2000
AML Award:
Honorary Lifetime Membership
Presented to:
Richard Cracroft
For:
The problem with honoring Richard Cracroft is that such an encomium
deserves the eloquence and good humor that he alone is most qualified
to give. To list his many contributions to Mormon letters falls short
of conveying his passion, his verve, his back-handed satire and his
front-loaded humor. For Richard Cracroft has not simply been a scholar
advancing our field; he has been a captain boldly leading us into
it-organizing, quelling, and presiding over the skirmishes that have
kept Mormon letters such an interesting panorama.
On one front Richard has been a literary scholar, credentialed in
American and Western studies, bringing LDS literature under the
legitimizing aegis of those more established fields. On another front
he has been a popular and accessible critic, explaining the history of
LDS fiction to the church at large in the pages of the Ensign or
guiding readers of BYU Magazine to the best of current LDS
literature. As a kind of literary diplomat, Richard Cracroft has for
many years directed BYU's Center for Christian Values in Literature,
bringing LDS literature and criticism into contact with larger,
non-LDS audiences through the journal Literature and Belief and
bringing together faculty and literary scholars from across campus and
the country through colloquia and conferences aptly named "Literature
and Belief" and "Spiritual Frontiers."
But Richard has been no literary pacificist. His passionate loyalty to
the Mormon faith and to a conservative Mormon aesthetics has caused
him to speak out with typical lack of timidity against backsliding
opinions and encroaching secularism. As he concluded his year as
president of AML in 1991, for example, he issued a stirring call to
LDS writers and critics to return to the core values of an LDS
worldview. Whether or not Richard has succeeded in stemming the sophic
tide of Mormon literature, his authentic Mormon voice has created no
enemies. To the contrary, it has always commanded respect, as all
great passion does, especially from someone who so genially combines
religious testimony and literary acumen.
Richard has been justly called the father of modern Mormon literary
studies, but we might even call him its godfather-substituting for
images of violence the force of Richard's constant good humor and good
will as he has presided over a dynasty of contributions to our common
cause. Not only did Richard inaugurate the first courses in Mormon
literature at BYU, but just prior to the founding of the AML he edited
(with Neal Lambert) the first anthology of Mormon literature, A
Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints. That
seminal work has been repeatedly celebrated both for charting a course
for future LDS literary studies and for reviving genres and authors
otherwise passed over. That early work has paid off in a heritage of
renewed attention to the genres and figures that he and Neal Lambert
salvaged from obscurity. He has more recently defended "home
literature" and popular genres, convincing literary scholars to take
seriously what mainstream Mormons are reading. Richard is an advocate
and a champion, a literate voice for works considered by some as less
literary, both in the past and the present. He is a leader who rouses
and rallies his audiences from their stupors of thought, motivating
them toward more profound engagement of both their religion and its
literary expression.
For his mediation and advocacy as critic, for his countless articles
and presentations that have shaped the field, for his inimitable
eloquence and humor, and for his many years of tireless reading and
writing on behalf of Mormon letters, the Association for Mormon
Letters proudly confers upon Richard Cracroft honorary lifetime
membership.