Bushman's Joseph

I'm reading Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling biography of Joseph Smith Jr., and making rather heavy going of it. I'm only on about page 120, so my impression may not be entirely fair.

I've always been irritated with and suspicious of Joseph Smith, for unclear reasons (to me) that go beyond the ask-for-your-best-friend's-wife-as-a-spiritual-test and marry-14-year-old-girls problems that preceded institutional polygyny. It's odd that Joseph bothers me so much when Brigham Young, who was an absolute tyrant and much more objectively offensive, doesn't push my buttons. So I am interested in learning about the real Joseph and getting a feel for who he actually was. Unfortunately, reading Bushman is like walking uphill into a strong wind of adulation, as he lays out briefly the non-believer's case for a naturalistic explanation of events and then immediately counters it with long passages expressing how amazing, surprising, and miraculous Joseph's accomplishments (and personality) were.

It's sort of like the anti-Mormons, who want it both ways: Joseph was an uncultured, illiterate, incurious country bumpkin and a machiavellian evil scoundrel who perpetuated an unbelievable fraud. Bushman emphasizes how Joseph simply couldn't have known this or invented that, but then goes off into raptures about what an incredible genius he was. It's like fighting my way through a swarm of hallelujah-humming bees to try to see the real man.

Maybe I need to get further along in the book. Right now I find myself rolling my eyes and slapping the book shut just a little too often.