posted
Do you ever get sick of the question: Does your religion affect your writing much?
I'm reading the research area interviews and it seems these interviewers don't have a clue about basic research beforehand, except of course the ones interviewing you about a specific book.
Your answers are great but they seem repetitive and I'd like to skip them but I can't because there's always some new great remarks inside them.
So yeah, do you find these annoying? Or simply as a means to deliver the same response to a larger audience (which I suppose would be a good thing)?
Also, any interviewing tips would be greatly appreciated.
[ December 10, 2005, 12:41 AM: Message edited by: cheiros do ender ]
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posted
Mr. Card was gracious in answering me at a post-book signing Q&A when I asked him if his mission experience in Brazil had influenced his writing.
"Hello! Big fan here! Read all your books."
He had every right to turn to me and say, "well...duh," um check out the use of Portugese, check out x, y, z... Or the notes at the end of some of the books (where he actually TALKS about it).
Anyway, he didn't do that. He just acted like it was an intelligent question, answered it and moved on.
It's a somewhat related question to the "how does your religion affect your writing" and I suspect he's probably gotten it only slightly fewer times. Anyway, he doesn't show that he's tired of it, even if he is.
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Well I just brang it up because more or less every interviewer int he Research Area asks that question, and very plainly "how does your religion..."
Brazil doesn't seem to me like a question that everyone would want to ask, though I don't know for sure and can only go on what's in those interviews. I myself would probably ask that if I ever met him because I do capoeira, a brazilian martial art, and am learning portuguese through that.
The impression I get is that Mr. Card isn't really capable of giving a "well...duh," sort of answer. He always seems to give full answers to questions, it's just the fact that he has answered this one so many times with roughly the same answer. For you to be expected to have found the answer to your question in "notes at the end of some of the books" might mean having to look through possibly 50% of his work before you found it. And a fan getting a book signed from one of his favourite authors, who asks one question, should be able to ask any question he likes.
The answer to this question, on the other hand, is absolutely everywhere an interviewer should look besides in the fiction itself. There are many plain questions they've asked that could've saved time for better questions by being quickly researched beforehand.
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That just felt ... wicked. We Mormons get to commit so FEW really interesting sins. (Persistent knocking on strangers' doors doesn't rank very high in the "interesting" category.)
My religion affects my work the way every other aspect of my worldview affects it - it shows up in ways I'm not even aware of, because what "feels right" to me while I'm writing is going to include Mormon stuff.
At the same time, every Mormon has a different version of what they conceive Mormonism to be, and of how Mormonism affects their view of the world. So the very thing that feels Mormon to one member of the Church might feel heretical or irrelevant to another. A very personal matter.
Now, as to my religion CONSCIOUSLY affecting my work, that's a different matter. Sometimes I will explore some facet of Mormon history, either directly (SAINTS) or indirectly (Alvin Maker/Homecoming). In those cases, though, I try very hard NOT to make my readers make any kind of choice about whether they believe in a peculiarly Mormon idea or doctrine. Instead, I use STORIES from LDS history or scripture, and then only because I think they're really cool stories. I pick and choose what I want to use; and often Mormons themselves make the worst readers of those stories, since they catch the Mormon references and either accuse me of plagiarism <grin> or think they've "got it" and stop thinking about any of the other hundreds of things going on in the story.
I do write some things that are really internal to Mormon society - like my play Liberty Jail, for instance. There might be non-Mormons interested it in, but I make few allowances or explanations. Anything that is marketed to the general audience, however, assumes no previous knowledge or interest in LDS ideas, and make no attempt to convert anybody or convince anybody. You can read Saints as a nonbeliever in Mormonism and not come one whit closer to believing - but I hope you'll come considerably closer to understanding the LDS past, just as when I wrote Pastwatch I hoped readers would come considerably closer to understanding Columbus and his culture and time. I think that's legitimate.
But in a sense that's not even about my "religion," only about my culture.
My poetry, though, is thick with LDS references. But poetry is allowed to be personal, without apology. And my hymns are all LDS, though some of them probably speak to Christians in general. But I intend them for the LDS people, with the hope that some might be set to music and become part of our worship services.
If it's intended for Mormons, chances are non-Mormons won't even hear about it; and even on my websites, if I do something explicitly LDS, it'll probably appear on Nauvoo and only be linked to from here.
I think that's a fairly complete answer. Probably way more complete than you wanted.
Mostly, it comes down to this: I think fiction is a lousy way to proselytize, and proselytizing is a lousy way to tell stories. I try not to commingle the two.
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Actually, we were told we aren't allowed to link to Nauvoo content from here, that to do so violates the TOS of Nauvoo. The idea was that people on Nauvoo aren't writing for an audience wider than the Nauvoo community.
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" I try very hard NOT to make my readers make any kind of choice about whether they believe in a peculiarly Mormon idea or doctrine."
When I first heard that you were a Mormon, I was a little freaked out. You probably hear this a considerable amount as well, but I was immediately seized with the irrational fear that you had planted insidious messages about religion in my brain when I read Ender's Game. The thought seriously crossed my mind right away.
I can of course reason out that you have no special ability to change the way I think, that I process what you write through my own thoughts, and would have noticed if Ender's Game was especially manipulative or prostheletizing, which of course it is not.
But. I do recognize that I am in general wary of Mormons and that deep down, no matter how irrational or unfair I am being, I believe them to be scary and manipulative.
This is partly based on experience, I went to see the Mormon temple in SLC when I was 15 on a road trip, and I was actually freaked out by the missionaries from the Ukraine and the way they talked about the Book Of Mormon. Part of this was that they seemed scarily fanatical and lifeless, and part was my reservation against them, because I am from San Francisco, and grew up in a family that doesn't go to church regularly, nor did I know ANY mormons growing up.
What of this fear? I don't think I am being callous or stubborn, but I am being judgemental and irrationally phobic.... Actually I remind myself of what W.E.B. Griffin wrote in "Black like Me," that he looked himself in the mirror the first time, and realized he was afraid of the black man that looked back at him, and hated him in his own irrational way. Hmmm more food for writing.
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I was a little freaked out when I first heard that you were a Mormon too.... My first experience with your writing was a short story about Utah in the future, with the Salt Lake Valley flooded, in an anthology that contained other sci-fi authors - I don't even remember what it was, now, but I wasn't convinced you were all that friendly to the LDS people.
Now I see LDS theology in almost everything you write (or at least my own values, which I've derived from my LDS faith). It's in discussions about "aiua's" from the Ender series, and in the descriptions of marriage relationships in Enchantment, and many other places. Guess that makes me one of the worst readers, though. Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Didn't bother me at all to find out he was a Mormon. I've known too many Mormons to be scared of them.
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I found that a hat made out of Reynold's Wrap protects me from the insidious mind-control death-rays that the big gold Jesus on the Emerald City thing outside of DC shoots out of his fingers.
You know, I might be able to squeeze another preposition into that sentence with a shoehorn....
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JennaDean, I don't know what anthology it's in but the story of Mormons/Utah in the future is part of the novel Folk of the Fringe, or maybe you already knew that.
It's sort of set out in different parts like Asimov's Foundation, if you've read that, and the one of Salt Lake City being flooded is just one in the middle. Hope that doesn't count as a spoiler for any of the rest of you. If it does, I'm very sorry.
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The funny thing is I went "oh that's neat" nothing freaky nothing oh wow really?! However when I learned that he was theatrically trained THEN I wen't OH WOW THAT'S AWESOME and spazed like a 16 year old girl. I believe OSC treats religion how many good faithful people with an education do, it is a part of them, however it is not all of them. They do not allow it to take over their lives entirely and leek into everything they do, as they are open minded and know that people believe what they all individually believe. That been said OMG ACTORZZZZZZ LOLERSKATES (one thing uncommon on THIS forum )
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Orson doesn't say "well...duh" because he is the guy who lived it and wrote it. It would be hard to be that detached about your life and work.
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I suppose I was happy to hear of OSC's faith after reading most of the Ender series. This isn't because I'm Mormon, but because I am Christian, and I appreciate what our two faiths share.
Orincoro, I understand how you feel about being a bit freaked out about it. I know some people who have had some *very* bad experiences either within, or directly relating to, the LDS church, so I became a bit more wary of what I was reading.
But in all fairness, it is *always* up to us as a reader to be mindful of what is being taught to us in whatever form of entertainment we choose.
What's always worried me most about OSC's books, is that they are so engaging that I find mysel relating people I know to characters, instead of relating the characters to people I know. I get very deeply into these books, and can honestly say they've changed my life. This leads me to wonder exactly *how* my life has been changed though...
Perhaps a good question to you, Mr. Card, would be how you would *hope* your books are changing their reader?
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quote:But. I do recognize that I am in general wary of Mormons and that deep down, no matter how irrational or unfair I am being, I believe them to be scary and manipulative.
posted
Perhaps a general theophobia? That is, a fear of the discovery of God? Or do you think it's from a past personal experience? Or perhaps even simply a second-hand experience?
Posts: 70 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I did describe a personal experience of meeting some UKranian mormons in salt lake city who were scary.
Theophobia: The way you phrase it makes your faith the natural high ground. "A fear of the discovery of God," implies that God is neccessarily there to be discovered. This line of thought comes naturally to a religious person, but to me, someone who does not have any particular faith in a "God" of any kind, your phrasing seems rather too... suggestive?
Putting it that way isn't exactly condescending, but its... somewhat unfair. It's like asking someone if they're still ignorant, it implies too much about the person your asking; its as much a statement as a question.
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Hmm,well I apologize if that came across too er... statedly. But couldn't it have just as easily read "a fear of the discovery of the possibiliy of a god"?
But I admit, I misspoke in that regard. I was kind of hoping to open up the concept for discussion at the same time, if people jumped at it. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it in a manner directly querying you, or anyone else specifically.
Posts: 70 | Registered: Dec 2005
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quote: But couldn't it have just as easily read "a fear of the discovery of the possibiliy of a god"?
No. Because there's actually a huge difference between distrusting members of a specific religion and being afraid of gods in general.
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Well, but that was the question I was asking, that perhaps the fear was based more in a relation to (a) god, rather than to a distinct group of followers.
Nevertheless, I recant the comment.
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