The Great Mormon Novel. Where is it? By David Haglund

[_Euthyphro]

I saw this on Slate today.

[_The Dude]

The review of Grant Hardy's book is also worth a look if you'd like to see how non-mormons feel about apologists taking the Gadianton Turn.

Review of Grant Hardy's Understanding the Book of Mormon -- by Alan Wolf

[Grant Hardy] asks his readers to forgo historical questions in favor of literary ones: Let us bracket the issue of what Joseph Smith actually did, he proposes, and instead engage in a careful reading of the text with which, whether as author or as conveyor, Smith is associated. The "narratological structures" Hardy finds in that text, he is convinced, show that Mark Twain did not know what he was talking about. Hardy believes that showing how the Book of Mormon is constructed to serve its rhetorical goals should persuade non-Mormons to give the religion more respect. His aim is neither to make truth claims nor to win converts, but to elevate the reputation of his faith's guiding text.

I found myself willing—indeed eager—to go along with Hardy's suggestion. .... If someone can convince me that the reason for Mormonism's success lies in the narrative structure of its sacred text, I am willing to be convinced.

but in the end:

Hardy's heroic efforts to prove that there is literature somewhere buried in all those passages starting with "Behold" or "And so it came to pass" leave me, like Twain, gasping for air. Hardy does convince me that writing the Book of Mormon required an amazing amount of dedication. How else to explain its length and the fervent imagination clearly at work within it. He has not convinced me that what was written qualifies as great, or even good.

Or in other words, you can't polish a turd.

[_MCB]

Or in other words, you can't polish a turd.

I will have to read Hardy's book. It is certainly an attempt to polish a turd.

However, if you could refine the turd by restoring Spalding's text, it could become something worthwhile. Even Spalding's text was nowhere close to being a great American novel. Jocker's study is the best smelter available.