Themis wrote:The time line seems to be a bit of an issue here. Apologists want to argue that he couldn't do it in the time allotted(~2 months), but forget that he did some creation many months earlier with the lost 116 pages. He didn't start up again for many months, so how is this not more time for Joseph to prepare for when he starts up again. It's also interested to note that when he did, he started from where he left off.
Yes, the timeline is a factor. Obviously, the shorter the timeline, the more impressive the book's production appears. But even then, it's weak. I mean, how long did it take Kerouac to pound out On the Road? A month? In fact, now that I think about it, On the Road is a pretty good parallel, at least for this limited point. From Wikipedia:
Kerouac often promoted the story about how in April 1951 he wrote the novel in three weeks, typing continuously onto a 120-foot roll of teletype paper. Although the story is true per se, the book was in fact the result of a long and arduous creative process. Kerouac carried small notebooks, in which much of the text was written as the eventful span of road trips unfurled. He started working on the first of several versions of the novel as early as 1948, based on experiences during his first long road trip in 1947. However, he remained dissatisfied with the novel. Inspired by a thousand-word rambling letter from his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac in 1950 outlined the "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" and decided to tell the story of his years on the road with Cassady as if writing a letter to a friend in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.
The first draft of what was to become the published novel was written in three weeks in April 1951 while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan, New York. The manuscript was typed on what he called "the scroll":a continuous, one hundred and twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together. The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. In the following years, Kerouac continued to revise this manuscript, deleting some sections (including some sexual depictions deemed pornographic in the 1950s) and adding smaller literary passages.
Like On the Road, the Book of Mormon manuscript was produced in short order. But like Kerouac, Joseph Smith had been cogitating for years on the story and characters of the Book of Mormon. According to his mother, writing about life in the Smith home in the year 1824, some five years before the Book of Mormon manuscript was completed:
During our evening conversations Joseph would occasionally give us some of the most amusing recitals that could be imagined. He would describe the ancient inhabitants of this continent, their dress, mode of travelling, and the animals upon which they rode; their cities; their buildings, with every particular; their mode of warfare; and also their religious worship. This he would do with as much ease, seemingly, as if he had spent his whole life with them.
Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches, at 85.
