A couple of things are worth noticing right off the bat. First of all, the subtitle, "'Dazzling' or Otherwise", is obviously very mocking and condescending. Second, that rather cruel subtitle was completely omitted from the online Table of Contents. Is this a sign that DCP and the other editors wanted to try and "tone down" the Review---at least on a superficial level---while simultaneously "satisfying the masses" with their usual dose of smear tactics and ad hominem attacks?
Anyhoo, on to the meat of the article. In the introduction, Sis. Hicken employs a typical FARMS gambit, where she opens with an anecdote, and then pulls out the rug:
During the 1980s when I began to pursue freelance writing, I attended a few workshops to learn the craft. One of the pointers I remember from those lectures was to write a how-to piece because readers navigate toward essays that feature a way for them to develop new skills or improve their lives.
Why might she be setting up her "review" with this passage? Could it be that she is trying to establish an "us vs. them" scenario, in which she is the superior to Schofield's inferior?
I never wrote a how-to article. But a glance at Keith Bailey Schofield's title suggests that he did, or at least intended to.
Ah, of course. You see, the trouble here is that K. Schofield is apparently a Chapel Mormon, and so it makes sense that he will receive the "l-skinny" treatment. So, Sis Hicken's lacerating pen wastes no time dispatching the poor fellow:
Schofield's use of the words penetrating study brings two issues to mind. First, if the book is a penetrating study, which would encourage serious study, why use the word enjoyment, a term that connotes reading for entertainment?
Yes, of course. In the minds of FARMS writers (who have cut their teeth on Nibley), no "serious study" can ever be "enjoyable" to read.
Next, taking a page out of the book of capo regime Louis Midgley, Hicken rips on Schofield's (and Schofield's publisher's) supposed greed:
Schofield's publisher was possibly hoping to entice a broad group of potential buyers ranging from those who want to be entertained to those who want to be enlightened.
It is really hard to see Hicken's remark as anything other than a rather low accusation of pandering. I wonder why she didn't opt, instead, to give this Brother in Christ the benefit of the doubt; why, I wonder, did she not assume that his and his publisher's comments were heart-felt, and in earnest?
In any case, Hicken completes the FARMS trifecta with this next bit of lambasting:
Second, Schofield's statement astonishes me. I wonder how he defines "Mormon and his work." Numerous "penetrating" studies of Mormon's work, which might be considered the entire Book of Mormon, come to mind.1 Perhaps Schofield's focus is narrower, intending only to consider Mormon as the compiler or editor of the book. If he means that no specific study of the prophet Mormon has been written, then he may not be aware of articles by Jeffrey R. Holland, Spencer J. Condie, and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, for example.2 Although these are not book length, they represent insightful studies of the life of Mormon.
Yes; of course. Schofield is a "rank amateur." His work should be dismissed because "may not be aware of" these other studies. Just like professional hatchet man J. Tvedtnes---the most "hubris drunken" of all apologists---Hicken looks to position herself as "superior" to the apparently earnest and well-meaning Schofield. (Indeed, Hicken's smear piece later contains a reference to "The Master"---i.e., Tvedtnes's "Tribal Affiliation and Military Castes," in Warfare in the Book of Mormon, ed. Stephen D. Ricks and William J. Hamblin (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1990), 317.")
Later, in a bit of delicious irony, Hicken inadvertently condemns one of the primary analytical practices of the FARMS Review:
Schofield's portrait of Mormon is derived from Mormon's writings in the nine chapters of the short Book of Mormon (although two are written by Moroni), three chapters of the book of Moroni, and the many verses Mormon inserts as compiler, abridger, and redactor, which include the Words of Mormon. Schofield is confident this is enough, declaring, "I saw that even though Mormon had written little about himself, his writings were so extensive that deductions and inferences could be drawn bit by bit from his writings that would reveal various aspects of his life" (p. 4). Schofield categorizes his biography as "interpretation" (p. 57), "theory" (p. 66), "inquiry" (p. 71), "inference" (p. 73), "guesses" (p. 86 n. 4), and "pure speculation" (p. 84). These are accurate descriptions.
Does this remind anyone of, say, FARMS's treatment of the work of, say, Grant Palmer, or Mike Quinn?
A bit further on, Sis. Hicken seems to be describing the absurdly praiseworthy bottom-smooching that one can find the FARMS authors lavishing upon one another:
I was put off by the use of excessive adjectives elsewhere too: "breathtaking spiritual sensitivity" (p. ix), "brilliant creativity" (p. ix), and "incredibly perceptive Nephite prophets" (p. x).
Compare this with David Rolph Seely's review of Nibley's ""Teachings of the Book of Mormon: Semester 3 Transcripts":
t was an hour quite unlike any other I had spent in my two years at the university, and somehow my life was never quite the same.
We were alternately mesmerized by [Nibley's] genius, thrilled by his irreverence towards the "establishment," entertained by his irony, and sobered by his testimony, love, and commitment to the gospel.
Reading Nibley is a roller-coaster ride, and the reader must hold on tightly and maintain his or her wits. Nibley is a master of rhetoric and often uses hyperbole to make his point.
In the end, Hicken's hypocrisy is quite overwhelming. She winds up her article with this rather two-faced, back-handed "compliment":
In an address given at a Brigham Young University nineteen-stake devotional in 1994, Elder Joe J. Christensen, then of the Presidency of the Seventy, spoke of a resolution to expand our intellectual horizons and increase in wisdom.
Suppose you were to read an entire book each week for the next seventy years. You would read 3,640 books. That sounds like a lot, but in the Library of Congress are more than 27,000,000 books. Futurist Alvin Toffler said that books are spewing from the world's presses at the rate of one thousand titles per day. That means that in seventy more years there will be an additional 25,000,000 volumes. Even if we read continually, we could not read more than the smallest fraction of the books in print. Therefore, we should not waste time reading anything that is not uplifting and instructive.15
I think about this advice almost every time I pick up a book. I thought about it after finishing Schofield's book, and I asked myself if reading his book was time well spent. Although I do not consider Schofield's book a "penetrating study," nor entertaining, I found it a biography meant to inspire and motivate readers to deepen their study of the Book of Mormon.
Indeed, "books" are "spewing" from the likes of the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. And I can hardly wait.