1988  AML Award: Criticism

Presented to:
Wayne C. Booth

For:
The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

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Wayne Booth’s The Company We Keep is not specifically, not doctrinally a work of "Mormon criticism"; yet it is the work of a Mormon critic who has always acknowledged the roots of his most enduring values, his persistent sense of the world and what is worthy in it, as first nourished in Mormon country and community -- in a place some still call "American Fark." In the present situation of literary criticism, which often can seem desiccated by skeptical polemics rather than fertile with plurality, Booth argues learnedly, lucidly, generously, and delicately for not just the relevance but the necessity and centrality of ethical criticism, and demonstrates the athletic complexity of its action, as if his life -- as if all our lives -- depended on it. And he persuades us that our lives do indeed depend on our alert, quickened ethical relations to those who offer us the community at large, and the smaller community of Mormon letters within it, is one that promises (or threatens) to keep on giving. We thank him headily, glad of his company.

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