1) Maybe the best way to read Mormon Literary classics now is to be forced to do so, i.e. take that lit class! Does Gideon let people sneak in an sit in the back? Otherwise, you could hide on the roof like Hillel did to start his education.

2) I think an interest in LDS classics will come when new LDS things are consistently capturing the LDS popular imagination. People don’t find added up b/c it just doesn’t seem like a century-old “Saturday’s Warrior” is going to be good. When people have a more engaged present to project onto the past :) I think things will get better.
As far as this is concerned, I think a narrower definition of Mormon Letters applies. Anne Perry is awesome and wonderful, but reading her mysteries is not going to inspire someone to search for Mormon literary roots in the way that a wave of really good Mormon-themed content could.

Carly: Liz and Candy are right. Mormon literature in general is as Candy defined it. In this post, I’m primarily talking about those classics of older generations, which primarily seem to be Mormon authors writing on Mormon themes. (It doesn’t have to be that way, but we consider something like The Work and the Glory to belong to us as a people, whereas Ender’s Game doesn’t quite feel the same way. It’s equally valid as Mormon lit, yes, but I don’t know if it’s part of our heritage in the same way.)

Liz: There’s been some discussion on the out-of-print works (and what we can do about it) on A Motley Vision. If only they were out of copyright… As for the canon, it’s hard, particularly because so much of what’s popular nowadays is also rather transient. Not much of it sticks.

Sally: I think that — glimpses into the minds of the early Saints — is one of the compelling reasons we should read these classics. It’s a new perspective, a valuable one, and like you say it’s a vital part of our history. It matters.

Candy: A good definition. :)

Broadening this definition, we can include written about members of the church, and still broadening even further we can add holding significant Mormon elements or themes. However, for the most part to be ML is simply to say it was literature written by a member of the church and doesn’t necessarily have to have Mormon characters, themes, or elements.

I also have to disagree with Katherine’s comments about the movie called “Brigham” if it’s the one I’m thinking of. Tyrone Power should have been in that one, and he was a real heart-throb of the day. He was actually one of the first men to play Zorro, which Antonio Bandares has made famous to our generation. Ahem. Anyway, there had been many movies made by Hollywood about Mormons, each of which the Church came out against in a most public way. “Brigham” was the first such movie which the Church did NOT decry and there was actually some good press run by Utah papers of the time (primarily LDS editors). It is a great black and white classic and was very well made for that film-era. :-) I highly recommend it.

LDS classic literature can be very entertaining and I think it’s a vital part of our history as a Church.