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Marrow: A Review of Richard Dutcher’s Mormon Films

March 19, 2018

In Richard Dutcher’s latest film Falling, a rich scene revealing the subtle conflict between the demands of commerce and artistic endeavor is focused around the word marrow. The protagonist, lapsed Mormon Eric Boyle, a suffering videographer and aspiring screenwriter, is failing to sell his latest story to a well-tanned and successful Hollywood producer. After rejecting Eric’s work, the producer complains to him that if he wants to make it in the film business, he needs to do something different, something new.

When Your Eternal Companion Has Fangs | Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn

March 19, 2018

As a teacher of language and literature, I am probably supposed to sneer at Stephenie Meyer’s novels. They are not just genre fiction but, by blending urban fantasy and romance, genre fiction twice over; they are not only written for the young adult market, but they also avoid offending the sensitivities of Mormon readers; and their prose does not insist that you stop and weep over its sheer beauty.

Reading the Mormon Gothic | Stephenie Meyer, Twilight; New Moon; Eclipse; Breaking Dawn

March 19, 2018

Mormons and vampires—a strange combination, indeed. Stephenie Meyer first brought them together in her mock-epic series of Twilight novels, a contemporary literary phenomenon that sprang, true to the classic gothic impulse, from the author’s vividly persistent dream. The series tracks Isabella (“Bella”) Swan and her “vegetarian” vampire beau, Edward Cullen, as they first meet in Forks, Washington, fall into forbidden love, and, after conquering a series of increasingly threatening obstacles, live happily ever after as immortal husband and wife. 

Meeting Donna Freitas: A Review of Sex and the Soul and an Interview

March 19, 2018

Returning from spring break in 2005, Dr. Donna Freitas, assistant professor of religion at St. Michael’s College, a small Roman Catholic school near Burlington, Vermont, witnessed an epiphany in her “Dating and Friendship” course. One by one, her students admitted to themselves and to each other their profound disappointment in the sexual culture of their school—the “hook-up culture.”

The Widower

March 19, 2018

The Widower  Eric W Jepson  Four years had passed since Mary had died; Torrance still wasn’t comfortable dating and yet here he was, getting married. Five years with Mary may have been too short, but…

Triptych: Plural

March 18, 2018

I Nora bears the tray of hors d’oeuvres she spent three hours this afternoon preparing. Mushroom caps stuffed with chopped and sauteed artichoke hearts, onion, garlic, bread crumbs, and three cheeses. She approaches the door;…

Pulses

March 18, 2018

For more than a week, I thought 
cutting off my toe was penance. 

I delved a hole for this toe, 
a quick, tiny sepulcher at the crook

Some Kind of Beginning

March 18, 2018

The alfalfa fields had their own luster 
and, besides, no one came 
for any harvest. Instead, as children, we drifted 
in a golden sea with monarchs, my brother waving