Item Detail
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7913
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1
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0
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English
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Beyond 'Jack Fiction' : Recent Achievement in the Mormon Novel
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BYU Studies
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Spring 1988
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28
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97-109
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"Only fourteen years ago, Karl Keller called most Mormon novels to that point "jack-fiction." With that play on the familiar term "jack-Mormon," used for one whose faith and activity have lapsed and who is loyal to Mormonism only as a culture, Keller was claiming that Mormons had produced fiction essentially irrelevant to the doctrines of Mormonism and therefore removed from the heart of the faith. He offered as a model for what genuinely religious literature could be the work of Flannery O'Connor, whom he quoted as claiming, "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our Redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that." It surprised and disappointed Keller that his fellow Mormons had not been similarly engaged in creating fictional worlds based on the unique ways Mormon theology and experience would lead them to see the world." [Publisher's abstract]