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This. This is how much of a dork I am.
Sep. 15th, 2016 12:25 pmI have drawn a map (in MS Paint) of Fox's theory about what happened to Custer's battalion.
( cut because REALLY )
( cut because REALLY )
Speaking of the Little Bighorn
Sep. 2nd, 2016 04:08 pmPURELY BY SERENDIPITY, I happened to pick up a National Geographic in the doctor's office this morning and found this. It is deeply surreal in its own right, but even more so for me because Brigadier General Edward S. Godfrey (a lieutenant in 1876) is notable as a reliable diarist/witness; he's someone I know well enough, historically speaking, to have an opinion about. (He falls into the category of men honorably trying to do their duty to the best of their abilities, and is also notable as being an officer at/near/around the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876, who actually kept his head.)
I wish they had identifications for any of the Native American men.
I wish they had identifications for any of the Native American men.
UBC: Goodman, Boessenecker, Gardner
Jul. 21st, 2013 12:31 pm3 books this time, two mediocre, and one quite good. I'm discussing them in that order, with the Boessenecker & Gardner together because their subjects harmonize--it wasn't a planned diptych, but they turn out to make excellent foils for each other.
Goodman, Jonathan. Murder on Several Occasions. Illus. Nina Lewis Smart. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2007.
( Read more... )
Boessenecker, John. Badge and Buckshot: Lawlessness in Old California. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. [library]
( Read more... )
Gardner, Mark Lee. To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West. New York: William Morrow-HarperCollins, 2010.
( Read more... )
Goodman, Jonathan. Murder on Several Occasions. Illus. Nina Lewis Smart. Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2007.
( Read more... )
Boessenecker, John. Badge and Buckshot: Lawlessness in Old California. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988. [library]
( Read more... )
Gardner, Mark Lee. To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West. New York: William Morrow-HarperCollins, 2010.
( Read more... )
morbid much?
Jan. 29th, 2011 01:01 pmSo I've figured out why American history always bored me stupid in school. It's because I could care less about the Narrative of Progress which is how American history is generally taught. I'm fascinated by the disasters.
(There's a reason one of my tags is clusterfucks of the old west.)
And something reminded me this morning--I can't even tell you what--of what may be the first of these obsessions with morbid Americana: the terrible death of Floyd Collins. I first learned about Floyd Collins on a Girl Scout trip to Mammoth Cave when I was fourteen or so, and I've had a sort of aversion/compulsion complex about him ever since. Someday, I am going to figure out the story that wants to be written around him and write the damn thing.
But in the meantime--yes, what interests me is the underbelly2 of the American Dream.
---
1On the other side of the Atlantic, I was fascinated by Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary, which is of the same morbid genre.
2Like Shelob's: "Her vast belly was above him with its putrid light, and the stench of it almost smote him down" (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers 428).
(There's a reason one of my tags is clusterfucks of the old west.)
- the Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692
- murders like those of Mary Rogers and Helen Jewett1
And something reminded me this morning--I can't even tell you what--of what may be the first of these obsessions with morbid Americana: the terrible death of Floyd Collins. I first learned about Floyd Collins on a Girl Scout trip to Mammoth Cave when I was fourteen or so, and I've had a sort of aversion/compulsion complex about him ever since. Someday, I am going to figure out the story that wants to be written around him and write the damn thing.
But in the meantime--yes, what interests me is the underbelly2 of the American Dream.
---
1On the other side of the Atlantic, I was fascinated by Angela Bourke's The Burning of Bridget Cleary, which is of the same morbid genre.
2Like Shelob's: "Her vast belly was above him with its putrid light, and the stench of it almost smote him down" (J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers 428).
1. I started wishing for pictures in Son of the Morning Star with Captain Frederick Benteen: "In not a single photograph does he look formidable, not even very military. He appears placid, gentle, benevolent, with feminine lips and prematurely white hair. Only after contemplating that orotund face for a while does one begin to perceive something rather less accommodating. Embedded in that fleshy face are the expressionless agate eyes of a killer. One might compare them to the eyes of John Wesley Hardin or Billy the Kid. Now, this sinister absence of expression could be nothing more than a result of myopia, a condition afflicting him after the Oklahoma winter campaign of 1868-9 when he lent his protective goggles to a regimental surgeon. Still, in Civil War photographs, he has almost that same look" (Connell 30).
2. Custer with scouts in 1874. Bloody Knife, the man kneeling to Custer's right (viewer's left), also died at the Little Bighorn, and Connell spends a couple of pages discussing the fate of two of Custer's staghounds (who may or may not be the dogs in this picture).
3. Via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buymeaclue, this lovely moment between horse and humans.
4. Thank you,dd_b, for pointing me to this article about the discovery of some OK Corral documents in a Cochise County courthouse. ETA: and thank you, swan_tower, for the pointer to the NPR article, which provides a few other bits of information.
5. I made bread this afternoon, which means the house smells yummy.
2. Custer with scouts in 1874. Bloody Knife, the man kneeling to Custer's right (viewer's left), also died at the Little Bighorn, and Connell spends a couple of pages discussing the fate of two of Custer's staghounds (who may or may not be the dogs in this picture).
3. Via
buymeaclue, this lovely moment between horse and humans.4. Thank you,
dd_b, for pointing me to this article about the discovery of some OK Corral documents in a Cochise County courthouse. ETA: and thank you, swan_tower, for the pointer to the NPR article, which provides a few other bits of information.5. I made bread this afternoon, which means the house smells yummy.
UBC: Son of the Morning Star
Apr. 22nd, 2010 12:56 pmConnell, Evan S. Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn. San Francisco, North Point Press, 1984.
Usually when I say a book is interesting, I mean the subject matter is interesting, or the author's insights are interesting. Both those things are true of Son of the Morning Star, but it is also true that the book is interesting, because Connell made some definitely non-standard choices about his narrative.
This is not a linear exploration of the battle; the book starts with the first people to discover the disaster, and then works its way in and out, forward and back, in a set of loops or spirals, reaching back into the biographies of the major and minor players and forward into the survivors' lives and the fates of the bodies of the dead. When I finished it, the first thing I did was turn to the beginning and start reading again, because I know I missed things the first time around.
Not linear, but not disorganized. I never had the feeling that Connell didn't know what he was doing or that he didn't have a reason for his choices, even if I can't see what that reason is.
He tells the story from all sides: the Sioux and Cheyennes, the Seventh Cavalry, the Arikara and Crow scouts. The people who survived, the people who didn't. He talks about Custer's dogs; he talks about the horses--not just Comanche, the legendary "only survivor," but the horses who died, the other horses who survived, the Sioux and Cheyenne ponies. Connell pays attention to everyone. He's excellent at showing the arrogance, greed, self-righteousness, blind bigotry, and gross entitlement issues of most nineteenth-century white Americans (although not all nineteenth-century white Americans--he also searches out the exceptions), but he doesn't idealize the Sioux. The tribes who chose to help the U.S. Army had good reasons of their own, and Connell shows those, too.
Custer is at the center of the book, but Connell is very aware of just how much that center is an absence, of how much of Custer is lost to us and how difficult it is, therefore, to reconstruct his reasoning. He both shows and talks about the difficulties in the eyewitness testimony--the exaggerations and self-aggrandizements from both whites and Native Americans; the damage to the truth done by the aggressive efforts of whites to impose their own narratives and interpretations, until the Native Americans essentially gave in and told the story the whites wanted to hear; the simple actions of time--erosion and conflation--on human memory.
The one thing I wish is that there'd been enough production budget to include pictures. Connell talks about portraits a lot, from Frederick Benteen to Rain in the Face, and I would love for those portraits to be able to accompany the text. To be clear: that's not a flaw in what Connell wrote or something I blame Connell for; it's just something that would be an excellent addition.
Usually when I say a book is interesting, I mean the subject matter is interesting, or the author's insights are interesting. Both those things are true of Son of the Morning Star, but it is also true that the book is interesting, because Connell made some definitely non-standard choices about his narrative.
This is not a linear exploration of the battle; the book starts with the first people to discover the disaster, and then works its way in and out, forward and back, in a set of loops or spirals, reaching back into the biographies of the major and minor players and forward into the survivors' lives and the fates of the bodies of the dead. When I finished it, the first thing I did was turn to the beginning and start reading again, because I know I missed things the first time around.
Not linear, but not disorganized. I never had the feeling that Connell didn't know what he was doing or that he didn't have a reason for his choices, even if I can't see what that reason is.
He tells the story from all sides: the Sioux and Cheyennes, the Seventh Cavalry, the Arikara and Crow scouts. The people who survived, the people who didn't. He talks about Custer's dogs; he talks about the horses--not just Comanche, the legendary "only survivor," but the horses who died, the other horses who survived, the Sioux and Cheyenne ponies. Connell pays attention to everyone. He's excellent at showing the arrogance, greed, self-righteousness, blind bigotry, and gross entitlement issues of most nineteenth-century white Americans (although not all nineteenth-century white Americans--he also searches out the exceptions), but he doesn't idealize the Sioux. The tribes who chose to help the U.S. Army had good reasons of their own, and Connell shows those, too.
Custer is at the center of the book, but Connell is very aware of just how much that center is an absence, of how much of Custer is lost to us and how difficult it is, therefore, to reconstruct his reasoning. He both shows and talks about the difficulties in the eyewitness testimony--the exaggerations and self-aggrandizements from both whites and Native Americans; the damage to the truth done by the aggressive efforts of whites to impose their own narratives and interpretations, until the Native Americans essentially gave in and told the story the whites wanted to hear; the simple actions of time--erosion and conflation--on human memory.
The one thing I wish is that there'd been enough production budget to include pictures. Connell talks about portraits a lot, from Frederick Benteen to Rain in the Face, and I would love for those portraits to be able to accompany the text. To be clear: that's not a flaw in what Connell wrote or something I blame Connell for; it's just something that would be an excellent addition.
6 Degrees of Tombstone
Apr. 16th, 2010 11:14 amI'm reading Evan S. Connell's Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Bighorn (which, incidentally, is making me hate nineteenth-century white Americans--particularly, but not exclusively, the U. S. Army--like a slow burning fuse) and, hey, look! There's Billy Breakenridge!
Breakenridge was Cochise County Sheriff John Behan's deputy in 1881, and he published a book called Helldorado which is notable for being the print source of a lot of the misinformation about Wyatt Earp--and at least some of that misinformation is deliberate. (My post about Allen Barra's Inventing Wyatt Earp mentions Breakenridge's most egregious and outright lie: the insertion of a sentence into an article from the Nugget.) And on November 29, 1864, Breakenridge was present at the Sand Creek Massacre, in which two regiments of Colorado militia led by Col. John Chivington annihilated a Cheyenne village--a Cheyenne village, we should add, which had been promised safety. When junior officers pointed this out to Chivington, he "roared: 'I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians!'" (Connell 176).
Connell's account of the massacre reads to me a lot like atrocities such as My Lai. Chivington's men murdered women and children with obvious sadistic pleasure. They took trophies. Not just scalps, which whites and Indians both collected in the second half of the nineteenth century, but cutting off fingers to get rings, cutting off ears to get earrings. Lieutenant James Connor testified that "'I heard one man say he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition. . . . I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks'" (177). Robert Bent (a son of the white trader William Bent and the Cheyenne woman Owl Woman) testified "'I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them'" (177).
But wait! cried the righteous. There were Caucasian scalps in the village! A surgeon named Caleb Bursdal testified that "he had been treating wounded soldiers in a Cheyenne lodge when a trooper came to the entrance with five or six Caucasian scalps" (177). Bursdal was certain they were Caucasian because of the color of the hair, and he was certain they were fresh because "the skin and flesh attached to the hair appeared to be yet quite moist" (178).
This is where Billy Breakenridge comes in, for he corroborates Bursdal's testimony: "There were a lot of scalps of white men and women, some very fresh, found in the teepees" (178). Connell doesn't go into the question of Breakenridge's reliablity (he may or may not know just how unreliable Helldorado is), but his next paragraph is worth quoting in full:
In plain, Breakenridge here is associated with the same kind of inflationary, self-exculpating misinformation that he will later spread about Tombstone in 1881. He may, or may not, be telling the truth--we have no way to know--but somehow? I doubt it.
Breakenridge was Cochise County Sheriff John Behan's deputy in 1881, and he published a book called Helldorado which is notable for being the print source of a lot of the misinformation about Wyatt Earp--and at least some of that misinformation is deliberate. (My post about Allen Barra's Inventing Wyatt Earp mentions Breakenridge's most egregious and outright lie: the insertion of a sentence into an article from the Nugget.) And on November 29, 1864, Breakenridge was present at the Sand Creek Massacre, in which two regiments of Colorado militia led by Col. John Chivington annihilated a Cheyenne village--a Cheyenne village, we should add, which had been promised safety. When junior officers pointed this out to Chivington, he "roared: 'I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians!'" (Connell 176).
Connell's account of the massacre reads to me a lot like atrocities such as My Lai. Chivington's men murdered women and children with obvious sadistic pleasure. They took trophies. Not just scalps, which whites and Indians both collected in the second half of the nineteenth century, but cutting off fingers to get rings, cutting off ears to get earrings. Lieutenant James Connor testified that "'I heard one man say he had cut out a woman's private parts and had them for exhibition. . . . I also heard of numerous instances in which men had cut out the private parts of females and stretched them over the saddle-bows and wore them over their hats while riding in the ranks'" (177). Robert Bent (a son of the white trader William Bent and the Cheyenne woman Owl Woman) testified "'I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them'" (177).
But wait! cried the righteous. There were Caucasian scalps in the village! A surgeon named Caleb Bursdal testified that "he had been treating wounded soldiers in a Cheyenne lodge when a trooper came to the entrance with five or six Caucasian scalps" (177). Bursdal was certain they were Caucasian because of the color of the hair, and he was certain they were fresh because "the skin and flesh attached to the hair appeared to be yet quite moist" (178).
This is where Billy Breakenridge comes in, for he corroborates Bursdal's testimony: "There were a lot of scalps of white men and women, some very fresh, found in the teepees" (178). Connell doesn't go into the question of Breakenridge's reliablity (he may or may not know just how unreliable Helldorado is), but his next paragraph is worth quoting in full:
Chivington himself talked about a white scalp in one of the lodges, and although it was never displayed as proof of Cheyenne barbarity it reproduced itself until Denver citizens knew beyond doubt that his men had found dozens of auburn and blond trophies. Worse yet, they saw a blanket woven of human hair--hair from the heads of white women. Everybody knew this to be a fact. Still worse, according to an editor of the Rocky Mountain News, William Byers, the troops found a white woman's skin stretched across an Indian saddle.
(178)
In plain, Breakenridge here is associated with the same kind of inflationary, self-exculpating misinformation that he will later spread about Tombstone in 1881. He may, or may not, be telling the truth--we have no way to know--but somehow? I doubt it.
UBC: Inventing Wyatt Earp
Apr. 11th, 2010 08:12 pmBarra, Allen. Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. 1998. Castle Books, 2005.
This is a wildly uneven book. When Barra is on his game, he's very good indeed; when he's off it, like the little girl in the nursery rhyme, he's horrid.
( behind the cut I go into more detail than you probably want )
To end, I want to relay my favorite quote in the book, from an interview Barra had with Val Kilmer about playing Doc Holliday: "Trying to flesh out his character is like trying to put clothes on a ghost" (Barra 286).
This is a wildly uneven book. When Barra is on his game, he's very good indeed; when he's off it, like the little girl in the nursery rhyme, he's horrid.
( behind the cut I go into more detail than you probably want )
To end, I want to relay my favorite quote in the book, from an interview Barra had with Val Kilmer about playing Doc Holliday: "Trying to flesh out his character is like trying to put clothes on a ghost" (Barra 286).
UBC: Wyatt Earp
Apr. 3rd, 2010 01:01 pmTefertiller, Casey. Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997.
First, some criticisms:
Tefertiller is not as good a writer as Roberts; in particular, his paragraph structure and organization are dreadful. And I could do without the occasional sententiousness. He also does not seem to be as good a historian as Roberts. Particularly in discussing Wyatt Earp's life in Kansas (i.e., pre-Tombstone), Tefertiller has a tendency to accept the truthfulness of stories for which there is sketchy evidence at best. It's not, to be clear, the inclusion of those stories I object to; it's Tefertiller's decision, having admitted the sketchiness of the evidence, to proceed as if there was certainty they occurred. It also irritates me that Tefertiller lines up the Earp boys--Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, Warren--but does not even mention the existence of Earp girls until, around the time Wyatt was leaving Arizona in a hurry, Tefertiller records him deeding some of his property to his sister. (And, of course, the myth about Ike Clanton marrying "Jessie Earp.") I assume, because Tefertiller does not tell me that this bit about the property deed is false, that it is true; therefore, either he should have mentioned the existence of sister(s?) previously (Chekhov's gun holds for nonfiction as well as fiction) or he needs to signal clearly that there is no sister and this property deed story is (a.) Wyatt executing some sort of legal shenanigan or (b.) another untrue piece of the legend.
In a nutshell, then, my criticism of Tefertiller is that he does not organize his facts and his fictions as well as he could, and he is sometimes unclear about the difference between them.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things about this biography which I like. Although Tefertiller is partisan to Wyatt (and clearly has no use for Josephine Sarah Marcus, for which I can't say I blame him), this is the natural condition of the biographer1, and Tefertiller is doing his honest best to present a balanced picture. He digs into the disreputable parts of Wyatt's life and attempts (in his rather clumsy prose) to explain the Vendetta without trying to excuse it. He does an excellent job of explaining the background of the infamous gunfight: why the Cow-Boys were a very serious problem (they were coming close to inciting a war with Mexico, that's why), why people on various sides reacted the way they did, why it came to seem necessary to Wyatt Earp that he take the law into his own hands (Tefertiller doesn't have much use for Johnny Behan, either). And although he's bad about letting possible fiction stand for fact in relation to Dodge City and Wichita, he's very good about tracking the misinformation that Tombstone exudes like a skunk exudes stink: who started which lie, when and (if possible, which frequently it isn't) why.
One of the most interesting, and saddest, parts of the book is the end of Wyatt's life, living mostly hand-to-mouth in Los Angeles (according to Tefertiller, Sadie Marcus was a compulsive gambler, hence their poverty), going out for ice cream sodas2 with a friend and the friend's 9-year-old granddaughter, and going up to Hollywood, where he met actors like John Wayne (still at that time Marion Morrison), Tom Mix . . . and Charlie Chaplin. I have to quote director Raoul Walsh's account of the meeting because it makes me itch for a time machine and a video camera. It needs a little set-up: it's 1915, and Wyatt has wandered up to Hollywood with Jack London (yes, that Jack London, whom he knew in Alaska), and they're talking with Welsh (who is digging hard for stories, although "neither wanted to talk about himself") when Chaplin comes over:
There's something there--something about the fact that Wyatt Earp met Charlie Chaplin--that just fills me with wonder and delight.
Although I still don't like Wyatt Earp very much, I like him better than I did before reading this biography. (Tefertiller's thesis is that it wasn't Wyatt telling the self-serving lies that so incensed me when I was reading Doc Holliday, it was Sadie. And each and every one of Wyatt's co-authors and interviewers. Wyatt was trying to tell the truth. I'm a little skeptical, but I'll go along.) He was a man convinced of his own rectitude, which I never find appealing, but Tefertiller shows that he was also a man doing his best, flawed though that best might be. And even if I don't like him, I sympathize with him and I understand why he thought he had to do what he did.
Which shows that this is a good biography.
---
1Except in extraordinary cases such as the Earl of Oxford.
2One of my most favorite details in the book is that in Tombstone, Wyatt never touched hard liquor, but went almost daily for ice cream at a parlor on Fourth Street (101).
First, some criticisms:
Tefertiller is not as good a writer as Roberts; in particular, his paragraph structure and organization are dreadful. And I could do without the occasional sententiousness. He also does not seem to be as good a historian as Roberts. Particularly in discussing Wyatt Earp's life in Kansas (i.e., pre-Tombstone), Tefertiller has a tendency to accept the truthfulness of stories for which there is sketchy evidence at best. It's not, to be clear, the inclusion of those stories I object to; it's Tefertiller's decision, having admitted the sketchiness of the evidence, to proceed as if there was certainty they occurred. It also irritates me that Tefertiller lines up the Earp boys--Newton, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, Warren--but does not even mention the existence of Earp girls until, around the time Wyatt was leaving Arizona in a hurry, Tefertiller records him deeding some of his property to his sister. (And, of course, the myth about Ike Clanton marrying "Jessie Earp.") I assume, because Tefertiller does not tell me that this bit about the property deed is false, that it is true; therefore, either he should have mentioned the existence of sister(s?) previously (Chekhov's gun holds for nonfiction as well as fiction) or he needs to signal clearly that there is no sister and this property deed story is (a.) Wyatt executing some sort of legal shenanigan or (b.) another untrue piece of the legend.
In a nutshell, then, my criticism of Tefertiller is that he does not organize his facts and his fictions as well as he could, and he is sometimes unclear about the difference between them.
On the other hand, there are a lot of things about this biography which I like. Although Tefertiller is partisan to Wyatt (and clearly has no use for Josephine Sarah Marcus, for which I can't say I blame him), this is the natural condition of the biographer1, and Tefertiller is doing his honest best to present a balanced picture. He digs into the disreputable parts of Wyatt's life and attempts (in his rather clumsy prose) to explain the Vendetta without trying to excuse it. He does an excellent job of explaining the background of the infamous gunfight: why the Cow-Boys were a very serious problem (they were coming close to inciting a war with Mexico, that's why), why people on various sides reacted the way they did, why it came to seem necessary to Wyatt Earp that he take the law into his own hands (Tefertiller doesn't have much use for Johnny Behan, either). And although he's bad about letting possible fiction stand for fact in relation to Dodge City and Wichita, he's very good about tracking the misinformation that Tombstone exudes like a skunk exudes stink: who started which lie, when and (if possible, which frequently it isn't) why.
One of the most interesting, and saddest, parts of the book is the end of Wyatt's life, living mostly hand-to-mouth in Los Angeles (according to Tefertiller, Sadie Marcus was a compulsive gambler, hence their poverty), going out for ice cream sodas2 with a friend and the friend's 9-year-old granddaughter, and going up to Hollywood, where he met actors like John Wayne (still at that time Marion Morrison), Tom Mix . . . and Charlie Chaplin. I have to quote director Raoul Walsh's account of the meeting because it makes me itch for a time machine and a video camera. It needs a little set-up: it's 1915, and Wyatt has wandered up to Hollywood with Jack London (yes, that Jack London, whom he knew in Alaska), and they're talking with Welsh (who is digging hard for stories, although "neither wanted to talk about himself") when Chaplin comes over:
When I introduced my guests, he viewed Earp with evident awe. "You're the bloke from Arizona, aren't you? Tamed the baddies, huh?" He looked at London and nodded. "I know you, too. You almost made me go to Alaska and dig for gold." He sat down and related some of his experiences "when I was a snot-nosed brat in Cheapside."
(Tefertiller 318, quoting Raoul Welsh, Each Man In His Time (1974))
There's something there--something about the fact that Wyatt Earp met Charlie Chaplin--that just fills me with wonder and delight.
Although I still don't like Wyatt Earp very much, I like him better than I did before reading this biography. (Tefertiller's thesis is that it wasn't Wyatt telling the self-serving lies that so incensed me when I was reading Doc Holliday, it was Sadie. And each and every one of Wyatt's co-authors and interviewers. Wyatt was trying to tell the truth. I'm a little skeptical, but I'll go along.) He was a man convinced of his own rectitude, which I never find appealing, but Tefertiller shows that he was also a man doing his best, flawed though that best might be. And even if I don't like him, I sympathize with him and I understand why he thought he had to do what he did.
Which shows that this is a good biography.
---
1Except in extraordinary cases such as the Earl of Oxford.
2One of my most favorite details in the book is that in Tombstone, Wyatt never touched hard liquor, but went almost daily for ice cream at a parlor on Fourth Street (101).
UBC: Doc Holliday
Mar. 19th, 2010 02:13 pmRoberts, Gary L. Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006.
This is the biography of a man who left no account of himself in his own words, which means it as much a book about "Doc Holliday" as it is about John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. Possibly slightly more. Given the inevitable constraints of its subject matter, I think it is an excellent book and excellent biography (the two overlap, but are not necessarily the same); Roberts is very careful about distinguishing between facts, fiction, and the stuff in the mushy area in-between. He's also very good about pointing out things we want to be true, such as the legend of the romance between Doc and his cousin Mattie (later Sister Mary Melanie), or the even more unsupported legend that Kate Elder nursed Doc on his deathbed.
I am furious at Mattie's sister Marie, who burned Doc's letters; in "protecting" her sister, she destroyed what seems to have been history's only chance to see John Henry Holliday without the obscuring lens of other peoples' agendas. (Which is not to say the letters wouldn't have been colored by his own agenda, but at least the coloration in that case would be intrinsic.) From Perry Mallon to Bat Masterton to Wyatt Earp to Mary Katharine Cummings (assuming that she was, in fact, Kate Elder, as Roberts does and I find myself inclined to agree), everyone who spoke about Doc at any length had a blatant agenda of his or her own; mostly these agendas are transparent (except for Bat Masterson, about whom I find myself thinking, wtf?) and mostly they are about saving the speaker's reputation at Doc's expense. (Wyatt and Kate, I am looking AT YOU.) Mallon, of course, is entirely self-serving and made of lies, but Roberts shows his part in creating the legend of Doc Holliday--it's kind of scary, actually, to see how, once something has been said, no amount of debunking or disproving can make it go away entirely.
The description that sums Doc up for me is this one, which Roberts attributes to Lee Smith: "He did not have a quarrelsome disposition, but managed to get into more difficulties than almost any man I ever saw" (379). It's hard not to become partisan; Doc Holliday was not a good man, but he seems to have been striving to be the best man he could be under the rotten circumstances he found himself in. This quality makes him show up well against not only the Cow-Boys (especially Ike Clanton), but also against the self-serving revisionism of Wyatt Earp and Kate Elder. Of course, we can't know what Doc would have said if he'd lived longer, but I tend to think that, while it might not have been strictly truthful, it would have been honest.
( gleanings from Roberts' bibliography )
---
*Sadly, the Robert Chambers who ghost-wrote Wyatt Earp's articles for the San Francisco Examiner cannot have been the Robert W. Chambers who wrote The King in Yellow, but I really like the AU in which he was.
This is the biography of a man who left no account of himself in his own words, which means it as much a book about "Doc Holliday" as it is about John Henry Holliday, D.D.S. Possibly slightly more. Given the inevitable constraints of its subject matter, I think it is an excellent book and excellent biography (the two overlap, but are not necessarily the same); Roberts is very careful about distinguishing between facts, fiction, and the stuff in the mushy area in-between. He's also very good about pointing out things we want to be true, such as the legend of the romance between Doc and his cousin Mattie (later Sister Mary Melanie), or the even more unsupported legend that Kate Elder nursed Doc on his deathbed.
I am furious at Mattie's sister Marie, who burned Doc's letters; in "protecting" her sister, she destroyed what seems to have been history's only chance to see John Henry Holliday without the obscuring lens of other peoples' agendas. (Which is not to say the letters wouldn't have been colored by his own agenda, but at least the coloration in that case would be intrinsic.) From Perry Mallon to Bat Masterton to Wyatt Earp to Mary Katharine Cummings (assuming that she was, in fact, Kate Elder, as Roberts does and I find myself inclined to agree), everyone who spoke about Doc at any length had a blatant agenda of his or her own; mostly these agendas are transparent (except for Bat Masterson, about whom I find myself thinking, wtf?) and mostly they are about saving the speaker's reputation at Doc's expense. (Wyatt and Kate, I am looking AT YOU.) Mallon, of course, is entirely self-serving and made of lies, but Roberts shows his part in creating the legend of Doc Holliday--it's kind of scary, actually, to see how, once something has been said, no amount of debunking or disproving can make it go away entirely.
The description that sums Doc up for me is this one, which Roberts attributes to Lee Smith: "He did not have a quarrelsome disposition, but managed to get into more difficulties than almost any man I ever saw" (379). It's hard not to become partisan; Doc Holliday was not a good man, but he seems to have been striving to be the best man he could be under the rotten circumstances he found himself in. This quality makes him show up well against not only the Cow-Boys (especially Ike Clanton), but also against the self-serving revisionism of Wyatt Earp and Kate Elder. Of course, we can't know what Doc would have said if he'd lived longer, but I tend to think that, while it might not have been strictly truthful, it would have been honest.
( gleanings from Roberts' bibliography )
---
*Sadly, the Robert Chambers who ghost-wrote Wyatt Earp's articles for the San Francisco Examiner cannot have been the Robert W. Chambers who wrote The King in Yellow, but I really like the AU in which he was.
UBC: With Custer's Cavalry
Mar. 14th, 2010 09:53 pmFougera, Katherine Gibson. With Custer's Cavalry. 1942. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986.
This book is the memoir of Katherine Garrett Gibson; since it has no critical apparatus, it's impossible to tell how much of what we get is what she herself wrote and how much she was edited and/or expanded by her daughter (Katherine Gibson Fougera). I don't say this because I suspect Fougera of misrepresenting her mother's text, but just to signal that there is no way to tell.
Katherine Garrett Gibson went west to live with her sister, Mollie Garrett MacIntosh, a year or two before Little Big Horn. As Mollie was the wife of one of Custer's lieutenants (also killed at L.B.H.), Katherine's narrative is full of the officers of the Seventh Cavalry; General Custer himself, with his brother Tom, teaches her how to ride and shoot, and her friends are all officers who will die at L.B.H. and their wives. (Her own eventual husband, another of Custer's lieutenants, would have been at L.B.H. except for a premonition which caused her to nag him into rejecting the transfer.)
Katherine Gibson and her narrative are very much products of her time, with all the racism, classism, sexism, and other toxic ideologies that implies; this is not a deep or thoughtful look at Custer's Seventh Cavalry and its fate (she clearly idolizes Elizabeth Custer, and she remains unthinkingly loyal to the closed society she married into, even when her narrative itself suggests points of criticism). But it is keenly observed and full of fascinating details: my favorite is Senora Nash, the Mexican wife of one of the sergeants, the best laundress, cook, and midwife in the regiment--who is revealed upon her death to have been a man. (Katherine Gibson is baffled by this, and offers an elaborate explanation about a Mexican bandit escaping justice and Sergeant Nash's gluttony.) And since apparently I'm researching something to do with Custer, this was an excellent book to have on the plane.
This book is the memoir of Katherine Garrett Gibson; since it has no critical apparatus, it's impossible to tell how much of what we get is what she herself wrote and how much she was edited and/or expanded by her daughter (Katherine Gibson Fougera). I don't say this because I suspect Fougera of misrepresenting her mother's text, but just to signal that there is no way to tell.
Katherine Garrett Gibson went west to live with her sister, Mollie Garrett MacIntosh, a year or two before Little Big Horn. As Mollie was the wife of one of Custer's lieutenants (also killed at L.B.H.), Katherine's narrative is full of the officers of the Seventh Cavalry; General Custer himself, with his brother Tom, teaches her how to ride and shoot, and her friends are all officers who will die at L.B.H. and their wives. (Her own eventual husband, another of Custer's lieutenants, would have been at L.B.H. except for a premonition which caused her to nag him into rejecting the transfer.)
Katherine Gibson and her narrative are very much products of her time, with all the racism, classism, sexism, and other toxic ideologies that implies; this is not a deep or thoughtful look at Custer's Seventh Cavalry and its fate (she clearly idolizes Elizabeth Custer, and she remains unthinkingly loyal to the closed society she married into, even when her narrative itself suggests points of criticism). But it is keenly observed and full of fascinating details: my favorite is Senora Nash, the Mexican wife of one of the sergeants, the best laundress, cook, and midwife in the regiment--who is revealed upon her death to have been a man. (Katherine Gibson is baffled by this, and offers an elaborate explanation about a Mexican bandit escaping justice and Sergeant Nash's gluttony.) And since apparently I'm researching something to do with Custer, this was an excellent book to have on the plane.
Cupcakecon Report
Mar. 14th, 2010 06:05 pmYes, I have been Off The Grid for an entire week. If something happened which you want to be sure I know about, please leave a comment here.
I wrote up Cupcakecon as I went, in a somewhat elliptical fashion. Thusly:
Cupcakecon: Prologue
Arrive Madison airport -- Curse Delta for charging $25 to check a bag. -- Reading With Custer's Cavalry. -- Photograph of Comanche, (allegedly) the only living thing found on the battlefield after Little Big Horn. -- I buy a book of logic puzzles in Minneapolis. -- Tucson after dark. -- Five miles is longer than you think. -- The dithering dance of the juvenile rabbit. -- Having not been eaten by grues, I arrive safely at Endicott West.
Cupcakecon Day 1
Scenic horses. -- I startle a ground squirrel. Twice. -- The implausibility of the Tucson Mountains. -- Carriages at the Tucson airport. -- Arrival of Bear and Leah. -- Food, food, and more food. -- The Horrifying Habanero Incident. -- We encounter a stunningly gorgeous Malamute. -- Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.
Cupcakecon Day 2
We decide it is not a smoke detector, but a sin detector.
Cupcakes! -- Chocolate chipotle OMG. [N.b., for those of you in the Tucson area, this is the Red Velvet Cupcakery, which I cannot recommend highly enough.]
Gates Pass. -- Entish saguaros. -- Sonora Desert Museum. -- Do not feed the coyotes. (Also, do not teach coyotes to operate motor vehicles.) -- Petting a gopher snake. -- Mountain lions. -- Black bear. -- Mexican wolves. -- Can you spot the screech owl in this picture? (Hint.) -- The coati is busy and does not wish to see you. -- Otter. -- Beavers. Plural. -- Bighorn sheep. -- Small creatures sleeping underground. -- Cold hummingbirds. -- RAIN.
Beth's ponies. -- Nefer accepts my adulation. -- Saguaros with rainbow. -- Portrait of the author as a scale referent.
Dinner out.
Concerned Cat Is Concerned.
Cupcakecon Day 3
A white tree with a weeping habit.
Bisbee. -- Sacramento Pit and Lavender Pit. -- Delving too greedily and too deep. -- Quest for lunch. -- Leah and I learn about horchata. -- The Copper Queen Hotel. -- Angel gates and fluffy kitty. -- Stairs and steep places. -- French bulldog.
Tombstone. -- Clydesdales & Percherons. -- The Crystal Palace. -- Astonishing roulette wheel. -- We embrace the kitsch. -- Not Doc Holliday. -- I buy books.* -- Leah buys a parasol. -- Bear buys a wallet. -- Emma Explains The Gunfight. -- The Bird Cage. -- Still not Doc Holliday. -- Also not Josie Marcus. -- Tombstone's gilded Black Mariah. -- Duelling organs. -- Mrs. Fly and her Great Danes. -- Victorian racy photos w. Very Patient Dog under the pool table. -- Prostitutes named Cuckoo and Copperhead. -- Not Josie Marcus' crib. -- STILL not Doc Holliday. -- Oh John Ringo no!
The language of squirrels is entirely made up of profanity.
Portrait of three authors in a hot tub.
Cupcakecon Day 4
It is good to have wings. -- Coyote and javelina tracks.
Colossal Cave. -- A bull for Bull. -- 70 degree cave. -- Nineteenth century vandals. -- The C.C.C. -- Treacherous stairs and bad jokes.
Beth's ponies, part 2. -- Portrait of the editor as a scale referent. -- Beth longes Cai; Cory licks Bear. -- Bear rides Surprise; Cory licks me. -- I ride Surprise; Cory licks Bear. -- Surprise is 16.2 hands. A strapping wench. -- Beth is The One True Biped; I am a mere encumbrance. -- We hinder in a helping way. -- Volunteer Dog gets biscuits.
On the way home, my sunblock tries to kill us both, but fails.
Ravening Wolverine Is Ravening. -- Alarmed Cat Is Alarmed.
Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.
Bear and Mole were sisters.
Cupcakecon Day 5
Croissants! om nom nom. -- Nancy Drew lit crit. -- The awesomeness that is ZZ Top.
The Chevy Diva. -- We achieve an Amanda.
New Mexican cuisine FTW. -- Inferior cupcakes. -- We go in search of a climbing gym. -- A brief and unintentional tour of the old barrio. -- South Toule Street is well hidden, but we penetrate its mysteries. -- At higher elevations, it is harder to go up walls without DYING. -- We provide climber groupies for a woman we have never met.
I resurrect old skills and enact a lady's maid.
Quiet evening in for Mole.
Cupcakecon Day 6
The Tucson Festival of Books. -- Signing. -- Airedale with saddlebags. -- Sun. -- Corgi with saddlebags. -- Food. -- Panel. -- Signing. -- Signing. 4 p.m. In a tent. Facing west. -- The yellow face it burns us.
And yet, I am not sunburned. Neutrogena 100+ sunblock FTW.
Guatemalan cuisine also FTW.
Portrait of three authors in a hot tub and two authors in deck chairs. -- Short stories these days: "They lie there limply, twitching a little." "With their eyes shut, audibly chanting England, England, England."
Cupcakecon Day 7
Awake at 4:45 in the morning. -- Almost but not quite worth it for the stars. -- We drive to the airport. -- They call it a blind spot for a REASON, dipshit. -- The airplane does a good imitation of a sardine tin. -- Reading about Doc Holliday, as I do not want to start shouting at Wyatt Earp in public. -- Amazingly good babies. -- HOME.
---
*Gary L. Roberts, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend; Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend; Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. One begins to sense a theme.
I wrote up Cupcakecon as I went, in a somewhat elliptical fashion. Thusly:
Cupcakecon: Prologue
Arrive Madison airport -- Curse Delta for charging $25 to check a bag. -- Reading With Custer's Cavalry. -- Photograph of Comanche, (allegedly) the only living thing found on the battlefield after Little Big Horn. -- I buy a book of logic puzzles in Minneapolis. -- Tucson after dark. -- Five miles is longer than you think. -- The dithering dance of the juvenile rabbit. -- Having not been eaten by grues, I arrive safely at Endicott West.
Cupcakecon Day 1
Scenic horses. -- I startle a ground squirrel. Twice. -- The implausibility of the Tucson Mountains. -- Carriages at the Tucson airport. -- Arrival of Bear and Leah. -- Food, food, and more food. -- The Horrifying Habanero Incident. -- We encounter a stunningly gorgeous Malamute. -- Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.
Cupcakecon Day 2
We decide it is not a smoke detector, but a sin detector.
Cupcakes! -- Chocolate chipotle OMG. [N.b., for those of you in the Tucson area, this is the Red Velvet Cupcakery, which I cannot recommend highly enough.]
Gates Pass. -- Entish saguaros. -- Sonora Desert Museum. -- Do not feed the coyotes. (Also, do not teach coyotes to operate motor vehicles.) -- Petting a gopher snake. -- Mountain lions. -- Black bear. -- Mexican wolves. -- Can you spot the screech owl in this picture? (Hint.) -- The coati is busy and does not wish to see you. -- Otter. -- Beavers. Plural. -- Bighorn sheep. -- Small creatures sleeping underground. -- Cold hummingbirds. -- RAIN.
Beth's ponies. -- Nefer accepts my adulation. -- Saguaros with rainbow. -- Portrait of the author as a scale referent.
Dinner out.
Concerned Cat Is Concerned.
Cupcakecon Day 3
A white tree with a weeping habit.
Bisbee. -- Sacramento Pit and Lavender Pit. -- Delving too greedily and too deep. -- Quest for lunch. -- Leah and I learn about horchata. -- The Copper Queen Hotel. -- Angel gates and fluffy kitty. -- Stairs and steep places. -- French bulldog.
Tombstone. -- Clydesdales & Percherons. -- The Crystal Palace. -- Astonishing roulette wheel. -- We embrace the kitsch. -- Not Doc Holliday. -- I buy books.* -- Leah buys a parasol. -- Bear buys a wallet. -- Emma Explains The Gunfight. -- The Bird Cage. -- Still not Doc Holliday. -- Also not Josie Marcus. -- Tombstone's gilded Black Mariah. -- Duelling organs. -- Mrs. Fly and her Great Danes. -- Victorian racy photos w. Very Patient Dog under the pool table. -- Prostitutes named Cuckoo and Copperhead. -- Not Josie Marcus' crib. -- STILL not Doc Holliday. -- Oh John Ringo no!
The language of squirrels is entirely made up of profanity.
Portrait of three authors in a hot tub.
Cupcakecon Day 4
It is good to have wings. -- Coyote and javelina tracks.
Colossal Cave. -- A bull for Bull. -- 70 degree cave. -- Nineteenth century vandals. -- The C.C.C. -- Treacherous stairs and bad jokes.
Beth's ponies, part 2. -- Portrait of the editor as a scale referent. -- Beth longes Cai; Cory licks Bear. -- Bear rides Surprise; Cory licks me. -- I ride Surprise; Cory licks Bear. -- Surprise is 16.2 hands. A strapping wench. -- Beth is The One True Biped; I am a mere encumbrance. -- We hinder in a helping way. -- Volunteer Dog gets biscuits.
On the way home, my sunblock tries to kill us both, but fails.
Ravening Wolverine Is Ravening. -- Alarmed Cat Is Alarmed.
Portrait of four authors in a hot tub.
Bear and Mole were sisters.
Cupcakecon Day 5
Croissants! om nom nom. -- Nancy Drew lit crit. -- The awesomeness that is ZZ Top.
The Chevy Diva. -- We achieve an Amanda.
New Mexican cuisine FTW. -- Inferior cupcakes. -- We go in search of a climbing gym. -- A brief and unintentional tour of the old barrio. -- South Toule Street is well hidden, but we penetrate its mysteries. -- At higher elevations, it is harder to go up walls without DYING. -- We provide climber groupies for a woman we have never met.
I resurrect old skills and enact a lady's maid.
Quiet evening in for Mole.
Cupcakecon Day 6
The Tucson Festival of Books. -- Signing. -- Airedale with saddlebags. -- Sun. -- Corgi with saddlebags. -- Food. -- Panel. -- Signing. -- Signing. 4 p.m. In a tent. Facing west. -- The yellow face it burns us.
And yet, I am not sunburned. Neutrogena 100+ sunblock FTW.
Guatemalan cuisine also FTW.
Portrait of three authors in a hot tub and two authors in deck chairs. -- Short stories these days: "They lie there limply, twitching a little." "With their eyes shut, audibly chanting England, England, England."
Cupcakecon Day 7
Awake at 4:45 in the morning. -- Almost but not quite worth it for the stars. -- We drive to the airport. -- They call it a blind spot for a REASON, dipshit. -- The airplane does a good imitation of a sardine tin. -- Reading about Doc Holliday, as I do not want to start shouting at Wyatt Earp in public. -- Amazingly good babies. -- HOME.
---
*Gary L. Roberts, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend; Casey Tefertiller, Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend; Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends. One begins to sense a theme.
I finished listening to Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works before we went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving--which was a saga in and of itself: we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner 12 adults, 4 children (ages 12, 10, 10, and 4), 1 three-month-old Standard Poodle, and (on the deck) 2 raccoons--and I have some observations.
1. This is not for you if you are a sf fan of long, or even recent standing. It is geared toward people who don't know anything about science fiction and maybe aren't sure they're interested. Especially in the last lectures, where he's actually talking about twentieth-century science fiction, and a person might possibly have been hoping for something chewy and thought provoking, what he gives are book reports. He explains the plots.
2. It is also not for you if you love twentieth century Anglophone fantasy (using the term here to encompass speculative fiction OTHER than science fiction), because he ignores fantasy and horror almost entirely, except for children's literature. When talking about the literature of the fantastic in the twentieth century, he eschews the Anglophone tradition and talks about Robbe-Grillet instead. The attempt to plaster some academic credibility onto science fiction is transparent, especially if--as I have--you've seen the move umpteen bazillion times before. This also applies to the roping in of Woolf (see below).
3. Of the twenty-four lectures, three focus on women--Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Ursula K. Le Guin--and he mentions maybe one or two other women writers in passing (Charlotte Perkins Gilman gets a nod, for instance). The only non-white writer mentioned is Samuel R. Delany.
4. Professor Rabkin tends to be cavalier about details. Wherein, as we all know, the devil resides.
5. I think that many of his moreinsane contentious ideas about science fiction can be explained by his wholehearted and uncritical admiration for Heinlein and vice versa. The others can be explained by his attempts to graft some respectability onto the genre by claiming it for post-modernism. In his hands, science fiction becomes the extension of the canon of Great Dead White Males (I think Delany and Gibson are the only authors he talks about who are still alive). His analyses don't mention race hardly at all, but they do talk about sex, and especially about masculinity, and I can't help hearing a coded message to other believers in the ineluctability of male superiority: Psst! Over here! You can still talk like that over here! Which isn't true, but his version of science fiction makes it sound like it is.
De Voto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. 1942. Sentry Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, n.d.
This is a tremendously ambitious and entertaining book. De Voto's project is to examine, explore, and explain what happened to America in A.D. 1846, and he does an excellent job of it, from the politicians in Washington, to the army in Mexico, the Mormons fleeing Missouri, and of course the Donner Party descending to cannibalism on the verge of California. He uses lots and lots of primary sources, has a magnificently entertaining and snarky prose style (personal tomrissa: he has no use for Bronson Alcott and does not hesitate to say so), and not only explained mid-nineteenth century American politics so that I could understand it, but convinced me to find it interesting as well. No small feat, I assure you.
The flaw in this book--and it's a big one--is its treatment of Indians. De Voto (not surprisingly for his era) persistently Others the Sioux and Cheyenne and other Plains Indians, simultaneously demonizing and infantilizing them. I object to this, of course, on the grounds that it's racist, but also because, in terms of De Voto's own project, it's a catastrophic failure. He's so carefully concerned to pay attention to what people's motives were, both the politicians and the pioneers, the Mormons and Zachary Taylor and everyone in between, but with the Indians, he doesn't even try. He essentially says, "No one knows why Indians do anything, not even the Indians themselves," and thus there's a great gaping hypocritical hole in the middle of his beautiful, elaborate, interdependent structure of motivations and causes and pure human cussedness, and it makes me very sad.
1. This is not for you if you are a sf fan of long, or even recent standing. It is geared toward people who don't know anything about science fiction and maybe aren't sure they're interested. Especially in the last lectures, where he's actually talking about twentieth-century science fiction, and a person might possibly have been hoping for something chewy and thought provoking, what he gives are book reports. He explains the plots.
2. It is also not for you if you love twentieth century Anglophone fantasy (using the term here to encompass speculative fiction OTHER than science fiction), because he ignores fantasy and horror almost entirely, except for children's literature. When talking about the literature of the fantastic in the twentieth century, he eschews the Anglophone tradition and talks about Robbe-Grillet instead. The attempt to plaster some academic credibility onto science fiction is transparent, especially if--as I have--you've seen the move umpteen bazillion times before. This also applies to the roping in of Woolf (see below).
3. Of the twenty-four lectures, three focus on women--Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Ursula K. Le Guin--and he mentions maybe one or two other women writers in passing (Charlotte Perkins Gilman gets a nod, for instance). The only non-white writer mentioned is Samuel R. Delany.
4. Professor Rabkin tends to be cavalier about details. Wherein, as we all know, the devil resides.
5. I think that many of his more
De Voto, Bernard. The Year of Decision: 1846. 1942. Sentry Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, n.d.
This is a tremendously ambitious and entertaining book. De Voto's project is to examine, explore, and explain what happened to America in A.D. 1846, and he does an excellent job of it, from the politicians in Washington, to the army in Mexico, the Mormons fleeing Missouri, and of course the Donner Party descending to cannibalism on the verge of California. He uses lots and lots of primary sources, has a magnificently entertaining and snarky prose style (personal to
mrissa: he has no use for Bronson Alcott and does not hesitate to say so), and not only explained mid-nineteenth century American politics so that I could understand it, but convinced me to find it interesting as well. No small feat, I assure you.The flaw in this book--and it's a big one--is its treatment of Indians. De Voto (not surprisingly for his era) persistently Others the Sioux and Cheyenne and other Plains Indians, simultaneously demonizing and infantilizing them. I object to this, of course, on the grounds that it's racist, but also because, in terms of De Voto's own project, it's a catastrophic failure. He's so carefully concerned to pay attention to what people's motives were, both the politicians and the pioneers, the Mormons and Zachary Taylor and everyone in between, but with the Indians, he doesn't even try. He essentially says, "No one knows why Indians do anything, not even the Indians themselves," and thus there's a great gaping hypocritical hole in the middle of his beautiful, elaborate, interdependent structure of motivations and causes and pure human cussedness, and it makes me very sad.
