Brodie, Fawn. No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet. 2nd ed. New York: Knopf, 1971. 499 pages. ISBN: 0394469674.
Bushman, Richard L. Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. New York: Knopf, 2005. 740 pages. ISBN: 1400042704.
As part of a reading list to teach me about how biographies are written, I recently read two noted biographies about Joseph Smith. The two biographies were Fawn Brodie’s No Man Knows My History (1945) and Richard Bushman’s Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (2005). Joseph Smith was, of course, a nineteenth century visionary, author or translator of the Book of Mormon, and the founder of the Latter Day Saints. Any historian who handles Smith must deal with the supernatural occurrences and claims that pervaded his life. The question I put to myself as I was reading was this: How should a historian treat supernatural? How should a historian write about alleged visions and miracles and prophecies?
Like many historians of religion, Brodie and Bushman have personal connections to their subject. Fawn Brodie was born into the LDS church as the daughter of a bishop and the niece of an apostle and president. While in graduate school at the University of Chicago, she lost her faith. She then wrote her critical biography of Smith, for which the LDS Church excommunicated her. Richard Bushman, on the other hand, is a professional historian who has retained his Mormon faith. Many of Bushman’s works (one of which won the Bancroft prize) deal with early American history, but his biography of Smith has received perhaps the widest discussion.
Because of their different conclusions on Mormonism, Brodie and Bushman wrote very different biographies of Joseph Smith. These differences might be summed up in the way they treat Smith’s visions. Brodie plainly thinks that Smith was a charlatan and a hoax. She is almost mean-spirited in the way that she goes about debunking Smith and the Book of Mormon. I wished at times that she would simply report what Smith did or said, rather than taxing my patience by repeatedly explaining the obvious. The effect is to make Smith a flat character. In Brodie’s telling, he is always the adolescent trickster with scarcely any room to develop into a man who believed his own message.
Bushman, on the other hand, finds believable most, if not all, of what Smith claimed. Consequently, he writes as if Moroni had actually appeared to Smith, as if he had actually translated the golden plates, and if he had actually received revelations. This is not so problematic; as Bushman points out in his preface, a historian can scarcely be expected to add the words alleged or purportedly before every such statement. More problematic is the way Bushman structures his materials. For example, Bushman reports very little about Smith’s treasure seeking until after he discovers the golden plates. The effect, at least to this reader, was that Bushman presented a Joseph Smith whose mind or inner life was much more believable than Brodie’s, at the expense of leaving what actually happened much less certain.
As for style, both Brodie and Bushman have written good biographies, though neither is the summit of the biographer’s art. Brodie’s is much the better story. Where Bushman’s narrative is often interrupted by tedious justifications of Smith, Brodie’s book is well-crafted with an unswerving narrative. Bushman’s biography, though, is far better at explaining Joseph Smith’s teachings. One can read Brodie’s nearly five hundred pages and learn surprisingly little about what Smith thought or taught. The differences in style between Brodie and Bushman is not simply a result of the commonly invoked dichotomy between narration and explanation. Rather, the difference is due at least in part to the way they treat the supernatural. Brodie is able to dismiss Smith’s experiences as hoaxes and his teaching as nonsense, and so she can get on with her story. Bushman is obligated both to treat them as genuine and to provide scholarly explanations, so he sometimes gets bogged down in justifications.
My sympathies lie with both authors. Like Brodie, I have not a shred of faith in what Joseph Smith taught, and so I find her narrative of Smith’s life more compelling than Bushman’s. But like Bushman, I am a believing historian who writes about the history of religion and faith. As such, I would like to think it is possible to write about religious history, even supernatural occurrences, in a way that is different from unbelievers but that is still rigorously scholarly. Despite their admirable work, I think that neither Brodie nor Bushman has quite succeeded in the way they treat the supernatural.
What, then, is the proper way for a historian to handle visions and dreams and prophecies? The extreme of skepticism assumes there is nothing supernatural. The extreme of credulity treats such occurrences uncritically. My method, which is admittedly ad hoc, strikes what I hope is a balance between those extremes. I frankly distinguish between what I believe is supernatural and what I believe is not, leaving room for what is doubtful. After all, not every spiritual claim is true, and life is too short to give every opinion an equal hearing. But at the same time, I try to treat all religious beliefs as genuinely held, in order to give them their due influence in the lives of those who hold them.
Is there a better way?
A bit of a caveat: as the Wikipedia article on No Man Knows My History says, “Brodie presents the young Joseph Smith as a good-natured, lazy, extroverted, and unsuccessful treasure seeker, who, in an attempt to improve his family’s fortunes, first developed the notion of golden plates and then the concept of a religious novel, the Book of Mormon….. Brodie asserts that at first Joseph Smith was a deliberate impostor, who at some point, in nearly untraceable steps, became convinced that he was indeed a prophet—though without ever escaping ‘the memory of the conscious artifice’ that created the Book of Mormon.” If this be the case, to what degree can you consider Joseph Smith’s religious beliefs “genuinely held”?
I took a second look at Brodie’s book today, which convinced me that I erred in flattening out her treatment of Smith for the sake of comparison to Bushman. I’ll take the statement you quoted as a fairer representation of Brodie’s work.
That said, let me try to answer your question. A reliable judgment whether someone’s religious beliefs were “genuinely held” can probably only come from close engagement with the sources, which I haven’t done for Smith. If I had to choose between Brodie’s judgment and Bushman’s, I’d pick Brodie’s. But I suspect that Brodie overstates her point that Smith was deliberately deceptive in Smith’s later year, maybe by underestimating Smith’s capacity for self-deception. Brodie also seems to leave out most of Smith’s theology (at least, the parts that are too preposterous to refute). What I would have preferred was more treatment of Smith’s theology and fewer reminders that he was an impostor. Perhaps I’m asking more than is reasonable in one book.
The parallel question that is exercising me know is what to make of Lorenzo Dow’s beliefs. I think Dow belief in his early visions and dreams were unquestionably genuine. It helps that he probably started writing his journal soon after the first set of visions. I also think that the epithet “Crazy Dow” could not be literally true in his youth. But I don’t know how to judge his later life. It seems that his preaching and visions were not so sincere later, but whether that was due to his showmanship or a pursuit of wealth (he sold patent medicine and speculated in land, among other things), I don’t know. His only biographer, Charles Coleman Sellers, almost implies that he was insane in his youth and a charlatan in middle age, but his biography is among the poorest I’ve read.
Lincoln, I appreciated reading your thoughtful analysis and comparisons of the two biographies. I am a believing Latter-day Saint, and I am quite familiar with both books. I find Bushman’s book a much more responsible academic treatment, yet I find Brodie’s book much more “fun” to read. What I found interesting about Brodie’s book is how she has to continually make “course corrections” in the course of her story in order to account for Joseph Smith’s own apparent belief in the things that he was teaching.
It’s remarkable how well Brodie wrote while still in her twenties. But once having abandoned Mormonism she was bored by religion–which is a definite disadvantage if you’re writing the biography of the founder of a religion. Also Bushman had the advantage of sixty years of additional research on Joseph Smith. (What might Brodie have done if she had just had the five volumes of Vogel’s Early Mormon Documents!) Rough Stone Rolling, though much more complete, is filled with its own strategic twists and turns because Bushman (unsuccessfully) hoped the biography would be acceptable both within the academy and to the LDS leadership.
Dr. Matzko, just out of curiosity, how would one judge whether or not the biography was acceptable to either of the two groups? I can’t speak for academia, and I suspect that you can produce some data to support that position. On the LDS side however, I have heard (anecdotally), that certain members of LDS leadership liked the book. It is definitely sold (and presented on the shelves in fairly large quantities) at the BYU bookstore and Deseret Book. (As a point of interest, Brodie’s book is sold at BYU as well – that is where I first encountered it back in 1978. Vogel’s “Joseph Smith, the Making of a Prophet” is there as well, although in much smaller quantities) It seems to me that if LDS leadership found the book unacceptable that they would not allow it to be sold in such quantity in those two venues. I haven’t yet really seen any evidence that the book was unacceptable to LDS leadership.
John,
Why has Bushman’s review been “unsuccessful?” How would you even judge that?
I recommend a look at Bushman’s essay “The Balancing Act” , which Bushman incorporated in his memoir, On the Road with Joseph Smith: An Author’s Diary (2007). In the essay he says,
“Even though I wrote for a diverse audience, as the reviews came in I realized that I had not kept everyone with me. As probably was inevitable, readers who came to the book with their own strong notions of Smith found my account wanting. Those on the Mormon side thought I failed to describe his noble character and supernatural gifts; non-Mormons said I painted too rosy a picture and failed to acknowledge the obvious fraud. At both ends of the spectrum, I lost readers.”
In the book, Bushman notes how NYRB reviewer Larry McMurtry compared Bushman’s biography to “Fawn Brodie’s much to her advantage. She is far the better writer, McMurtry says. My book lacks ‘kick’…. Moreover, he goes on, Brodie recognizes that Mormonism is based on a fraud while Bushman ‘plays pitty-pat’ with the question of authenticity.”
Bushman also recalls telling an editor at Knopf that there had been “intense interest among Mormons, some of whom were surprised but more were pleased with the book. General Authorities for the most part have praised it. I said doubtless some objected but a negative opinion had not hardened among Church leaders.” (117-18)
I would not presume to second guess the book policy at BYU, but if the bookstore stocks the far more negative Vogel, it’s a sure bet it will stock Bushman–which is about the best the Church could hope for in the way of academic credibility. In fact, I recommend reading Bushman to any Mormons that I come across, especially 19-year-old missionaries.
Bushman’s essay “The Balancing Act” is also available at Common-place. I linked to it from the body of this post, but my link was broken.
I read On the Road with Joseph Smith. It was an odd book. From the title, I thought it would be about Bushman’s experiences writing the biography, but it was about his experiences after publication. I would far rather have read about Bushman’s time spent in the archives than his time spent checking his Amazon sales rank. Even then, On the Road covered the newspaper and consumer reviews, but ended before the academic reviews were published, which was what I wanted to read about most. The book would have benefitted from an editor’s hand, to give it shape. Still, it’s about the only book I know of about the academic book lecture circuit.
I understand that Bushman himself felt that he “lost readers,” and therefore considered the book to have been less successful than he otherwise thought it might have been. Any author will be excessively critical of his own work. I think that he set an impossible goal – the nature of the subject that he is treating simply will not allow such a broadly appealing biography to exist. The subject of Joseph Smith’s life is polarizing. It becomes particularly problematic when one has to deal with Joseph’s own statements – this is why Brodie had to provide bridging information of her own in order to account for Joseph’s apparent belief in what he was teaching.
I personally think that Bushman got it just about right. His comment: “Those on the Mormon side thought I failed to describe his noble character and supernatural gifts; non-Mormons said I painted too rosy a picture and failed to acknowledge the obvious fraud” seems to indicate to me that he positioned the book just where it needed to be. If he succeeded in completely pleasing one of those two groups, he would completely alienate the other.
With regard to its success (or lack of) within the Church , all I can say is that it is clearly available and easy to obtain. I know a number of other Latter-day Saints who have read the book and liked it. It certainly hasn’t been swept under a rug in church-related circles. In addition, I can find the book on the shelf right next to Brodie’s at places like Borders or Barnes and Noble. I can also easily find it public libraries (again, right next to Brodie’s book). In that sense, I can hardly believe that the book was not successful on some level. I don’t think that commercial success was really what Bushman had in mind – I think that he wanted to achieve some sort of literary breakthrough with regard to documenting the life of Joseph Smith. Regardless of the criteria by which Bushman judges its success, from a LDS perspective I consider his book to have been very successful.
I also recommend reading Bushman to any Latter-day Saint (and I have a spare copy to loan out), although I think it would be safe to say that you and I do this for different reasons. That alone tells me that Bushman positioned his book right where it ought to be.
I think we’re in basic agreement that Bushman’s biography is comprehensive and well enough written and should be read by Mormons. But I doubt the MTC will put it on the required reading list or encourage missionaries to mention it to prospects. (In fact, not one missionary whom I’ve talked with since 2005 has claimed to have heard of the book–not that I expect that much from 19-year-olds.)
If I were to write a biography of Joseph Smith, it would be hopeless for me to pretend that I believed Smith to be a prophet of God. I would try to present Smith’s life dispassionately as possible: for instance, noting that he had a generous, charismatic personality and enjoyed his friends. But my treatment would undoubtedly alienate those who believed Joseph a prophet. And that’s as it should be. Truth is more important than book sales or reputation in the academy.
“But I doubt the MTC will put it on the required reading list or encourage missionaries to mention it to prospects.”
I don’t think the purpose, population, mission, or time restraints of the MTC lend themselves to ever including a book of this sort on a required reading list. Missionaries are in there for two months at most – to facilitate an intensive language program. They are also given a crash-course in basic social skills and politeness (something desperately needed by boys that age), and trained to structure their day productively (also desperately needed). The rest of their reading time is spent with our core scriptures, and maybe one or two additional basic-level books on the overall mission and program of the Church.
There is no place for polygamy or the Kirtland Safety Society in such a birds-eye view of present day Mormonism and what it’s about.
Frankly, Protestants do not understand at all what the function of a missionary is within the LDS Church. They think that they are supposed to be comprehensive encyclopedias of information about Mormonism. They think they are a place to debate theology. A place to learn all the details.
This is flatly incorrect on both counts.
The missionary’s function is to herald the overall message of the Restored Gospel to the world. They’re like the herald riding at the head of the king’s procession, blowing the horn and announcing his arrival. If the townsfolk want to know more about the king than a basic introduction, they are going to have to get it from someone other than the herald. There is nothing unusual about this. No one expects a comprehensive anguished analysis from the introductory speaker at the Republican National Convention. No one expects detailed analysis from a commercial either.
Missionaries have one purpose and one purpose only – to declare an introduction to the advent of a new era under Jesus Christ. That’s it. They’re not there to debate with you. They’re not there to give you a college introductory course in Mormon history. You are asked to do that on your own time. And many who join the LDS Church do engage in more detailed investigation before joining.
Given the urgency of declaring Christ and his central message, and the time and manpower restraints involved, the demand for polygamy to be on the menu is utterly silly. The very idea that we would take away air time about Christ and the central points of modern life in his restored Church in order to discuss something we don’t even practice anymore is silly.
And the idea that a book as massive as Bushman’s would even be read by a bunch of incredibly time-constrained nineteen year-olds, left to their own devices is silly. My experience is that Protestants often VASTLY overestimate the amount of control that the LDS Church has over its missionaries. Well I was one, and I can tell you, I was largely responsible for my own time. I also knew the other missionaries I was with. And I can tell you that Bushman’s book would likely be read by only a small percentage of those missionaries, regardless of whether it was in the MTC bookstore or not.
You’re simply not being realistic here.
Seth, I think you missed the point of this statement entirely: “(In fact, not one missionary whom I’ve talked with since 2005 has claimed to have heard of the book–not that I expect that much from 19-year-olds.)”
That said, is it really too much to ask for a believer to have a basic understanding of the history of his faith? I don’t think that’s too much to ask of Protestants, going back to the sixteenth century, or even of Christians generally, going back two millennia. Surely it’s not too much to ask an LDS believer to go back to 1830.
An editorial reminder: Let’s not let the discussion get heated. I’ve already removed one comment from this post, and our editorial policy on comments is strict.
I wouldn’t necessarily assume that any LDS believer that read your treatment would be alienated. Those that might be are probably those who aren’t likely to be reading a non-LDS history of Joseph Smith in the first place. I’ve read your Dialogue article “The Encounter of the Young Joseph Smith with Presbyterianism,” and I quite enjoyed it. I learned a few things that I didn’t know, and I thought that you treated the subject quite well from your particular perspective.
I can’t think of anything quite like On the Road. Bushman is sometimes remarkably frank–admitting to repeatedly checking his Amazon sales ranking is just one example.
Here’s a nice quotation about the relationship of RSR to Brodie: “Brodie has shaped the view of the Prophet for half a century. Nothing we have written has challenged her domination. I had hoped my book would displace hers, but at best it will only be a contender in the ring, whereas before she reigned unchallenged…. I had hoped for better from…the academy in general. But these are the facts of life. While we get smiles and toleration in many of our relationships, below the surface is deep disagreement, even a touch of hostility.” (102)
It’s not too much to ask Lincoln. But I think it is unrealistic to expect it. I see little evidence that Mormons are any worse informed about their history than any other religious denomination.
Of course, the comparison can be a bit unfair, because membership in Protestantism can be a bit more of a moving target than in Mormonism. So it’s hard to pin down a population to make comparisons with (if such comparisons are even worth doing).
One point of order – our history does go back two millenia as well. On top of that, we have to be versed in American frontier history in the 1800s. So I’d say even more is expected of the average Mormon in some ways.
But I would like to note Lincoln, that I enjoyed the analysis. Remarkably objective, and a breath of fresh air compared to what I’m accustomed to encountering online whenever Mormonism is a topic.
I appreciate your comments about the Dialogue article, Roger. I sometimes wonder if anyone reads journal articles any more. I’m on the receiving end of five journals, and after looking at the article titles, I often go straight to the book reviews without reading any of them.
You might be interested to know that I first submitted that article to BYU Studies and received a painfully polite letter noting that it had been rejected by a unanimous decision of the board, a “half dozen academic scholars who have written extensively on Latter-day Saint history.”
The reason history is more important to Mormons than to evangelicals is that it’s sacred story is so recent and comparatively well documented. As an obscure Wikipedia article, “Mormonism and History,” has it: “The Mormon religion is predicated on what are said to be historical events such as the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the historicity of the Book of Mormon, which describes a detailed pre-Columbian history of North America. President Joseph Fielding Smith, the tenth LDS prophet, declared that ‘Mormonism, as it is called, must stand or fall on the story of Joseph Smith. He was either a prophet of God, divinely called, properly appointed and commissioned, or he was one of the biggest frauds this world has ever seen. There is no middle ground.’ As Jan Shipps has written, ‘Mormonism, unlike other modern religions, is a faith cast in the form of history,’ and until after World War II, Mormons did not critically examine the historical underpinnings of their faith; any ‘profane’ investigation of the Church’s history was perceived ‘as trespassing on forbidden ground.’
“Although traditional Christianity is likewise a history religion, few primary sources survive from two or three millennia ago, and biblical places such as Jerusalem, Jericho, and Bethlehem, are acknowledged to exist by scholars of every religious persuasion. Likewise, the Assyrian and Babylonian empires mentioned in the Bible are treated in all histories of the ancient Near East. By contrast, locations of Book of Mormon places are disputed even by Mormons, and the existence of those places is not acknowledged by any non-Mormon scholars. Martin Marty, a Lutheran scholar of American religion, has observed that LDS beginnings are so recent ‘that there is no place to hide….There is little protection for Mormon sacredness.’”
I don’t know about that. To an extent, I agree. I’ve sometimes pointed out to Protestants in debates that unlike them, we haven’t had the luxury of 2,000 years to clean up the images of our historical figures in a haze of increasing factual obscurity.
But don’t underestimate the extent of what human beings do not know about even recent historical events. I just finished Cornelius Ryan’s classic World War II book “A Bridge Too Far.” Amazing amount of research that he did on that book. The footnotes are staggering. Military inventories, records, interviews, newspaper accounts, diaries, and massive amounts of pouring through US, British and German military records. And Ryan flat-out admits to the vast amount of detail that we do not know about the disastrous Allied invasion of Holland. For all his research, some of the biggest controversies, and some of the most crucial explanations remain lost to us. Many of them in fact.
The more one learns, the more one realizes how much is NOT known.
This is the case with Joseph Smith. People uncover tidbits, and then brashly assume that they have an accurate picture of the man. The reality is that we don’t really know. The truest part of Fawn Brodie’s book was the title: “No Man Knows My History.” That really is true. People don’t know him.
It doesn’t help matters that Mormonism’s founding history took place in one of the ugliest periods of US history. A time that most of America is trying hard to forget – that black hole in high school history books between the signing of the Bill of Rights and the Civil War. People in the United States are largely completely ignorant of this period of history. They fail to realize what a harsh, alien, and brutal time for our nation it was. They lack any sense of historical context with which to view the events of this time period.
And it is in this fog of ignorance that they study out the facts of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. In total isolation, they scrutinize the bare data surrounding the Mormon story, and then rise up in presentist indignation to pass judgment on the Mormon past by the values and assumptions of the 21st century. People just don’t get how ugly America was during this period. Therefore they have absolutely no workable basis for judging how relatively praiseworthy or ugly the Mormon history is.
I could go into examples, but I see no need. Suffice it to say that I think the single biggest step in vindicating Joseph Smith and the Mormons, is merely to educate oneself in 19th century American history. Once you understand the national context, Joseph does alright for himself.
But understanding that context is something that will remain beyond the reach of most.
Two responses, Seth. (1) Though it’s true that historians have to rely on the sources that survive, you take this idea too far, almost to the point of denying that we can know anything true about the past. That is simply not true. Even in cases where the sources are thin, historians often do an amazing job reconstructing the past. In the case of Joseph Smith, there are plenty of sources. (2) I’m not sure where you got the notion that we’re ignorant of the history of the early republic. Are high school students ignorant? Probably, but they don’t write biographies. I happen to be a graduate student studying the early republic and religion in particular, and I assure you that there is plenty to read.
Well, my point was not that we can’t know anything.
My point was that a little humility about how much of a bead we’ve got on historical characters is in order. I think my example of Cornelius Ryan illustrates that point. And this is doubly true of polarizing characters – where inevitably, the sources we do have will be highly agenda-driven. There is plenty of room to say we don’t know in such instances.
Seth, that sort of historical agnosticism would effectively render the study of history irrelevant. No matter how many facts a historian gathered, you could continually argue that there was still “plenty of room to say we don’t know.” Both Brodie and Bushman agree that Joseph Smith married more than two dozen women while publicly and repeatedly claiming that he was not practicing polygamy. Are the biographers correct or is there “plenty of room to say we don’t know”?
John, just a guess, but sounds like you are trying to imply meanings beyond the two bare data points you selected.
For example, is the audience supposed to take those two data points and say “wow, what a sneaky, philandering, law-breaking scumbag”?
Or are they supposed to reach some other conclusion. The way you selected the data points seems to imply that you’d like a negative conclusion about Joseph Smith. And for an American audience lacking any historical context within which to place these data points, that may indeed be the rather ignorant conclusion reached. But a further historical background will reveal different conclusions.
So it’s not so much particular data points and whether they are valid or not that my comment was aimed at. It is how opportunistic people take those isolated data points, and use the general ignorance of the audience to imply conclusions that are controversial at best.
I’m implying nothing except that there are historical facts that we can know beyond reasonable doubt. Are the biographers correct, or is there “plenty of room to say we don’t know”?
I think the context of my earlier comment was clear enough and I don’t think your remarks really address it.
I simply asked if Brodie and Bushman are correct, or is there “plenty of room to say we don’t know”? Can I state beyond reasonable doubt that Joseph Smith married more than two dozen women while he publicly and repeatedly claimed that he was not practicing polygamy?
As I said, that question is irrelevant to the point I was making.
I said nothing about whether specific data points were verifiable or not. My original argument applied only to CONCLUSIONS drawn from decontextualized data points. Sure it’s reasonable for people to conclude that Joseph had at least a certain number of wives. And yes there are documented statements of denial. I wasn’t talking about that to begin with. I was talking about where people then take those isolated data points.
I don’t have a clue what the words “data points” mean when discussing history. Do you mean “facts”?
You said above that “further historical background will reveal different conclusions.” If it’s true that Joseph Smith married more than two dozen women while he publicly and repeatedly claimed that he was not practicing polygamy, what different conclusions about that statement might be reached by investigating the historical background?