The Cultural Hall

[Note: I know people usually review books that are new and edgy, but I'm a little behind the times.  Hopefully this will be useful or engaging for some of you weary middle-road travelers, even if it is a year late.]

I’ve always been a bit of a voyeur. Not the perverted sort you might chase from the bushes under your window, mind you, but I’m not ashamed to admit that I love to eavesdrop on conversations people have in public places. I suspect the reality TV boon feeds on society’s collective curiosity by giving us an acceptable outlet for voyeurism, and though I don’t watch much TV these days I certainly understand the appeal.

I’m a harmless enough voyeur, and also a hopeless daydreamer. My wife has a certain look, a sort of amused, patronizing smirk, which she gives me every time I begin a sentence with, “Wouldn’t it be cool if….” I see that look a lot, because I frequently fantasize about the ideal situation. It’s been a hobby since I was a child.

I’m not only talking about big dreams, like wouldn’t it be cool if every dollar we spent was replaced by a dollar and a quarter in our bank account? I also fantasize about obscure things, like wouldn’t it be cool if our shoes tracked our steps and reported statistics and GPS coordinates on a Google maps mashup? Just think—you could look back in life and know that you walked 3.2 miles the day you got your first job, or that you almost crossed paths with your future wife four times before you finally met, or that if you had walked one block further yesterday you would have seen Regis Philbin leaving Coldstone. Regis Philbin!!

For an idealistic voyeur like me, it makes sense to wish for front row seats to crucial and controversial conversations in history. With the right view I’d know for sure if Floyd Landis cheated to win the Tour de France, or whether George Bush is as dishonest as he has lately seemed, or if Paula Abdul is really sober as she publicly claims.

These would be interesting things to know, but if I were able to be a fly on any wall, past or present, I would certainly choose the house of Joseph and Emma Smith. Were their arguments as spectacular as Joseph’s diarists described? Did Emma really push one of her competing wives down a flight of stairs? How many of his 30+ wives did she actually know about? Did Joseph honestly believe he spoke with God?

I’ve just finished reading Rough Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman, a patriarch in New York and obviously faithful Mormon. This 560-page biography of Joseph Smith was a bit of a slog at times, but it added new dimension and intrigue to the man and his religion and I’m glad to have read it. It really made me wish there were a Joseph Smith reality TV show.

The life of our founding prophet is discussed so frequently and blithely at church that he has almost become a caricature—a saintly, jovial man who loved to play stick ball and displayed Christ-like wisdom in every action. In reality, Joseph was a moody, hot-tempered, and arrogant man—who also liked to play stick ball and cared deeply for his friends. In other words he was, unlike the religious caricature we worship, quite human.

In spite of his flaws I came away from the book more convinced than ever that Joseph Smith was a genius. Not simply inspired, he had a phenomenally brilliant mind and rare ability to lead. Like many geniuses, he was dogged by fits of melancholy; like many leaders, he was arrogant and prone to publicly scrutinized folly.

Emma’s relationship with her husband is fascinating to me. She once called him “bigger than Bonaparte,” a quip which he lightly called her “wisest utterance.” She undoubtedly knew him better than anyone else on earth; while offering him comfort in his melancholy she would have heard the insecurities and naked honesty that frequently accompanies depression. There are hints throughout their relationship to so much going on below the surface—letters begging forgiveness for un-described wrongs, loud arguments lasting until three in the morning, and to the end, the sincerest affection one for the other.

Bushman’s book presents a prophet far different from the polished, incomplete version I learned about in seminary, yet certainly Emma’s understanding of the man would be many levels deeper than we can hope to know with even the best book. Wouldn’t it be cool if we knew what was spoken between those two? There is so much to wonder about.

If I had expected to find the Sunday-school version in this book, I would have found a lot to surprise me. Bushman addresses the treasure seeking, multiple first vision accounts, head-in-a-hat translation, criminal charges, and other interesting details from the earlier years of the Church, explaining many criticisms along the way. But the final years of Smith’s life were most interesting to me, culminating in his candidacy for president of the United States, ordination as king, and increasingly deceitful polygamy that would ultimately lead to his murder.

Bushman has said his goal in writing the book was to convince people that learning authentic Church history does not have to lead to apostasy. The evidence doesn’t force you to leave the Church, he said in an interview with John Dehlin, and I admire his determination to pursue an accurate history without destroying faith. Perhaps to achieve that end, Bushman occasionally takes the reader to the edge of a steep ravine but not past the cusp, introducing topics like Zelph the white Lamanite or the Kinderhook plates without really exploring the implications.

So what has been the effect on me of reading a faithful but not faith-promoting biography of my Church’s founder? I’m not entirely sure my reaction has settled into a consistent feeling yet. At various points in the book I thought of Joseph Smith as ambitious, confused, mentally unstable, spiritual, fraudulent, brilliant, despicable, pitiful, and even prophetic. He was far more complex than either the faithful or the faithless seem inclined to believe, and while I don’t think the book convinced me one way or the other, I feel better prepared to leave the decision to faith.