The Great Mormon Novel. For years, the LDS literati have been guessing when it would appear. So far it hasn't. And like the Second Coming, nobody knows the hour.
In the meantime, some darn fine Mormon writers have produced novels that are hitting the national charts. Years ago, many critics thought poetry or the essay might be Mormondom's gateway to the publishing mainstream. But that hasn't been the case.The most successful Mormon writers, it seems, have proven to be a band of gypsy storytellers - authors of "genre fiction," that bedeviling term used to describe fiction with a particular style, content and theme: "mysteries," "Westerns," "fantasies," "romances," "young adult books."
Instead of John Miltons, Mormon culture is producing a corps of John Grishams.
And for many observers, that's not the bad news. It's the good news.
"It makes perfect sense to me," says Orson Scott Card, a Mormon and one of America's most celebrated science-fiction authors. "In the LDS culture, we have a bent toward proselyting. We feel our lives should make a difference. So-called `serious literature' tends to be about the artist, while `genre literature' is about changing the world. When I associate with literary writers, all they talk about is career; but the genre writers talk about making a difference. And that's a very Mormon attitude."
As a writer of science fiction and fantasy, Card has indeed made a difference. Today, he leads a legion of young warriors - science-fiction novelists like M. Shayne Bell, Dave Wolverton and Virginia Baker. In fact, the L. Ron Hubbard "Writers of the Future Competition" has been won by so many Utah Mormons in recent years that one publicist joked about visiting the state just to bottle the water.
But science fiction is just one field where LDS writers are showcasing their storytelling talents. Mormon-authored mysteries are also gaining stature. And the monarch there is Anne Perry - a writer of international fame who teaches Sunday School in a tiny Mormon outpost in Scotland.
A few months ago, Perry visited Salt Lake City to pump her newest mystery, "Brunswick Gardens" (Fawcett, $25). She also took a moment to speak about an upcoming project, a fantasy novel featuring a woman from ancient Egypt who is permitted to read the "minutes" taken during "The Council in Heaven," the grand dispute between the forces of good and evil that Mormons believe occurred at the inception of the world.
The book sounds like a blockbuster. Especially given Perry's knack for intrigue, quick prose and her ability to make readers compulsively turn pages, to ask the question all genre writers love to hear readers ask: "What happens next?"
"There's a human fascination with storytelling, and Mormons participate in that," says Edward Geary, director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. "With stories, you don't begin with the idea that you have a point of view to present but have a story to share. The values are implicit in the story. Over the years, those who have talked and agonized about taking Mormon art to the world have tended to be more self-conscious about it."
On top of that, more readers today want to be entertained as well as enlightened. And as Ron Millet, president of Deseret Book, points out, "With LDS writers, the entertainment aspect is clean compared to what else is available. The general non-LDS audience appreciates that, too."
Whatever the reasons for the boom in LDS genre literature, it has become a force. In the "young adult" and "juvenile" genres, Ann Cannon, Louise Plummer and Barbara Williams have made names for themselves with national publishing houses. And one of the most stalwart branches of the Romance Writers of America is the Utah chapter.
Regionally, Gerald Lund has set records with his historical fiction novels from the "Work and the Glory" series. Lee Nelson's "Storm Testament" books are popular Westerns. And humor always sells.
On the flip-side, LDS literary writers have had less success. Despite Card's claim that writing literary fare is like dropping a grain of sand into a lake and watching for ripples, many Mormon writers still forge ahead with it - honing their language, examining philosophy and psychology and refusing to trade on formulas and pat structure.
The essays and criticism of Eugene England, for instance, continue to be provocative and are worthy of much more attention from national critics than they've received. The short stories of John Bennion, Pauline Mortensen, Doug Thayer and Linda Sillitoe are as solid as any found in the annual "O. Henry" collections. And several poets - such as Lance Larsen and Susan Howe - are publishing in prestigious places.
Levi Peterson and Marilyn Brown, two LDS literary lights, produce marketable literary fiction, though that may say more about their gift for compelling narrative than the tastes of LDS readership.
Yet in the end, writing books spawned from "the life of the mind" has always been a lonely outpost for Mormon authors.
"It's frustrating for many writers on two levels," says Neal Kramer, president of the Association for Mormon Letters and the assistant dean of general education and honors at BYU. "These writers can't get a national foothold, yet they can't get a foothold in the LDS community either."
Kramer's explanation?
"Sometimes the conflicts in their work are difficult for people in the LDS community to face. They challenge us in ways we'd rather not deal with when we read novels. So many people in the LDS culture read to escape or to be entertained, not to be challenged."
That would explain the local lack of interest. But the indifference of the national literary establishment is more puzzling. Part of it is probably ignorance on the part of the Eastern publishing houses. They feel all Mormon work must be fumigated for missionary work.
And as Wallace Stegner once pointed out, the big houses still believe a second-rate Eastern writer is better than a first-rate writer from the West. It's a reverse provincialism that has haunted many wordsmiths west of the Rockies.
Nevertheless, the bias doesn't seem to hold when it comes to "potboilers," "whodunits," "oaters" and other genre work. Perhaps, as Geary says, LDS "pop writers"' often mask their Mormonism while their academic comrades tend to deal with it straight up. Whatever the reasons, national publishers seem intent on snapping up manuscripts by LDS genre writers.
And that means more and more Mormons will be producing it.
As Scott Card would say, it makes perfect sense.