{"id":86948,"date":"2024-09-15T04:06:38","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T11:06:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=86948"},"modified":"2024-09-24T07:45:19","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T14:45:19","slug":"tracing-literary-lineage-in-david-paces-american-trinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/tracing-literary-lineage-in-david-paces-american-trinity\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracing Literary Lineage in David Pace’s \u201cAmerican Trinity\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In considering the stories collected in David G. Pace\u2019s American Trinity: And Other Stories from the Mormon Corridor<\/em>, I keep thinking of lineage. Not priesthood lineage but the literary kind.<\/h4>\n

Mormon writers\u2014excuse me, Latter-day Saint writers\u2014have inherited the problem of genre writers through the ages. Each generation of storytellers draws upon the lineage of previous work. And yet it\u2019s easy for narrative breakthroughs to be lost to readers who haven\u2019t been invited into the literary congregation.<\/h4>\n

For female writers and thinkers, for example, feminist works often have been received \u201cas if it emerged from nowhere; as if each of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present,\u201d wrote poet Adrienne Rich. \u201cThis is one of the ways in which women\u2019s work and thinking has been made to seem sporadic, errant, orphaned of any tradition of its own.\u201d Latter-day Saint writers face a similar challenge. In Rich\u2019s words, each new generation of LDS stories might be received as \u201csporadic\u201d or \u201corphaned of any tradition of its own.\u201d<\/h4>\n

That\u2019s why an insightful, illuminating opening essay by Christopher T. Lewis is one of the blessings of Beyond Common Consent\u2019s thoughtful publication of American Trinity<\/em>. In his foreword, Lewis asks readers to consider what came first, which serves as an excellent invitation into these 12 stories. Pace\u2019s characters are eternally caught between the faith of their childhood and their own mature unbelief. They are bruised, yet nostalgic for a time when their ideas about God, family and the future seemed less complicated. Above it all, these characters could testify that it\u2019s Mormon mythology to which they still hold fast.<\/h4>\n

In fact, LDS mythology is a literal imprint in \u201cAmerican Trinity,\u201d Pace\u2019s weighty, satirical title story about Zed, the cynical Third Nephite. For those who didn\u2019t grow up steeped in Latter-day Saint scripture, the Three Nephites are disciples of Jesus described in the Book of Mormon (3 Nephi 28:7) who become translated beings called on a mission to live on earth and do good deeds until Jesus returns. As a writer, Pace takes the mission seriously. His character, Zed, has been called\u2014Zed thinks of it as a curse\u2014on an eternal ministering mission. He admits he has lost his faith, admits he would rather eat oysters and observe humanity by watching Broadway plays than continuing his work of translating scriptural texts to contain \u201cthe requisite miracles.\u201d Still, despite his weary cynicism, Zed believes in the power of The Book.<\/h4>\n

Zed\u2019s a delicious, satirical character, and Pace’s story of religious magical realism is filled with insightful questions about storytelling. \u201cWithout our own inspired, and inspiring book, those of us residing in the New World would always be relegated to the step-sheep of God.\u201d That\u2019s from Zed\u2019s argument with Mormon, the warrior prophet whose name would be the title of a book of scripture and, for generations, a shorthand nickname for a religious people. \u201cWe are more than the sum of our battles.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Are LDS readers and writers more than the sum of our mythology? It\u2019s an intriguing question that Pace, who has served as a literary community organizer in Salt Lake City as well as a writer for this publication,\u00a0explored earlier<\/a> in his 2015 novel, Dream House On Golan Drive<\/em>. In that novel, a version of Zed serves as a guardian angel to a very lost, very contemporary soul.<\/h4>\n

Doctrine turns literal in \u201cLana Turner Has Collapsed!\u201d In the mirrors of the women\u2019s dressing room in an LDS temple, Gloria is troubled by a vision of dead celebrities, \u201cbut all the Lanas were moving away from her, busy in eternity\u2019s endless tasks, looking for the man of their dreams, the warm studio lights, the adoring eye of the camera.\u201d<\/h4>\n

In the pages of American Trinity<\/em>, there\u2019s a Sunday School bandit (not to give readers too many ideas), as well a nightwatchman who guards grubby LDS relics, and Paul, a lost Saint who befriends Saul, a befuddled Jewish man, who comes to serve as his doppelganger. It’s in the dark notes of the stories that readers may hear universal notes. That’s in\u00a0particular\u00a0for readers who didn’t grow up with stories of golden plates and ministering angels, but who may have struggled with their own religious doctrines.<\/h4>\n

Many of these stories grow out of autobiography, but readers don\u2019t need to trace that history. Instead, this is more helpful:\u00a0the writer might be considered a cultural anthropologist of LDS culture. Once, when asked in a 15 Bytes interview if he considers himself a Mormon writer, he answered, wistfully: “Hopelessly.”<\/h4>\n

For a couple of weeks, I\u2019ve been thinking about Pace’s title story as a flashy anchor for the collection. But two stories with more everyday plots, \u201cStairway to Heaven\u201d and \u201cCaliban Revels Now Ended,\u201d have started to claim more literary heft in my mind. In \u201cStairway,\u201d a young man learns about the limitations and hope of prayer while a reckless friend goes missing. And in \u201cCaliban Revels,\u201d a man returns to the town where, as a LDS missionary, he and his companion read the Book of Mormon to an older man who had lost his ability to speak due to a stroke. Nothing is resolved, nothing falls away in these stories, but the complexity of being caught between feels like the best, and most honest, kind of fiction.<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

American Trinity:<\/em> And Other Stories from the Mormon Corridor<\/em>
\nDavid Pace
\nBy Common Consent Press<\/a>
\n2024
\n215 pp.
\n$11.95<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In considering the stories collected in David G. Pace\u2019s American Trinity: And Other Stories from the Mormon Corridor, I keep thinking of lineage. Not priesthood lineage but the literary kind. Mormon writers\u2014excuse me, Latter-day Saint writers\u2014have inherited the problem of genre writers through the ages. Each generation of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1731,"featured_media":86951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2589,35],"tags":[2214],"class_list":["post-86948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews-literary-arts","category-literary-arts","tag-david-pace"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/american-trinity.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-09 07:19:46","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86948"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87137,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86948\/revisions\/87137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}