Comments on: Perspectives on Parley Pratt’s Autobiography: Writing as Restoration and Redemption

By: smb

smb — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:20:21 +0000

Nice.

By: Ben

Ben — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 00:27:41 +0000

Dennis: those are some important questions.

Kent: Aha, we have snared you into our trap of interest! David’s right, we will have a post next week by Matt Grow that will deal with all the questions you have. It was originally schedule for Monday, but Ryan T’s will be going up that day since thematically it is a good follow-up to this one. So, look forward to Matt’s next thursday–I just looked it over today, and it’s a good one.

By: David G.

David G. — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:52:55 +0000

Kent, Matt Grow is scheduled to address the writing of the autobiography in the next post. I assume he’ll deal with some of your questions.

By: Kent Larsen

Kent Larsen — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:42:29 +0000

Will someone in this series address how the manuscript became a book? I gather from the post that the manuscript version that PPP wrote is not extant. Do we know why? Is the 1st edition the earliest version of the manuscript available? Who was involved in the publication of the book?

I’m afraid that you’ve made me very curious about the process from manuscript to book in this case. And the example of what happened with Lucy Mack Smith’s History (as outlined in the introduction to the Lucy’s Book edition), there may have indeed been a lot of changes to the manuscript.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 19:48:52 +0000

Ben (16):

Yes, Parley’s apostasy was definitely downplayed. I just thought, also, how it’s interesting that Parley makes no mention (I don’t think) about how John Taylor was an important influence in Parley’s rehabilitation (from apostasy). This could have been a pretty cool theme for Parley to explore (Parley helped Taylor join the church, and Taylor helped Parley stay in the church) — why didn’t he? Maybe he simply preferred to completely put that time of his life behind him …?

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:52:40 +0000

Amanda: What David said (he knows the period a lot more than I–this is the furthest I have made it away from Nauvoo). I especially agree that it was a trend started to try to reach the second generation of Mormons.

Tom: but blowing off fairy dust is what we do best!!! (and if I were to speak on Parley’s Auto in sacrament meeting, I would do more of the things you are asking for–this is just a different venue)

Clean Cut: As Matt said, there is a discourse on it in the book. I am away from my copy right now, but I can say that he doesn’t dwell on it at all through the majority of the text.

Dennis: your recollection of how Parley dealt with that episode is exactly right (you even got the wording pretty close–impressive). That’s why I said some of these tough issues were either downplayed or ignored, in this case it was the former.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 05:22:39 +0000

Although some of these claims are a little too speculative for my blood, I thought this post was enlightening overall.

If I recall correctly, Parley did talk about his 1837 apostasy, although only in very general terms (saying something about how his mind was darkened for a time against Joseph, or something like that).

By: Clean Cut

Clean Cut — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:42:27 +0000

How very interesting! I’m really looking forward to this series. I read his autobiography on my mission when my companion, who was a Pratt, let me read the book. I remember really enjoying it. However, I can’t quite remember the details now. It would certainly be interesting to go back and read it again now that I know a little more about Church history. How extensive was his treatment was of polygamy?

By: Tom D

Tom D — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:11:18 +0000

Interesting stuff. The PPP Autobiography has long been high on my list of books to read. I still want to read it, but now I’d like to find a modern biography to go with it.

I do hope that you don’t blow all of the fairy dust off of the Autobiography. I wonder (without having read it) how much PPP was inspired by the Lord to write what he did. What were his “spiritual” missions and accomplishments.

Nearly all modern biography seems to want to explain a persons life purely in terms of what the subject did and what was going on around them with a big portion of speculation about what they were thinking in fairly Freudian terms. I am curious about PPP’s inspiration. I think Bushman did an excellent job covering that in Rough Stone Rolling.

By: David G.

David G. — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:47:21 +0000

Amanda, my sense is that the main wave started in the 1870s and 1880s, and reflected the desires of the aging generation to strengthen their legacy among the rising generation. There is also the context of the polygamy raids, and many of these autobiographies emphasize the early persecutions, so there’s a didactic angle too.

David Wrobel, although he doesn’t deal with Utah much (if at all), has written in Promised Lands about the broader phenomenon of the pioneer generation in the West establishing pioneer societies during the last quarter of the 19th century. He argues that these societies and the nostalgia they promoted represented an effort by the elderly to hold on to their status in a rapidly changing world that didn’t value their contributions.