Poet And The Murderer (Hardcover)

Worrall then spins the narrative of Mark Hoffman's life. Raised in the Mormon faith that is steeped in secrecy and mystery, Hoffman early on becomes a sceptic of the Mormon foundations. He grows to hate the Mormon church and sets out to create a series of documents that undermine some of the key principles and teachings of the Mormon faith. He wants to expose Joseph Smith as the con-artist Hoffman believed him to be. And since the Mormons are so secretive, he knows that his forgeries will be bought to ensure silence that could make the church look back.

Worrall goes into an abundance of detail regarding the art of forgery, detailing how it was possible for Hoffman to create these new documents that looked like they were from the correct time period. If Hoffman can fool even the most celebrated forensic experts, who wouldn't believe him? But as the tales and lies that Mark Hoffman weaves become bigger and broader, so do his debts, and he finally resorts to murder, which lands him in jail for life.

Perhaps the title of this book is mere titilation, because there is little material regarding the life of Emily Dickinson herself. Yet Worrall does point out some consistencies in character that may have drawn Hoffman to attempt to create a work of poetry that Emily herself may have written in her secretive seclusion. "The Poet and the Murderer" is well-written and relatively fast-paced. It makes one wonder if what one actually believes to be authentic can ever be proven to be so.

Only the first bit and a few sections later are really concerned with the forged Dickinson poem. Worrall's treatment of her life and poetry is brief and fair-enough. A in-depth reading isn't really called for in this book, so Dickinson fans oughtn't be too disappointed not to find more literary analysis. Though she is billed as a co-headliner in this story, she is actually more of a footnote.

An unprepared reader might be overwhelmed by the quickly multiplying number of characters in the first chapters, as the poem goes to auction and more and more experts and dealers get consulted. But these are soon moved offstage as the viewpoint switches to Hofmann's. We also get digressive chapters on the history of forging, which are interesting but are obviously makeweight.

The implied exposure of shady doings at the big auction houses never comes to pass, apart from some fuming quotes from people who had been burned by the forgeries.

The meat of the book is the telling of how Hofmann forged important Mormon documents, playing the top church leadership like a pawnshop Gibson in a Pete Townshend impersonation contest. The technical details of how Hofmann worked his dishonest magic are amazing enough, but more so is how brutally accurately he sized up the church's leaders. For one legendary document, he took a chance and left it vulnerable to carbon dating, knowing that the church wanted the document to be true and would not destroy a portion of it to date it. The Mormon church gets a very rough ride in this story, especially in the background material, and it's hard not to feel that they couldn't have tried to be more skeptical, lest the sky fall.

A bibliophile blanches to think how many forged Hofmann manuscripts and autographs are still out there, perhaps even shaping our view of history, as the Mormon documents did for awhile. I don't know what use a natural talent for forgery could be put to in a law-abiding life, but he certainly mis-used his to the hilt. Thanks to Mark Hofmann, "don't believe everything you read" has a whole new sinister tone.