I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; and the only polishing I get is when some corner gets rubbed off by coming in contact with something else, striking with accelerated force against religious bigotry, priestcraft, lawyer-craft, doctor-craft, lying editors, suborned judges and jurors, and the authority of perjured executives, backed by mobs, blasphemers, licentious and corrupt men and women--all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there. Thus I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty, who will give me dominion over all and every one of them, when their refuge of lies shall fail, and their hiding place shall be destroyed, while these smooth-polished stones with which I come in contact become marred. (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 304)
Already we are in a country foreign to the well-groomed, serene Joseph of Legacy or the Work and the Glory. This Joseph is impetuous, unpolished, brilliant, quick-tempered and sometimes proud. He is vigorous, combative, trembling with a weird and powerful vision. He thrives and grows through conflict; his existence is defined by struggle; he laughs into hell and loves doing it. He is not safe. And his world is not the one he lives in.
As the scholar Walter van der Beek has written of Joseph, "He could not live without the word of God, and could barely live with it."
Rough Stone Rolling, then, is in its own way as romantic a story as is another biography titled with Joseph's own words. No Man Knows My History did Joseph a perhaps backhanded favor; it rescued him from historians who had for decades dismissed him as a shallow but charismatic frontman for Sidney Rigdon by firmly advocating for his almost artistic religious genius. Fawn Brodie loved Joseph, though she did not believe him a prophet. Richard Bushman loves him too, and does believe. But in the end, he agrees with Brodie's title - we cannot fully know Joseph Smith.
But Bushman tries. He gets into Joseph's mind, as much as the prophet allows us to, which isn't as deep as we long for. The book, though, is driven more than anything by what Joseph dreamed of, what he hoped for, what spiritual hungers panged him. How did Joseph's personality, Bushman asks, shape his work?
He does not skimp on the controversies - treasure digging, Masonry, polygamy are all here - but it's that question, I think, which could be the most challenging to faith. For Bushman, Joseph the prophet is not merely a mouthpiece for God, serenely confident in every situation. His personality drives his questions for God, his self-conception of his role as prophet, his religious imagination as he laid out his new faith. This is Joseph Smith's church as much as it may be God's.
His life can be sectioned into fourths: his calling, and only gradual sense of his prophetic role, which culminates in the organization of the Church; his early triumphs and creation of a people, culminating in the Kirtland Temple Pentecost; his failures and overreaching, which lead to the collapse of Kirtland and the shadowed valley of Liberty Jail; and finally, rebirth and recreation, the weird genius of Nauvoo.
Organizing the book by this schema looks like this:
The preface and prologue through the end of chapter 5, "The Church of Christ." xix-127.
"Joseph, Moses, and Enoch" through the end of chapter 17, "The Order of Heaven," 127-322.
"Reverses" through "Washington," 322-403.
"Beautiful Place," through "Epilogue," 403-563.
I propose we split that long middle section into two: "Joseph, Moses, and Enoch" through "Cities of Zion," 127-231; "The Character of a Prophet" through "The Order of Heaven," 231-322.
Here's a schedule, then:
By June 11: The preface and prologue through the end of chapter 5, "The Church of Christ." xix-127.
By June 25: "Joseph, Moses, and Enoch" through "Cities of Zion," 127-231
By July 9: "The Character of a Prophet" through "The Order of Heaven," 231-322.
By July 23: "Reverses" through "Washington," 322-403.
By August 13 (I'll be returning the weekend before this, and it's a bit longer section): "Beautiful Place," through "Epilogue," 403-563.
How does that sound?
