetically enjoy the Church’s International Art Competition entries as much as I enjoy the Smithsonian Art Museums.
The point is not that the Great Works aren’t great in some sense or another, but that so is so much else, and as our world of experience and knowledge grows beyond the relatively limited scope of what we had access to and time for before, so too will our art, literature, music, and cultural thinking in general.
Comments
15 responses to “Where are the Latter-day Saint Shakespeares?”
Thx for this thought-provoking essay. Your mentioning early-Utah writers reminded me of one of the most entertaining light books to emerge from 1900s Utah: “Papa Married A Mormon”. Written by John D. Fitzgerald, who was raised in a Catholic/Mormon family, chose to attach himself to the C faction but could have as easily remained in the M faction. An entertaining portrait of the typical Mormon household from that period.
The old-school humanities with an interest in intrinsic literary greatness haven’t existed in close to a century, at least. So Hanania is arguing about something that your average state legislator cares about a lot more than your average English professor. Plus he sidesteps the whole issue of originality and influence – points 2 and 3 from his list. Sure, someone could write a new play just like a Shakespeare play today, but that wouldn’t make it great – it would make it derivative. Hanania recognizes that architecture “depends on the complex interplay of political, historical, technological, and economic factors” – but literature really is the same, even if a lot more people have access to literacy and writing implements.
I pretty much agree that a lot of contemporary popular art is pretty good, and I’ve long thought that the whole “Where are the Mormon Shakespeare” discussion was overwrought.
Not Shakespeare, but Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, Brandon Sanderson, Shanon Hale, etc. isn’t a bad lineup.
Raymond: As noted, I’m a huge fan of Fitzgerald’s children literature, but I need to try out his adult books. Going on the to-read list.
Jonathan: That’s a good point about professional humanities scholars. I’m conflicted on their direction.
On one hand I agree with their turn away from the canon (although my understanding is that they framed it more in terms of representativeness and qualitative judgments than the statistical argument above), but I’m not sure their replacement is much better, but then again I’m not sure what I’d replace it with.
Poolcop: Yes, we’re not doing too bad.
If I’m reading the “Shakespeare is fake” argument correctly – and I may not be – is it saying that there are lots of great writers, but due to luck, we tend to remember the great ones that happened during population bottlenecks, because it was easier to achieve a critical mass of consumption during that time, and then the greatness just kind of stuck.
If it weren’t for AI, I would agree with you that there would be more LDS artistic creators. And while there might be more, the problem is that you and I are likely to not discover them because of AI. AI is likely to flood the market with mediocre art to such a degree that we will likely be spending our time on that, instead of stumbling across the diamond in the rough that we would have otherwise found. The count of diamonds may be increasing, but the volume of rough will be outpacing it dramatically.
Years ago, when I worked at a children’s book publisher, I expressed my disdain for the old “Little Golden Books” to my boss. He quickly disabused me of my judgement, pointing out that without “Little Golden Books” the market for children’s books in the U.S. would not have developed and created the opportunities for many of the books that came along later — without “Little Golden Books” there might not have been “Where the Wild Things Are” or a host of other well-known works that have changed lives. Since then, my take away has been that it takes a lot of what we think are mediocre works to create the environment for acclaimed literature.
Rather than worrying what literature is good or great (as if such a thing can even be determined — I have yet to see any widely accepted criteria for what is good in literature, and at this point I don’t think such a thing is even possible), I suspect a better question is what literature do we need for our culture and our lives? In the gospel lens, the question is what literature will help both Church members and non-members come to Christ?
Unfortunately, that question has received little attention. Too often Church leaders and members dismiss the question, assuming that scripture provides everything needed. This is not unlike the situation that Orson F. Whitney faced when he gave the “quip” you mentioned—except it was far more than a quip. It was, in fact, the subject of his 1886 “Home Literature” address, which, with other things, led Church members in the 1890s to start writing short stories and novels as part of the Home Literature movement. Somehow we have forgotten his point, that we need this literature to develop a culture that will ennoble us.
In contrast the literary hegemony in the U.S. seems caught in its own understanding of what is “good” — based either on what sells most (in the trade book marketplace — sold in stores and online) or something like what is most innovative (in the academic or literary market). So unless LDS authors allow themselves to be captured by these strains, and get attention because they sell a lot of books or because they are innovative (neither of which are necessarily bad), its hard to see how they will get a lot of attention.
IMO, the problem comes down to the fact that the LDS audience is a sub-culture in the broader US culture — so we either need to act independently and develop our own literature with its standards and values independent of the US market or we need to let our values be subsumed in the US values and write what the broader culture needs.
Unfortunately, the LDS market has chosen to do neither. The mainstream of LDS publishing (i.e., Deseret Book) is focused on paper-thin stereotypical values based on the portrayal of morality instead of any actual wrestle with moral issues, while otherwise accepting the same values as the mainstream trade market (i.e., what sells best). There is little strategic attention to what the worldwide audience for LDS books will need. LDS publishing seems like it is all about producing LDS versions of what is popular in “the world,” instead of what will help Church members think about what it means to be LDS and Christ-like.
I suspect that the solution to these issues is getting more Church members to value our LDS culture, to read our literature, use it in our lessons, talks and how we process the world. [It would have been nice if our people applied the lessons of the Book of Mormon to the recent election, for example.] I’m afraid our growth in the past 50-75 years has led to diluting and neglecting the culture we have. We have a lot to do to reclaim it.
Jader3rd: It’s a little simpler than that; I think you could basically make the argument in a sentence that, since we have exponentially more people with the means to engage in humanistic pursuits, we should expect many, many more Shakespeares, which implies that the intrinsic, once-in-a-millenia greatness imputed to past writers, composers, and artists is fake.
Yes, I agree that AI will flood the market with mediocre content, especially in things like children’s books once we nail consistent, frame-by-frame characters. However, I’d argue in some cases that AI is flooding the market with great material. For example, a skilled Midjourneyist can produce artistic content as good as any Andy Warhol, and MJ fora are simply producing a lot of great art.
@Kent Larsen: You’re right, it wasn’t a “quip,” but I guess I was referring to how the phrase is used as a quip: “e.g. when are we going to get Shakespeares of our own?”
But yes, I agree with your comment, although I’d point out that I think the tensions you note exist in virtually every subculture that is large enough to produce its own cultural content.
The argument hinges on the premise that Shakespeare wasn’t that great after all. Therefore, Latter-Day Saints have already fulfilled the prophecy.
I cannot accept this premise, because I find Shakespeare as good as his reputation. Literary quality is not a mystification, but a matter of experience. I have read all of Shakespeare’s plays and find them captivating. I think there is room for debate about what writers deserve to be canonized, as well as discussions of difference of taste, but this particular argument seems to try to negate the issue entirely. There is room for the “old humanities” impulse, not least because they really did identify writers who still speak to us now.
A significant portion of the “success” of the old masters is simply in being first. That’s not to say that any random play or playwright could have replaced Shakespeare, but that he had the fortune to be significantly better than his predecessors, which was a much easier task back then. Art of any sort is very tough to produce from a culture that requires its artists to be farmers in order to survive. Once the black death was over and the printing press had been invented (and whatever else you want to add to this list) there was an opportunity for a great playwright to exist in the English speaking world. Within a hundred years or so, Shakespeare arrived and essentially laid claim to a large swath of space in the literary world. You’ve probably seen analyses that break all stories down to 36 basic plots (or 20, or 7 or whatever number the author comes up with) and Shakespeare already has most of those slots filled, which is why we enjoy making movies based on his plays so much. Being first is much easier than edging out someone who is already great. So, sure, Shakespeare wasn’t the first guy to write a play, but he had a lot fewer people to push out of the way.
As the OP mentioned, women weren’t given a lot of opportunity to compete with Shakespeare, but it probably wasn’t until about 200 years later that the idea of a woman as an author writing about women’s lives seemed remotely possible, and suddenly, there is Jane Austen filling that space. And now, 200 years later, we like making her books into movies, too. Other great writers have followed, but they must either be so much better than those before them so as to supplant the old works, or they have to find increasingly narrow corners to succeed in.
I don’t think this is a difficult question at all. Put simply, great art is hard. As a culture, we tend not to like hard. We prefer easy and faith affirming. That is genuinely not meant as an insult. It’s simply human nature.
Another aspect of great art is that it speaks to people across time. A work can be very good today, but if it doesn’t stand the test of time, it’s not great. Poolcop lists 4 authors they deem great. One was very popular, but is already disappearing after only about 20 years. Unless she somehow makes a big comeback, she won’t be deemed great. The other 3 are very good and seem to have much more staying power. They might be on the way.
@Poolcop. You actually put Stephenie Meyer in the same sentence with Shakespeare? That’s probably why we’ll never have a Mormon Shakespeare.
I don’t know why Church members haven’t produced a “Shakespeare” other than the most obvious reason: we haven’t immersed ourselves deeply enough as a people in the great arts of the past. Hence, we don’t draw from a deep enough well. We probably never have.
-Eliza R. Snow, widely honored by LDS as a poet, produced mostly contrived schlock, however devout. Go ahead, pick any of her poems at random.
-Almost all, maybe all, of the then-newest copyright-1985 hymns were uninspiring, 4/4, mediocre pablum snoozefests. Find a single one that’s worthy of the same ink as any of the old standards. Even McConkie’s “I Believe in Christ” is a McClunker—it rhymes “God” with “sod.”
-Go look at the artwork in any Deseret Book store. Gad.
Church culture suffers from the same problem Hollywood is now going through. It is not deeply rooted enough in the humanities. No wonder we get mostly ridiculous and shallow sequels. Shakespeare?! We haven’t even come anywhere near C.S. Lewis. (How about a single general conference talk—ever—of the caliber of The Great Divorce?) The Church plays a role in this by dumbing everything down and delivering correlated curricula suffering further from Marvel-like sequelitis.
I appreciate the philosophizing. But I wish one person here had listed a 21st century Latter-day Saint writer or work they like. Shakespeare’s London had people who would pay to see original theater. We have better education and higher population numbers, but we need a more active audience.
A few starter recommendations:
Drama: Eric Samuelsen’s The Plan and Melissa Leilani Larson’s Little Happy Secrets.
Poetry: Darlene Young’s Homespun and Angel Feathers and Michael Collings Taleisin.
Novels: Angela Hallstrom’s Bound on Earth and Rafael de la Lanza’s Eleusis.
Memoir: Alison Hong Merrill’s 99 Fire Hoops and Gerd Skibbe’s Konfession Mormone.
Comics: Scott Hales’ Garden of Enid and Matt Page’s Future Day Saints.
You should take a look at Irreantum, Wayfare, and the Mormon Lit Blitz.
And you’ve got to read some Steven Peck and probably, by the year of our Lord 2025, some James Goldberg.
James G., thank you for the suggestions. I will take a look at some of that. I am a new subscriber to Wayfare; I have read only the third issue (my first.) We’ll see where that goes, but it’s certainly better than anything the Church itself puts out.
That’s an interesting point about needing a more active audience. My experience here in Utah (as a newer, two-year resident), though, is that it is often difficult and expensive to get tickets to anything good. The Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City is very well-supported and has been forever. The Utah Symphony Christmas concert we just attended in Salt Lake was packed. (Although I wish there had been more young people in attendance.) MoTab’s Christmas concert had sardine-level crowd density, as usual.
Poets, no doubt, could use a more active audience. I confess indifference to free verse. I much prefer formalist poetry, which is very hard to find these days. Can you suggest any good, contemporary formalist poets?
Ray: I’m worried my OP was too negative when there’s a positive slant on all this; emphasizing not so much that Shakespeare was bad as much as the fact that there is so much that is also great.
DaveW: Amen
PWS: Of course, which ones stand the test of time is famously hard to discern in advance.
M.V. I agree with most of your comment, but I’ll point out that with, for example, Elder Maxwell we did have some gems. (And I haven’t been in a Deseret Book store for years, so I can’t speak to that).
James Goldberg: I second the thanks for the starter list. I’ll have to admit to being a little burned out from canonical Mormon lit lists when I read “The Backslider,” and somehow a book about how a young adult can’t stop masturbating didn’t make it onto my “Mormon Shakespeare” list, but you’re right that we should expand into more recent, living work.
As a side note on more modern authors, I’ve really enjoyed Brian Evenson (not a Mormon Shakespeare, but perhaps a “Mormon” Edgar Allan Poe), but I wish there was a Mormon writer with his skill but who was more light than dark; maybe your list of fora and authors has that.