tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post7913696842450347255..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: Who Will Review the Reviewers?Paul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-1168842881628070672008-05-01T15:52:00.000-06:002008-05-01T15:52:00.000-06:00ah, but the real sarahblum's blog has been duly no...ah, but the <I>real</I> sarahblum's blog has been duly noted, will appear on <I>Cliopatria</I>'s History Blogroll, and win her a Pulitzer Prize in blogging.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-31764951258610365472008-05-01T10:57:00.000-06:002008-05-01T10:57:00.000-06:00He might not be that Ed Blum, but you are definite...He might not be <EM>that</EM> Ed Blum, but you are definitely that sarahblum<BR/><BR/>And I am glad to see that you keep up with your blog about like I do. Must be the weather!<BR/><BR/>Oh, to stay remotely on topic, I agree re: book reviews. I try to keep such things in mind as I write them and pray people do the same with my work in the years to come.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-27040755990131318002008-04-30T19:11:00.000-06:002008-04-30T19:11:00.000-06:00Ed - I celebrate your entire catalogue. Your nomin...Ed - I celebrate your entire catalogue. Your nomination for the BAFTA was rightly deserved. I saw <I>Scenes of a Sexual Nature</I> four times in the theater. I think it was Ewan McGregor's best role and I really feel like your work as the director helped bring out McGregor's inner actor. <BR/><BR/>Wait -- you're not THAT Ed Blum? You wrote a book? On Du Bois? Was it about Du Bois and Scenes of a Sexual Nature? No? Oh, my mistake. Perhaps I should have checked before I wrote.Sarahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17262684885044041191noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-6959338449229712252008-04-30T16:20:00.000-06:002008-04-30T16:20:00.000-06:00Ed (& Paul): My apologies for the salutation to P...Ed (& Paul): My apologies for the salutation to Paul rather than you. I read the "posted by" line and forgot to look up.<BR/><BR/>Matt: I agree with everything you said in the 12:58 comment.<BR/><BR/>To all, I acknowledge my misspelling of "predictable" in the comment.<BR/><BR/>- TLTim Lacyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02896230254720822005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-44025415758400756022008-04-30T14:26:00.000-06:002008-04-30T14:26:00.000-06:00The point is not whether a mistake is innocent or ...The point is not whether a mistake is innocent or mean spirited. Sometimes reviews are mean spirited, and certainly that is not the case here. And in fact, I am not challenging the thrust of the review of _There Will Be Blood_ at all. I'm curious about what it means to have an actual person represented in a novel and then represented in a film and then analyzed by a scholar and how in this case there was some very interesting gender reconfiguring that went on. It may tell us something about religion and gender in the United States, but also issues of geography. Anyone who reads Oil knows that it is about a specific place, a place that was associated with a female religious power, not a male one. I think there is food for thought there and there is no reason to get hung up with the intentions of the reviewer. I do not know nor do I care why the author made a "mistake" or not.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-30583834493886101282008-04-30T12:58:00.000-06:002008-04-30T12:58:00.000-06:00Tim, I agree that reviews should be "about one's h...Tim, I agree that reviews should be "about one's honest reactions---meaning emotional, professional, and scholarly---to any book in front of the reviewer." However, all too often reviewers: 1)use book reviews as opportunities to promote their own agendas; 2) fail to read a book carefully; and/or 3) do the cheap and easy thing of talking about what the author should have done rather than evaluate what the author did in fact try to do. Like Ed, I have become much more sensitive when I write reviews to what the author's explicit purpose was rather than what I wished he or she had done with the topic.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-22002818374358684902008-04-30T12:46:00.000-06:002008-04-30T12:46:00.000-06:00Completely agree with you about the AHR/JAH review...Completely agree with you about the AHR/JAH reviews, Tim. In particular, too many of those books skimp on the summary, so I don't even get a sense of the book. Drives me crazy!John G. Turnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08461094355047650502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-59550347914194849912008-04-30T12:03:00.000-06:002008-04-30T12:03:00.000-06:00THIS---meaning a weblog---is the absolute best pla...THIS---meaning a weblog---is the absolute best place to review a review. And this particular forum seems like a nice prominent place to correct and encourage reviews.<BR/><BR/>And Paul, I'm sorry, but reviews are about one's honest reactions---meaning emotional, professional, and scholarly---to any book in front of the reviewer. You were probably just been making an overstatement to drive home a point, but the appreciation-then-critique ordering is by no means necessary. It's a fine personal philosophy, which arose from your own temperament and experience, but there's no ~one way~ to write a review. <BR/><BR/>In fact, I'm going to take a chance and cite an example of preditable reviewing paradigms: those that appear in AHR and OAH. Here are their formats: (a) positive, negative, positive; or (b) book summary, negative, then positive. It's quite diplomatic and apparently professional, but they don't tell the reader much about what they might want to buy. Plus, most of those reviews are too short. - TLTim Lacyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02896230254720822005noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-15742067952733396082008-04-30T09:37:00.001-06:002008-04-30T09:37:00.001-06:00Just kidding about the debate.Just kidding about the debate.John G. Turnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08461094355047650502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-23465898837145344472008-04-30T09:37:00.000-06:002008-04-30T09:37:00.000-06:00Debate!! You are of course correct, Ed, that revie...Debate!! <BR/><BR/>You are of course correct, Ed, that reviewers aren't held to anywhere near the same level of accountability as authors. And I can only imagine the pain and potential career/financial cost of an unfair and mean-spirited review in a prominent publication. <BR/><BR/>Most books are reviewed in a number of places; hopefully, the balance of reviews will be fair. [That wouldn't be the case for a book outside the academic mainstream -- I think that would present a very different case and a more troublesome one]. <BR/><BR/>The Sunday / McPherson mistake seems to be quite innocent. All the more reason for people to read Matt Sutton's fine book. <BR/><BR/>In short, you're quite right about the structural issue, but what could be done about it? The best case scenario would be for other scholars to complain on behalf on a book's unfair treatment, then hope the publication wouldn't employ said reviewer in the future.John G. Turnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08461094355047650502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-86270982241784631562008-04-30T08:29:00.000-06:002008-04-30T08:29:00.000-06:00Many of the H-net listserves used to allow authors...Many of the H-net listserves used to allow authors to respond to reviews of their works; it has been a while since I've seen this, though. I always enjoyed that - and Paul Harvey and I had a nice little tussle over _Freedom's Coming_ on H-South. I jabbed at Harvey, he bobbed and weaved, and then pummeled me. Two words for Harvey: butterfly and bee.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-35965074250688020742008-04-30T07:48:00.000-06:002008-04-30T07:48:00.000-06:00There is, of course, a process of evaluation of re...There is, of course, a process of evaluation of reviewers at the beginning - at the level of who is asked or selected to review. Editors of journals, magazines, newspapers seek out individuals with expertise on a topic. And then, editors reserve the right to edit reviews or not print them. But by and large, there is very little accountability in the review process, and the truth is that deans, provosts, and presidents see these reviews and make promotion decisions around them (not always, but sometimes).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-27184024596694642262008-04-30T07:32:00.000-06:002008-04-30T07:32:00.000-06:00John, the difference between reviewers and authors...John, the difference between reviewers and authors, however, is that one is held accountable (authors) and the other is not (reviewers). As you well know, monographs go through a series of reviews: first as a manuscript; then by a press board; then publicly by reviewers. So the problem here has nothing to do with fallibility - lord knows I make mistakes all the time all over the place. The problem is in the structure.<BR/>Now, as the question of McPherson versus Sunday; one does wonder why the filmmakers selected that name. But then again, one wonders why the reviewer explicitly stated that Sunday was the model for the character in the novel (and not just the film).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-354374107791857032008-04-30T05:42:00.000-06:002008-04-30T05:42:00.000-06:00Couldn't the filmmakers (and therefore the reviewe...Couldn't the filmmakers (and therefore the reviewer) have had Billy Sunday in mind and simply christened him Eli? Given the character in the movie, it would be easy for the reviewer to presume the character was also originally modeled after BS. <BR/><BR/>Has anyone seen the caricature of Billy Sunday in the BBC version of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster? Fantastic!<BR/><BR/>On reviewers: perhaps they are as fallible as authors.John G. Turnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08461094355047650502noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-21460790023868589902008-04-29T19:15:00.000-06:002008-04-29T19:15:00.000-06:00Thanks Ed for raising this issue (and promoting my...Thanks Ed for raising this issue (and promoting my book!). Indeed, Sinclair wrote Oil! to critique very real people and very real events in 1920s Los Angeles. No one reading Oil! in the late 1920s would have seen Eli Watkins as anyone other than Aimee McPherson. Nevertheless, the film There will be Blood does something very different with the minister character, burying the likeness to McPherson that ran through the original novel. <BR/><BR/>It is hard to believe that after anyone actually read Blum’s book they would come away with any doubts that DuBois was an American prophet (as Ed defines “American prophet”). Unfortunately it seems that on occasion reviewers don’t let the evidence get in the way of a good preconception.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com