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Regarding this line:
"Rough Stone Rolling makes use of much recent research and is the most complete biography of Joseph Smith published to date, but it lacks the literary distinction of Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History (1945), a biography that presents Smith as a gifted fraud.
This strikes me as a pretty non-objective statement, regardless of it being sourced to a literary review. I would remove the comparison altogether, and perhaps replace it with a line or two on how the book was received by the public/critics...
71.112.200.213 06:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
This seems like a really one-sided assessment of the book. All the citations that are listed are criticisms, and much of the language in the article is unnecessarily subjective. This article needs some work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.170.190 ( talk) 15:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Could an image of the book cover be added? Does that require permission from the publisher? Unjedai 15:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I just came across this article and it didn't make sense for the critical reaction to the book to be found in the footnotes, so I made a new section and moved them there. I also thought the notes about Brodie's work were off-topic so I removed them.
I was disappointed to find that some of the critics' quotes found in the previous version were taken out of context by whoever added them, which made the critical reaction seem more suspicious and less laudatory than the full reviews would convey. The worst offender was the Lampman quote, which had her accusing Bushman of "sanitizing Smith's motives"; yet the actual quote was that "some may feel Bushman sanitizes" (emphasis mine), Lampman had earlier called the book "an honest...portrayal", and the general tone of the review was quite warm. The Kirn quote was missing the latter (and more positive) half of the sentence, even though the Kirn review overall was quite negative. (It is surprising to me to find that Walter Kirn is not an academic but a novelist and disaffected former Mormon; why the NYT would have considered him qualified and dispassionate enough to review a scholarly book such as Bushman's is a mystery to me. Nevertheless, a NYT book review is a notable review and thus Kirn has a place here.) Hopefully the section should now be a bit closer to an accurate reflection of the reviews cited.
I think the section is quite incomplete though, and if anyone wants to help by including the more notable LDS reactions (both critical and approving), that would be great. I imagine we could get a broader spectrum of secular reviews too; this book received a fair amount of attention when it came out and there's got to be a lot more material out there available to us. alanyst / talk/ 04:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I added quotes from Marvin Hill (actually one long quote substituting one word for a comma). It has been changed to something considerably more favorable. I must respectfully disagree with part of the recent change.
1) Changing the opening phrase is fine with me.
2) I must remove "remarkable by any standard". The title (and opening line) is muted sarcasm. The review is systematically negative. Even the praise at the end (which I quote), is extremely limited. See Midgley's 10th footnote at http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=19&num=1&id=638, where Midgley (in his characteristic acerbic style) notes the review is negative, along with an earlier review by Hill of Beginnings).
3) So in summary I believe the quote more accurately represents the reviews. If anything it is more pro-Rough Stone than the rest of the review since it cites about the only line of praise in the whole thing.
4) And last, I do not wish to cite Midgley's interpretation of Hill's review in the article itself, since his rhetoric is overblown, it comes from a deeply apologetic source, its in a footnote, and it seems strange to cite a review of a review.
Carneadiiz ( talk) 21:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
Carneadiiz ( talk) 00:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Carneadiiz ( talk) 00:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
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Regarding this line:
"Rough Stone Rolling makes use of much recent research and is the most complete biography of Joseph Smith published to date, but it lacks the literary distinction of Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History (1945), a biography that presents Smith as a gifted fraud.
This strikes me as a pretty non-objective statement, regardless of it being sourced to a literary review. I would remove the comparison altogether, and perhaps replace it with a line or two on how the book was received by the public/critics...
71.112.200.213 06:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
This seems like a really one-sided assessment of the book. All the citations that are listed are criticisms, and much of the language in the article is unnecessarily subjective. This article needs some work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.170.190 ( talk) 15:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
Could an image of the book cover be added? Does that require permission from the publisher? Unjedai 15:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
I just came across this article and it didn't make sense for the critical reaction to the book to be found in the footnotes, so I made a new section and moved them there. I also thought the notes about Brodie's work were off-topic so I removed them.
I was disappointed to find that some of the critics' quotes found in the previous version were taken out of context by whoever added them, which made the critical reaction seem more suspicious and less laudatory than the full reviews would convey. The worst offender was the Lampman quote, which had her accusing Bushman of "sanitizing Smith's motives"; yet the actual quote was that "some may feel Bushman sanitizes" (emphasis mine), Lampman had earlier called the book "an honest...portrayal", and the general tone of the review was quite warm. The Kirn quote was missing the latter (and more positive) half of the sentence, even though the Kirn review overall was quite negative. (It is surprising to me to find that Walter Kirn is not an academic but a novelist and disaffected former Mormon; why the NYT would have considered him qualified and dispassionate enough to review a scholarly book such as Bushman's is a mystery to me. Nevertheless, a NYT book review is a notable review and thus Kirn has a place here.) Hopefully the section should now be a bit closer to an accurate reflection of the reviews cited.
I think the section is quite incomplete though, and if anyone wants to help by including the more notable LDS reactions (both critical and approving), that would be great. I imagine we could get a broader spectrum of secular reviews too; this book received a fair amount of attention when it came out and there's got to be a lot more material out there available to us. alanyst / talk/ 04:56, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
I added quotes from Marvin Hill (actually one long quote substituting one word for a comma). It has been changed to something considerably more favorable. I must respectfully disagree with part of the recent change.
1) Changing the opening phrase is fine with me.
2) I must remove "remarkable by any standard". The title (and opening line) is muted sarcasm. The review is systematically negative. Even the praise at the end (which I quote), is extremely limited. See Midgley's 10th footnote at http://mi.byu.edu/publications/review/?vol=19&num=1&id=638, where Midgley (in his characteristic acerbic style) notes the review is negative, along with an earlier review by Hill of Beginnings).
3) So in summary I believe the quote more accurately represents the reviews. If anything it is more pro-Rough Stone than the rest of the review since it cites about the only line of praise in the whole thing.
4) And last, I do not wish to cite Midgley's interpretation of Hill's review in the article itself, since his rhetoric is overblown, it comes from a deeply apologetic source, its in a footnote, and it seems strange to cite a review of a review.
Carneadiiz ( talk) 21:33, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
Carneadiiz ( talk) 00:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Carneadiiz ( talk) 00:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 19:11, 27 April 2017 (UTC)
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 18:53, 30 November 2017 (UTC)