|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
"The chances against this book’s ever being written are astronomical—you won’t find another like it. It says what is on everybody’s mind but nobody wants to talk about. Relentlessly honest, England asks us to take the plunge with him into icy and sometimes forbidding waters, and invariably we emerge on the other side feeling refreshed, invigorated, and glowing with a strong sense of testimony. How does he do it? By giving us experience all the way, instead of speculation and argument. He invites us to criticize to our heart’s content—but be sure to go all the way. For him, the Gospel demands dialogue in the manner of Abraham and Enoch, who dared to ask searching questions of the Lord and in reply got not reprimands but answers and blessings. His intensely personal reflections would be embarrassing if they did not always turn out to be the reader’s own. Always experience comes to the rescue, and the fact of existence itself silences the distant drum of entropy. A little learning is touchy, impetuous, and vain, but England is not goingto let us off with a little learning." —Hugh Nibley
|
|
|
|
"The dean of the Mormon personal essay, Eugene England is a writer whose intellect feeds his spirit and whose spirit informs all his writing. This much anticipated volume contains the best essays of a man who believes that the Church is the true body of Christ and so has dedicated himself to keeping the members of that body, including himself, healthy—however painful the cure. On the altar of that belief he lays his considerable talent." —Mary Bradford, editor, Mormon Women Speak
"Eugene England has a knowledge of Mormon history and insight to Mormon culture that is unique. But what he writes is more than historical explication or literary criticism; it is itself an experience, a struggle to know and to understand–to see feelingly. His essays are pilgrimages of spirit and form which often challenge fashion, but always exhibit that deep intellectual and spiritual integrity which has been the distinguishing characteristic of our finest meditational and devotional literature." —Clifton Jolley, columnist, Deseret News
|
|
|
|
Eugene England (with Charlotte) is Professor of English at Brigham Young University and bishop of the BYU 139th Ward. He writes poetry, personal essays, biography (Brother Brigham), and criticism of American, especially Mormon, literature: he is now at work on a book to be called Shakespeare and Melville: Man’s Final Lore.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
title page
Dialogues with Myself
Personal Esays on Mormon Experience
Eugene England
Orion Books
copyright page
Copyright © 1984 by Orion Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN 0-941214-21-4
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Signature Books, Midvale, Utah
dedication page
This book is for Charlotte,
who brings joy and pain and endures
epigraph
By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.
—Joseph Smith, 1844
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
