Park on Quinn: How Not to Review a Book

[_Johannes]

I don't really know what it's like to be a liberal Mormon academic but that metaphor conveys a vivid impression: pride in having been sharp enough to recognize the genuine antique; satisfaction in possessing a valuable heirloom; otherwise unaccountable tolerance for a creaky old clock that was of a clunky design even when new; and great care in handling the fragile mechanism lest it all fall apart.

....and when they actually want to tell the time, they look at the electronic display screen on their iphone.

Being a liberal academic is probably the same in every church.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Ironically enough, the books that haven't been published with a university press are the most significant, at least for people interested in understanding Mormonism and not in working through their own preoccupations or career aspirations. But why does the reviewer—I mean, "overviewer"—bother to tell us this irrelevant information if not to prime readers who rely more on the signals of scholarly achievement than the substance of it? This is substantially the kind of ad hominem I'd expect from the old FARMS review BS—it's just capped with a civil concession that maybe there is some value to the niche-press publications of an unemployed historian without an academic position ("but still, nice job. Thank you").

Nothing captures the feel of that navel-gazing anxiety ridden crap show that calls itself Mormon Studies better than naming your blog's domain "ProfessorPark" and using "Musings of a Professor..." in your subtitle. Ben is really a walking incarnation of a sacrament meeting, boring to the point of agony with no actual content being expressed outside of platitudes.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Quite a devastating review, Prof. Symmachus. It's not clear to me what went wrong, exactly, with the Mormon Studies crowd. For a few years, they were simply the new upstarts--they were actively opposed to the Old Guard Mopologists, and at the time, they seemed like a breath of fresh air, though I don't know that that is really saying a whole lot. Anyone, including Rodney Meldrum and his crew, would have been a welcome replacement for the sheer dishonesty and viciousness of the classic-FARMS Mopologists. That said, this Mormon Studies crowd seems to have faded from view, and this latest, uh, "installment" doesn't exactly inspire much enthusiasm. I guess in the end the only thing I can really say is that banality and boredom pervades across the entire Mormon "intellectual" universe at the moment.

[_Stem]

Ironically enough, the books that haven't been published with a university press are the most significant, at least for people interested in understanding Mormonism and not in working through their own preoccupations or career aspirations. But why does the reviewer—I mean, "overviewer"—bother to tell us this irrelevant information if not to prime readers who rely more on the signals of scholarly achievement than the substance of it? This is substantially the kind of ad hominem I'd expect from the old FARMS review ____—it's just capped with a civil concession that maybe there is some value to the niche-press publications of an unemployed historian without an academic position ("but still, nice job. Thank you").

Nothing captures the feel of that navel-gazing anxiety ridden ____ show that calls itself Mormon Studies better than naming your blog's domain "ProfessorPark" and using "Musings of a Professor..." in your subtitle. Ben is really a walking incarnation of a sacrament meeting, boring to the point of agony with no actual content being expressed outside of platitudes.

Very much this^

[_Doctor Scratch]

Dean Robbers:

Would you please clarify? Are we now expected to maintain these so-called blogs? With all due respect, if this rumor is true, then I worry very much that we may be compromising our institutional values.

[Guest]

and when they actually want to tell the time

ha, exactly. You definitely can't demand that the antique clock tells time or you're making a "category mistake".

[_Gadianton]

Symmachus,

Okay, I went back and read the Park review for myself. What struck me was the stylistic similarity to a FARMS attack on a Chapel Mormon rather than a full-blown manifesto of war on a critic. FARMS would start out with some patronizing, then lots of put downs, and wrap up with an insincere compliment (A-B-A).

It's definitely not a review though, just as you said. At paragraph 5 (out of 10) it finally gets to the book whereas a FARMS review is gnawing on entrails by paragraph 5. I would call it something like, dismissing by contextualizing (anyone can do that, see above). Play intellectual historian and classify an idea, and now that it's placed, there's nothing more to do since we're already familiar with those kinds of ideas. ex., "Quinn’s work also reveals the marks of his own era." and "This approach is reflective of its historiographic origin" we know these are dead ends or aren't original and so what's the point to continue?

I thought this was interesting:

and it tells the story of how the LDS Church transformed from an institution struggling for cash to a global conglomerate with billions of dollars in revenue

and then:

rather than craft a persuasive narrative, argument, or interpretation.

I'd think that telling the story of how the Church went from rags to billions might count for at least a narrative.

I did look for Analytics' review but I can't find it.

[_Gadianton]

Dean Robbers:

Would you please clarify? Are we now expected to maintain these so-called blogs? With all due respect, if this rumor is true, then I worry very much that we may be compromising our institutional values.

Doctor Scratch, I know that you're on the low end of social media awareness due to your busy schedule as a teacher and thanks to your many commitments to peer-reviewed journals. I've never said that you and other faculty *can't* have blogs, but I really don't see the point when there is such a high demand in internationally renowned outlets for your work. Why, you've barely posted a thing on this board in the last few months due to the high demand for your time in the professional world. Why would you want to screw around with a blog? I get it, every second thirteen-year-old has something like a blog even it's their Facebook Wall -- I think that's what they call it.

If at some point my phone isn't ringing off the hook to book your time for another scholarly endeavor then by all means, start a blog and try to get your credibility in the black that way. But seriously, if it ever does get to the point where you're that desperate, let's talk. There are better options, in my opinion. I learned recently that Amazon has a direct-to-print option for self-publishing. I know you like the scholarly feel of a hardbound book and I'd have to check on their hardbound options, but I could get some of the guys with tech skills together and I'm sure we could script something out to cull this board for your posts, and then blast raw data to an API at Amazon and bam! out pops a book. That's basically what The Interpreter does, right? We could cook up some randomization algorithm that will name each section of posts and that will be the next book title. We could run it every six months, or ever two months if you have lots of time and it will amount to your own scholarly periodical.

[_Aristotle Smith]

What I call your attention to here, my fellow dissenters, is that the current horses in the stables of the Mormon intelligentsia are as excretive as ever. This review—I mean, overview—is of a piece with Classical Apologetics, complete with an ad hominem premise.

Thanks for your review of the non-review Symmachus.

I highlight the above because you put into words something that I experienced myself. On my way out of the proverbial LDS door I found myself just as annoyed with liberal Mormons as I was with the Mopologists. I never could put my finger on why that was the case. You nailed it, in many ways they play the same game with the same tools