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Show Utah Source Material for Literature' By MAURICE L. HOWE2 Utah literature has not yet crystallized into greatness. This state, how termed a veritable gold mine of source material awaiting a competent interpreter. Early day journals kept by trappers and explorers which antedate the Mormons and the later diaries kept by the followers of Brigham Young provide a tremendous amount of excellent data. Great social experiments have been attempted in Utah, for example, plural marriage; the The full story of polygamy United Order, and ecclesiastical government. with its psychological, spiritual and emotional significance has never been ever, has been adequately presented. The days of pioneering are not yet ended. Utah has ten counties with out a railroad, eight counties without a bank, and four counties without libraries. Today living is still difficult; there is still conflict between old and new. Still dogma is arrayed against liberalism; still there are unsolved questions of economic existence. Utah is faced by natural and social forces affecting the livelihood of her citizens. Agricultural resources are very limited. There is an exodus of her youth. The attack upon, and possible solution of these human problems need a gifted and powerful interpreter who can see the forces clearly and portray the new American literature, which may be provincial, but certainly not lacking in vigor. Such literature will be preg nant with earthiness and fraught with the implications that mark the whole national era from 1830 to date. The Mormons have ever been a record keeping people. Vast quantities of original material are available in church, public, or private libraries. Here are influences that make for great themes-vanished prehistoric races; covered wagons; idealists who held to their ideals; bloodshed and persecution; thirsty, grudging soil; social conflicts arising from plural mar riage; converts fresh from Europe who starved in the barrens and kept their faith; experiments in cooperative living; dispossessed Indians; cowboys, prospectors, characters of the glamorous west, mingling with the farm and factory people who trekked a thousand miles to build a temple! Such ma terial awaits the genius, powerful and perceptive, to tell the story to the world. 2 An abstract of a paper read at the general meeting of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, May 14, 1938, Logan, Utah. State Director of the Federal Writers' Project and the Historical Records Survey of the Works Progress Administration in Utah. 29 |
