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REVIEWS Not Enough Trouble REVIEWS Not Enough Trouble Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the In Trouble Enough, Taves attempts to Book of Mormon by Ernest H. Taves (New write a biography of Joseph Smith, relying York: Prometheus Books, 1984), $19.95, almost wholly upon Lucy Mack Smith's 280 pp. and Joseph Smith and the Origins History of Joseph Smith and His Progeni- of the Book of Mormon by David Persuitte tors (Liverpool: S. W. Richards, 1853), (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland and Co., the History of the Church, B. H. Roberts, 1985), 295 pp., $19.95. ed., 7 vols., 2nd ed. rev. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957), Fawn Brodie's Reviewed by Kenneth H. Godfrey, No Man Knows My History, 2nd ed. (New Church Education System Area Director. York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), Donna Hill's Joseph Smith, The First Mormon AT LEAST ONCE a decade, it seems, some- (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), Gerald one publishes a book about the Latter-day and Sandra Tanner's Mormonism—Shadow Saints without taking the necessary "trou- or Reality? (Salt Lake City: Modern ble" to adequately research the subject. Microfilm Co., 1972), and E. D. Howe's Stanley Hirshon was judged guilty of this 1834 Mormonism Unvailed (Painesville, offense in 1969 and received from the Mor- Ohio: Published by the author, 1834). mon History Association its "Worst Book" His bibliography totals only seventy award for his volume on Brigham Young. books, articles, and monographs, while Ernest H. Taves, a Massachusetts-based Richard L. Bushman's book, Joseph Smith psychiatrist with both Mormon and Men- and Mormon Beginnings (Urbana: Univer- nonite roots, would be a strong candidate sity of Illinois Press, 1984), which, inci- for the same award this year. David Per- dently, ends with the Prophet's move to suitte, a retired Air Force computer ex- Kirtland in 1832, has a bibliography which pert, would follow, though at a consider- cites more than 700 documents. I use able distance. His book, though seriously Bushman for comparison because he, too, flawed in approach and evidence and unin- lives on the east coast, far from the LDS formed in key areas, is at least neither Church Archives. trivial nor silly. Trouble Enough begins with a chapter The title for Taves's book comes from on the Prophet's ancestry, drawn mainly the pen of Ebenezer Robinson who in his from Lucy Mack Smith's biographical newspaper The Return (vol. 2, p. 315), sketches (which he describes incorrectly as published years after the event supposedly a rare book) and the Solomon Mack nar- occurred, tells us that when Joseph Smith rative found in Richard L. Anderson's placed the handwritten manuscript of the Joseph Smith's New England Heritage Book of Mormon in the cornerstone of the (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1971). Nauvoo House, he exclaimed, "I have had In Chapter 2, he moves the Smith family trouble enough with this thing" (Taves, from Vermont to Palmyra in five pages. p. 160). The narrative recounts money digging, the 140 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT First Vision, the bringing forth of the Book Several Latter-day Saint scholars, including of Mormon, the Kirtland years, the trou- Robert K. Thomas (1972), have found bles in Missouri, the founding of Nauvoo, stylistic differences among Book of Mor- and the Prophet's martyrdom, with hardly mon writers and have pointed out, for an innovative interpretation or thought to example, that Enos certainly wrote dif- break the chronology. ferently than did his son, Jarom. I did a Part 2 of this volume attempts to character study of more than twenty Book identify authorship of the Book of Mor- of Mormon personalities and found them mon using stylometry. Stylometry, de- as diverse as many of those found in the scribed as a "scientific recognition system world's other scriptures. The Book of Mor- for written or spoken utterances," began mon is a very complex canon of scripture with Augustus De Morgan, the English that ought not be dismissed as the product mathematician and logician, in 1851. After of one man's mind on the basis of statisti- delineating how it works, Taves then in- cal studies that are hardly foolproof. forms his readers that by using stylometry, Trouble Enough, moreover, has other he has discovered that the Book of Mor- weaknesses. Historians generally agree that mon was authored by only one person. for something to become history, facts have I would have been more impressed to be put together into a pattern that is with this section had Taves provided an understandable and credible. Only then analysis of the weaknesses of stylometry as will the resulting portrait of the past be well as its strengths. Stylometry, contrary usable and useful in making decisions and to what Taves writes, is not an exact sci- taking action. Mere "facts" listed and un- ence, and its use on the writings of Paul linked do not a history make, but rather a and Shakespeare have generated heated catalogue. Taves provides us with a cursory controversy. One argument has revolved glimpse of some "facts" in the life of around what constitutes a sentence in the Joseph Smith but fails to provide the New Testament Greek of the Apostle Paul. reader with the necessary linkage to make Stylometric studies are based, in part at a strong historical chain. The reader gains least, on determining the average length of no new insights into the Prophet nor into a writer's sentences. In old Greek manu- the Mormon movement. The book seems scripts there is no punctuation. It is there- to have no telechy, or reason for being. fore difficult to determine just where Paul's Taves, a psychiatrist, might have pro- sentences begin and end. Such judgments duced a significant book had he psycho- are subjective and not hazard free. Some analyzed Joseph Smith and his family as of the same arguments used against those did Dr. Jess Grosbeck, who reported his who have concluded that Paul did not findings in a paper he read at the 1985 author some of the New Testament books Sunstone Symposium. However, when attributed to him could be made against Taves attempts a very brief (three-page) the stylistic study of the manuscript of the analysis of one of Joseph, Sr.'s, dreams, I Book of Mormon, which had, according to find Grosbeck's (1985) conclusions regard- the printer, little, if any, punctuation ing the same dream far more convincing (Stocks 1979, 10; Jessee 1970; Larson than those of Taves. Grosbeck plows new 1977). ground by hypothesizing that the dream One study using stylometry concluded points to the destitute circumstances of the that Thomas Jefferson did not write the Smith family, both economically and so- Declaration of Independence, while an- cially, as well as the depression of the other study, using the same methods dem- senior Smith. Taves seems to dig furrows onstrated that the writings of the person in fields that have already been plowed, who did the Jefferson study, were not planted, cultivated, and harvested by penned by the same person (Ellison 1965). merely stating that it is a dream about the REVIEWS 141 family expressing hope and promise. Taves Taves's treatment of the Solomon then concludes: "Well, here is the stuff of Spaulding manuscript and the Book of myth, enough to keep a convention of Mormon would have profited by a thor- amateur (or professional) analysts busy for ough reading of Lester Bush's fine article a week" (pp. 7-8). Yet he fails to deliver (1977) on that subject. Taves, further- the analysis called for by such a stimulat- more, cites and draws conclusions from ing assertion. His book would be better Oliver Cowdery's "Defense in a Rehearsal had he, at that point, provided us with his of My Grounds of Separating Myself from own interpretation of the significance of the Latter-day Saints," even though Gerald this dream; but instead he chose to write and Sandra Tanner proved long ago that it two paragraphs, mostly containing ques- was a forgery. tions accompanied with no more insight Taves's writing of the Kirtland experi- than an amateur could have provided. ence is equally lacking in sound scholar- Unlike Bushman, Taves did not do his ship. He shows no evidence that he has homework regarding the Smith family's read the prize-winning monograph Hill, financial difficulties, nor did he compare Rooker, and Wimmer wrote on the their experiences with that of other Ameri- Kirtland economy, nor Milton C. Back- cans. He characterizes the Prophet's par- man, Jr.'s, The Heavens Resound (Salt ents as being uniquely inept in their per- Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1983), or sonal affairs, while Bushman was able to even Max Parkin's twenty-year-old master's convincingly demonstrate that they were thesis "Conflict at Kirtland" (M.S. Thesis, far more typical than unusual. Taves has BYU 1966). Zion's Camp, by Roger D. some interesting census data relating to the Launius (Independence: Herald Publish- size of the town of Palmyra that refutes ing House, 1984) would have been a help- both Brodie and Hill and convincingly ful resource, but Taves seems unaware of argues that Palmyra during the Smith era its publication as well. His chapter on the was not a frontier but rather an established Book of Abraham is dated and displays his sizeable community. He also tells us that ignorance of Donl Peterson's research estab- Palmyra had a black population of forty- lishing the mummies' discovery, their ar- six but fails to comment on the significance rival in the United States, and additional of this information.
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