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Fawn M. Brodie
NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SMITH -- THE MORMON PROPHET New York. Vintage Books. 1945. 1973 Paperback: 498 pp 2nd Revised enlarged edition (995) ISBN-10: 0679730540 ISBN-13: 978-0679730545 Reviewed by Patrick Killough (A work in very early progress 12/14/2009) I. biblio Reviewer's rating * * * * * Fawn M. Brodie's NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SMITH -- THE MORMON PROPHET is justly celebrated. It comes early in an evolving 20th century historical tradition recently exemplified by Yale Professor Frank M. Turner's hotly debated studies of Cardinal John Henry Newman. In what some call "new history," an historical figure like Joseph Smith or John Henry Newman produces an autobiography. Hagiographers from the figure's own church (Mormon, Roman Catholic) may then tend to take their hero's own description of himself as definitive, "Gospel." Any criticism of a favorite Saint by carping sinners is then discounted. Not so with New Historians. For them a Newman, a Smith, a Churchill, a Nixon speaks but one voice among many contemporaries looking at the subjects' lives, works and reputations. Like Turner's Newman, Brodie's Smith is and must be evaluated from many points of views, not all flattering. Smith (1805 - 1844) is seen as a product of his growing up years in America, especially in New York. It was a time of religious dissolution in which prophets flourished and the second coming of Jesus was widely expected in the 1830s and 1840s. But before he was the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Joseph Smith was a man of limited formal education, possessed of perhaps the most fertile imagination before Franz Kafka and latterly a voracious, eclectic, increasingly well-informed reader and a prodigious yarn-spinner. For years Smith also dabbled in searching for buried treasure (Spanish, Indian) through necromancy. He read signs and mysterious texts through a powerful stone. His transition from magic to religion was not abrupt. Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon borrowed lavishly from ideas in the air about the coming of ancestors of red Indians to North America. He also drew upon Scriptural language and recurring phases like "and it came to pass" from the King James's translation. What is original in his various religious writings contains nothing so exalted as the greatest passages of Isaiah or the Gospels. Joseph Smith did not formulate as new and exalted a religious vision as Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. What he did do, in Brodie's judgment, was create a well-conceived and organized church with a defined, active, contributing role for every member. Before God was God, He had been a man, in constant motion towards getting better and better in every way. Joseph Smith assured his followers that they too were meant to follow in God's footsteps. His was a religion of joy, optimism and blessing of earthly pleasures. Mrs Brodie's prose is memorable. Her research, though in many ways long since overtaken, was impressive for its time and in the teeth of a church tradition among some of limiting access to their prophet's human shortcomings. A most impressive piece of historical writing. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/260064220.html =-=-=-=-=-= II. bn Title of this review: "An early example of frontier fiction": THE BOOK OF MORMON Reviewer's rating: * * * * * Posted 12/14/2009: What endures within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to biographer Fawn Brodie, is the charism of founding prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. and his BOOK OF MORMON. The man Smith falls somewhere along a line of enthusiasts of religion between Joan of Arc and Elmer Gantry. He is not to be taken lightly, nor is he underestimated by his biographer Brodie in NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SMITH -- THE MORMON PROPHET. He was bright, riotously imaginative, creative. He drew men and women to his spell. His prophesyings rolled themselves out with King James Bible eloquence: "And it came to pass that ..." over and over again. Smith's book was a patchwork of memory and creative re-imaginings of Bible texts, of ideas in the air about Indians as the lost tribes of Israel, the imminent second coming of Jesus and communitarian living. One contemporary observer saw Joseph Smith as expressing all the major ideas, good and bad, abroad in the State of New York in one decade. Yet there are no passages, original either to Smith or an angel or to God Himself, in THE BOOK OF MORMON that bear comparison with Isaiah's Man of Sorrows or Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. As literature, it is chloroform, to paraphrase Mark Twain. And yet, and yet...THE BOOK OF MORMON is literature. It commands its inexplicably understudied place, according to Fawn Brodie, in American literary history. "...
[T]he book is one of the earliest
examples of frontier fiction, the first long Yankee narrative that owes
nothing to English literary fashions. Except for the borrowings from
the King James Bible, its sources are absolutely American ... nothing
can detract from the fact that many people have found it convincing
history." (Chapter V).
The Mormon Church, according to Brodie, is built upon Smith's personality and his Book. In its day THE BOOK OF MORMON spoke to American concerns about the origins of Amerindians, with their great mounds that seemed to bespeak descent from an older, higher non-Indian civilization. Smith's vision was that God's creation is good. After all He Himself had once been human and had risen, as can all men and women, to divine heights. Smith was Yankee in his blending of piety and avarice, according to his biographer. His religion was this-worldly, kindly, passionate and attractive. Every churchman had a defined role to play. Each knew that he or she could make a difference for Christ. Church ceremonies, some borrowed directly from Freemasonry, were riveting. Families and marriages mattered a great deal in Smith's prophecies, many given him directly by God after prayers for enlightenment. Thousands of people in the USA and the UK were thirsting for what Smith had to offer. Brodie's research was exemplary for its time and inspired many to go and do likewise in increasingly friendly archives. Certainly, Yale history Professor Frank B. Turner writes concerning Anglican later Roman Catholic Cardinal John Henry Newman much as Brodie had of the Mormon prophet. Neither historian took their subject's self-portrayal as definitive. Both Smith and Newman must also be seen as their contemporaries saw them and took their measure -- for good or for evil. -OOO- RECOMMENDED RELATED READING: Frank B. Turner: -- John Henry Newman: THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY; -- John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion http://search.barnesandnoble.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/Fawn-McKay-Brodie/ e/9780679730545/?itm=1&usri=fawn+brodie++no+man+knows+my+history ==-=-=-=--=-= III. amazon TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: Pioneers of frontier fiction: James Fenimore Cooper and Joseph Smith, Jr. RATER'S REVIEW: * * * * * Let's play three blind men feeling different parts of an elephant. Said elephant is Fawn M. Brodie's biography of Mormon prophet-founder Joseph Smith, Jr., NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY. Some readers gravitate to Smith's optimistic vision of a human nature capable of infinite perfectibility; others gnash their teeth over Fawn Brodie's reading Smith's mind, somewhat as Smith allegedly read Egyptian texts at the bottom of his hat. For my part, I am fascinated by the biography's following passage: "... [T]he book is one of the earliest examples of frontier fiction, the first long Yankee narrative that owes nothing to English literary fashions. Except for the borrowings from the King James Bible, its sources are absolutely American ... nothing can detract from the fact that many people have found it convincing history." (Chapter V). American frontier fiction? I thought that that flowed from New England narratives of Indian wars and Cotton Mather's sermons on the wilderness as the seat of all evil. I thought world-class American frontier fiction came of age with Indian-sympathizer James Fenimore Cooper and characters in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, WYANDOTTE and THE WEPT OF WISH-TON-WISH. Fiction? Prophecy? Truth? Whatever the BOOK OF MORMON, THE BOOK OF ABRAHAM and other Smith writings are, they are products of a powerful, assimilative imagination. Smith was only 38 when he died violently in 1844. His formal education had largely ended when he left New England for New York as a boy with his family. But he had a hugely retentive memory and read widely. He had sensitive antennae for what bothered the frontier people around him. One contemporary observer said that Old Joe Smith exemplified every major truth and error agitating New York in a particular decade. One such national and frontier preoccupation was with American Indians. Their high mysterious mounds were being ransacked. And buried Spanish treasure was thought to be everywhere. Writers, one actually got it right, were theorizing that Indians had come to North America from somewhere else, from Israel -- or from across the Bering Straits. Joseph Smith picked these ideas up, along with notions in the air about healthy eating and drinking, living in communities, plural wives, Masonic rituals, etc. and wove them into his various writings and translations. Smith sent early missionaries westward into Indian Territory with the "good news" revealed to him by God about their pre-history, which they should find religiously, culturally and politically liberating. What strikes me is that Joseph Smith liked and admired Indians at a time when all too few other Americans did. His were the years of Georgians grabbing Cherokee land after gold was discovered on it. This was the era of Andrew Jackson and the Indians' "Trail of Tears." These were also the years of war, uprooting or trouble for Creeks, Choctaws, Seminoles and other "redskins" -- years in which another writer of the frontier, James Fenimore Cooper, wrote religion-flavored frontier fiction and clearly loved and admired American Indians. Not many Americans had anything good to say about those "merciless savages." So I say three cheers for that fun-loving wrestler, Old Joe Smith and also for dour, serious, at times ponderous James Fenimore Cooper! If there had been a million more articulate Americans who were pro-Indian, then America today might be a more just nation. -OOO- Your Tags: joseph smith, james fenimore cooper, religious history, fawn brodie, american indian prehistory http://www.amazon.com/No-Man-Knows-My-History/ dp/0679730540/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b =-=-=-=-=-=-= IV. epinions no reviews TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: "... we will establish our religion by the sword. ... 'Joseph Smith or the Sword!'" by aohcapablanca, Dec 15 '09 The faithful of Joseph Smith, Jr.'s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been savagely persecuted as few other European-stock of the United States of America. Their worst troubles began in Missouri. But their founding prophet was lynched in nearby Illinois in 1844. And from those parts they were later driven out to Utah. Joseph Smith preached peace but an iron fist was clutched just beneath his velvet glove. On August 6, 1838 there was election day violence in Gallatin, seat of Daviess County, Missouri. At the polling place, 30 newcomer Mormons who wanted to vote routed with clubs more than two hundred old settlers. One anti-Morman had sneered at them: "Daviess County don't allow Mormons to vote no more than niggers" (Chapter XVI). Every Mormon present voted that day. But they had broken many an oldtimer's pate. Public anti-Mormon sentiment then surged after years of peaceful co-existence. Joseph Smith summoned Mormons to hear him speak in the public square of the town of Far West, Caldwell County, Missouri on October 14, 1838. He had finally had more than enough of being persecuted. Toward speech's end, Smith said: "If the
people will let us
alone ...we will preach the gospel in peace. But if they come on us to
molest us, we will establish our religion by the sword. ... I will be to this
generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating for peace was
'the Alcoran or the
Sword.' So shall it eventually be with us
-- 'Joseph Smith or the Sword'" (Chapter XVI).
In NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SMITH, author Fawn M. Brodie combines the passionate romantic way of writing history characteristic of Thomas Carlyle or Hilaire Belloc with the sober, down-to-earth milieu-contextualizing by Wisconsin Professor Ronald L. Numbers (biography of Adventist prophetess Ellen G. White) or of Yale Professor Frank M. Turner (biography of Cardinal John Henry Newman). NO MAN KNOWS MY NAME, first published in 1945, has long enjoyed the status of a classic, and rightly so. One-time Mormon Fawn Brodie lets Smith tell his own story in his own words, often long after facts he is recalling and spinning. But like Numbers and Turner, Brodie gives a subject's autobiography no more prima facie credit for telling the truth than reports by other eye-witness contemporaries. And people who knew the Mormon prophet best tended to treat him in one of two contrasting ways. To some Smith was a saint who could do no wrong, beloved friend and interlocutor of God and angels. To the August 1838 mob in Gallatin, Missouri, by contrast, Smith and other Mormons were "... a
set of horse thieves, liars, and counterfeiters. They'll swear a false
oath on any occasion to save another Mormon. They are thieves and
knaves and dupes in the bargain" (Ch. XVI)
Joseph Smith taught that God had once been a man. And the point to being human was to rise to the level of God. Smith was a fun-loving wrestler. He also enjoyed wine and the company of pretty women. His religion was joyous, earthy. And he made a defined place in it for every believer. Each man and woman among the Mormon Faithful counted, made a difference, was indipensable for the spreading of the Mormon faith. No wonder, according to Fawn Brodie, that it drew thousands from the shores of Britain to wherever the Prophet happened to be. It was Smith's soon-to-be successor, Brigham Young, who organized a smooth transportation system for converts from the UK to the USA. And, unlikely as it seems to 21st Century sophisticates, it was the intellectual quality of Smith's message that drew and held Young and thousands of others. Smith might have been a weak, imperfect man, but he was God's friend and chosen medium of communication. Like James Fenimore Cooper, his contemporary fellow American frontier writer, Joseph Smith was fascinated by Indians, admired them and sang their praises. Smith even sent missionaries from Missouri into nearby Indian Territory. They brought with them copies of THE BOOK OF MORMON, in which Joseph Smith had revealed their pre-historic origins among the semitic races of the Old World. The prophet expected the Indians to rejoice in the facts that God had revealed about their origins and their place in creation and to accept the revelations of Smith as racially uplifting and liberating. COMMENT: Lord knows, the American Indians needed every enlightened friend they could get with the stature of Fenimore Cooper or Joseph Smith. Brodie stresses that, dull and factually discredited or disputed as many of Smith's writings seem today (Mark Twain compared them to breathing chloroform), in their 19th Century heyday they filled real needs of real Americans out on the frontier. Smith's messages were timely. Smith's works tackled and gave confident answers to questions roiling American minds in the 1830s and 40s. -- Where did Indians come from?
-- Is the world about to end? -- Should religious meetings be pentecostal and full of frenzy? -- Was freemasonry good or bad? -- Was polygamy intended by God? -- Should the Faithful live in theocratic communities and hold property in common? The prophet experimented and learned from his tentative initiatives. Above all, according to Fawn Brodie, Joseph Smith had sensitive social antennae. He was very much a man of his time and place -- and charismatic to boot. Brodie's biography is also worth reading for her sketches of how Joseph Smith morphed without interior turmoil from riotously imaginative youthful tale teller, soothsayer, buried treasure seeker and interpreter of mysterious texts into a serious student of Hebrew and genuine religious pioneer. Smith was not the only religious pioneer in an America whose old Anglican and Puritan establishments were losing their hold on the popular mind. But Joseph Smith's Mormons became a national power by the time of the Civil War and have since spread over the world. The same cannot be said of Mother Ann Lee's Shakers or, to the same extent at least, of Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists or even of the quieter Seventh-Day Adventists of Ellen Gould White. But all of America's pioneering prophets and prophetesses were responding variously to deeply felt American needs. They rose or fell to the extent that their responses filled those needs. Reading Fawn Brodie's life of Joseph Smith is the polar opposite of breathing chloroform. For it is a great fling -- at times merry and even rollicking -- at serious but readable history. NO MAN KNOWS MY NAME has inspired many subsequent students of the Mormon Prophet. And rightly so. -OOO- Pros: Joseph Smith: fun-loving, slow to wrath but willing to fight. Beautifully written, illustrated, researched. Cons: Judged slanted and untrue by many (but not by any means all) Mormon faithful. The Bottom Line: Combines the best of romantic and hard-nosed approaches to history writing. Excellent photos and maps. Joseph Smith warts and all: charismatic, lover of the world and the flesh. Read it! Overall Product Rating: * * * * * Recommend to a friend? YES! http://www.epinions.com/reviews/No_Man_Knows_My_History_The_Life_of_Joseph _Smith_The_Mormon_Prophet_by_Fawn_McKay_Brodie/skp_~1/search_string_~ No%2520Man%2520Knows%2520My%2520History%253A%2520The%2520Life% 2520of%2520Joseph%2520Smith ==-=-=-=--= V. lunch.com TITLE OF THIS REVIEW: "I will be to this generation a second Mohammed": Joseph Smith, the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805 - 1844) was the first prophet and founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints aka the Mormon Faith. Fawn Macay Brodie (1915 - 1981), author of NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY: THE LIFE OF JOSEPH SMITH, grew up in a poor but eminent Mormon family. During her student days at the University of Chicago, however, she abandoned religion of every shape. A few years later, in 1945, she published her celebrated secular but sympathetic biography of Smith. It was a bombshell. Faithful Mormons initially castigated it almost to a man. Lapsed Mormons hailed NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY as a revelation of the shaky foundations of Mormon theology and authenticity. Twenty-eight years later Fawn Brodie issued a second, rethought edition with very few substantive changes. By and large, it can be cautiously asserted, her biography has stood the test of time. It has also inspired new generations of historians, Mormon and non-Mormon, to face the facts of their founding years honestly and credibly. What depths did Mrs Brodie stir up? First, she used but was far from giving blind faith to Joseph Smith's own several autobiographical writings. He was raised in New England, came of age in New York and Pennsylvania and lived in Missouri and Illinois. In all those places he was remembered. And many eye witnesses, believers and non-believers, wrote up their recollections or contemporary observations. To some the Mormon Prophet was God's friend and a chosen channel for God's frequent and detailed revelations. His writings were infallible, on a level with Jewish and Greek Scriptures. In this respect, he was treated much as very many of the first Seventh-day Adventists treated a few years later their founding prophetess Ellen G. White. Their founders could do no wrong. They were saints of exemplary life. But to others Smith was just Good Old Joe or Joe the lying, thieving rascal. He was known from early years to belong to a poor family and to have had little formal education but to be a voracious reader. He had the most vivid imagination the world was to know before Franz Kafka. He was the best, most spell-binding yarn spinner for hundreds of miles. He was a six-footer, good-looking, strong, a wrestler. He was fun-loving, easy going, not fond of manual labor. He used magic stones to seek for gold and buried treasure. He claimed to have had visions of God the Father and God the Son and to have received revelations from them and through angels. He said that he had discovered a Golden Bible. He had found sacred texts written in an ancient Egyptian dialect. He sat behind a screen separating him from his secretary and dictated translations read from texts that appeared at the bottom of his hat -- into which he sank his head to decipher. Over time he abandoned magic for prophesying and for religion. He learned Hebrew. He founded and organized a church. Nothing, however, that was original with Smith in his writings, according to Dawn Brodie, ever approached the sublime level of Isaiah's Man of Sorrows or Jesus's Sermon on the Mount. His English resonated with the King James Bible. Phrases such as "And it came to pass that..." were repeated scores of times. He became a Freemason and incorporated Masonic practices into his Church liturgies. And yet earlier on he had denounced Freemasonry. He was always experimenting and trimming. As time went by, Smith's view of his place in history expanded. He said in 1838: As time went by, Smith's view of his role in history expanded. In 1838 he told a large crowd of the faithful: "If the
people will let us alone ...we will preach the gospel in peace. But if
they come on us to molest us, we will establish our religion by the
sword. ... I
will be to this generation a second Mohammed, whose motto in treating
for peace was 'the Alcoran or the Sword.' So shall it eventually be
with us -- 'Joseph Smith or the Sword'" (Chapter XVI).
One attractive feature of Joseph Smith (shared with James Fenimore Cooper) was his respect for and good intentions toward American Indians not long after their Trail of Tears deportation to the west. Much of his BOOK OF MORMON explained the origin of these native Americans from a homeland in the Near East. He sent his earliest missionaries into Indian Territory to explain to them God's special plans for them. I hope that I have given you a tiny taste for this very rich, beautifully crafted book. Enough for you to make up your mind whether to read it. In addition to text you will find photos and maps, reproductions of early publications by Smith and much else. Enjoy! -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/reviews/UserReview-Fawn_M_Brodie_NO_MAN_KNOWS _MY_HISTORY_THE_LIFE_OF_JOSEPH_SMITH-1432532-15900-_I_will_be_ to_this_generation_a_second_Mohammed_.htm FILE: brodie_josephsmith |