Talk:Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

Untitled

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)

Feel free to try a revision, but I believe adequate documentation to back the statement appears in the notes.--John Foxe 09:58, 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)

I feel the same way. Seems unnecessary, regardless of the documentation. zarahemlite 208.69.44.26 (talk) 20:54, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

As I wrote more than a year and a half ago, you're welcome to try a revision. That's what Wikipedia's all about. But to do so, you must use reliable sources; and you can't argue that an article is "unnecessary" or "unnecessarily subjective" if it's solidly based on reliable sources. What's not WP:RS is simply opinion.--John Foxe (talk) 10:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Book Cover

Could an image of the book cover be added? Does that require permission from the publisher? Unjedai 15:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Work on "Critical Reception"

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)

Thanks. You've improved this piece, especially by moving the notes to the body. I apologize for removing the "some may feel" from the Lampman quotation, but that was only Lampman being polite anyway. My major change has been to readd the comparison with Fawn Brodie. Certainly Bushman is the most complete biography, but Brodie is still more fun to read; and that literary difference should be mentioned.

My big surprise was NYRB assigning McMurtry to review the book. His expertise is western history. It's like the editors forgot that Joseph Smith died in Illinois. McMurtry is clearly out of his depth in that review; in fact, it's one in which you wonder whether he really read the book.--John Foxe (talk) 12:02, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Marvin S. Hill

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)

My problems are that the characterization of the review comes from Midgley and the quotation also comes via Midgley's footnote 10 rather than from Hill. I'd like to see the review itself, but Dialogue is not held by many libraries in my part of the world so it may take a bit for me to get a copy. It may also be necessary to provide a phrase of identification about Hill beyond the fact that he's a retired BYU professor. And the quotation needs a page number citation.--John Foxe (talk) 00:04, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay I understand your objection better now. I actually pulled the quote from the Dialogue piece, I read the entire review. The quote also appears in Midgley along with his nasty commentary, but it actually is, in my opinion, the best summary quotation. I'm no lawyer but I believe I can send you a copy of the article under fair use. Email me.

Carneadiiz (talk) 00:31, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and as for identification for Hill, I too would like more information, I just don't have any. All I know is that he's a retired professor at BYU who writes on American History, so he's an appropriate source here, especially since he's not taking the party line. I get the distinct impression reading his review that he's no orthodox believer, but who knows.

Carneadiiz (talk) 00:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.--John Foxe (talk) 16:07, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

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