The Unseating of Dr. Smoot

by William Morris

The Unseating of Dr. Smoot opens with the title character Rebecca Smoot aboard a flight to Salt Lake City. Having recently had her tenure clock reset for her position at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, Smoot is visiting her home state for a "not exactly a job interview" meeting with faculty at Utah Valley University and to give a lecture at Brigham Young University on Marilynne Robinson's Gilead novels.

In the days after her lecture, Smoot also visits with her college-aged niece, best friend from her undergrad days, and widowed father before returning to Wisconsin.

Inspired by the structure of a typical LDS sacrament meeting (complete with chapter titles like Opening Hymn, Youth Talk, and Visiting Authority Remarks). The Unseating of Dr. Smoot is about scholarship, art, academic politics, and what it's like to have an enduring but complicated relationship with one's faith, religion, occupation, loved ones, and the place where you grew up.

This volume also contains two short stories Morris has labeled “Conference” and “The Ward Organist,” which won first place in the 2023 A Journal of Mormon Thought short fiction contest.

Genres: Mormonism

124 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 5, 2023

About the author

People best remembered wallpaper and furniture designs of William Morris, British painter, craftsman, and social reformer, whose poetry includes Sigurd the Volsung , the epic in 1876.

The Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement associated William Morris, an English architect, textile, artist, writer, and Marxist. Morris wrote and published fiction and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. He worked his known The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858).

William Morris wrote The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball , and the utopian News from Nowhere .

William Morris, an important figure in the emergence, founded the Socialist league in 1884 but broke with the movement over goals and methods before the end of 1880s, that decade.

He founded the press of Kelmscott in 1891 and devoted much of the rest of his life. People consider the edition, masterpiece of Kelmscott of 1896 of the Works , book of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Reviews

[David Harris]

Note: The edition I read contains the novella plus two additional short stories. I enjoyed all three works. All contain a wealth of dialogue, both interior and exterior, that brings the characters to life.


The title tale relates the story of Dr. Rebecca Smoot’s short trip to Utah from the Midwest to make a scholarly presentation at UVU and to interview for a position at BYU. This is also an opportunity for her to visit her father and catch up with other family members and friends.


Honestly, the whole idea of interviewing for an academic position makes me downright queasy, but I was happy to experience the process vicariously through Rebecca. As someone who has spent a lot of his life outside Utah (my birthplace was Provo), I enjoyed both the familiar and unfamiliar aspects of Smoot’s brief homecoming. And the conversations with friends and family around church activity and non-activity, an unavoidable aspect of life in 21st century Utah, seem authentic and genuine.


I was intrigued by the author’s idea to spin out the tale in the format of an LDS sacrament meeting with chapters entitled ‘Opening Prayer’, ‘Opening Hymn’, ‘Announcements’, etc. But I have to say that I didn’t find any particularly meaningful connection between the chapter names and the corresponding content of each chapter. Perhaps I just didn’t look hard enough. In any case, that’s a small detail.


The Ward Organist was my favorite of the three stories. I think this is because I am a musician and have held Church callings which have involved providing a piano accompaniment and leading the singing.


The mentor in the story, whose strong words of warning against allowing oneself to become "typecast", for lack of a better word, into the role of organist go unheeded, paints a bleak picture of the monk-like loneliness of the calling. And yet a love of music allows one to overlook this important concern for the sake of music and the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction it brings.

[Darlene Young]

This book is a collection of three works, a novella (The Unseating of Dr. Smoot) and two short stories. All three speak delightfully to an audience familiar with LDS culture and, in the case of the first two, the culture of academia as well. Delightful juxtaposition! I found all of these main characters familiar and yet very particular and interesting. Morris captures vividly and truly the tensions of academia vs. faith, professional ambition vs. the pursuit of one’s personal interest or sense of calling, nostalgia for a youthful worldview vs. moving towards a more mature understanding. I particularly enjoy Morris’s exploration of the longings and questionings of a modern, well-educated woman in the Church: what does it mean to value oneself and one’s God-given desire for progress and the development of talents while also valuing family life? How is one to be an LDS woman in the world?

Morris writes with an affection for his culture, which I enjoy. Even more, I enjoy that he takes the culture (its worldview, and, yes, its faith) seriously. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in literary art and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

[Anne]

I enjoyed reading this novella and accompanying two short stories, which won first place in the 2023 Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought short fiction contest.

The slim little volume arrived in the mail as one of four 2024 selections for the Dialogue Book Group, which I receive the books for, but don’t participate in.

[Ryan]

A short story about the uncertain and unsettling decisions a Mormon academic has to make as they navigate their faith and career.