MCLC: The Challenge of Linear Time review (1)

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The Challenge of Linear Time review (1)
Josh Fogel’s review of Murthy and Schneider’s edited book was a hatchet job.  I have not read the book so cannot speak to the quality of its contents; I can only speak to the contents of Fogel’s review. One thing I can agree with Fogel about is how consistently appalled I am by Brill books because of their shoddy production, editing, and their astronomical prices. I would counsel anyone to stay away from Brill altogether.
But, on more substantive points: One would think that if you accept a book for review — particularly for a congenial website such as MCLC, which usually retains a basic parameter of collegiality among peers — you should at the very least be willing to take it seriously. Fogel does not extend that basic courtesy to Murthy and Schneider’s book.  Fogel is known as an anti-Marxist. That is fine. No problems, except when others are not quite so intolerant as he. Then he has to take out the hatchet in the most sarcastic, most ungenerous, and most uncollegial way possible. Do serious colleagues deserve such treatment from a senior scholar in the field, whose personal and political biases are quite well-known and transparent? Why does he believe others’ scholarly choices and theoretical approaches are so worthy of ridicule?
I will address no other aspect of the review, since, as mentioned, I have not read the book. However, I am disturbed by the tone, the pretense, and the lack of courtesy extended by Fogel to colleagues in the field, and I am upset that MCLC — usually, otherwise, a very well-moderated site — would have published such a viciously unsavory attack.
Rebecca Karl
New York University
by denton.2 at osu.edu on May 19, 2015
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