Proceedings of the Symposia of the Association for Mormon Letters 1978-79I. Id. Iv. vt. vIL. vIII. Ix. xI. Contents Foreward Truth and Consequences: The Identity Crisis in Missionary Fiction Lavina Fielding Anderson Cluade T. Barnes, Utah Naturalist Davis Bitton The Moral Measure of Literature Stephen L. Tanner Freshet in the Dearth: Samuel W. Taylor's Heaven Knows Why and Mormon Humor Richard H. Cracroft Folklore in The Giant Joshua Willian Wilson Element and Glory: Reflections and Speculations on the Mormon Verbal Imagination Bruce W. Jorgensen The Psalm of Nephi: A Lyric Reading Steven P. Sondrup Voices of Conflict: The Literature of Mormon Sisterism Chris Rigby Arrington Some Thoughts on Mormon Literature and the Mormon Sense of Sacred Space Neal Lambert “All Things Which Have Been Given of God. . . Are the Typifying of Him" ‘Typology in the Book of Mormon Richard Dilworth Rust The Process of Living: C.S. Lewis as a "Guide of the Perplexed William Clayton Kimball 35 43 37 65 79 95 107 113 121Foreward Presented in this volume are most of the papers given at the various symposia sponsored by the Association for Mormon Letters during 1978-79. In many respects, this is a conpanion volume to the issue of Dialogue (XI, 2) devoted to the papers given during 1977. The first five papers were read at the annual fall symposium in Salt Lake City; the next two--"Element and Glory" and "The Psalm of Nephi"--were given at the symposium on Mormon literature held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in Phoenix, Arizona; the last four were pre~ sented at the spring symposium in Charlottesville, Virginia. It is hoped that although many members of the Association were not able to attend one or more of the symposia-even though they were held in diverse locations-- all will welcome the availability of the papers in printed form. I am pleased to be able to express appreciation to all of the authors represented in this volume not only for preparing an oral version of their papers but also for making them available in a form suitable for publice~ tion. I am also happy to extend thanks to the Department of English, Brigham Young University for considerable help and assistance in the preparation of the final manuscript. Steven P. Sondrup Executive Secretary, Association for Mormon LettersTruth and Consequences: The Identity Crisis in Missionary Fiction Lavina Fielding Anderson (Reprinted by permission, Sunstone, Vol. 3, no. 6, 1978) Only a year ago Franklin Fisher stood at this very podium and reminded ust "Fewer people than we might think find it terribly important to take a stand on whether Joseph Smith really saw God or was visited by an angel. But a Mormon novel is by definition about people who do find it important." ("Three Essays: A Commentary,” Dialogue, 11 [Summer 1978]: 55.) Mormon missionaries are such people. And their work is to persuade other people that such things are important. The missionary is a sinner partially redeemed, dealing in the cosmic drama of salvation, redemption, and--yes--damiation. Yet we seldom refer to this issue with such polysyl- labic splendor. Instead, the missionary problem is more usually summed by a code question, "How's your testimony, Elder?" meaning, "Do you know you can deliver what you promise?" All other questions pale by comparison with this one focusing on the missionary's own spiritual health, yet it may well be the most infrequently asked question in missionary fiction. Only within the last three or four years have a handful of Mormon writers--all but one of them beginning their craft--approached as an artistic problem the agonizing spiritual problem of a crisis of faith, a crisis of religious identity. These creative works are Douglas Thayer's "Elder Thatcher,” from Under the Cottonwood and Other Mormon Stories (Provo: Frankson Books, 1977), Bela Petsco's "Numbers" and “God Still Demands a Sacrifice" from his 1977 BYU master's thesis, "Nothing Very Important and Other Stories," Christy Ackerson's novel, "Tales from a Tracting Book," also a 1977 BYU master's thesis, and Robert Elliot's three~ act play, Fires of the Mind, performed at BYU and published in Sunstone (winter, 1975.) In all four, the main characters experience an identity crisis brought on by the contrast between the futility and boredom of their missionary routine and the transcendent spiritual content it should enclose. In other words, all of the main characters do missionary work, but all come to the point where they ask, "Can I be a missionary?” It's valid, at this point to ask why this question, so frequently asked in real life, is so seldom asked in fiction. I think there are three reasons. aaa1. Where missionary work in general is concerned, nonfiction has traditionally communicated with more power. For instance, the Ensign has published forty-five short stories since 1971, only two of which deal with missionaries. But during the same time, it has published at least twenty- five first person missionary accounts and sixty-five articles on how-and- why missionary work should be done. Since 1971, the New Era has published ten missionary stories, but forty-six first person accounts, and fifty-two how-and-why articles. Missionary work is the Church's serious business and, after all, isn't there something a little--well, insincere-—about making up spiritual experiences? 2. Traditionally, missionary stories--like missionary homecomings-- have trained prospective missionaries in their future roles. Three fine examples are Bruce D. Porter's article, originally submitted as fiction, "Dinner Invitation" (Ensign, June 1977, pp. 30-33)--two proud and squabbling elders are humbled by their contact with a shockingly fat but radiantly spiritual German sister; Mark J. Stoddard's short story, "Jensen and Ernstein," (New Era, February 1975, pp. 11-13)--featuring a trunky senior and a greenie with a powerful testimony; and Bill Adler's short story, "When White Shirts Turn Gray," (New Era, December 1977, pp. 13-15)--showing an arrogant greenie who is taught humility and love by his departing senior. These stories effectively reinforce correct missionary attitudes. Should the institution's own publications show the missionfield itself precipitating a crisis of faith? Should other believing members of the Church? 3. A typical nineteenth century missionary was likely to be an adult converti an identity crisis, were one to occur, would probably accompany conversion. His mission would be the vehicle by which he demonstrated the profundity and power of his reorientation Christward. In contrast, a twentieth century typical missionary is a nineteen-year-old boy who may or may not have experienced that profound reorientation and whose role is at least as much described by dress standards, staying with his companion at all times, and memorizing discussions as it is by providential deliverances, confounding the opposition, and performing miracles. In other words, as the details of a missionary's role have become more conspicuous, it is more possible for a missionary to role-play, rather than probe the depths of his religious identity. Excellent portraits of this role-by-rule missionary appear in nearly every story of Gladys Farmer's Elders and Sisters (Provo: Seagull Books, 1977), a delicious and comprehensive scrapbook of nearly every situation a missionary could find himself in, But in sampling nearly every aspect of a missionary's exterior life, it relatively neglects the missionary's interior life. Plenty of her missionaries don't want to be in the missionfield, but none of them challenge the validity of their work; even when one lazy, stubborn, homesick elder protests, "'Maybe I don't want to be a missionary, he is "shocked by his om words." (pp. 45,42.) In other words, he basically identifies himself as a missionary regardless. After a series of "learning" experiences, he accepts his companion's definition of himself: "'Remember, Elder, you're a voice of gladness, a voice of mercy from heaven, a voice of truth out of the earth.'" (p. 55.) Next morning, Elder Arnold is transformed: he knocks on the doors confidently, he speaks "with penetrating conviction," and, final touch, the housewife "even understood his French." (p.55.) A achange has occurred, but it has occurred in a string of narrative incidents; we have not seen it from the inside. Douglas Thayer does not sidestep the challenge of showing us that change. With bis blunted, understated sentences, each one sitting foresquare and factual in a paragraph that is a complex blend of narrative and memory, he traces Elder Thatcher's identity crisis and its resolution. The entire story takes place while David Thatcher, six weeks back in Provo from his mission to Germany, waits to give two carefully outlined pages of inspiration for his homecoming talk. But he has mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, he wants to tell the priests at the sacrament table what a mission is really like. "They shouldn't have to go on missions as dumb as he had been. They needed to know the good and the bad." (p. 103) On the other hand, he knows that the congregation "didn't want him to tell them about the everyday boredom, doubt and failure, and even despair a missionary faced." (p. 102) He remembers he had borne his testimony on leaving because "he had felt the whole ward needed him. . . to confirm their idea of what a newly ordained nineteen- year-old elder should be." (p. 78) But in the missionfield, he started needing to know what he himself thought and felt. At first, he simply wanted to go home. He hated Germany, was embarrassed at his new role, and racked by the feeling that "he would never by young and free again." (p. 91) But home, while it was "all the good things"--his family, his girlfriend, his ward--constituted precisely those elements that had also “trapped him on his mission." (p. 92) More importantly, he feels from his very core that he had "to be honest or he lost a place to start his life. . . . So he had decided that he could ask for a release and go home honest only if he did absolutely everything he was supposed to. Then he could stand up in testimony meeting and say, ‘I made an honest mistake. I found out that I didn't know the gospel was true, but I still want to go to church and live here in the ward with you.'" (p. 93) So he did everything he was supposed to, and the role became his means to finding his identity, even though "he didn't want it to be true then, already afraid perhaps of the obligation of knowing that, the intensity of life, the understanding.” -(p. 101) The change, when it occurs, is some- thing he can't describe or talk about because "it was too personal, the beginning of a new mind and a new heart, the feeling of beginning power, new happiness." (p. 102) These feelings are as real as the enbarrassment, the fatigue, the homesickness. For the first time, seeing the suffering in Germany, he sees the necessity for a Savior; he also sees that "sex didn't have to be the ultimate experience of his life." Instead, in this new reality, "love and spiritual experience [became] as real as eating or drinking," and he senses, outside himself, an "infinite emotion," demanding of him a “final obligation." (p. 99) Roleplaying the missionary has transformed him into the missionary; facing the comfortable complacent congregation, he puts the outline back into his pocket. That gesture is an affirmation of his new identity. He will not deny the reality of spiritual experience. In contrast, Bela Petsco's narrator, Mihaly Agyar, a Hungarian convert from New York serving in Arizona and California, finds that the missionfield presents him with a choice between his identity as a coumitted Christian me mmmand his role as a missionary. In some ways the most meta~physical of the four writers, Petsco reveals Agyar to us with an austere and remote style, watchful and withdrawn even in the depiction of pain. In the first story, “Numbers ," Agyar is tossing in a waking nightmare of free-associated scriptures involving numbers and the missionary numbers game "so he numbered them in the wilderness of Sinai. . . . He numbers. She numbers. It nunbers. They number. We. . . . No--not we. They number. "Number now, and see who is gone from us... + "Now, Lf you come to know in your heart, Brother Brown, that the restoration of the gospel is true, would you desire to be baptized into the Church. . . and become number 1,857,663? . - + “yunber of baptisms this week. Number of baptisms to date. . . - Nunber of fanilies being taught. Number of contacts this week. Number of hours spent teaching Ist Discussion--2nd Discussion--3rd Discussion--4th oSth--6th. Mumber of contacts committed to baptism. Nunber of copies of the Book of Mormon placed. Number of testimonies borne." (pp. 173-176) Ageinst this flood is his own puny voice protesting, "No." In some ways, Agyarsounds priggish, lacking in charity toward less mature missionaries, placing as much importance on his unyielding re- Sistance to the system as his companions place on conforming to it. But fa another way, his persistent "no" is the voice of the integrated self, resisting the mindless violation of individuality that this statistical Approach to missionary work perpetrates upon both contact and “Missionary. For hin, retaining a testimony depends on denying the "worship" [of] ali the golden numbers.” (p. 179) In the succeeding story, "God Still Demands a Sacrifice,” Agyar reaches the predictable inpasse with his mission president and offers to go hone: ie Pinot any longer support a system which equates doing the Lord's work with baptizing alone.’ (p. 185) His mission president asks him to fasts bray, and talk with a visiting General Authority. Agyar does and the Benczal Authority shatters him by saying, almost kindly, “'After all, Sidce, baption is the name of the gane.'” (p. 186) Thus, the sacrifice Agyar has offered is not acceptable. As he leaves, he says fo the General ‘Authority: "'God still demands a sacrifice." “Tp was alnost a question--at least the brother took it as one~and after a nonent'. . . said, "Yes .. .' (p. 187) The sacrifice Agyar Gs being asked to make is that of his personal integrity. Petsco does not follow Agyar into the labyrinth of the decision he must make. He leaves the reader with the fresh shock and the pains but westne following intercalary vignette we have a snippet from his homeconing sek wtg misoion is neither all good-—nor is it all bad. | - . My mission taught ne the importance of gaining a personal testinony."’ (p- 188) Teeter Agyar means by "testimony," he has found the key to living with wnbiguity, ae Elder Thatcher must in his materialistic hone ward: | Agvet aneigidee Thatcher could keep both their identities and their roles; but fey Agyat, unlike Elder Thatcher, the role was his burden, not his means of deliverance.In Christy Ackerson's "Tales from a Tracting Book," also set in Germany, we see Sister Nancy Harper juggling her own explosive oranges of roleplaying and identity. Ms. Ackerson's prose does not have the carefully layered solidity of Thayer's, the austere metaphysics of Petsco's. Instead, it is busy, buzzy, and domesticated, breathing a kind of homey reality that, in some ways, makes it easier to relate to. Sister Harper is introduced to us as thoroughly human, diligently tracting the morning away but wishing irritatedly that her companion wouldn't wear such garishly red lipstick and brooding with voluptuous greediness over German pastries. She lives inside her missionary routine with the same combination of comfort and frustration as a housewife and with as little thought for philosophical subtleties, usvally. When an enthusiastic new elder gives as a spiritual thought the ex- ample of Ether who "'did cry [repentance] from the morning, even until the going down of the sun'” she wonders cynically, "without counting hours?" yet still feels "vaguely guilty. If I were as spiritual as Ether, we might be having success. I'd know just what to say to Kreugers, and how to say it, and they'd feel the Spirit, and know it was true. Or maybe, if they weren't ready yet, I'd know that, too, and we wouldn't be wasting our time on them." (pp. 98-99) This chain of simple sentences is like her perception of her role: cluttered but uncomplicated. What's bothering her is not profound questions about ultimate truth, but her inability to per- form perfectly the missionary's role. When she does throw herself into the role, she, like Elder Thatcher, finds the results confirming. She and her companion fast for the Kreugers (a kind of ultimate sacrifice for this missionary who savors each taste of yoghurt with healthy sensuality) and it seems to work. She feels "so good . . . - The Gospel was true... ~ Clear sky, sunshine, fasting--it was neat, being a missionary." (We notice a certain elemental simplicity in her distinctions.) "We were in the right place at the perfect time. And Kreugers would make it. We'd go in there tonight with a spirit so strong they wouldn't be able to re~ sist." (pp. 109-119) But Kreugers do resist. And another investigator, her life briefly transformed by the gospel, backslides overnight. Then Sister Harper is transferred—her passage to a new identity. The crisis begins as she looks at the tracks, "wickedly inviting,” and thinks how easy it would be to step in front of the train. She leaves her companion, her investigators, and her city without feeling "a thing." (p. 223) She considers, then rejects the idea of asking golden questions on the train. And she toys with the idea of going on to Munich instead of transferring as she must in a few miles. At the same time she is questioning her identity as a missionary, she is also questioning her identity as a woman, possibly paralleling Elder Thatcher's attempts to place sex in proper perspective in his changing life but in reverse. Behind her she leaves Elder Dunn, whose brow eyes and pointed allusions to their "future" has sent her mooning over housewares in a department store. But he is still corresponding with Francene, who writes provocatively sexy letters. Part of Sister Harper's anger boils over in that direction: "That fluff head! What did she know of missionary work? . . . She'd probably cry when the first hausfrau waved a mop in her face. and then Elder Dunn would comfort her with some meaningful promises te mmmabout their future. Ha!" (p, 225) But Sister Harper can't soothe her battered femininity by leaning on her missionary competence since she's also questioning that. "Missionaries were incredibly naive. . . . What did we do, really? . . . What had I done?... The Germans just didn't change. . . . We trudged up and down stairs, pushing doorbells, meeting goals, counting hours--all along vaguely suspecting that we weren't accomplishing much." She feels revulsion at the thought of start- ing "the whole missionary routine all over again."(pp. 226-27) Yet mission- aries don't quit--except for those who can't learn the language. And she was "a super missionary who knew the discussions backwards and forwards, in English and German, and could do the work, but didn't see the point any longer." She has to sort this out carefully. "It wasn't that I hadn't tried. I'd done as much as three or four elders put together, and I'd followed the program, and kept the rules. And it still hadn't paid off." (p. 228) It's a dizzying revelation for her. The cause-and-effect of the gospel that she had always taken for granted doesn't work. The gospel may still be "true," but now she has no way to prove it. When the train pulls out for Munich, she climbs back on it. At first her freedom exhilarates her. Then it panics her. She deliberately picks up a German student for the afternoon, but finds herself compulsively probing for the meaning in his life. He has little, and it makes her realize with a shock that she does. She explains the atonement to him, so passionately that he finds her naive and accuses? ""You've never done anything really bad, have you?" . . . "I stared at him. . . . Just today, I could have said. Right now. The stupidest thing I'd ever done, only I couldn't go back now. +» because if you had," he was saying, ‘you couldn't make it sound so easy. . . . People don't change. . . « This repetition of her own earlier words stings her. "'Yes they do,’ I blurted out. 'They can. I'm going to." “He stared at me strangely. "'t've done something awful,’ I said. "'I have--and I can't talk about it now. But I'm going to. . - do better.’ “He narrowed his eyes. "'T'm going to repent,’ I said, standing up. 'I'm going to have a clean record now." “His lips pressed into a smile. He was trying to understand. 1 suddenly wanted to hug him. I wanted to hug the whole world. But I remembered mission rules. “'Te's OK," I said, smiling. ‘Let's go.'"He got up slowly. ‘You really know that,' he said, trying to smile himself. ‘You really believe it." "TT do,! I said. 'I know it's true." (pp. 249-50) This moment of realization, that affirmation, was more than conditioned reflex to a "teaching moment." It was a realization that her identity did not come from roleplaying missionary for the promised reward of a baptism. Instead, it sprang from her need to change because of acknowledge wrongdoing, her right to change because of her eternal identity, and her power to change because of the atonement of Christ. As a missionary on the loose in Munich, she was at odds with her role and had experienced a frightening loss of identity. "Nobody knew I was anything!" she had realized. (p. 239) Her conversation with Otto makes her see the relationship between her permanent identity and her temporary role. She is not a complex character and she is not fascinated by the intellectual aspects of the problem; but a profound change has occurred. Oddly enough, the rest of the novel is not anticlimactic. Her discovery becomes part of her life, not the high point of her life. No one knows she's been playing hookey because her companion's train was late too. It's raining the next day. Tracting is still dreary. She still loves pastry. She still thinks about Elder Dunn and her heart does flipflops when he is transferred in as zone leader. But she refuses to break an appoint ment with a contact when Elder Dunn invites the sisters to the circus; and when they meet a former SS officer who cannot cleanse his conscience of the innocent blood he has shed, she tells him with authority: "You can be clean again, Herr Brandt. You can erase the past. It's not easy--I know from something I've done--you have to change your life and start keeping all the commandments. . . .It makes you worthy to really talk with Him, and then you can ask His forgiveness for what you've done.' "Herr Brandt gazed silently into the bottle of sprudel on the table. ""Like me," I said. 'Nobody knows this, but . . . I even ran off to Munich by myself and broke all the rules.’ (Sister Nord choked on her fork.) "Now I'm trying to repent--I'm trying to be a better missionary so I can ask the Savior to forgive me. And then His atonement--His sacrifice-—will Pay for the wrong I've done. Then I'll be clean again." "Whew, I thought. It's that simple. But T never saw it that way until now. “Herr Brandt looked across the table, his eyes gentle. ‘That's why I need to stop smoking,’ he said, 'So I'll be worthy. The others never expleined it quite that way.'" (pp. 304-05) Part of the gentleness may be for the difference between deliberate murder and an afternoon in Munich, but part of it is also for a recognition that the atonement is infinite. Herr Brandt is ultimately baptized, though not easily; but the real convert is Sister Harper. She had first accepted unthinkingly, then rejected her role as a missionary. Now she accepts it as an expression of her identity--that of a committed Christian. In the fourth example, Robert Elliot's Fires of the Mind, Elder Johnson ultimately rejects the missionary role and, in so doing, rejects the emgidentity and testimony he had thought he wanted. The play involves five elders in Taipei, whimsically and somewhat irrelevantly named Matthews, Markham, Lucas, Johnson, and Poll. The dialogue is supple, slangy, laced with humor, and taut with the threat of violence. Elder Matthews, the zone leader, is hard-working, and rules-conscious, currently guilty of classifying his slide collection during study time. Elder Markham, Johnson's companion, is sincere, a little stupid, and frankly bucking for a promotion. Here's a sample conversation between him and Elder Matthews: Markham: Well, how's the work here in the North? Matthews: Oh, it's coming; the Lord is blessing us daily. The harvest is at hand if we'll just thrust in our sickles and reap. If the Lord is with us, we can't fail. Markham: The Gospel's so beautiful. I've never been so happy. Matthews: Yes, these are the best two years of our lives. Markham: It's so wonderful to be serving these people. They're so humble and beautiful. I work my tail off and I love every minute of it. It makes me feel so good. I wish I wish I could just do this forever. Then Elder Matthews asks a seemingly irrelevent question: "How long have you been out?" Without hesitation, the devoted Elder Markham replies: "11 1/2 months tomorrow." (p. 47) Elder Johnson knows the cliches too, but, as his departing companion, Elder Poll, had explained to Elder Markham: "He knows the Church rests basically on revelation and individual testimony. and he's not satisfied with what he's got. . . . He doesn't want 2 sign, but he figures the 'warm feelings’ everybody talks about aren't enough to base your life on. He wants something more, and until he gets it, he has to reserve judgment. And he's honest, painfully honest. I mean he can't just accept the fact that he hasn't completely arrived, and work at it slowly. He's always thinking about it and tormenting himself.'" (p. 33) Elder Lucas, the fourth elder, understands Elder Johnson and mediates between him and the two insensitive "system" missionaries. He had gone on his mission from "a little hick town in Alberta," determined that "no big city Heart of Zion boys were ever gonna show me up. . . . I went into the LIM red hot and I burned the place up. But it wasn't for the Lord. I worked really hard, but only to prove that I was the best." (p. 43) His mission has taught him that "reward-seekers and sign-seekers are both look~ ing for proof that they're worthy. They're both insecure, and they want the Lord to compensate them for it. Sometimes He will, but sometimes He won't. I guess that's the trial of faith, or at least one of then." (p.45) For Elder Johnson, the trial of faith is faith itself. He had come on his mission as a "gambler," feeding coins of his time to the "one armed bandit" Mormon god. "And I keep on losing,” he cries. “A month, a year, now two years for this mission. And I always say I'll quit if I don't get an answer. But, everyone says 'Try, just once more, try. You've tried so hard and so long. Don’t quit now. Maybe it'll come this time.’ And it never does. A taste, sonetimes--a feeling, a thought--but it's only a tease.ee They never last. Never." (p. 55) He will not accept the good feelings. "I could never say something's true because it makes me happy. For me, it's got to be the other way around. Tt makes me happy becuase it’s true." (p. 55) Epistomology is as important as ontology. Becuase he does not understand the means by which his "good feelings" come, he refuses to recognize them as valid. In a climactic scene where he contends against the models of Elder Markham's unthinking faith and Elder Lucas’ sophisticated spirituality, he suddenly comes to the core issue~-his real identity as a skeptic: "What if they're wrong? How could you live with yourself if they're wrong? Your life would be a joke. All your suffering a joke.'" (p. 87) Despite his sincerity and his pain, he is not striving for a convert's identity; he is preserving the identity he has built out of negation and resistance. And he rejects the possibility of faith by rejecting the missionary's role. He. slips out of the apartment with a girl, even while his companion is reading aloud a letter from a man they've taught, whose openness to spiritual experience has brought him the confirmation that Johnson has rejected for himself. In summary, let's return to those three reasons why fiction may have traditionally avoided the missionary's crisis of faith as a subject. And I think we can see that the failure has been in the writer, up to this point, not in the subject. Are these creative works as convincing as nonfiction? All four are deeply affirmative of the reality of spiritual values. Even in Fires of the Mind, Johnson is rejecting something he could have--not some~ thing that does not exist. And Agyar's testimony survives almost total disillusionment with the missionfield. They bear, in our terminology, a Powerful "testimony of testimony." Second, these stories are also effective as training literature for prospective missionaries. Granted, not every missionary suffers a crisis of faith, although I know few who do not feel crippling discouragement, at least for a time. But for those who do find themselves doubting and despairing, where are their models? And third, none of these stories denies the importance of the missionary's role; in- stead, all of them use the yardstock of conformity to role as a measure of the missionary's own spiritual maturation--positively for Elder Thatcher and Sister Harper, negatively--though in different ways--for Agyar and Johnson. Naturally, the ramifications of "having a testimony" extend far beyond the missionfield, and the comparative paucity of its examination in Mormon literature is not confined to missionary fiction. But in the missionary situation, the missionary is playing "truth and consequences." Like the Prospective convert, he too must decide the truthfulness of the message he brings, and either decision has momentous consequences. Not only is the missionary the minister of salvation, he is the sinner in need of salvation himself. Such questions are not only legitimate questions for the Mormon writer to ask, but vital and urgent matters. Again at last year's meeting, Herbert Harker said, “when I first thought about it, it seemed to me that the reason a person writes is to explain--to explain, for example, what it was like to be the grandson of a polygamist, living on a farm in Canada during the depression. T know now that my impulse rises from a deeper source; I write not so much to explain as to understand." ("Excavating Myself,” Dialogue, 11 (Summer 1978]: 60-61.) Thayer, Petsco, Ackerson, and Elliot have helped us understend, ‘CLAUDE T. BARNES, UTAH NATURALIST Davis Bitton When Claude T. Barnes died in 1968, just ten years ago, he was identi- fied as a lawyer, businessman, and naturalist. He might also have been counted as a banker, scientific farmer, and politician. And having published some fourteen pooks and 118 articles he was certainly one of Utah's best known authors." Of all these labels the one he would have preferred, I am sure, is that of naturalist. For sixty years he obsrved the birds, mammals, trees and flowers, the mountains and canyons, the clouds and streams of his native Utah. For Claude Barnes there was beauty all around. And not content to keep his appreciation to himself, he wrote about what he saw. In the tradition of Thoreau and John Muir and Aldo Leopold he used words not only to describe but also to praise the marvels of nature. His col- lected writings, a paean to the beauties of Utah, also frequently contain reflections about life and its meaning. The time is ripe for a fresh appreciation of this Utah naturalist. On February 15, 1884 he was born at Kaysville, Utah, the eighth child of the third wife of John R. Barnes. An older brother, then a missionary in England, proposed that the infant be named Joseph Teancum Barnes after Joseph Smith and Teancum, a great warrior in the Book of Mormon. His mother, Emily Stewart Barnes, had a mind of her own, however. Having just read Bulwer-Lytton's play The Lady of Lyons, whose hero was Claude Melnotte, she decided on the name of Claude Teancum Barnes. Later, as an adult, Barnes wrote, “It being the purpose of a name to designate exclusively, it is thought that the name Claude Teancum Barnes is unique.” As we shall see, there was more than his name that was unique about Claude Teancum Barnes. The childhood of Claude was unexceptional in some ways. He went to school, won prizes, played games, and worked. Every day he milked three cows, pulled a wagon carrying the milk for three miles to the creamery, and then returned to breakfast before going to school. He made some spending money by cartying messages to people in the Kaysville area to come to the Barnes store to respond to telephone calls. Telephones were obviously scarce, autowobiles as yet unknown, It was a bucolic if strenuous atmos~ phere. In one of his later writings he even recalls the outdoor shanty of his childhood as a place of “spider, bee and ineffable contemplation.” By any standards his parents were impressive people. John R. Barnes is one of Mormonism's unsung heroes, a figure of the second rank of the kind who made up the bone and sinew of the movement during its first two generations. An immigrant who had been converted in England, the elder Barnes settled in Kaysville and there demonstrated his business acumen and undeviating commitment to Mormonism. Over fifty when Claude was born, NN eee-10- John R. Barnes appeared stern to the boy. Yet Claude could not help but respect the integrity of his father, whom he described as "stern but true; broad in cares, but stzict, frank, staunch, clean, fair, plain, bright, safe, and well tried.”' His mother was perhaps even more formidable. Wife number three in a polygamous union at the time of Claude's birth, Emily had eight children. When the first wife died, the second, who had only one child, unselfishly stepped aside and allowed Claude's mother, Emily Stewart Barnes, to assume the position of honor as legal wife. Renowned as a cook and hostess at whose table many of the leaders of the Church sat as guests, Emily was a woman of many parts who could sew and make home remedies as well as having appreciation for the things of the migd. "What a woman!" Claude later exclaimed in the tribute he wrote to her. Trying to discern in young Claude Barnes the lineaments of the later man, we discover intelligence, competitiveness, and industry. He carried the sacrament to the Mormon meetings for ten years. Baptized at age eight, he was ordained a deacon at thirteen, a teacher two years later, and a priest at seventeen. He was a promising Mormon boy. I have found no clues of exceptional sensitivity to nature during the growing-up years. Interestingly, the father himself had an eye for natural beauty of flowers and scenery, but there was no direct handing down of the sense, for it was not until many years lateg that Claude was surprised to discover this side of his father's character. It was apparently as a teenager that Claude first took an interest in politics and law. He attended a rally at which Congressman William King was the speaker. The next day Claude went home and "on a chair before his mother's wash tub imitated King; and then and there decided to be 2 lawyer. Between 1899 and 1902, from ages fifteen to eighteen, Claude Barnes was a student at the University of Utah. One clue that it was still essentially a high school by later standards is the fact that just a year before his admission Claude had graduated from the eighth grade in Kaysville. I find nothing to indicate interest in science or nature during these years, but his interest in politics and public affairs was clearly apparent. He had heard William Jennings Bryan speak at the Salt Palace during the 1898 campaign. As a new university student of fifteen Claude gave a political speech before 150 students. He participated in student legislative assembly and debate, once debating against Elbert D. Thomas, later U.S. Senator from Utah. At this young age, still in his teens, Claude Barnes was cogsidered an eloquent speakr who could speak intelligently on public issues. In 1902 at the age of eighteen Claude was called to serve as a missionary in England. Assigned to the west side of London he found time for what he later called “considerable reading and study at the British Museum and South Kensington Museum.” The latter institution had displays of plants and animals, perhaps an early stimulus to his interst in such things. Yet he did not slacken in his preaching of Mormonism. As he later modestly put it, "In the two years that he was there he held nore street meetings than any other Mormon missionary before or since in any part of the world; as high as 80 per month." One would have to admit, I think, that 80 street meetings in a month represented genuine exertion and commitment. And those familiar with the heckling custom in London's Hyde Park will appreciate Barnes's statement that it was his experience holding missionary street meetings that aided him in public speaking “ever afterward; for he could always get and hold a crowd."ee -1l- One other thing he found time to do while a aissionary in England was write articles for the Millenial Star, the official mission periodical. The titles indicate a theological and promotional interest: “The Power of Example”; "Why Mormonism Grows”; "The Personality of the Holy Ghost"; and “Repentance.” In a 1903 article on "Knowledge from God or Knowledge from Reason,” the nineteen-year-old missionary gave a safe enough answer: only revelation can give the highest kind of knowledge. But it is perhaps significapp that at this young age he vas wrestling with such a ponderous question.” After traveling in France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Belgium, Claude Barnes returned to Utah, arriving in early 1905. Back home Claude wasted no time in getting back into the thick of things. He attended the University of Utah in the spring, again participating in debate. It would have been during these spring months, one assumes, that he rekindled an old acquaintance. Annie Elizabeth Knowlton was twenty-two years old and according to her husband's later fond recp}lections “was so beautiful she was probably unexcelled in that respect.""» He was probably tight, for she had won first prize for beauty at the,jtah State Fair, and we can still admire her photograph for verification. In the fall of 1905, leaving his bride behind, Claude Barnes struck out for the University of Chicago Law School. His earlier decision to become a lawyer was still in force. What drew him to Chicago during that school year I do not know. He must have been lonely in his new environment, longing for his wife and loved ones back in Utah. He found time for much reading and browsing in the library. One day he was in the medical library and happened upon a book entitled North American Land Birds by Baird, Brewer, and Ridgvay. "It was," he later wrote, “ay initiation into the delightful, , field of ornithology, and Mr. Ridgway became my friend and correspondent.” Given the direction that his life took later on, this event almost appears to have the same significance for Claude Barnes as the famous occasion when Edward Gibbon sat on the steps of the capitol in Rome and began the chain of thoughts that led him to write The Decline and Fall of the Ronan Empire. But Claude Barnes was not ready to plunge into the life of a naturalist. In the sunmer of 1906 he returned to Utah and, this time taking Annie with him, then went back to the University of Michigan to complete work on his law degree. It is tempting to see that year at Ann Arbor as crucial in weaning him from his Mormon faith, for he did becone affiliated with the Nasopje Lodge there and with a brotherhood called The Woodsmen of the World." It is Clear frou the four articles hpspublished in the Improvement Era in 1907, two of them written at Ann Arbor,”” that he was acquainted with the writings of Ernst Haeckel, the German Darwinist whose The Riddle of the Universe was a mechanistic form of monism that seemed at the time to represent a major challenge to the Christian faith. But Barnes referred to it only to refute it. Ethical societies are not sufficient in promoting moral behavior, he argued, citing as evidence the favorable crime and divorce statistics from Utah at that time. “Jf a Latter-day Saint, trust not him who has forsaken your ranks," he wrote.” In “The Unconscious Illapse,” Barnes took up an old Line of reasoning to point out how several Christian spokesmen were coming closer to the Mormon position. He was in his way a defender of the Mormon faith. Back in Utah with his wife by the summer of 1907, Barnes did not immedi- ately begin the practice of law. Instead he went to work for the Deseret News rel-12- for half dozen years. In December 1907 his wife gave birth to a son, Stuart Knowlton Barnes, and three years later there came a daughter, Kathleen Louise, These were the only two children born to this marriage. Among the articles he wrote as a newspaper reporter of most interst to us, in view of his later development as a naturalist, are two articles appearing in the Deseret News in 1908. In July of that year, expressing his new interest in ornithology, he published "A Plea for Our Birds.” In November came an essay entitled “Typical Early November Day.” Here is a sample: One by one the leaves flutter to the ground, leaving bare limbs to shiver in the oncoming cold. How variegated, how sig- nificant, how beautiful it has been, this autumn, this sunset of the year! The twilight, truly has come; but the retrospect is inspiring. Enthused by the gorgeousness of environs, sensing the fact that nature was undergoing 2 change that on every hand had a purporet of divinity, an immutable symbol, I strolled into the garden and upon the hillside, bent on drinking in the full sublinity of autumnal beauty. - Pondering over the charm of it all, I rambled into the orchard, where delicate tints appeared with astonishing variety and profusion. ‘The crimped raspberry leaves were changing from the summer color of oriental green to almost every describable hue. One had become pure Venetian red, bordered with raw sienna, the undersurface being pale shell pink. ‘Another, from the same bush, was deep orange; and one nore Venetian red mottled with brown, green and gold. . « « Already Claude Barnes was flexing his verbal wings as a writer about nature. There is the personal touch, the willingness to talk about his own observations, the undisguised relish for the beauty, the passion for specific colors, all of which continue in his later writings. At this time Claude was twenty-four years old. Life must have seemed good to Barnes during these years. A handsome young man with an attractive wife and two promising children, scion of a respected family on the Utah scene, respected as an effective public speaker, now becoming known as a writer about the natural beauties of Utah, he would not have found life dull or uninteresting. If the pgstponenent of practicing law was frustrating to him, that was ended in 1913."/ That same year he was elected to the state legislature, where he served for two years. His writings about nature did not stop with the two articles already mentioned of 1908. He began a series on Utah birds for the Improvement Era and a series on namnals, birds, fish, and even insects that appeared regularly in the Juvenile Instructor. By 1913 and 1914, the same years he was serving in the legislature, he was ready for big time, so to speak. Collaborating with J. H. Paul, an English professor at the University of Utah, Barnes published four books in two years: Farm Friends and Spring Flowers; Forest Groves and Canyon Streams} Farm Foes and Bird Helpers; and Western Natural Resources. Not surprisingly he was included in the 1914 publication Men of Affairs in the State of Utah, where he is described as “endowed with 2 keen mentality and with broad and liberal views.” “Few members of the Utah bar are more, yidely known throughout Utah,” said the article, "than Claude Teancum Barnes." In 1913 Barnes published in the Improvement Era an article entitled “pryden on Salvation for the Dead.” Mainly the reprinting of a long passage from Dryden's Religio Laici, the article included an introduction by Barnes eee“13+ in which it is clear that he loved to read not only Dryden but also Isaac Walton, Thomas Browne, Joseph Addison, and Henry Fielding. More important, perhaps, is the indication that Claude Banres still had faith in his Mormon religion. Here is the argument: although a seventeenth-century writer Like Dryden could not be expected to understand things fully “without the illuminating influence of revelation,” he came close to expressing the 4 Mormon approach to salvation. Barnes was still a defender of the faith. For the two decades stretching from about 1913 to the early 1930s Barnes continued to write about nature. The Juvenile Instructor and Improvement Era were his main outlets but he branched out and published in Outer’s Book, St. Nicholas, Nature Magazine, and the Rocky Mountain Sportsman. In 1922 he published Manmais of Utah, which appeared in a revised and expanded edition in 1927 under the title Utah's Mammals. Evincing an interest that was more than casual, he joined such organizations as the Anerican Society of Mammalogists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Ornithologists Union, the London Zoological Society, the Philosophical Society of England, the Eugene Field Society, the Society of Psychical Research of London, the Cooper Ornithological Club, the Ecological Society of America, the Biology Society of Washington, the Western Society of Naturalists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On the local level he was the first president of the Utah Audubon Society. But there was also taking place in his life during these years a kind of shrinkage or narrowing down. In 1919 hig,father died, with an address written by himself read at his own funeral.“ Claude never forgot this experience. In 1921, after just sixteen years of marriage, his wife Annie died, leaving him with a fourteen year old son and eleven year old daughter to raise by himself. About the problems of raising those children during the 1920s we are told practically nothing. In 1929 Stuart married and not long after Kathleen followed suit; both lived for the remainder of their lives in the East and died at young ages before their father. Claude seems to have maintained a close relationship with his mother. She wag,a widow and Claude, after 1921, was a widower, and by 1930 lived alone.“' He had long talks with his mother, gathered some information directly from her, and encouraged her to write down as much as she could remember about her pioneer experiences. In 1932 she too died. Claude was left alone, so to speak; his life had suffered a severe contraction. There was a narrowing also, it seems to me, in the alienation of Barnes from his church. Suffice it to say that his children drifted from the faith and, not to imply any casual connection, he at least stopped attending meetings. This may not be surprising, for his earlier reading had led him to question and to probe. It takes little imagination to believe that he may have encountered Mormons who were unreceptive to the Kind of comments he would make; the church's failure to put to use minds such as his did not begin with nor end with Claude Barnes. On the other hand, he continued to pub}ish in church magazines and continued to make some financial contributions.“" He did not launch any kind of crusade against Mormonism; there is not a single article or book that is really intended as a frontal attack on the religion. He was still his parents’ child and in the 1950s when he wrote separate small biographies of his father and his mother, it is obvious that he still admired their faith and commitment.a1 Finally, he continued to think about immortality, about a continuation of life after death. It must be remembered, of course, that the vocational center of Claude Barnes's life was law, which he continued to practice right on through the years. He must have been considered a successful lawyer, for in 1946 he was chosen to represent a group of polygamists before the U.S. Supreme Court. Ever the scholar, he did reserach on and published The White Sli Act: History and Analysis of Its Words “Other Immoral Purposes,” which is still considered a standard work of reference on this topic. Along with law, at least since the death of his father in 1919, Claude spent some of his time in management of the John R. Barnes Company Farms. This was no small operation. Consisting of 600 acres, the Barnes farm was said to produce “crops so great that if they were loaded on wagons, ,g ton to the wagon, the wagon trainwould reach from Salt Lake to Ogden. Claude was proud to report that only one or maybe two years ended without the farm showing a profit. Finally, to keep his mind alive, his interest whetted, there was politics. When he was a very young man, he was able to get Utah's congressman to send him the Congressional Regord, which must have kept him informed on public issues for many years." After his service in the state legislature, I do not know what role he played in the Republican Party for the next twenty years. He may well have participated in the con- ventions as a delegate and, as an effective speaker, may have played some role in the campaigns. In any event, by 1938 he was ready for the larger stage. He filed as a primary candidate for U.S. Senate on the Republican ticket. It was the first year that Utahns voted directly in a primary rather than choosing candidates in conventions. Barnes was defeated by Brigham Young University President Franklin S. Harris, who went on to be defeated by Democrat Elbert D. Thomas. For the next six years Barnes was a member of the Republican National Committee. So it would be misleading to think of Claude Barnes as going back in- to a shell. Yet when the flood lights were turned out, when the campaigns were over, when he went home after work each day, what did he do? It is on this front, occupied formerly by family and church, that I see a contrac~ tion. And it was here, one gathers, that his love of nature moved in to provide activity and aesthetic stimulation. The return to Utah way back in 1907 may have seen the start of his nature hikes, for Barnes was then an enthusiastic new ornithologist. Certainly he often found time to get into the out of doors all during the 1910s and 1920s. But after the death of his parents and his wife and the departure from home of his children, after about 1930 or so, the nature walks must have provided solace and enjoyment. In 1934 a newspaper reporter wrote: The hours of his deepest joy come to Mr. Barnes when he dons khaki, seizes his field glasses, altitude barometer and pocket microscope, and steals avay into the hills. There he studies plant and animal specimens or, alone by some gurgling brook or peering up into the star-studded heavens, iptrigues himself with the creative cogitations of his own mind. It was these individual excursions, day after day, month after month, that led to the publications that in my estimation raised him from a journalist, Someone who wrote articles about nature, to a naturalist in the tradition of Thoreau.-15- The writings of Claude Barnes fall into several different categories.” There is the legal treatise written in 1946 and his brief for the Supreme Court, not to speak of the many similar documents prepared for his private practice. There are the theological and apologetic articles that appeared in church magazines. There were the two biographies dealing with his mother and father. ‘There was at least one historical novel, apparently never pub- lished. And there is a volume of moral essays. In all of these, especially the biographies, there are passages of interest to the student of Barnes as a naturalist. But it is his writings specifically on nature that will be our main concern now. I find it convenient to divide them into three groups. First, there are articles and books primarily factual and descrip~ tive--the long series in the uagazines dealing with specific birds and animals and sites, the textbooks, his study of the mountain lion. If he had stopped with those, if his life had ended about the time of the great contraction in the early 1930s, he would have still accumulated a considerable bibliography, enough to establish him as an important figure among those proncting knowledge and appreciation of Utah's natural surroundings. But he did not stop there. Continuing to do some articles in the pattern of the past, he moved out into a new domain in 1940 with The Wending Year, his book of poetry. Not one of the major poetic achievements of America, or even of Utah, The Wending Year contains at least one stanza and sometimes several stanzas for each of the 365 days of the year. It is too monotonous, too sing-song, too predictable in its flat-footed scheme and the steady march of its iambic pentaneter rhythm. Triteness and sentimentality are found on every page- Yet it is an ambitious effort--116 pages of poetic statenent--and it has its moments. Here is his stanza for October 7: Beneath the leafy showers on yon trail, Where fledgling birds in summer flocks did tread, There scatter now the winsome broods of quail, For yet a time by tender mother led. Above all The Wending Year is a catalogue of specific observations. There : is the natural setting--flower, bird, tree, and cloud-~and often accompanied by a moral reflection. This work of poetry represents the second category of his nature writings. After the war, during the closing decade of his life, he reached the high point of his achievement as a literary naturalist when he wrote his four little volumes on the seasons: The Natural History of a Wasatch Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. Perhaps recognizing his limitations, he abandoned poetry and returned to prose. Drawing from the accumulated files of years and years of nature hikes, he had specific notes for each day of the year. In prose form, allowing himself no more than one page of print for each day, he produced little descriptions and moralistic reflections. They are personal and charming. In them (and to a certain extent in all of the Barnes nature writings) we find precision, concern for ecology, empathy, and wonder. As an observer of the natural world Barnes early recognized the importance of precision. Actually the shades of meanings of different words may even have developed independently, for hg_had a well thumbed and personally annotated copy of Roget's Thesarus.“’ But especially when writing of the plant and animal kingdom he wanted to be clearly understood.=16- For this reason he scrupulously used the Latin terms within parentheses. That, of course, can be a stumbling block to ease of reading, and I must admit that in his biographies it sometimes seems stilted. "The desert jack rabbit (Lepus californicus deserticola) was--and still is--common in that vicinity; and in the foothills the mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus hemfonus) was fairly plentiful. . . . The cottontail (Syivilagus nuttalli grangeri), which lived in the labyringhine shrubbery of every creekside, was an especially delicious tid bit.""» This passage is typical. I do not find it objectionable. Usually jumping over the Latin terms as unnec- essary for present purposes, I am reassured to realize that the writer was careful in his distinctions and knew what he was writing about. He had a strong desire to report on the sounds made by the animals, especially birds. For this he developed onomatopes, words which came as close as he could make them to the actual calls. “The other jays approach, and there is a medley of sound,” he wrote. “The loudest is a raspy ‘cha, chaa, chaa, chaa, chaa,' the 'chaa' being repeated usually five times but sometimes as much as ten. . . . Then several of the birds give vent to a long chutter, somewhat likg that of squirrels but resembling the clicking of a large fishing reel."*" Barnes is trying valiantly to give an exact idea of the sound. On another occasion he explained: It is always somewhat difficult to make an onomatope, that is a lettered or syllabic imitation of a bird's song. It is obvious that our alphabet was constructed for human beings who have hard teeth, soft lips, enabling them to distinguish between labials and dentals; but a bird has only a hard beak, without teeth or soft lips, its palate is different and it is not con~ structed to emit nasals. We humans, by the position of lips and teeth, are able to master more consonants than the bird can; but usually we are able, in making an onomatope, to approximagg the voice of the bird. I often give it up, then keep trying. Those who use Barne's descriptions as a guide to their own bird watching would probably agree that an approximation is better than nothing. And if I am not mistaken, such eminent ornithologists as Roger Tory Peterson made the same effort in their classic descriptions. Another area in which Claude Barnes was not at all satisfied with the rough language of everyday usage was color. A 1948 article he published in the Journal of Mammalogy (later reprinted in The Natural History of a Wasatch Autumn) explains that as a student at the University of Chicago he Found in the medical library North American Land Birds by Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway. This introduced him to ornithology, and he became a friend and correspondent of one of the authors, Robert Ridgway. Ridgway's book Color Standards and Color Nomenclature became Barnes's companion. “I have for many years given the book scrupulous attention," he wrote, “even enclosing it in a cotton bag when I took it afield and hegrudging its exposure to sunshine lest its historic color cards fade. Later he obtained A Dictionary of Color by Maerz and Paul, but was frustrated to find that its color desig- nations were by letter and number rather than by words. The summit was reached, as far as Barnes was concerened, when he became a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and discovergg the great color chart produced under the direction of Robert F. Wilson. With this background we can-11- appreciate more fully the care that went into Barnes's references to a maple tree of Talting yellow with darker tints of mirabelle and saffron, the acajou red of a small weed growing in the Farmington bay, skies of light Alice blyg and mountains of mikado brown with lower hills of light cinnanon drab.” Perhaps not knowing of the color charts just mentioned, a local writer in 1934 wrote that Barnes had obtained charts from paint stores and “assembled facilities for the indenjjfication of some 1,530 colors, which is getting down to fine shades.” Barnes saw some threat to his beloved Wasatch Front. He noticed that all the larger streams were mddy, which he attributed to the overgrazing and fires that had allowed every rain to carry off soil from the hillsides. He advocated forest and wildlife management. He was not a great hunter, saying on one occasion: “Since the naturalist never desires to kill, except to supply food for his larder or specimens for his scientific collection, it is understandable that any act in violation of that rule causes repentant regret. It is little wonder that he should not fgpgive in himself or others any act that is thoughtless enough to be wanton.""" And he was aware of the interconnections between the various life forms--Darwin's “tangled bank.” He was not a modern ecologist, but his concerns, like those of Gifford Pinchot, Jghn Muir, and Aldo Leopold, adumbrated the ecology movement of the 1960s. Barnes had an empathy for the various creatures he observed. He tried in imaginatiogsto “enter into minds, experiences and understandings of birds and manmals.""® This is not the attitude of academic zoologists, but it is not unusual among naturalists. “If it were our lot to be a water bird,” Barnes wrote, “we should choose to be a Canadian goose; this on account of its intelligence, resourcefulness, fidelity, beauty and happy gregarious life; but if we had to be a shore bird we should be a black-necked stilt. Compared with avocets, the stilts wade in fresher water and their feeding habits are daintier; furthermore, being ordinarily unsought by the gunner, they live on placid lagoons in sunny tranquility. Black bellied plovers and killdeers appeal to us very much, but the die is cast--we shall be black-ggcked stilts if the ayths of Plato result in the great transmigra~ tion. On one occasion he wrote that all nature, like man, lived that it might have joy. Insects could be happy, Barnes thoght, as could birds. Observing a bird feeding on a cone, he wrote, jyhat a happy life in a land of plenty-~insects in summer, nuts in winter."* On other occasions he realized that there might be problems with such projection of human values. Speaking of the water ouzel, he wrote: And what a carefree bird it is! Winter or summer, snow or sunshine, it never leaves its beloved stream; for always, even when ice mantles the canyon trail and brookway, some pool remains open beneath a snow~ frozen fall. Living in the purest and sweetest surroundings, it is perhaps the happiest bird in all the world. But there comes the query: what is happiness? Should we say: happiness is the enjoyment of a Present without worry over an unknown future? What an ineffable word “happiness” is, for to no two people do the identical things constitute joy!Claude Barnes had an admirable capacity for wonder. As long as he lived, he never became blase about the mountains, canyons, and streams he visited. Conceding that he had identified the species and sub-species of animal and botanical life “with meticulous care,” he said that his attitude had nevertheless been “constantly one of interest and wonderment, interest in the distribution and ecological factors affecting specjgs and wonderment in the overwhelming development and congruity of it all.""* He once noted that a naturalist "must be ecstatic at times, especially when prompted by something almost spiritual in woodland purity like the Audubon hermit thrust." I do not want to overestimate the originality of all this. Delight in making careful and precise observations, a concern for what man is doing to his natural surroundings, an imagined empathy for other living things, a reverent awe before the beauty and majesty of it all--these are notes already sounded by many otherg,in the long tradition of modern poetic and prose descriptions of nature." The same is true of the relative nothingness of man before the great relentless cosmic forces and his vanity in assuming that he is the measure of all things. And to celebrate the loveliness of scenery ranging from mountain to valley, stream and marsh, is by no means new to Claude Barnes. Sometimes, of course, the content can be tradition~ al while the style adds a strong individual voice of literary genius. It would be going too far to claim such in this case. In an interesting passage Barnes praises the poet John Keats. “Every naturalist must read Keats with admiration,” he said, “for the great poet often describes a scene with a word." Then Barnes goes on to notice what he saw as a limitation in the poet, who was not "accumstomed to view things with the trained eye of the naturalist,” “what could Keats have done," Barnes asks, if he had become a naturalist? It would be idle to deny that there is a valid point here; the trained naturalist of the nineteenth or twentieth century did have the benefit of accumulated scientific knowledge, at the very least the established taxonony and generic names. But it is probably not unfair to notice also that in his literary skills, at least in poetry, Barnes himself was lacking. What could Claude Barnes have done, we may ask, if he had been a Keats? Yet there is something of worth here. In prose, I submit, he is fairly effective for his purposes. He does speak out of his own life experience, his own reflections; using established tropes does not, of course, prove insincerity in the user. Above all, he was writing about a specific area-- the Wasatch Range in the Rocky Mountains. For the natural history of City Creek Canyon, Big Cottonwood Canyon, Lambs Canyon, and the like, it is futile to turn to Thoreau or Joseph Wood Krutch or Aldo Leopold. For this area we can turn to Claude Barnes, who brought to an intrinsically fascinating subject matter a lively intelligence, thorough self-training, and considerable verbal facility. At times Barnes came close to what I would describe as a modern Lucre~ tius, a materialist who saw gyerything in terms of matter in notion. He was undoubtedly a Darwinist.“° But soon we encounter qualifications and reservations. Consider the following passage: So multiform is the evidence of it that evolution is now seldom denied by intellectual honesty. The theory, that all organisms sprang from an original, simple type of life, and that it in turn arose somehow from inanimate nature, goes back to the ancient es-19- Greeks. Nowadays we have much to prove its truth~-comparative anatomy, geological succession, geographic distribution, classi-~ fication, embryology, serotology and genetics. Darwin's thesis that changes in species have come about through natural selection is to my thinking no longer regarded as the major cause; never- theless, although much has been done in cytogenetics to prove that the genes and chromosomes are very important in the trans~ mission of hereditary characteristics and in the creation of mutations, and, although there has been much study on the influence of climate, isolation and environmental factors, no one can yet say with certainty what causes species to change their form. In 1867, eight years after the appearance of Darwin's Origin of species, one F. Jenkins gave such an overwhelming criticism of the Darwin theory, and let us say, of the modern claim of the importance of mutations caused by genes and chronosomes as well, that I at least have never seen it successfully answered. Jenkins’ simple contention was this: no matter how favorable a variation chosen by natural selection might be, and, we might add, no matter how desirable a mutation produced by genes and chromosomes, it would be swarmed 7 and vanished in no time by the sheer numbers of regular breeding. To repeat the main point he is making: that change and evolution have occurred is demonstrable; why they have occurred is not at all certain. One of the repeated words in Claude Barnes is the mystery of it all. This was what he objected to in theological bigots but also, one would assume, what he objected to in scientists who thought they had it all explained in neat formulas. In the tradition of Montaingne he was less interested in consistency than in a constant probing. Beauty there was in the world as he saw. There was congruity also. Over and over again there seems to be the idea of design--the old idea that behind the watch there mist be a watch maker. But he was not an eighteenth~century naturalist who might well have seen his observations as leading inexorably to the con~ clusion that behind it all there was a Creator. He was not confident about what design really meant, asking on one occasion, ,“Is design but the average of the chance direction of individual particles?""* again, he said, "There is an eventual mystery that he [the writer] cannot solve, and, as a naturg}- ist, he can only in humility await the development of greater knowledge." One cannot help but be struck by Barnes's repeated expressions of interest in the concept of eternity and eternal duration. On December 26 he wrote, "The end of the year precedes a glorious reawakening in spring; the end of life forebodes the eternal darkness of the tomb. Would that in the despair of his hegrt man could see some spark of light in the unfathom~ able reality ahead!"”” Here are some more glimmers of that concern: It is pleasant to think of immortality, but only if it be in a place where the joyful vigors of life will be continued without disease or pain, where flowers bloom and birds sing, where love and romance prevail, and where ever changing progressive develop- ment is the goal. Any heaven that offers man a mere state of ecstatic abstraction.seens incongruous as we look upon the reality of nature in spring.-20- The naturalist, if he be true to his own heart, must hope that a power so marvelously capable in design as that which he sees about himself caggot have failed to provide an ultimate of individual existence. There is in nature, however, much more than the power to awaken aesthetic joy--it is the final hope of the intellectual that they might discover in it that most important of all things, a solution to the mystery of life. Biochemistry and physics, cytology and genetics, are leading us into strange fields, fields that might encourage the thought of individual sempiternity. Developments in those fields during the past ten years would have been watched by Claude Barnes with utter fascination. It is interesting to discover that Barnes early became anxious about the possibility of continued existence of the human soul. He joined the London Society for Psychical Research, which was seeking some kind of scientific confirmation of the unseen world. He even exacted a promise from his parents that they would reappear to him after their death “if possible,” Unfortunately for his desire, they did not do so “even ina dream.” During his retirement years Barnes wrote two works specifically on the subject of immortality. The first of these, The Duration of Mind, was sub- mitted to and copyrighted by the Philosophical Society of England before its private publication in Utah in 1955. His conclusion, in a nutshell, is that there is no proof of continued personal existence after death, but it is not impossible. "To ue it is just as absurd to deny the possiblity of immogtal- ity as to adopt a religious view and claim to know something about it. Contrasting his own conclusion to that of Bertrand Russell, Barnes wrot +». he makes ultimate annihilation a mathematical certainty, whereas I merely uaintain that there is no proof of immortality, not that it is beyond the pale of possiblity by some means we do not understand. He contends that immortality is disproved; I, that we do not know of any proof of it, a far different conclusion. He is dogmatic and positive, as certain as the mathematics in which he excels, wggreas I leave the door open and constantly yearn for evidence. Barnes goes on to mention the kind of immortality in which influence extends after death in the lives of children and friends. One would think this would be the last word on the subject, but a year or two before his death Claude Barnes published a pamphlet entitled Can Science Have A Religion? In this little pamphlet he showed an intense awareness of The limitations of modern physical science. To judge from the bibliography Barnes kept up his reading rather well. Transplantation of vital organs, recent publications in enzymology, the exciting work with DNA, molecular biology, genetics and metabolism-in all these areas he was not relying on the science of the pre-World War II period. I do not find evidence that he had read the important work of T. S. Kuhn on the importance of paradigms in shaping scientific concepts but he seems quite aware of what Einstein had done to the Newtonian synthesis. “Our knowledge is so limited,” he writes, ——-21- “that 4t seens arrogance to deny the possiblity of anything.”°! He did not wish people to draw the wrong conclusions. He did not see himself as lapsing into a priori modes of thought, which he considered to be that of all religion. “I am of humble knowledge,” he said. “Who am I to deny that at the proper time laws of which there is no present evidence will, arises, supersede all other laws and accomplish that which we deemed impossible?” He did not believe that man was any more important than anything else. Call- ing up a Mormon phrase, he saw “nothing to indicate anthropomorphispy the doctrine that as man is God once was and as God is man may become.""” He had hoped to discover that the "great ouside directing force had some interest in man," but in this he had failed.” Notice, however, that he still be~ lieved in a great being, as the “deepest conviction of my life.” Let us hear his conclusion: Now, if I recognize such a pattern maker it is foolish in me to think that it is helpless in the matter of the cessation of the human mind, which it constructed. What is man's mind--I do not know; but whatever it is, it is a masterly mechanism. . . « In the very solemity of my reasoning I, therefore, finally believe that nature has an outside influence, ,gnd that influence is capable somehow of continuing the human mind. So Claude Barnes saw as much of dogmatism and unjustified certainty in the world of science as he saw in the world of religion. He wanted to keep the doors open. He was a believer malgre lui. His habitual study of the natural world had, of course, created in his mind a great storehouse of facts. But he had not lost his sense of wonder, his sense of the aystery of it all, his quest for,geaning. That was what he meant in describing himself as a naturalist.°* After many years of nature walks he had accumu~ lated so nany specific memories that all he had to do was mention such words as sagebrush, foothills, pine forst, or quaking aspens, or waterfalls to conjure up definite living things he had seen. “It is the way of the natur- alist,” he said, “ever alert for beauty of color, shape or song; ever hopeful that in wide understanding will come greater comprehension of the meaning of it all.” And that this did not lead him to a gloom or despair is evidenced by another statement about the naturalist's activities: “They who divert themselves to an investigation of all forms of nature to the end that they may find the meaning of life and the evidence of its eventual perpetuation are of all men most happy, for they are on the very path of eternity.”NOTES Ighe bibliography appended to the present paper lists the know published works of Claude T. Barnes. I am grateful to Kathy Johnson for assistance in Compiling it. Other works include "Grains of Sand” (essays), “The Broken Arrow," a novel, and "Doris of Montamere,” a novel based on the pioneer experiences of his mother. These works aust have been in existence in 1934, when they are mentioned by a newspaper writer, but they seen never to have been published. Eugene Middleton, "Personality Portraits of Prominent Utahns: Claude T. Barnes,” Deseret News, 26 Novenber 1934. Obituaries are found in Deseret News, 1 May 1968; and the Salt Lake Tribune, 2 May 1968. 2«Biography of Claude T. Barnes," typescript, borrowed from Ezra Clark Knowlton. Written in the third person, this seven-page typescript is alnost certainly an autobiography written by Barnes himself. 3claude T. Barnes, The Grim Years: Or the Life of Emily Stewart Barnes (Salt Lake City: The Ralton Co., 1949), pe Sle ‘claude T. Barnes, Toward the Eternal: Or the Life of John R. Barnes (Salt Lake City: The Ralton Co., 1954), pe 95 She Grim Years, p. 88. Sroward the Eternal, pp. 49-SL- Biography,” p. 2. Sryia. Stpid. l0nxnowledge from God or Knowledge from Reason,” Millennial Star 65 (1903): 620-23. — Lls, Biography,” pp» 2-3. 12pnocograph from Ezra Clark Knowlton, The Utah Knowltons (Salt Lake City, 1971), pe 210. 1olaude T. Barnes, The Natural History of a Wasatch Autumn (Salt Lake City: The Ralton Co., 1958), p. 6. Hereafter the works on the four seasons will be cited by the short title, as, e.g., Wasatch Autumn. Léepiography,” p. 7+ An interesting incident regarding the Woodmen of the World, in which we discover that Claude's brother Richard W. was also a Woodman, that a Woodman lodge opened in Kaysville about 1900, and that the father, John R. Barnes, “thought it was sinful to join secret lodges,” is recounted in Toward the Eternal, p. 71+ Lerhe Dependence of Morality Upon Religion,” Improvement Bra 10 (1907): 510-17, 598-607; “The Unconscious Illapse,” Improvement Era 10 (1907): 783-69 “the New Mania” {on roller skating], Improvement Era 10 (1907): 865-67.“2h U~the Dependence of Morality Upon Religion, lene was admitted to the Utah Bar October 14, 1907; later to a United States District Court. We practiced his profession, first from 1913 to 1923 with George B. Hancock, a Utah man whom he had met at Michigan; and thence- forth alone.” “Biography,” p- 6- Pe 18yon of Affairs in the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: The Press Club of Salt Lake, 1914), p. 360. 1eraude T. Barnes, "Dryden on Salvation for the Dead,” Improvement Era 16 (1913): 299. 2cyaude T. Barnes, Toward the Eternal, pp. 95-97. 21, brief second marriage, to Effie Alice Lee, lasted from 1929 to 1931, produced one child, and ended in divorce. Ezra Clark Knowlton, The Utah Knowltons, p- 213. 22iaterview with former bishop George Cannon Young, 2 October 1978. 23e,aude Ts Barnes, Toward the Eternal, pp. 65~66. 24mpiography,” p- 2+ eugene Middleton, "Personality Portraits of Prominent Utahs: Claude T. Barnes,” Deseret News, 26 November 1934. 281 addition to the titles listed in the bibliography at the end of the present paper, Claude Barnes wrote articles for the Salt Lake Herald (1902), the Deseret News (1907-13), and such national magazines as Country Gentleman. There are also certain unpublished writings, including two historical novels+ 2ToBiography,” pe Te 28claude T. Barnes, The Grim Years, p. 33. 2%vasatch Spring, p- 70. 30 Styasatch Autumn, ps 6+ 32yasatch Autumn, pp. 6-7. Byasatch Autumn, pp 18-20. 34, Eugene Middleton, “Personality Portraits of Prominent Utahns: Claude T. Barnes,” Deseret News, 26 November 1934. 35, Claude T. Barnes (with J. R. Paul), Forest Groves and Canyon Streams (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1913), ps. SSCS 36yasatch Winter, p. 8.=24- Syasatch Autumn, p. 2 Wasatch Winter, pp. 8-12. 3Byasatch Summer, pe 47. 3%yasatch Spring, p- 63. *Cvasatch Summer, p. 99. Wasatch Summer, p. 76; Wasatch Spring, p. 79; Iyasatch Summer, ps 19. ‘2yasatch Winter, pe 6. ‘Syasatch Summer , ps 32. 4, 44on the larger significance of conceptions of nature see George Boas, “Nature,” in Dictionary of the History of Ideas. ‘Suasatch Summer, p- 45. 4 Swasatch Winter, p. 12; The Duration of Mind, pp. 41-58. 47, Wasatch Winter, p. 12. For another recognition of Darvin's limitation: See Barnes, Can Science Have a Religion? p. 7. *8yasatch Winter, p. 28 ‘Svasatch Winter, p. 6. 5%vasatch Winter, pe Ll. SIyasatch Spring, p» 80. S2yasatch Spring, ps 92+ S3yasatch Spring, p» 66. S4une Grim Years, p» 83. Cf: “In later years I became a member of Mr. Myers" "Society for Poychical Research! in London, a famous organization for the scientific investigation of psychic phenomena, such a telepathy, tele- Kinesis, ghosts. I was already faniliar with hypnotism, having used it to aseist religious organizations trying to help drunks, drug addicts and the like; but, after ten years, I gave the society up for the reason, that I des~ paired of ever getting proof of any psychic phenomena except hypnotisn, telepathy and prenonitions, all of which I could explain on natural, material- istic grounds.” Can Science Have a Religion?, pe 14. SScyaude T. Barnes, The Duration of Mind (Salt Lake City: The Ralton Co., 1955), pe OL. 56the Duration of Mind, p. 93+ 37, Can Science Have a Religion? p. 7+~25- 58can Science Have a Religion’, p. 7. 5%can Science Have a Religion?, p. 20. §[can Science Have a Religion?, p. 21. ®lcan Science Have a Religion?, p. 22. 2vasatch Winter, pp. 14, 16, 34-35. S3yasatch Summer, pp. 66-67.BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CLAUDE TEANCUM BARNES 1903 “Knowledge From God or Knowledge From Reason,” Millennial Star 65 (1903): 620-23. "The Power of Example,” Millennial Star 65 (1903): 101-03. “why Mormonism Grows,” Millennial Star 65 (1903): 403-05. 1904 “The Personality of the Holy Ghost,” Millennial Star 66 (1904): 667-68. 1905 “Repentance,” Millennial Star 67 (1905): 61-64. 11907 “The Dependence of Morality Upon Religion,” Iuprovaent Era 10 (1907): 510-17. “The Dependence of Morality Upon Religion,” III, Improvement Era 10 (1907): 598-607. “The New Mania," Improvement Era 10 (1907): 865-67. “The Unconscious Illapse,” Improvement Era 10 (1907): 783-89. 1908 “A Plea for Our Birds,” Deseret Evening News, July 4, 1908. “Some Utah Birds," I, Improvement Era 11 (1908): 597-602. "Some Utah Birds," I, Improvement Era 11 (1908): 681-85. “Some Utah Birds," ILI, Improvement Era 11 (1908): 773-778 “Some Utah Birds,” IV, Improvement Era 11 (1908): 920-25. “Some Utah Birds," V, Improvement Era 12 (1908): 31-35.-27- e Use of the Idle Hour,” Improvement Era 11 (1908):514-18. “Typical Zarly November Day,” Deseret Evening News, November 21, 1908. 1909 “The Coyote--Pernicious or Beneficial?” Deseret Evening News, January 2, 1909. “Some Utah Birds,” VI, Improvement Era 12 (1909):345~51. 1910 “The Cottontail,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):612-13. “The Grizzly Bear," Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):139-41. “The House Mouse,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):258-60. “The Little Chipmunk,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):556-57. “The Muskrat,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):498-99. “The Porcupine,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):313-15. “The Rattlesnake,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):430-32. “The Skunk,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):380-81. "The Wildcat,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):197-99. "The Woodchuck,” Juvenile Instructor 45 (1910):661-662. i911 “The Badger," Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):396-98. “The Beaver,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):663-65- “The Gray Gopher,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):300-02. “The Gray Wolf,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):105-07. “Little Brown Bat,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):493-95. “The Long-tailed Weasel, Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):365-66. “The Mink,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):236-38. “The Mountain Lion, Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):40-43. “The Pronghorned Antelope,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):165-67.-28- “Trout Growing--A New Industry,” The Western Monthly, May, 1911. “The Wolverine,” Juvenile Instructor 46 (1911):555-57. 1912 "The American Buffalo,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):75-77. “The Big-Horn Mountain Sheep,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):479-81. “The Birds,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):504-06. “The Elk,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):177-79. “The House Fly,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):416-19. “The Killdeer," Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):734-35. “The Moose,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):233-36. The Mule Deer,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):295-97. “The Red-Shafted Flicker," Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):619-21. “The Utah Trout,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):355-57. The Valley Quail,” Juvenile Instructor 47 (1912):555-59. 1913 “Bullock's Oriole,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):449-51. “pryden on Salvation for the Dead," Improvement Era 16 (1913):299-303, Farm Friends and Spring Flowers with J. H. Paul (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret News, 1913). Forest Groves and Canyon Streams with J. H. Paul (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret News, 1913). “The Arkansas Flycatcher," Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):637-38. “The Belted Kingfisher," Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):363-65- “The Bohemian Waxwing,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):72-74. “The Burrowing Owl," Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913) 1662-64. “The Mountain Bluebird,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):221-22. “The Red-Winged Blackbird,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):199-201. “The Western Meadow Lark," Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):344-46, ss...-29- “Western Evening Grosbeak,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):14-15. “Western Horned Owl,” Juvenile Instructor 48 (1913):452-54. 1914 “Attract the Birds,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):406-08. “The Black-billed Magpie Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):213-14. “The California Cuckoo,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):546-48. rm Foes and Bird Helpers with J. H. Paul (Salt Lake City Utah: The Deseret News, 1914). “The Golden Eagle," Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914 1606-08. “In the Wilds of Wyoming,” Intermountain Sportsman, June, 1914. “The Mallard Duck,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914): 70-71. “The Mountain Chickadee,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):17-19. “The Weakening of the Bird's Song,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):445-47. “The Westera Robin,” Juvenile Instructor 49 (1914):243-44. Western Natural Resources with J. H. Paul (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Deseret News, 1914). “The Wilds Outside Yellowstone,” Intermountain Sportsman, May, 1914. 1915 "The American Goshawk,” Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):329-30. "The American Osprey,” Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):507-09. "The Birds of June," Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):366~68. “The Canvas-Back," Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):750-51. “The Charm of Yellowstone,” Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):427~32. "The Dusky Grouse," Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):610-12. “The Green-Winged Teal,” Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):679-80. “The Wild Turkey," Juvenile Instructor 50 (1915):835-36.=30- 1916 “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” I, Juvenile Instructor 51 (1916) :579-81. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West, " II, Juvenile Instructor 51 (2916) 3651-52. "Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” III, Juvenile Instructor 51 (1916) :735-36. “The Long-Crested Jay," Juvenile Instructor 51 (1916):839-40. “Man's Dependence on Birds,” Juvenile Instructor 51 (1916):376-78. "The Road Runner,” Juvenile Instructor 51 (1916):230-32. 1917 “The American Bittern,” Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):401-02. “The Audubon Warbler,” Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):263-64. “The Barn Swallow,” Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):369-70. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West, (1917) 1288-90. IV, Juvenile Instructor 52 “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” V, Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917) :337-38. Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” VI, Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917) :393-94. eauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West," VII, Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917) :505-06. a “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” VIII, Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917) 3566-67. — “The Black-Necked Stilt," Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):154-55. "The Calliope Humming-Bird,” Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):291-93. “The Spoonbill,” Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):619-20. “The Utah National Guard," Juvenile Instructor 52 (1917):449-55. 1918 "A Teapper's Adventure," Improvement Era 22 (1918):52-55.-31- “At the Top of the Canyon,” Part 1, Improvement Era 22 (1918):136-39. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” IX, Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918) :8-9. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” X, Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918) :115. a “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” XI, Juvenile Instructor 53 (2918):283. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” XII, Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918):405. — ~ “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West, “ Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918 518-19. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” XV, Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918) 633. “The Grizzly of the Idaho Woods,” Improvement Era 21 (1918):793-98. “In the Midst of Fangs," Improvement Era 21 (1918):687-89. “Surrounded by Mountain Lions,” Outers Book--Recreation, February, 1918. “The Northern Shrike,” Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918):96-97. “The Rubber Boa,” Juvenile Instructor 53 (1918):342. “The Sting of the Desert's Fang,” Quters Book-~Recreation, August, 1918. 1919 "A Prospector's Adventure,” Improvement Era 22 (1919):444-46, “At the Top of the Canyon,” Part II, Improvement Era 22 (1919):223-33. “A Winter Night,” Improvement Era 22 (1919):318-20. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West," XVI, Juvenile Instructor 54 (1919) 367-68. “Beauty Spots of the Inter-Mountain West,” XVII, Juvenile Instructor 54 (2919) :289-90. "His Return,” Improvement Era 22 (1919):626-28. 1921 “an Indian Deserted Rendezvous,” Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921):303. “Dreamland,” Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921):119.=32- “Mission Lake Near Glacier National Park," Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921): 526. "The Old Mill,” Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921):357. “Purgatory Butte,” Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921):464, "Utah's Garden of the God's,” Juvenile Instructor 56 (1921):413. 1922 “The Crossing of the Grand,” Juvenile Instructor 57 (1922):81. “Freaks of Nature,” Juvenile Instructor 57 (1922):252 “Jackson Glacier,” Juvenile Instructor 57 (1922):544. "The King of Mount Baldy," St. Nicolas, February, 1922 Mammals of Utah (Kaysville, Utah: Inland Printing Co., 1922) “Sculptor's Gallery," Juvenile Instructor 57 (1922):487. “The Terror of the Range,” St. Nicholas, November, 1922 1923 "Cloud Reflections,” Juvenile Instructor 58 (1923):121. “Putch, the Mink's Last Fight," Nature Magazine, April, 1923, 1927 “The Goshawk,” The Utah Educational Review, December, 1927. Utah Mammals (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1927). 1933 "The Bob Cat,” The Rocky Mountain Sportsman, August, 1933. “The Old Mill,” The Weekly Reflex, Kaysville, July 6, 1933. 1936 "The Beaver," The Rocky Mountain Sportsman, April, 1934. "The Muskrat," The Rocky Mountain Sportsman, June, 1934, “The Rattlesnake,” The Rocky Mountain Sportsman, May, 1934, ee,<3 1937 “an Extraordinary Visitor,” Improvement Era 40 (1937):144, 169, 183. The Loneliness of Alces,” Improvement Era 40 (1937):487, 526-27 1939 "The Distorted Face,” Improvement Era 42 (1939):146-47. 1940 “an Adventure in Old City Creek,” Improvement Era 43 (1940):664, 686-88. The Wending Year (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1940). 1941 “The Cabin Door,” Improvement Era 44 (1941):531, 552-553. 1942 “The Grizzly of Logan River,” Improvement Era 45 (1942):148. 1943 "That Dark Room,” Improvement Era 46 (1943):469, 502. 1945 “The Hardscrabble Grizzlies,” Improvement Era 48 (1945):20, 52. 1946 The White Slave Act: History and Analysis of Its Words “Other Immoral Purpose” (Salt Lake City, Utah: Sugar House Press, Inc., 1946). 1949 The Grin Years; or The Life of Emily Stewart Barnes (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Raiton Co., 1949. 1951 “Mysterious Mountain Lions," Improvement Era 54 (1951):92-93, 125-27.=3h- 1954 Toward the Eternal; or The Life of John R. Barnes (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Co., 1954). 1955 The Duration of Mind (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Co., 1955). “Wild Animals of Utah Pioneer Days,” Improvement Era 58 (1955):160-61, 190-92. 1956 Some Arts of Living (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Co, 1956). 1957 The Natural History of a Wasatch Spring (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Gon, 1957) The Natural History of a Wasatch Summer (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Coe, 1957)» — 1958 The Natural History of a Wasatch Autumn (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton fo.) 1958) SSOSOCSCSCSCS~STt 1959 ‘The Natural History of a Wasatch Winter (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Co. 1959). 1960 The Cougar or Mountain Lion (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Ralton Co., 1960). 1966 can Science Have A Religion? (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1966) Dictionary of Utah Slang with Dorothy B. Jensen (Kaysville, Utah: Inland Printing Co, 1966).THE MORAL MEASURE OF LITERATURE Stephen L. Tanner About a year ago the Western Humanities Review included an essay by Jobn Gardner titled "The Idea of Moral Criticism.” This essay is essential~ ly an old-fashioned defense of moral affirmation as the most fundamental artistic value. According to Gardner, most criticism in our century evades the real task of criticism, which is the evaluation or assessment of literary works. He singles out the New Criticism as the most influential of such evasions and asserts that "true art treats ideals, affirming and clarifying the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Ideals are art's ends; the rest is mere methodology. True criticism, what I am calling ‘moral criticism," may speak of technique, but its ultimate concern is with ends." He thinks the schools of criticism in our age are "too neat, too intellectual, too ‘scientific’ to deal with so lively and unpredictable a creature as art" and "they ignore the very essence of art, which is emotional affirmation.” He explains that a man writes a novel "to find out what he can maintain, not just with his head but with all his nature. He gives it to his readers not only to delight them and instruct them but also to support them if they are the right kind of people already, and stir doubts if they're not." For these reasons, "True criticism is, at least some of the time, morally judgmental." To avoid such judgments, Gardner insists, is to treat art as a mere plaything. "It may not really legislate for humanity," he says, but whether it is heard or not, it is civilization's single most significant device for learning what must be affirmed and what denied." He concludes by saying, "It is precisely because it affirms values that art is important. The trouble with our present criticism is that it is, for the most part, not important. Tt treats the only true magic in the world as though it were done with wires.” In one sense, there is nothing original in these statements. They simply reiterate Matthew Arnold's assertion "that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life--to the question: How to live." And Arnold, of course, speaks from within what is probably the oldest and most influential tradition in criticism. But in another sense, Gardner's essay is novel and unorthodox. In recent criticism, the moral approach has not been fashionable. Gardner himself is a successful contemporary novelist, and we hardly expect a contemporary novelist to come to the ed~36- defense of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. That this essay, taken within the context of recent criticism, has a radical flavor tells us something about the diminished role of the moral approach in contemporary literary criticism. But by the same token, that a contemporary novelist fully conversant with existing schools of criticism should reassert the prime value of moral affirmation in art confirms that moral criticism is fundamental and enduring. The following statement by Northrop Frye expresses a position all but universally accepted in the past few decades: "The fundamental act of criticism is a disinterested response to a work of literature in which all one's beliefs, engagements, commitments, prejudices, stampedings of pity and terror, are ordered to be quiet. We are now dealing with the imaginative, not the existential, with ‘let this be,’ not with 'this is,' and no work of literature is better by virtue of what it says than any other work." Like the disciples of the New Criticism, Frye is saying that the important thing about literature is not what it says or affirms or promulgates, but only how well it works as a self-contained, organic whole during whatever it does. There is truth in this, but it leaves out the primary business of literature, which is direct or indirect affirmation. According to Gardner, a position like Frye's shrugs off the question of evaluation because it thinks it knows the answer: "Beauty is Truth and Truth is Relative." It would be interesting to speculate about the causes of the reluctance of modern critics to take evaluation seriously. The broad causes undoubt- edly include the relativistic temper of the modern mind; current philosophical concern with description and methodology rather than with the ascertainment of order and values the subjectivist inclination furthered by some branches of psychology; and the attempt to emulate the dispassionate objectivity of science. Any one or any combination of these might influence an individual critic, and each may lead to the conclusion that evaluation is neither meaningful nor possible. From some research I've been doing in American criticism of the 20s and 30s, I would suggest another more specific cause. The moral critics of that period were discredited by the creation of a myth--a caricature. It was the Myth of the Nasty, Mean, Horrid Old Man. According to this stereotype, moral critics such as Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More were narrow- minded and hard-hearted old men determined to maintain their authority against aspiring youth; they were fixed in ancient ways and petulantly annoyed with novelty; and they were trying to elevate their own narrow preoccupations into universal edicts. Pairs such as the following were set critical-creative; resressive-liberating; intellectual-enotional; old-new; cold-warm; realism-imagination; business-art; dogma-choice; reaction-progress; authority-individualism; tradition-experiment. The moral critics were always stuck with what was considered the negative in each of these pairs. This myth has been pervasive and long-lived. In the late 60s I approached Lawrence Dembo, a distinguished scholar of modern criticism, about directing a dissertation on Paul Elmer More. He said he didn't want anything to do with that reactionary stuffed shirt. Fortunately, there was a man in the department who had known Babbitt and More and therefore was not susceptible to the stereotype. He was pleased to direct my research. Whatever its causes, the reluctance of modern criticism to take moral evaluation seriously creates tension within the Mormon critic. Becoming“37 skilled in the methods of 20th-century criticism and at the same time devoutly maintaining one's religious beliefs can be an unsettling process. I have found nyself at times feeling a little embarrassed and apologetic about my moral preoccupations when responding to literature as a teacher or critic, I suspect that others of my generation who were trained under the influence of the New Criticism have experienced the same ambivalence. I remember reading an essay by Gene England in which he chafes under the burden of his formalistic training, and suggests that something wore or different is needed, particularly for appreciating Moron literature. Questions concerning the role of evaluation in criticism (what is good and bad, right and wrong) are extremely complicated and will never be Tesolved to everyone's satisfaction. But a Mormon critic can and should resolve them to his satisfaction. I don't see, for example, how a Mormon critic can avoid subscribing to some kind of edification theory. His world view necessarily causes him to see literature as a criticism of life and to value it according to what it affirms or promulgates. This doesn't mean he must reject modern critical theories and methods, but he must complete or supplement them so that ends as well as means are assessed. Ié there be any conclusion to be drawn from the history of literature, it is that the writer of stories must teach whether he wishes to teach or not; his very denial of the pertinence of the moral law to literature becomes in practice inevitably a form of teaching. The fact is that ethics and aesthetics are inseparable in literature. Or, more precisely, just in proportion as the practice or criticism of literary art becomes superficial, ethics and aesthetics tend to fall apart, whereas just in proportion as such practice or criticism strikes deeper, ethics and aesthetics are more and more implicated one in the other until they lose their distinction in a common root. What I wish to assert is summarized in this fundamental syllogism: Literature cannot be separated from life, and life cannot be separated from moral concerns; therefore, moral concerns must have a primary role in the understanding and appreciation of literature. Consider this group of statements. Henry James: "The great question as to a poet or a novelist is, How does he feel about life? What, in the last analysis, is his philosophy? When vigorous writers have reached maturity, we are at liberty to gather from their works some expression of a total view of the world they have been so actively observing. This is the most interesting thing their works offer us. Details are interesting in proportion as they contribute to make it clear." Leo Tolstoy: "The cement which binds together every work of art into a whole and produces the effect of life-like illusion is not the unity of persons and places but that of the author's independent moral relation to the subject. . . . Whatever the artist depicts, whether it be saints or robbers, kings or lackeys, we see and see only the soul of the artist himself." T. 8. Eliot: "The greatness of Literature cannot be determined solely by Literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards."~38- Flannery O'Connor: For the novelist "judgment is implicit in the act of seeing. His vision cannot be detached from his moral sense." Ralph Ellison: "Still I believe that fiction does help create value, and I regard this as a very serious--I almost said 'sacred'—function of the writer." Such statements by distinguished writers could be multiplied to fill volumes. The point I wish to make is that we must not be intimidated or misguided by prevailing attitudes in recent criticism. Realizing we have the weight of a tradition listed for centuries on our side, we should expouse unashamedly and unhesitatingly an edification theory of literature and then strive for a moral approach of criticism that is perceptive and wise. Let's stop fretting over the legitimacy of moral criticism and get on with the business of learning to do it well. It isn't easy to do it well. To assume that it is, is a common error that has discredited moral criticism. Formalistic criticism is often easy to dos the glut of articles in scholarly journals is evidence of this. One often encounters graduate students who can effortlessly do a slick job of pointing out patterns of images, archetypes, or phallic symbols. This kind of analysis is a skill that can be taught and learned with relative ease. But to determine exactly what a work of literature affirms and then perceptively examine the full moral implications of that affirmation is a difficult task requiring maturity and wisdom in addition to formalistic skill. I want now to make some observations and suggestions regarding moral criticism, What I say has most direct application to modern fiction. I've chosen this focus because the fiction of our age is the most widely read and most morally problematical kind of literature, Wise and discerning criticism is much needed to guide readers through the moral labyrinth of the contemporary novel, where the danger--particularly for immature readers-- is very real indeed. At the end of every character in fiction dangles a world view, What a character says and does depends ultimately upon the author's fundamental attitudes and values. How do novelists embody their ethical beliefs, opinions, and prejudices'in novels? What is it likely that this novelist must have believed in order to disclose and portray as he did such characters, actions, and thoughts in such a work? These are the most important questions the moral critic must answer. And notice that they are literary questions, not moral ones. The moral critic translates aesthetic signals into ethical statements. This is the hard part. Judging the ethical statements is fairly easy for anyone possessing moral convictions. Certainly any member of the Church should be able to handle that part, but being able to do it does not make him a literary critic. Where training, skill, experience, creativity, gifts are required is in the first part of the process, the translation part. The more precise our knowledge of how the writer accomplished his artistic ends, the more accurate will be our inferences about his ethical beliefs. Discerning the values expressed in a novel is difficult because the artist is deliberately subtle in disclosing them. He is trying to recreate life, but life that is ordered, and in which ethical beliefs are tested in ‘a complexity of human action corresponding to actual life. The value of eee~39- ethical statements in good art is that they are not abstract; they always Come embodied in concrete hunan situations. And in addition to the Subtlety of disclosure, we must also take into consideration the complexity Of the creative process. The writer cannot know in advance the exact Suture of the values he will portray. The process of writing itself, {avolving both the conscious and unconscious mind, creates values oF shadinge of values the author cannot foresee and sometimes doesn’t recognize even after the fact. That is part of the mystery of the creative process. The critie must reconstruct intention implicit in the work, which frequently transcends the author's conscious intention. Since perceptive moral criticism is difficult, a satisfactory Mormon criticien will be difficult. A knowledge of the Restored Gospel is of Great value, but its usefulness to the critic is confined largely to the Gasiest part of his task: judging ethical statements after they have been translated ot identified, Besides this, we must recognize that although the principles of the Gospel are fairly simple, recognizing and applying them in concrete situations is not at all easy. Fiction resembles those oem ate situations, and consequently even the critic with a good under” Standing of Gospel principles must struggle in perceiving and interpreting moral elements in fiction. More often than not Mormon standards get in the way of good criticism because they are applied too narrowly. We don't like foul language nor adultery; therefore a novel that uses foul language and treats adultery is bad. This approach shuts one off from most of contemporary fiction. Recently, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was banned from the schools in an Idaho community because it contains objectionable language. The most tecent novels of Bellow, Malamud, and Updike, to take three respected contemporary writers, contain language and situations as bad as or worse than those of Cuckoo's Nest. If we apply superficial standards, or even. if we apply the most significant moral standards in the wrong way, we will be unable to do justice to the Fiction of our time. I think there are moral objections to be made to Kesey’s novel, but they have nothing to do with the language or the explicit description; and even granting those objections, there is still pleasure and profit to be gained from reading the novel. Contemporary writing requires a good deal of intelligent sifting and winnowing. It is unreasonable to expect or require writers with no appreciation of or commitment to Christian doctrine--let alone Mormon doctrine--to reflect overtly and specifically such doctrine in their novels. We must be willing to examine their work on its ow terms. In order to convert the world, we must know something about it. How do people with beliefs and values differ- ent from ours think and act? Are all differences real or only apparent. The Light of Christ influences all men, after all, and the Mormon critic should penetrate to the moral core of a work; that is where the Light of Christ will reveal itself. A serious novelist, one who is successful, will capture life truly, and any true portrayal of life, regardless of superficial trappings, will reveal the centrality of moral lav. Thus, paradoxically, a novel focusing on sexual promiscuity can reflect important ethical truths. As Latter-day Saints we should be pleased to have our basic moral values confirmed in the writings of those who perhaps do not consciously subscribe to all of them. That is, if a writer with no religious scruples about adultery shows in his portrayal of life that adultery cannot bring happiness, t#é#éewee.e.d=40- the principle of chastity is confirmed, on empirical grounds, as it were. There are, of course, authors who portray sin as generating happiness, but they are not the ones who recreate life truly. They are often secking in their fiction to confirm their faulty morality and cheat to do so. When a literary work cheats or lies or achieves its right or wrong ends unfairly, or celebrates what ought to be scorned, or mocks what should be praised, the critic should announce what has gone wrong and point out why. But this can only be done by a person with thorough knowledge of how literature works and tolerant patience in getting beneath surface appearances as vell as clear moral vision. How does a critic go about penetrating to the moral core of a novel? Is it possible to deal with ethical values with any degree of objectivity? To what extent are value assertions cognitive and to what extent are they emotive? I think some answers to these questions are suggested by Richard L. Means in The Ethical Imperative (1969). This is a book of sociology written by a sociologist, but its insights are easily translated into literary terms. He begins by addressing the crisis in American society-vrace relations, urban conditions, overpopulation, misuse of national resources, the revolt of the young. "Our problems," he says, “are all in areas that are deeply involved with certain ethical judgments, while our social scientists, committed to an ideal of objective neutrality, are most reluctant to venture into the realm of ethics." The puroose of his book is to develop an objective theory of values in relation to social problems. The working definition he provides as an aid in analyzing social problems within American culture can serve also, I think, as an aid in analyzing moral issues in literature. T haven't time to summarize his arguments, in which he acknowledges indebtedness to the classic sociologists Max Weber and Emile Durkheim and to phenomenologists like Nicolai Hartmann, Max Scheler, and Alfred Shutz, but they are persuasive in arriving at this conclusion: "Values are self- existent: consciousness can grasn them, but it does not make then." He explains that the analysis of social and cultural systems suggests that most societies make judgments of meaning concerning a limited range of objects. The basic value objects in his scheme of analysis aret 1, The Self 2, Nature 3. Other Minds 4, Time 5. Society Man has to make assumptions concerning the existence and characteristics of all these in order to function within a social world. And Means clains, "in line with an established sociological tradition, that value objects are independent of our changing and differing verceptions." He devotes a chapter to each of these value objects, explaining them and demonstrating how they can function objectively in sociological investigation. The human mind responds to the value object by cognitive knowledge and emotion. It is the combination of cognition and emotion that produces meaning, and weaning invested in a value object is a social value. Ii our fundamental source of knowledge about society comes from real individuals, living people, says Means, there are three levels of analysis when assessing values in Americ society:~41- Individual value claims and direct expressions of value commitments. The behavior of people as a reflection of underlying values. The symbolic exoression of value commitments in cultural objects such as literature, art, law, education, etc. When these notions are transposed from sociology to literary criticism, some interesting suggestions for methodology emerge. For example, the critic could direct his attention to such value objects as a means of getting at the moral core of a novel and thus avoid being misdirected or mired down by less basic elements, elements in which values cannot very objectively be assessed. The job of the critic in considering value objects would be to determine the author's cognitive knowledge of them—how he perceives and understands them-— and then determine what emotions are attached to that cognition; this com- bination of cognition and emotional commitment would reveal the meaning the objects have for the author, what he says or affirms about them. It is possible, as Means points out, to attach unethical meaning to value objects, and it is here where the critic would make moral judgments. The process of determining cognition and emotional commitment is where questions of tech- nique are important. In that process we can use all that modern schools of criticism can teach us about artistic means, the techniques of artistic dis~ closure. statements. It is the process of translating aesthetic signals into ethical Means’ three levels of sociological analysis are readily translatable to literary analysis: 5 Individual value claims and direct exoressions of value commitments made by the narrator or characters. ‘The behavior of characters as a reflection of underlying values. The symbolic expression of value commitments in objects, events, and characterization. Most of us already use these levels of analysis. The value of Means’ book is that it attempts, with a considerable degree of success, to establish an objective basis for recognizing and discussing values. Indirectly, it provides the moral critic justification for his belief that evaluation in literary criticism is both possible and significant. To summarize what I've said, although the moral approach has a dim~ ished role in contemporary criticism, and the Mormon critic who practices it may feel a little insecure, a little like a second-class citizen in the modern community of literary criticism, it is nevertheless the most fund- anental and enduring approach to it as it and should strive to revitalize it. Tequires maturity and wisdom in treating ends and encompasses methods such ae the formalistic, psychological, and archetypal that primarily treat means. t We should be unequivocal in our commitment It is a demanding method because had better not be practiced at all than practiced narrowly or incompletely. To practice it tolerantly and verceptively and wisely involves penetrating to the ethical core of a work of literature, and this can best be done by Setting aside superficial characteristics and focusing on fundamental and unchanging value objects. ee lgFreshet in the Dearth: Samuel W. Taylor's Heaven Knows Why and Mormon Humor Richard H. Cracroft While it is profoundly true that, as Henry James ingisted, "It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature," it is equally and too-soberly true that it takes a great deal of sifting through Mormon belle and not-so-belle lettres to uncover even one page of intentional humor. Excuses are freely given in behalf of the nineteenth century Saints, who were too busy, we remind ourselves, building and fleeing and preaching to pause for breath and perspective on their lives, the perspective that Degets humor. Modern readers, anxious to find the revealing self-knowledge of humor among the nineteenth century Saints, point with too-steady fingers to the occasional bon mots of Joseph Smith or Brigham Young, or to the few memorable humorous passages in the works of Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt, Eliza R. Snow, John Lyon or even the little known Scipio Africanus Kenner. But the fact remains: There is little of that sense called humor manifest in nineteenth century Mormon literature, public or private. \ And when one turns, hopeful, to the twentieth century, it soon becomes apparent that celestial hopes (if humor can ever be celestial) are again eclipsed by telestial realities, and the Mormon funnybone remains too nearly unassailed. One must search far into the first half of the twentieth century before turning up any intentionally sustained published humor, Among the folk there is always humor, particularly the anomalous jokelore which clusters about J. Golden Kinball and the Sanpete Scandinavians, but such folk humor is countered by sundry Church Section editorials and Church Presidents’ asides in General Conference which warn against humor from the pulpit and in the church classroom. Yet there are some hopeful signs. Emerging from decades of roadshows, such plays as Keith Engar's All in Favor, Carol Lynn Pearson's The Order is Love, or Douglas Stewart's Saturday's Warrior and its several light-hearted though less satisfactory spinoffs, show a stirring of interest among the nenbership of the Church that bodes well for a better popular reception for Mormon humor. At the same time, Virginia Kammeyer has published a. light book of humorous poems entitled Saints Alive, Carol Lynn Pearson has denonstrated in her Busy Bishop's Notebook and its successors that Saints are willing to pay a dollar for a laugh, and Donald R. Marshall has sandwiched eee”ahh into his The Rummage Sale and, to a lesser extent in Frost in the Orchard, some of the finest vieces of sustained Mormon humor written thus far. Indeed, it is in just such serious collections as Marshall's that Mormon humor seems most likely to flourish as a kind of relief from more straight faced literature. Certainly the most sustained vopular humor in the Mormon tradition is found in what might be called the "happy family" books in the style of Clarence Day's Life With Father or Rosemary Taylor's Chicken Every Sunday. In this tradition, Rodello Hunter's nationally popular House of Manv Roons was well received by Church members, though her more acerbic A Daughter of Zion met with notably less enthusiasm. Probably best received of all these books has been Pana Married a Mormon, by John D. Fitzgerald, author of the Great Brain books. Not as popular, but of primary importance to Mormon literature, is Samuel W. Taylor's Family Kingdom (1951). This quasi-family history of the John. . Taylor families, steeped in Mormon "pecular: ‘and tinctured vith universal family humor, was republished several years ago to suoply the continuing demands of a variety of readers who enjoy Mormon on the rocks with a twist of lemon. It took a Sam Taylor to turn the sober marriage Pronosals of his father, a Mormon apostle, into a delightful and occasionally bittersweet comedy made possible when, for example, that marriage proposal is to a fourth or fifth wife, and spiced by an innocent suggestion by the revered apostle that the first wife accompany the bride and groom on their honeymoon. It took a Sam Taylor to make that Mormon apostle at once a lovable bumbler and a spiritual giant, to turn the problems and squabbles of multiple families into unforgettable Mormon comedy which has made Family Kingdom a near-classic in Mormon non-fiction, or semi-fiction, for the difference is not always great in Sam Taylor's work. But it is in a strictly fictional work, in Taylor's little known but truly delightful Heaven Knows Why (1948), that he has created the best Mormon comic novel to date. While Professor Kenneth B. Hunsaker has been understandably byperbolic in calling the book “the most delightful of all Mormon novels,"* he is right in insisting that Heaven Xnows Why is an “outstanding comic novel," which is "different from all other Mormon novels."3 Unfortunately, the praise is slightly tarnished when one must add that the book is, as far as I know, the only full-length comic novel in Mormon letters; however, such a qualification does not, in fact, diminish the worth of the novel, which is a joyful tour de force. First serialized in six parts in Collier's as "The Mysterious Way," Heaven Knows Why was published in 1949 by A.A, Wyn, Inc., of New York, and naned an alternate selection for the Literary Guild. Although it was widely noticed and favorably reviewed, the novel raised a storm in \ Utah. Indeed, Taylor suggested in a recent conversation that the book \ was a kind of litmus paper among Mormons-~it was either violently loved or hated. As with so many of the Mormon books of the 1940's, it is difficult today, pushing 1980 and the sesquicentennial of the Church, to under stand why Heaven Knows Why was ever controversial. Today the novel seems innocently funny, one of the few works--Mormon or non-Mormon--which moves the reader, on nearly every page, to a response which ranges from a quiet chuckle to boisterous belly-laughs--not at the expense of personal conviction —-45- or the LDS faith, but at the refreshing combination of things familiarly Mormon and things erringly human into a series of hilarious situations. The book is out of print. In fact, BYU's Harold B. Lee Library does not own a copy. The book should be in print. At the very least it should be well-known among Mormon scholars, for, as this paper will show, Heaven Knows Why affords an excellent example of the possibilities of in and out- group Mormon humor, a frame of reference through which to consider other works of Mormon humor, and an opportunity to consider briefly why there has been so little Mormon humor when its effect can be so healthy. IL Heaven Knows Why? braces its contents between two bookends comprised of heavenly scenes featuring the late but now angelic Moroni Skinner. Moroni has just lost promotion to Chief Checker of the Compiling Office because of his preoccupation with the rapidly deteriorating state of his and Lucy's grandson, Jackson Skinner Whitetop, a handsome and lazy young veteran of the very recent World War II who now exists on the remnants of the once-proud Skinner ranch in a Western Utah valley which Taylor has recently identified as Deep Creek Valley at Ibapah.© After requesting and receiving "limited orders ' (with seventeen car- bon copies) permitting him to make one appearance to his wayward grandson, Moroni Skinner journeys to earth and undertakes his short-term mission. Uncertain as to how to effect a change in his grandson, Moroni first visits Jackson without revealing himself. His visit is interrupted by Bishop Jensen and his lovely daughter, Katie. Moroni inmediately sizes Katie up and deter- mines that she will marry Jackson. Moroni begins prompting Jackson, Katie, and the Bishop to say things which run counter to the fact that Katie is to marry Henry Brom, the Bishop's first counselor, in the Salt Lake Temple on the following day. Still uncertain as to how to confront Jackson in person, Moroni makes a practice appearance to old Milo Ferguson, a crusty apostate of recent vintage; but Milo, though he is finally convinced of Moroni's otherworldly reality, still refuses to be overawed or to believe. Now more confident, Moroni materializes in Jackson's untidy bedroom and solemly tells his grandson that he is "from beyond." "Beyond what?" asks the stunned Jackson; then, recognizing that the visitor is indeed his late grandfather, Jackson stanmers, "You're Grandpa S-Skinner. How's a--tricks up there, Grandpa? How's Grandma Lucy Skinner?" (p. 31). A solemn Moroni then presents his message to Jackson without benefit of scriptural phrasing: "I'm telling you to straighten up, fix up you place, and marry Katie Jensen. That is my message"(p.33). Stunned but obedient, Jackson goes immediately to confide in Bishop Jensen. The Bishop is dumbfounded and, left alone in his study, prays for guidance. His wife, Beryl, a doubting convert to the Church who has long eavesdropped on her husband's interviews with Ward members, listens in. Concerned that her daughter might marry the no-good Jackson Waitetop, Beryl places a milk can to the thin partition and speaks through it, ina voice ringing with eternity, and demands that Jackson be allowed to marry Katie only when he has solved "The Trouble," a longstanding feud between the north and south sectors of the valley, both of which believed the Lord desired a new chapel to be built in their respective neighborhoods.~46- Moved to action by his own revelation, the Bishop, with Katie, visits Jackson's ranchhouse,and enjoys several brisk cups of coffee which Jac! Mormon Jackson guiltily foists off on the innocent Bishop as Coffee-Near, a healthful, non-caffeinated beverage made from an old family recipe. Jackson, who now has faith that heaven knows why and how and when, accepts the fact that he must solve "The Trouble," and promptly proposes marriage to Katie, who, though flattered, turns him down, Jackson then boldly tells her that he'll be taking her to the dance that evening. Katie Laughs and dismisses him, but in fact attends the dance with Jackson after Henry fails to show up on time. At the dance, Beulah Hess, acting under Henry's directions, lures Jackson into the backseat of a car and begins screaming that Jackson is molesting her. Angry men gather in a lynch mob, but Anita Smith, an unmarried mother, saves Jackson by insinuating that he is the father of her illegitimate child. Anita's father, Nephi Smith, promptly arranges a shotgun wedding for the next afternoon, and Jackson goes home, confused and disconsolate. The next morning, Jackson is further shaken when he finds a bundle of bills in the amount of $25,900 stashed in his kitchen cupboard. Trying to ascertain the owner of the money, he spreads the story of his find around the valley. Soon several families arrive and offer, in effect, extensive, free remodeling jobs on the ranchhouse in exchange for eny money they can find. Katie arrives, tells Jackson that Henry's back trouble, aggravated by his Participation in the action of the previous evening, has caused a postponenent of her wedding. She assists Jackson in planning the remodeling of his hone for his supposed bride-to-be, Anita. However, we learn in the meantime that throughout the war Henry has been stealing and selling Jackson's sheep, and has hidden his illegal gains. Milo Ferguson has figured out Henry's schene and it is he who has stolen the $25,009 and surreptitiously restored it to its rightful owner. Jackson arrives at the wedding still hoping that Anita will relent and admit his innocence. He finds Bishop Jensen far gone on hard cider, which has been foisted on him as unfermented. Just as the Bishop begins to perform the marriage of Anita and Jackson, Milo Ferguson arrives from Salt Lake City with Anita's former landlady, who promptly rushes up to Henry Brown and greets him as Anita's "husband" and father of their child. Bishop Jensen hastily marries Anita and Henry, who half-heartedly attempts to kill Jackson but cannot. Stunned at this turn in events, the Bishop, his wife Beryl, and Katie leave for Salt Lake City, General Conference, and an extended trip abroad. They return that evening, however, accompanied by Apostle Black, who, though near death, is still anxious to fulfill a prophecy that he would dedicate the chapel site in the valley. In a dramatic meeting of all the valley Saints, the Apostle insists that the burial plot of Milo's late wife must be the property on which the chapel will be built. Claiming now to understand why Moroni Skinner appeared to hin, Milo rises, testifies to his continued unbelief, and offers his property, which Apostle Black promptly dedicates. Jackson, "The Trouble" now resolved, eloves with Katie, promising that he will take her to the temple as soon as he is ordained an elder. The Bishop's wife, Beryl, who had deceived her husbend with the milk-can revelation, now understands that the Lord had worked through her, the Bishop, Jackson, and Moroni Skinner to expose Henry and solve "The Trouble." She thus comes belatedly to a testimony of the Church, and all ends well.-47- The bookend of Heaven Knows Why is found in a return to heaven. Moroni, now at ease regarding his happily married grandson, has been promoted to Chief Checker of the Compiling Office of the Accounting Section of the Cur- rent History Division of the Records Department, and, because "progress and glory are eternal" (p. 211), is moving into better quarters, much to Lucy's joy. Moroni receives a shock, however, while boasting to his old friend Apostle Black about how he had straightened out the valley's problems in three short days. He learns that everything that had happened occurred just as it had been destined to occur. "'Well,'" concludes Moroni, ""I'll be doggoned'" (0, 213). IIT Heaven Knows Why is not a great book but it is a very funny book-~ a freshet in the dearth of Mormon humor. Taylor's aim was to entertain, and he is amused by Professor Hunsaker's claim that there is a not-too-subtle Parallelism between the story of Moroni Skinner and Jackson Whitetop and the story of Joseph Smith and various heavenly visitors.’ While the idea is feasible, to burden the lightweight plot of Heaven Knows Why with such heavy allegory would be to freight the book beyond its capacity to float lighter than air. In fact, the book can bear no such serious interpretation. It is a Light, tastefully handled, and very funny novel. Working in a renovated furnace room, Taylor wrote the book soon after his return hone from the service in World War II. He developed his tale around two fanily stories. The basic plot, Taylor notes in recent correspondence, arose from events in the life of a star-crossed acquaintence, and he took the visitation idea from the life of his grandfather, Samuel Wooley, who was told in a visitation to marry a certain onan. And he did. But while Taylor notes that the story is "a sugar-coated sermon on the power of faith," he insists--and the evidence of the book bears him out--that the novel was not written to satirize Mormons or things Mormon, but to entertain human beings who like to read about the foibles and the joys of other human beings, regardless of their faith. In this Taylor is successful, for Heaven Knows Why appeals to both Gentile and Saint, and his comical yet only slightly barbed treatment of Mormon customs, revelation, and the Word of Wisdom shows how the Matter of Utah can be dealt with in a delightfully refreshing, funny, yet painless manner. Knowing that he is aiming at millions of Collier's readers--an over- whelmingly non-Mormon readership--Taylor wisely refuses to become stuck on the reef of Mormon terminology. Consequently, the book is very nearly free of Homenclature peculiar to Mormon organization or belief, and he omits use of such term as Stake House, Stake President, General Authorities, the Doctrine and Covenants or even The Book of Mormon. Taylor also manages to avoid the straits of polygamy and thus keeps the reader's mind uncluttered by received cultural notions that have generally accompanied any mention of plural marriage. He even sets the novel in a remote Utah valley, and while the time is post-World War II, the Mormon folkways and attitudes suggest the 1920's, a less complex world of yesteryear. Where he must make specific use of a term such as the "temple recommend,” ee~48- > Taylor defines the term contextually, without undue explanation to cunbersose footnote. Thus Bishop Jensen can use the temple reconmend as a Sever against Jackson in the young man's courtshin of Katie, without confusing the non- Mormon reader, and the recommend naturally becomes the center of the explan- ation as to why Nephi Smith left the Church. Nephi has five lovely doughters, four of whom had married outside the temple. Nephi was determined that his last daughter, Bessie, would have her temple marriage--a shotgun temple marriage to Gentile Eph Todd, the valley bootlegger. Arriving at the Bishop's home with the embarrassed couple and a .30-.30 rifle in tow, Nephi explains that Eph "is willing to embrace the gosvel" and asks Bishop Jensen for a temple recommend. The Bishop explains that such a favor is impossible, and Nephi reminds the Bishop that "I've worked hard for the Church. And I donated ten acres of my best pasture land for the new meetinghouse.” The Bishop refuses the recommend and Nephi apostatizes with the announcement that “If the Church couldn't do that much for him in return for all he'd done, to hell with the whole shebang" (p. 76). The humor which arises fron such necessary denial of full privileges to a non-member or backslider and the subsequent anger of the aggrieved parties is an experience universally understandable, and transcends the Mormon frame of reference even though it would have particular meaning to the Latter-day Saint reader. But Bishop Jensen is the central comic figure in the novel. And while some Mormons would take offense that the office of Bishop is being treated lightly, most Mormon and non-Mormon readers will see the Bishop in the well- defined literary tradition of the sincere clergyman whose continuing innocence in a fallen world makes him vulnerable and may even imperil his peace of mind for a time. Most of these literary clergymen, like Bishop Jensen, plod innocently on to eventual triumph over the human and satanic forces that would belittle and destroy them. Thus all readers can enjoy the plight of the Bishop, regardless of their perspective. So, when the devoted Bishop barks his knuckle on a wrench and cries, "You misbegotten son of perdition. You illegitimate offspring of an unnatural union,” readers agree with Jackson, who notes that he "admired the man's ability to cuss without using profanity” (pp. 36-37), and mentally underscore the Bishop's humanity and not his Mormonness. \ | Similarly, any reader must be sympathetic with the good Bishop's very / human confusion about revelation. As a sound and sober twentieth century man, | the Bishop is naturally skeptical about visitations. At the same time, he is a believer. His two sides clash, however, and he muses, "Trouble was that some abused the privilege. All you had was a person's word for a thing like {a visitation]. You had to draw a line between the genuine, hysterical, wishful, and mistaken, Not to mention pure fabrication" (p. 38). Thus, when Jackson tells the Bishop of Moroni Skinner's visitation, the Bishop is troubled, partly because he has never had a visitation, "or so much as a prompting," and he resvonds to Jackson: "Too many people in this Church go around claiming to have talked with spirits. Mind you, I'm not a skeptic. I believe in visitations. It would be the greatest thing in my life if I had one myself. But I don't think everybody's worthy. I'm not. And we don't need ‘em like we use to. Joseph said that himself. Or I guess it was Brigham--yes, it was Brigham. After Joseph passed on, Brigham Young got up and told the people there'd been too many visitations and he figured he could get along a spell on what was=49- stored up ahead. . , “gut that was a long time ago," Jackson pointed out. "Maybe we're running short again." (p. 39) But the Bishop is persuaded when he also hears the voice of the Lord, albeit through his wife's milk can, and he is thrilled to have become worthy of such a manifestation. Later, when he learns that his revelation was wifely and not heavenly, the Bishop decides that, after all, it really was the Lord sveaking through her, for the apparently false revelation clearly elcome solution of "The Trouble,” a unified congregation, and @ a testimony of the gospel. Taylor leaves ambiguous the originator of this felicitous outcome, but his tone is not ambiguous. He is not mocking revelation, faith, Bishops, or the LDS Church; instead, he is dealing lightly with the very human problem of the skeptical-believer, a problem not peculiar to Latter-day Saints. . Taylor uncovers a similar universal problem in his comic treatment of the Bishop and the Word of Wisdom. Henri Bergson has written that "rigidity is the comic, and laughter is the corrector,” and in the good Bishop, Taylor gently assials rigidity. The righteous, well-meaning and innocent Bishop is duped by nearly all his Word-of-Wisdom breaking associates into violating the Word of Wisdom, although he is never aware of his fall. Indeed, at some point in the book, nearly all of the characters violate the Word of Wisdom, most of them with an excuse similar to that of Henry Brown, vho claims at various times that the doctor has ordered him to drink hard cider and coffee--for his back. "Gentile doctors don't realize the value of coffee as a medicine" (p. 63), comments Jackson wryly, underscoring again one of the modern Mormon's chief puzzlements concerning the book: Why did the Latter-day Saints of the first half of the twentieth century have such a burning concern over coffee, tea and tobacco? The use of these forbidden substances was anathema, but their attraction for even the most pious seemed compelling; it was as if coffee, tea, and tobacco were ever-present edenic apples beckoning to hungry latter-day Adams and Eves, an allure difficult for Mormons of the 1970's to understand. In one of the funniest scenes in the book, Bishop Jensen has just dropped in on Jackson and finds him brewing a pot of coffee and experiencing tobacco hunger. Says the Bishop, through the door: "I see you are living the Word of Wisdom," the voice said acidly. The bishop's purple-ringed eyes were peering through the shotgun hole in the kitchen door. The bishoo's nose was sniffing the rich brown aroma. Jackson scratched his chest vigorously instead of pulling out the tobacco. "Just having a cup of Coffee-Near," he said desperately. "Coffee-Near? What's that?" "Just an old family recipe. Make it out of wheat and dandelion roots and stuff. Got it from the Indians. Nearest thing to coffee we ever tasted, so we just call it Coffee-Near." "Don't say." The bishop sniffed at the tantalizing odor wafting through the hole. "Just made out of wholesome grains and roots?" "and the seed of a berry," Jackson said, not wanting to stretch the truth beyond recognition. "It smells wonderful," the bishop hinted. “Well, you have to get used to it,” Jackson said disparagingly. ve drunk it so many years I don't mind it.” uy Ese ae-50- The bishop squinted his left eye and smelled in small delicate sniffs, getting the subtle overtones. Then he closed his eyes and drew in a great lungful, his face revealing ecstasy and vast longing. "Jack," he said, in his passion forgetting formality, “have you got an extra drop or two? If that stuff tastes like it smells...” Jackson had no desire to lead the bishop astray. On the other hand it would be no sin on the bishop's part if he didn't know what he was getting. And, surveying the hopeful face at the hole, Jackson decided it would be more cruel to refuse. Too, at the bishop's age a bit of a lift wouldn't hurt him, just once. Jackson also realized that he was not being hospitable. "why don't you come in, Bishop, and we'll get another cup." (pp. 68-69) Enthusiastic about this remarkable product, the Bishop suggests that Jackson and he market it. Jackson, left alone, frantically attempts to concoct a recipe for Coffee-Near. Giving up, he finely grinds a fresh blend of coffee and adds "a few barley husks and an egg as camouflage." He then places it in a fruit jar and labels it Coffee-Near. "'In fact,'” he muses, "'that is the nearest coffee the bishop ever drunk in his life. (p. 80). The Bishop returns, tastes the coffee and again waxes ecstatic over the product, "What a flavor! What body! What aroma!" he exults; I didn't know, I might take this for coffee!" (p. 70). But Jackson is again saved. Ned, a local sheepman, gives Jackson an old family recipe for Coffee-Near, as partial penance for assisting Henty in his rustling. Jackson accepts and makes up the recipe but finds it tastes "Like old horse blanket" and inadvertantly leaves it to burn on the stove. When he returns, he tastes the brew and finds that the burning is the secret to creating a delicious blend which very nearly resembles the forbidden joy. As the story ends, Jackson and his father-in-law are planning a partnership to market the stuff for yearning Saints. Bishop Jensen is the victim in yet another subterfuge as regards the Word of Wisdom. At the wedding, his old nemesis Nephi Smith gives the Bishop hard cider and allows the good man to believe that it is sweet cider. The Bishop takes a large draught, as does Jackson, who detects immediately that the cider “had a needle as big as a twenty-penny spike." The innocent Bishop quickly drinks a quart and asks for more, Nephi is happy to respond. The cider does not take long to work on the teetotaller. Mrs. Smith, the grandmother of Anita's illegitimate child, tries to induce the child to kiss Jackson, its supposed father. The tipsy Bishop, his voice strangely loud, chides the woman for her bad taste and swears at her. Grandpa Nephi Smith inquires as to the problem. "I merely told her! the Bishop said louc- ly, ‘that this whole thing is in bad taste. I merely suggested that she keep that little bastard out of sight until after the ceremony’ (p. 171). The Bishop is then forced, in his thick-tongued stupor, to explain the apt’ ness of the profanity which he has so loudly invoked at the child's mother's wedding. An embarrassed time is had by all. Following the wedding the Bishop returns hone, greatly disturbed and greatly hungover but still innocent, and his wife, to ease him, adds unknown insult to unknown injury by plying him with what he thinks is Coffee-Near, but what is really the real thing, carefully stored in the back of Beryl's medicine chest.-51- In the Bishop, Taylor's readers, Mormon and non-Mormon alike, see rigidity assailed. Taylor attempts, as he wrote in a letter dated December, 1968, and deposited in the Lee Library at BYU, "to cause the outside world to smile with us [Mormons], to feel warm toward us, to understand the titantic [sic] struggles we can have over such utterly,trivial things (from a moral viewpoint) as a cup of coffee or a cigarette." He wanted, as he insists in a letter to A. A. Wyn's editor, to cause readers "to finish the story thinking 'Gee, [guess Mormons are pretty much like anybody else. They're human, too.'"" Taylor succeeded, for the Literary Guild reviewer and several other reviewers agree that the book was "side-splitting," "a funny book that is funny." And, to Taylor's cygdit, some reviews even forgot to mention that the book was about Mormons! Iv But the serialization of "The Mysterious Way" in Collier's and its subsequent publication in book form as Heaven Knows Why raised another kind of unexpected response which must give Mormons pause. Taylor notes, in a memorandum to the BYU depository, that, When the story began running in Collier's, the mail poured in. Some readers thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever read. But the reaction of others made me realize that the Mormons simply were not accustomed to the type of literature about themselves which was so enjoyed by Jews and Gentiles about themselves. Mormons had been conditioned to judging by black and white--for or against. Literature either had to be faith-promoting and full of flawless stereotypeg,as characters, or it was anti-Mormon; there was nothing in between. Perhaps this period has passed. Perhaps firmer-rooted Latter-day Saints approaching the sesquicentenary of the Church are prepared to see themselves in larger context. Perhaps the Saints are readv to agree with George Washington Hggris that "A Little nonsense now and then/Is relished by the wisest men." ” Perhaps. More likely, however, Mormons are not ready for Mormon Art Buchwalds or Mormon Erma Bombecks or Mormon Bill Arps or especially Mormon Mark Twains. There are several reasons why they are not ready and several reasons why they should be. Taylor hinself has argued in a Dialogue article! that as long as the Chuech has a "managed press" we will not have a Mormon or regional literature, much less a Mormon humor. But there are reasons beyond this, for Mormon literature in the non-managed press, from the solem, humorless profundities of Dialogue to the almost nuritan tales of Douglas Thayer and the occasional Lighter stories of Eileen Gibbons Kump and Donald R. Marshall underscore E.3. White's memorable comment that too many feel that "if a thing is funy it can be presumed to be something jgss chan great, because if it were truly great it would be wholly serious.""” Mormons continue to insist that we are a humor-Loving people, but it remains a fact that our humor, literary or folk, is frequently derivative, often contrived, and generally treated with sus- picion. The reason seems to lie deeper than a so-cdlled "managed press," which is a symptom, not a cause.-52- Mark Twain suggests, in another context, one of the reasons for the dearth of Mormon hunor. He writes, "Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no hunor in heaven.""° If Mormonism is the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, then Twain's statement is already proven; regardless of the state of heavenly hunor, however, Twain is right in suggesting that humor generally requires a sting, a stinger, and a stingee. Anxiously engaged Latter-day Saints are anxious not to sting or be stung. The Mormon folk can sting its leaders or institutions; it can say such things as "The Second Coming was to have occured last year, but the Lord couldn't get it through Correlation.” When the folk puts on its white shirts and ties, however, a not-too-subtle change occurs. Part of the reason for this change is the remarkable sense the Latter- day Saint has in being at stage center and participating in a cosmic drana in which he is a major protagonist. Each Mormon becomes, as it were, Joseph Smith in his own grove, and has, thanks to the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God, a terrific sense of his individual importance. To laugh at any aspect of this drama may seem somehow to be a diminution of that role. And in playing that important and one-time role for keeps, Mormons are made deeply aware of Platonic appearances and realities. The world, charged with the grandeur of Cod, becomes a darkened mirror of the divine, for to the [grd and consequently to Latter-day Saints "all things . - . ate spiritual."/7 tp such a context a sensitive menber of the Church often feels guilty about the caustic, the sardonic, the too-urbane and too-skeptical, for he is keenly aware that the world is a kind of negative film which will soon be developed into a positive print, the distortions airbrushed, the shadows properly adjusted, and the focus, the setting, and the characters perfected. Furthermore, Mormons are committed, if they accept their theology wholly, to a millenialist position which reminds that "the time is far spent, there is little remaining” until worthy Saints are caught up to join the Savior in his advent. This sense of destiny overwhelms and sobers and leads to a necessary warning of one's neighbors, and to a need to present before the world the best possible image of the Church, the vehicle of this theology. To many, a comic world view, with its built-in sting, detracts from that image. The very nature of our perception of the universe seems to array itself, then, against the possibility of Latter-day Saint humor. Unlike the Jewish sense of good-humored schimpfen with God, exemplified in such works as Fiddler on the Roof, the Latter-day Saint's relationship to God is more formal, more hierarchical. God exists at the pinnacle of a ladder that begins with the individual and climbs through a hierarchy of Church authorities to the Prophet, to Christ, and to God. At each level the Mormon becomes more subject to authority and increasingly distrusts the democracy of his position. At each level he sees a diminution of humor, and seems increasingly hesitant to project the barbs of humor at levels too much higher than his own. Conse~ quently, Mormons can laugh at humor about themselves, their Bishops, and even their Stake Presidents, but they generally grow nervous as they listen to jokes about General Authorities, and very uncomfortable about humor concerning the First Presidency; thus humor about deity, unless it is clearly strengthen” ing to the Mormon position, is rarely tolerated. With these powerful theo~“5 ogical guns arrayed against then, it is little vonder that Mormon humor~ ists, wherever they are, have settled for an occasional innocuous and much hacked-at paragraph in The Ensign or The New Era or on the back page of Mountainvest But in this dearth the Mormon people have lost rich opportunity for Personal growth, not to mention the healthy release and well-being promoted through humor, particularly humor basically in sympathy with the Mormon veople. There is, then, a need anong Mormons who accept the divinity of the Church and its destiny for a humor which enables them to admit, within their own contexts, their own frailties and the inevitable frailties of their leaders and organizations, the difficulty which arises when man, with his Nephi-Lemuel nature, must vlod forward in faith along a dimly lighted path which remains discernable only to the Lord. In this context a Mormon humor can aid in fostering corrective adjustments, in promoting self-understanding, and in teaching others. Humor, lawless as it is, enables a Latter-day Saint to flex and reminds him of the need for flexing in lieu of snapping. This need was made clear in the humorous second-wave response of the Mormon people to the serious revelation of June 8 regarding the black and the priesthood. ‘“ithin a few days Mormons were making jokes about the black and the temple and talking facetiously of necessary changes in well-established Church procedures and customs, and within a week some were whispering that Saints were now singing, "come, come ye Saints, Do-dah, do dah." More inflexible Mormons probably took offense, but such humor, which will doubtless never be written, is a sign of healthy adjustment to 2 sudden change in a longstanding uncomfortable condition, and demonstrates the power of humor in aiding Saints to adjust to change in a world where even the apparent absolutes are eohemeral. Similarly, humor can make us self-aware, teach us about ourselves and assist us to teach others about ourselves. Mark Twain insisted that "Humor must not professedly teach, and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever."1€ The move] universe’ which surrounds Motmon theology promotes the didactic, and so does humor. Thus when Brother Ezra Cooper, in Carol Lynn Pearson's ‘The Order Is Love, hears Sister Burrows castigate her husband as a "lazy, no account excuse for a man," Ezra responds with a healing, teaching, self-avareness which is both profound and funny. "Sister Burrows," he says, "the Lord hasn't asked us to confess other people's sins-~just our own."9 In the same play, when Ezra Cooper tells how he came to live in Southern Utah, we note how humor exemplifies at once Ezra's faith and his humanity. When questioned about the possibility of a mistake in sending the Saints to the desert regions of Southern Utah, Brigham Young responds, "There's no mistake. . . . But don't take my word for it. You go home and pray about it." Says Ezra, in an answer which reflects both heaven and earth, "So I went home and prayed about it--damn it!"20 There is an important place in Mormon culture and Mormon letters for both an in-group end an out-group literary humor. At least a corner of the void of in-group humor is being very slowly filled by musical drama--if such drama can survive the onslaught of serious Mormon critics--and by such funny stories | as Donald R. Marshall's "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You,” featuring Elder Calbert Dunkley and Miss Floydene Wallup of Mink Creek, Idaho. But there is room for many more such funny explorations of the Mormon world, toon for books and poems and articles which provide gently medicinal stings wg=54- which most Mormons can increasingly tolerate, and which will depend for their success, in part at least, upon the reader's or viewer's eager grasp of familiar Mormon particularities, as well as upon their appreciation of universal human verities. But the out-group literary humor of Mormonism remains a wasteland, as Mormon writers hesitate, for at least some of the reasons noted earlier, to communicate comically about what Latter-day Saints take so seriously. As the Church continues its rapid growth, there will be an increasing need to reinforce the humanness of Church members to a critical world-wide audience which is primarily conscious of Mormonism's peculiarities. While the several non-fictional and humorous accounts of large Morson families go far toward communicating Mormon humanity to the world, they alse insist upon these Mormon peculiarities. In Samuel W. Taylor's Heaven Knows ti however, one finds a unique example of a comic novel which adnirably performs what Taylor has called "indirect missionary work"2l through its warm and friendly treatment of Mormons as fellow human beings, not as peculiarities, at the same time that it communicates familiarly with Mormons, puts them at ease, and teaches them, subtly but surely, perspective on bumper-sticker self-righteousness. Heaven Knows Why, and similar as yet unwritten comical treatments of Mormons and Mormonism, should be encouraged as a refreshing and restorative force, albeit a sub-force, in Mormon culture and letters. lo. lu 2 1. ua 15. 16.10. wa 13. uu 15. 16. 1B. Notes Henry James, Hawthorne (Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1963),p.2 first published in England in 1879. Kenneth 8. Hunsaker, "The Twentieth Century Mormon Novel," unpublished doctoral dissertation (Pennsylvania State University, 1968), p. 13. Kenneth B. Hunsaker, "Mid-Century Mormon Novels," Dialogue, IV Gutumn, 1969), 126. Personal telephone conversation with Richard H. Cracroft, September 19, 1978. Samuel W. Taylor, Heaven Knows Why (New York: A. A. Wyn, Inc., 1958). All quotations from this work will be cited in the body of the paper. Personal letter, Samuel W. Taylor to Richard H. Cracroft, September 19, 1978. Hunsaker, "The Twentieth Century Mormon Novel," p. 142. Henri Bergson, "Laughter" (1901), tr. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell, in Comedy (New York: Doubleday, 1956), p. 73. P. 1, Letter "The Mysterious Way' and the Education of a Mormon Writer," December, 1968. The letter is in the Taylor folder in the BYU Manuscript Library, Harold B. Lee Library. A copy of the letter was also sent to Richard H. Cracroft by Mr. Taylor. P. 2, Letter Samuel W. Taylor to Miss Elizabeth Phinney of A. A. Wyn, Inc., August 23, 1947, p. 1. Letter in Taylor folder, Harold B. Lee Library. A cozy of the letter was also sent to Richard H. Cracroft by Mr. Taylor. Particularly reference is made here to the review of the book in Wings, ‘The Literary Guild Review, June, 1948. See the Taylor folder in the Lee Library. P. 2, Letter, "'The Mysterious Way' and the Education of a Mormon Writer." Sut Lovingood (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p. xxi. See Samuel W. Taylor, "Peculiar People, Positive Thinkers, and the Prospect of Mormon Literature," Dialogue, IT (Sumer, 1967), 17-31. See also Taylor's "Little Did She Realize: Writing for the Mormon Market," Dialogue, IV (Autumn, 1969), 33-39. E. B, White, "Some Remarks on Humor," The Second Tree from the Corner (New York: Harper and Brother, 1954), p. 174. Mark Twain, from Following the Equador ("Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar’ in The Portable Mark Twain, ed. Bernard DeVoto (New York: Viking Press, 1946), p. 562. Doctrine and Covenants 29:34. Mark Twain, Mark Twain Eruption, ed. Bernard DeVoto (New York, 1922), P. 202 (January 31, 1906),=56- 19. Carol Lynn Pearson, The Order is Love (Provo, Utah: Trilogy Arts, 1971), I, i, p. 20. 20, Ibid., p. 17. 21. P. 2, Letter, "'The Mysterious Way' and the Education of a Mormon Writer," op. cit.Pe Folklore in The Giant Joshua William Wilson Before Maurine Whipple became a novelist, she was a folklore collector. And partly because she was a folklore collector, she became a successful novelist. According to Ms. Whipple's own account, she grew up in Utah's Dixie surrounded by folklore. She loved to talk to the old people and listened eagerly to their tales of pioneer times. Later, when she began work on The Giant Joshua, some of these old people were still alive and she turned to them once again for inspiration and for stories of Dixie's past. Incorvorating what she had learned into her novel, she created in the process one of the best collections of early Mormon and Western lore yet published, a work surpassed only by Austin and Alta Fife's Saints of Sage and Saddle. The book contains scores of proverbs, superstitions, remark- able providences, folksongs, legends, and humorous anecdotes. It is equally rich in descrivtions of material culture and particularly of folk practices-- of games, of dances, of holiday celebrations, and of arts and crafts. It contains, for instance, over sixty references to foodways alone, thus providing us with a fairly clear picture of the daily fare of the impoverished Dixieites. But The Giant Joshua excells as a work of folklore not because Ms. Whivple scatters a substantia’ number of folklore items through its pages, but because she sets these items in what folklorists call context--that is in the social milieu in which they exist and in which they function in the lives of those who possess them. All too many collections of folklore have provided pages of folklore texts but have left untouched the human beings who lie behind the texts. Thus when we have looked through, let us say, a list of folk beliefs and suverstitions, we have found it easy to smile at whinsical-sounding cures like mare's milk for whooping cough, at bacon fat wrapped around the neck for a sore throat, or at gargles of rough elm bark for the black canker. But when we are forced to look beyond such a list to actual mothers in The Giant Joshua and when we see them struggling to keep their children alive and turning desperately to these traditional remedies as their only hope, our smiles soon turn to tears. The great strength of The Giant Joshua as a work of folklore is that throughout the novel Ms. Whipple sets practically every folklore item in it—-( 58 from medicinal remedies like these to songs of the evil Deps and to ganes played at Clory's birthday party—in cultural context that helps us under- stand more about the force of folklore in the lives of people than do nany of the scholarly works in the field. As Mary Ellen Lewis has argued recently, the novelist, with intuitive insight, can frequently create context for us that the scholar can only approximate. The Giant Joshua succeeds as a work of folklore, then, because Ms. Whipple, as a novelist, had to surround that folklore with life. On the other hand, the life in the novel frequently rings true because it is based on folklore. In the past, students of folklore in literature have produced a pretty sterile body of scholarship. They have scoured through literary works to find folklore-sounding items, have searched for analogues outside the works to prove that the items are indeed folklore, and then have published articles tinder such titles as "Proverbs in the Fiction of So and So." In the process they have expended great amounts of energy but have produced little light. Their long lists of folklore have taught us next to nothing about the works of literature themselves. Recently, a growing’ number of folklorists, having tired of these literary detective games, have begun to look at last at the ways authors have actually used folklore to achieve their artistic ends. So far they have developed no comprehensive model for studying folklore in a work of literature. I shall not attempt one today. Instead, like my colleagues, I shall look at different forms of folklore in one specific work, in this case in The Giant Joshua, and shall try to explain how some of these forms func- tion in the novel. Because my time is limited, my illustrations must be also. According to President Harold B. Lee, the purpose of the gospel is to make bad men good and good men better. If this is true, then there are few characters in The Giant Joshua who reach this ideal. Erastus Snow, David Wight, and Wilhelmina “acIntvre are all good people, but they are already good as the novel begins and they do not change much as the plot develops. They are frequently sustained by their faith as they face hardshivs and persecution, but they are not much improved by it. In the main they are moved, as Edward Geary suggests, by their humanistic devotion to an Idea rather than to church doctrine and by their equally humanistic resolve never to give up the fight, no matter what the cost. » In the Lives of Bathsheba, Abijah, and Clorinda MacIntyre the gospel is important, but its influence is mostly negative. It makes the termagant ) Sheba even meaner by forcing her into polygamy; it turns the basically tender and loving Abijah into an arrogant, narrow-minded zealot; and it strikes the gaiety from Clory's eyes and silences the bells in her laughter as she struggles unsuccessfully to accommodate her hunger for freedom with the authoritarian denands of the church. In the delineation of these three characters--and particularly of Sheba and Abijah—superstitions and proverbs play a key role. In my judgment, Sheba is the most fully drawn character in the novel-- a magnificent and terrible shrew, a woman designed to fit the Dixie landscape, a landscape both savage and brutal. This savagery is exemplified in Sheba's superstitious practices. The novel is full of folk beliefs, but with the-59- exceptions of Keturah Snow's worrying about a cat sucking breath fron e exis and of unmarried girls’ trying to divine their future mates at Clory's biethday party, the conmunity superstitions all have to do with folk vedicine, particularly with herbal cures. Sheba, too, knows many of these, but a number of her practices depart from these more coumon superstitions and, like her own nature, seem to come from the dark side of the world. To cure her corns, for example, she spits on her fingers and makes a cross Over them; she claims that a baby who sees itself in the mirror will die: She warns Willfe, who is in labor, to be sure she hasn't any double-bitted gues around, so she won't have twins; she attempts to hold back Willie's labor by wrapping a leather strap wround her wrist; she claims that Clory's baby will be marked because Clory, while pregnant, is frightened by a rattlesnake; and she uses freshly killed rabbit brains for the gums of a child cutting teeth. Like the Indian Tutsegabbet she realizes that she has to propitiate all her gods to protect herself from harm, so she wears her temple garments as armour against bullets and arrows and at the same time keeps a snake's tattle over the lintel to charm away the Deps. Unlike old Tutsegabbett, however, Sheba lacks charity and_concern for others and thus remains in many ways the true savage in the novel. Ms. Whipple's descrip- tion of Sheba at soap making serves as a good metaphor for her nature in general. "She looked like a high priestess of some sinister cult serving up black magic.” In spite of these negative images, we at times see Sheba in a somewhat sympathetic light, particularly on those occasions when she thinks back on happier times when she did not have to share her husband with a younger, more attractive woman like Clory. But we needn't read far to discover that even without polygamy, Sheba would probably be a mean and petty woman. Above all else she enjoys meddling in other people's lives. At a Relief Society quilting bee, for instance, she ruthlessly cuts apart one community member after another, each time making herself appear morally superior to the person maligned. In a similar vein, but even more malevolently, Sheba constantly belittles Clory, whom she has come to hate. She does so by bear- ing tales to Abijah of the misdeeds of Clory and her children and particular- ly by haranguing Clory with an endless flow of didactic proverbs. Proverbs are generally thought to contain the distilled wisdom of the ages, a wisdom which can be applied to appropriate situations in the present. Thus Sheba, by using these traditional phrases, is able to give the appearance of expressing not only her own disapproval of Clory but also the disapproval of wise men and women everywhere. Practically each day of her life, Clory must stand before the imperious Sheba, watch the hair on her chin mole quiver with virtue, and listen to statements like these: "The girl who pokes fun at her elders comes to not good end"; "whisper in church, your soul's in the lurch"; "it isn't enough to be good, you have to be good for something"; "never leave today's work for tomorrow; tomorrow will have enough of its own"; "make tracks, the Lord hates a dawdler"; "a thing vell done is twice done"; "an idle tongue's the Devil's workshon"; "a place for everything and everything in its place." There is nothing inherently wrong with these proverbs, of course, and in another context they might serve a positive function. In The Giant Joshua, however, they serve primarily to reaffirm Sheba's smug faith in her own moral uprightness and to make Clory feel bad, bad enough that she longs to be free from Sheba, from polygamy, and from the suffocating life in the Dixie mission.~60- Unlike his wife Sheba, Abijah MacIntyre subscribes to few super- stitions. But like her, he is full of proverbs. However, whereas Sheba draws her aphorisms from a large body of traditional lore, Abijah takes his mostly from the scriptures and from statements of church authorities, statements he memorizes and makes his own. And whereas Sheba uses proverbs to express her feelings, Abijah uses then to cloak his. In spite of his frequent cruelty, his self-righteousness, and his extreme male chauvinism, Clory stays with Abijah because she understands that behind the mask he generally shows to both the world and to herself stands a man capable of much love and tenderness. Unfortunately, just as Abijah's whiskers hide the sensitive dimple in his chin so too does his religion mask and suporess these natural affections. On only one occasion in the novel—when he blesses his injured daughter Kissy--is he fully able to forget himself and use his religion to serve others. At other times he is far too aware of his own importance as a spokesman for God to be genuine ly and unselfishlessly concerned with the affairs of his fellow Dixieites. Thus only now and then, when he momentarily forgets his high calling as one of God's elect, does he allow himself to drop the mask, to make love to Clory without shame and to embrace his children without embarrassment. On other occasions, when he feels the need to express his natural sentinents but lacks the courage to do so, he hides behind his mask of religious pro- verbs. For example, when he begins to have trouble with his son Freeborn, the advice he gives him sounds as though it had come from Shakespeare's old fool Polonius giving advice to his son Laertes: "Remember, my son, the Prophet's advice: ‘Grain for man, corn for the ox, oats for the horse, rye for fowls and swine, barley for mild drinks--always keep the Word of Wisdom; strong drinks are not for the belly . . . . Tobacco is not for the body, neither for the belly.'" The tragedy is that Abijah is not a Polonius. He loves his wild towhead Free with all his heart. Yet when Free leaves for the Indian battle from which Abijah senses he will not return and when he tries desperately to tell him how he feels, he retreats once again from his true feelings to his proverbs: "Well, my son, I want ye to be humble and follow the leaders o' this Church and ye will never go astray... T have learned that if we do our duty the Lord will provide. . . . I hae not used coffee, tobacco, and strong drink, nor have I profaned the name of Deity." Superstitions and proverbs are less important in Ms. Whipple's characterization of Clory, but still they play a part. The only supersti- tions Clory really knows are a few remedies to improve the looks, something one would expect from a beauty-conscious young woman, and her proverbs are nothing remarkable at all. Most of them are directed at herself: "I'd for- get my head if it weren't fastened on"; "I'm as full as a tick.” But the lack of these items in Clory's life is as important as their presence in the lives of Sheba and Abijah. Because she rejects Sheba's occult practices and because she does not use proverbs to hurt others or to hide her natural feelings, she stands in sharp contrast to the dark and tyrannical Sheba and the self-righteous and unfeeling Abijah. As a result, we see her, from the outset, as a sympathetic character. Proverbs and superstitions play, perhaps, the most obvious parts in The Giant Joshua, but other forms of folklore fill equally important roles. For me, two of the most moving passages in the novel are the two occasions when Erastus Snow--first after the arrival of the saints in Dixie and second-61- after the plague has carried off many of the colony's youngsters--rebullds che courage of his people by gathering them together and engaging then in Story telling sessions in which they find courage to face present trials by telling stories of past hardships-stories of Clay County, of Nauvoo, of Haughn's Mill, of the great plains, In these passages, Ms. Whipple has her characters consciously recount legends that have come down to us from events in the past. But her use of legends is really far more subtle than this. Ms. Whipple not only puts legends into the mouths of her characters: the actions these Characters perform are thenselves frequently based on legends. For example, Abijah's administering to an ox, Clory's deciding to stay in Dixie because of the beauty of the Sego Lillies, the Indian battles, Clory's hiding an Indian youngster in her skirts, Tutsegabett's putting his fat wife into the Virgin River to stop the flow of water, the Nephite’s appearing to Abijah, Abijah's missionary stories, the Devil's appearing at the dedication of the St. George temple, the first wife's breaking a window pane over the head of her husband in bed with his second wife, the Cohab and Dep experiences-— these and numerous other events in the novel all have counterparts in oral tradition. To this list ve can add the large nunber of remarkable providences which, though perhaps not based on actual legends, have grown out of legend producing beliefs. These would include such events as the dam's washing out because the brethren had raised corn instead of the cotton they had been commanded to raise, Zadoc Hunt's sandstone house weathering because he had defied counsel and quarried the stones without permission, Sister Hansen's remaining barren because she had been a prostitute, and Clory's children dying because she had not been a dutiful polygamous wife. ‘These legends serve numerous functions in the novel. I can mention only two of them here. First and most obviously, the legends give life to Ms. Whipple's narrative. It is axiomatic that people tell and keep alive stories about those events which interest them most or are most important to them. By collecting these stories and working them into the novel's narrative fabric, Ms. Whipple has enlivened aplot that could have degenerated, as it actually does in some places, into a sentimental story or a philoso- phical tract. Second, and perhaps most importantly, the legends echo one of the main conflicts in the narrative. Throughout the novel miraculous,faith-promoting stories, told in high seriousness, are followed again and again by other stories which discredit them. For éxample;~Abijah administers to the sick ox palling thé Wao Ti-which the pregnant Betsy Tuckett is located. The ox recovers, but the baby is born before the train reaches its intended destin- ation. Following a severe drought, Erastus Snow prays for rainj the rain comes, but in such abundance that it floods out most of the crops. When Abijah, in spite of contrary counsel, decides to bring out ore from a mine he has discovered, a Nephite appears to him and causes him to forget where the mine fs located. But a few days later his own son Free and Gottlieb Uttley devise a Nephite hoax which tends to make fun of the entire Nephite tradition, When Milleniun Tuckett is the first child stricken by the plague, Erastus Snow promises he will recover; he does, but then Snow's own child is the first to die. Abijah, full of testimony, blesses Clory before she delivers her son Janes, and the delivery goes well. A short time later, full of the same testimony, he blesses Willie before she delivers her daughter Temple. But Willie dies.~62- This conflict between faith and doubt in the Legends is the same one Clory struggles with all her life as she is pulled one day toward faith ané a desire to conform and the next toward disbelief and an urge to be free. The conflict is never resolved and we are left wondering whether God is really in His heaven or whether we are subject only to the bludgeonings of chance. Resolved or not, the conflict adds dramatic tension to the novel and the legends heighten that tension by providing a resonant background for the conflict. Shortly after the saints arrive in Dixie, Erastus Snow, accompanied by mountainman Shadrach Guant, looks out over the valley and is overcome by the glorious work that lies ahead. "Here," he exults, "everyman will love his neighbor." To which Guant happily replies, "Or else, by gadder, we'll shoot him.” For me, one of the principal saving graces of The Giant Joshua ts its delightful frontier humor. I have heard that in Logan, where I have just moved, it gets so cold in the winter the railroad tracks huddle together to keep warm. The Loganites who tell this joke are following a pattern found throughout frontier America, where men and women, faced with almost unbearable living conditions, have managed to endure by telling self-deprecating jokes and exaggerated tales about their environment. This is the humor of The Giant Joshua. For example, when the storm mentioned above washes out the crops, Lon Tuckett quips: "I vum, Brother Snow, when you was askin’ the Lord for rain, why didn't you tell him how much!" When solemn Abijah asks the same Lon Tuckett if he can drive a particular team of horses without swearing, Tuckett replies: "By Gorry, I don’t know. This nigh horse is such a God dam balky fool I expect I shall swear some." When Gottlieb Uttley's father rises in testimony to express appreciation for his family, he says of the errant Gottlieb: "Of course, Gottlieb is not a goot poy; he smokes and he trinks and svears. . . but t'ank God he's a goot Later-Tay Saint!" And when Brigham Young gives the aged Zebedee Trupp permission to marry a young girl, he adds: "Just let me warn you, she's a-going to need a lot ore than the laying on of hands! This last joke, of course, is told also about J. Golden Kimball and Apostle Reed Smoot. Tt and most of the jokes in the novel are not Ms. Whipple's inventions but rather floating anecdotes taken from oral tradition and worked skillfully into the narrative, where they serve to break tension when it builds too high and to increase our admiration of the gutsy Dixieites. If the superstitions and proverbs function in the novel to help develop character and set the scene for Clory's struggles with Abijah and Sheba, if the legends energize the narrative and reinforce the novel's basic confict, and if the humorous anecdotes provide a sort of comic relief while at the same time helping characterize the tough, resilient pioneers, then the numerous descriptions of material culture and of customary practices make the actions of the novel seem realistic and believable. Time will not permit my giving examples of these descriptions. Suffice it to say that Ms. Whipple's detailed, almost ethnographic, accounts of games, of parties, of dances, of quilting bees, of soap making, of spinning, of yarn dyeing, and of houses, clothing and food--all these accounts, worked carefully into the narrative, give the novel a sense of immediacy and enhance the verisimilitude of the plot.-6 ‘The literary critic Constance Rourke has argued that a truly American literature could not develop until a body of native American lore had first come into being, a lore that later underpinned and gave vitality to the literature. Perhaps the same thing can be said for Mormon literature. By the twentieth century the Mormons had, as Thomas O'Dea has remarked, experienced enough together that they had developed into a separate ethnic group, almost a separate nation. Out of this common experience developed a body of Mormon and Western lore, and from this lore, Maurine Whipple drew inspiration for The Giant Joshua. I do not believe that the success of the novel rests entirely on its base in folklore. Its characters are highly complex, its plot many- faceted. To achieve her artistic ends, Ms. Whipple had to employ many devices, some of which have little to do with folklore. I do believe, however, that had she not relied on folklore she would not have succeeded as well. Bruce Jorgensen has argued that when Ms. “hipple “imagines ‘those old people’ [in the novel] through the folk speech she inherited from them, they come grittily alive and true; when her abstractions and popular cliches try to waft them up to the heroic "Idea," they lose dimension and substance." I agree with this statement, but would like to change Jorgensen's phrase "folk speech" to "folklore." It is not just the speech the characters use but rather the entire folklore milieu in which they move that gives them dimension and substance. Eugene England has argued that while the first part of The Giant Joshua is successfully worked out, the last two-hundred pages fail. Again, T would agree, and I would point out that most of the folklore in the novel is in the first part of the book; in the last pages it thins out. Whether or not one agrees with my interpretations of folklore in the novel, one would have to agree, I believe, that the further Ms. Whipple moves from her folklore base the less concrete and the less successful the novel becomes. According to Ms. Whipple her intention in writing The Giant Joshua was to trace the evolution of the Mormon Idea. Throughout the novel, and particularly in the last part, Clory moves toward some sort of ultimate union with what Ms, Whipple calls the Great Smile. When the union is fianlly achieved, Clory realizes that the testimony she has sought all her life has been in her heart all along. If this is the Mormon Idea, it is one I have never heard before. In my judgment, it has far more to do with the pantheisn of Bryant or the transcendentalism of Emerson than it has with anything I have ever known in the Mormon church. As a philosophical treatment of Mormon doctrine, then, as a presentation of the Mormon Idea, the novel fails. But as a rendition of the Mormon experience, or at least part of it, it succeeds. Those of us who have read the novel have probably learned very little of Mormon philosophy. But we have had the pleasure of rubbing shoulders with real people, struggling with real problems, in a real world. And because of this our lives are richer.