Volume 06, No. 3

Due to an unavoidable delay in the “Mormonism in the Twentieth Century” issue, the editorial staff decided to proceed with the preparation of this literature issue. It is not a special issue in the usual…

In a 1969 review-essay entitled “The New Mormon History,” Moses Rischin spoke of the sophistication with which scholars both within and without the Mormon culture were beginning to examine the Mormon past. He added, “This seems only the beginning. A giant step from church history to religious and intellectual history seems in the offing. As Mormon continuities and discontinuities are reassessed from entirely new perspectives and with a potentially greater audience than ever before, other Ameri cans and Mormons may better come to understand themselves.”

The career of Bernard DeVoto, the foremost writer and one of the greatest intellectual forces whom Utah has produced in this country, was conspicuously marked by achievements and honors. He wrote five novels, three books devoted to the history of the West, a classic study of Mark Twain, a stimulating study on the relationship between history and literature, another on the interdependence between psychology and literature, three volumes of essays which may serve as a chronicle of the issues dominating American life for twenty-five years (1930-1955), hundreds of reviews and articles on an astonishing range of topics, a monthly column for more than twenty years in America’s most widely read serious journal (Harper’s), and introductions to many books by other authors.

As Mr. Fetzer’s article in this issue of Dialogue makes clear, Bernard DeVoto grew up a Catholic, not a Mormon. What is more, he grew up in a house dominated by his father, and his…

When it was published in English in 1962, Nobel Prize-winner Halldor Laxness’ novel about the Mormons, Paradise Reclaimed, went virtually un noticed in the Mormon community and, as far as I can tell, is still…

I had a girlfriend and ever since I knew her when she was in the eighth grade, she always said, “I’m going to be a writer. I’m going to be a steady contributor to Cosmopolitan when I’m thirty years old.” I never said that because I didn’t think I was good enough. I wasn’t one of those people who say, “I’m going to be a writer.” 

Dear Sirs: This is to acknowledge with gratitude the receipt of your letter of December 6. The honor accorded me* I consider a great one indeed, the more so as I reflect on the many…

Had Brigham Young adhered to Sam Brannan’s advice and settled in California, San Francisco might have become the Mecca of Mormonism. Young stopped in the Great Salt Lake Valley and San Francisco had to be content with lesser glories. However, California did produce a number of interesting Mormon-related books, pamphlets, and broadsides. A list of these works, as they appear in Clifford Merrill Drury’s California Imprints, 1846-1878 Pertaining to Social, Educational, and Religious Subjects (privately printed for the author, 1970, is printed below for the reader’s edification. Those interested in the location of the works should consult Drury’s volume. 

One of the most magnificent collections of books and manuscripts pertaining to English and American history and literature is housed in the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, a privately endowed institution in San…

One of mankind’s great social, political, and moral problems is war. The constant menace of war keeps the minds of thinking men disturbed and grieved. More than any other thing, war destroys wealth, art, culture, morals, and happiness. 

I have been asked to give the charge to the graduates. This demands that I shall strive to indicate to you what is important and what has significance for you above all else. 

Klaus J. Hansen’s review of Doyle L. Fitzpatrick’s The King Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island King in the Spring 1971 Dialogue is the latest manifestation of a currently popular scholarly perspective on Mormonism which is most easily recognized by its emphasis on “the political kingdom of God.”

I did much of my growing up as a Mormon while doing graduate work or engaged in teaching and administration at Stanford University. Though not a full-blown multiversity on the Berkeley or Minnesota model, Stanford…

A few days ago I was chatting with a good friend, a psychotherapist of rather remarkable competence and ability. This man, a very active and deeply committed Mormon, has been especially effective in working with…

I never intended to leave Utah. In fact, I didn’t leave until I was sixteen, and that was only a trip to my father’s hometown in Wyoming. I didn’t make it to California until I…

Mormons might find particular interest in the recent defeat by the California legislature of a bill that would have repealed all laws against sexual relationships by consenting adults. Only an impassioned stand by a coterie of legislators from that strong hold of rectitude commonly known as Rafferty Country prevented its passage, as members of this group with Bibles opened thundered denunciation of the abominations of Sodom and Gomorrah. Proponents of the defeated bill remained confident, however, of its eventual passage in future sessions, and predicted that similar legislation will within a few years prevail throughout most of the nation. 

There are those who delight in pitting faith against reason and who thereby dis parage thinking in order to exalt religion. They even find scriptural justification for taking this stance in the writings of Paul,…

This year October takes us sudden, breaks 
The honeylocust leaves with a parching frost 
And casts them, ashen green and clattering, down
On sidewalks still glaring as white as summer. 

                        You can’t pray with a clenched brain 
                        Or fall asleep with fisted hands; 
                        But force one finger open at a time 
                        Until thoughts clatter loose and fall 
                        Like budded balls of crumpled paper. 

if i have seemed lately to turn from you 
and mail my mind beyond our common rooms 
as if the calm intelligence your eyes 
offer to share were not sufficient plea 

(Monday, Aug. 4, 1969.) 

            The trees are still in mist this August morning:
chestnut and beech first scorched by sense of Autumn,
and the rest just dull vert between vague seasons.
The swirl of Ceres disciplined to stubble 
reduces the whole seasonal cycle’s plumed

                        A north town, north in mountains 
                        the beavering trappers cached—
                        one—two-hundred years ago—
                        the religion house, in a good sky, 
                        the two-hat temple brimmed 
                        in roofy granite, and blacksmith tin. 

No, Father, I never got over 
that first rush of anger 
like wings folding round me 
as I discovered the world 

Somewhere, deep in the background of the world,
Lost in this traffic of hurrying men, 
A forgotten bush burns vaguely. 
No one turns aside to see, 

There was a time 
When the measure of the earth 
Was lions. 
And the earth was full of lions, 

Dialogue departs from its usual review format in the following exchange of points of view on W. Cleon Skousen’s latest book, The Naked Capitalist

When Samuel W. Taylor began toying with the idea of writing on the Nauvoo period of Mormon history, his editor undoubtedly pointed out that as fiction the subject was strictly a zero. Who would believe…

Andrew Karl Larson’s Erastus Snow: The Life of a Missionary and Pioneer for the Early Mormon Church is a biography written, as the author candidly points out in his preface, “at the behest of Erastus…

A thorough study of Utah’s troubled relations with the Federal Government during the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been long over due. Interest in Utah’s pioneer era has dominated historical scholarship, to the…

My early school years, until I was in the seventh grade, in fact, were spent in a two-room school. The school was in southern Arkansas, three miles from the nearest town, El Dorado—El Dorader, we…