Sarah Monette's Blog, page 10

the woes of the small domestic predator

UNDERFOOT CAT: [on the bathroom sink] All right, where is it?
ME: [from the other side of the bathroom] It's not over there.
U.C.: Where the hell did it go?
ME: It's over here.
U.C.: Oh don't be ridiculous. How could it have gotten over there? It was right here.
ME: It's a bug. It has wings.
U.C.: [comes over to check] Wings?
ME: Which means you're not going to be able to catch it from the floor, either.
U.C.: [thoroughly put out] Wings is cheating.
(BUG: [from somewhere above our heads] Ha ha!)

UBC: Walker, Turley, Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Massacre at Mountain Meadows by Ronald W. Walker

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I was, I admit, a little skeptical about this book, being as it is "the most professional, transparent account of a controversial event in Mormon history produced under church auspices" (from the Journal of American History review, quoted on the back cover). From other reading, notably Salamander: The Story of the Mormon Forgery Murders with a New Afterword, I am aware that the Mormon church has not always put its best foot forward in the enterprise of historiography. That would be why I made sure I found and read The Mountain Meadows Massacre first, knowing that Juanita Brooks set the bar.

I was pleasantly surprised. Walker, Turley, and Leonard live up to the JAH review; their account of the massacre is both professional and transparent. They make the story as clear as it is ever likely to be; they make careful delineations about who shoulders what part of the blame for the way the events at Mountain Meadows unfolded (I have a tag on my blog for "clusterfucks of the old west," and believe me, this qualifies); they (a) remember that Native Americans are not a homogeneous population and that their society is not monolithic, (b) incorporate the perspective of the Paiutes into their narrative from what evidence they have, and (c) include among their appendices (the roster of emigrants known to have been killed and known to have survived; the value of the emigrants' property, the roster of Mormons suspected or proved to have taken part in the massacre) a list of Native Americans known to have participated in the massacre and a list of Native Americans accused of participating who can be proved to have been somewhere else. This is responsible historiography, and I appreciate it.

They also pull in modern research on how atrocities happen and really do an excellent job of showing the steps on the road to Hell: why relations between Mormon settlers and non-Mormon emigrants were so tense; the spread of rumor and gossip (I even buy their theory that the story of the emigrants poisoning dead cattle to kill Indians and Mormons is based in an anthrax outbreak); the terrible snowballing effect of one bad decision after another, until the Mormon leaders Dame and Haight had convinced themselves that the only option left to them was to massacre the Fancher wagon train.

I also appreciate the fact that Walker, Turley, and Leonard track carefully, and incorporate the testimony of, the children who survived because they were judged too young to talk. I've talked other places about children and history, and although that's not really something Walker, Turley, and Leonard are pursuing, the fact is that they treat respectfully the testimony from people who were seven or younger at the time of the massacre. One of the children, who was not quite three at the time of the massacre, nevertheless remembered distinctly and vividly her father being killed while he held her.

The massacre at Mountain Meadows is dreadful both in and of itself and in the way that it demonstrates how horribly easy it is to paint yourself into a corner, how difficult it is for human beings to stand firm against a group decision, even if they think the decision is wrong, and the awful awful things that happen because someone decides it's "too late" to do something better.



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How It Works

ME: This is not a good time.
CATZILLA: [blankly] what are you talking about? every time is a good time for kitty
ME: Really. Not a good time.
CATZILLA: but kitty is adorable
ME: Kitty is in the way.
CATZILLA: kitty is adorable
ME: Kitty is standing on what I'm trying to type.
CATZILLA: kitty is adorable
ME: Did I mention this is not a good time?
CATZILLA: KITTY IS ADORABLE [sits down. pointedly.]
ME: ::sigh:: [pets kitty] . . . Kitty is adorable.

UBC: Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre

The Mountain Meadows Massacre by Juanita Brooks

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Juanita Brooks was a very brave person.

Writing less than a hundred years after the massacre and--as she states clearly--being a devout and loyal Mormon, she had the courage to (a) ask questions, (b) find answers, and (c) publish what she found, despite the fact that her findings were not favorable to the Mormon Church or many of its important early members, including Brigham Young. The book is fascinating as, in-and-of-itself, a historical artifact and as a work of historiography, talking about how history is made.

It is not a perfect book. I don't find Brooks a particularly compelling writer, stylistically, and she has the problem endemic to historians of her generation, of assuming that the motivations of Native Americans are irrecoverable and incomprehensible (and, yes, she does at one point compare the Paiutes to children). And hers is a first pass at the historiographical archaeology of the massacre at Mountain Meadows; historians coming after her, who had her work to build on, were able to dig deeper and extract more delicate shades of nuance. But she proves that the Mountain Meadows Massacre was the brainchild of the Mormons and that Mormon men participated, and held positions of leadership, in the massacre; and she proves that John D. Lee got thrown under the bus by his religious brethren. He was certainly guilty, but if he was guilty, so were a host of other men, all of whom walked away scot free while Lee was executed. The massacre exhibits one of the lows that human nature can sink to; the aftermath demonstrates another.



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UBC: Pelonero, Kitty Genovese

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



It is a cruel irony that it is so much easier to explain why a book is bad than why a book is good. Because this book is excellent and I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to explain why.

Partly, it's that Pelonero has a clear, vivid writing style; partly it's her effort to practice compassion towards everyone involved, even that baffling, prowling monster, Winston Moseley; partly it's that she has done the research and dug as deeply as she can dig, and she shows the careful process of assessing her sources, trying to figure out for each discrepancy who was wrong and why (and she admits that with some discrepancies it can't be done). Partly it's the vehemence with which she defends the truth against the revisionist histories that have started cropping up. I agree with her that I understand why people want to believe that what really happened wasn't as bad as the reporters made it out to be, but it is intensely frustrating, just as it is in any case where revisionist denier-ism crops up, to watch the rapacious ease with which the lie overtakes and in some cases drowns out the truth, how easy it is for people not to assess their sources, but to assume that because it's in print (or, even worse, because it's on the internet) it must be true. Plus the greedy pleasure we are all prone to when offered the idea that "they" have been lying to us but "we" know better.

Just because someone is telling you what you want to believe, does not make what they say the truth.

The death of Kitty Genovese is a true nightmare and a nightmare of truth. We need to remember her because we need to remember what her death tells us, in plain, indelible, capital letters, about human nature. Thirty-eight witnesses saw and did nothing, not because they were monsters, but because they were human beings.



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UBC: Smith, The Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang

Last Hurrah of the James-Younger Gang by Robert B. Smith

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



I picked this up at a library book sale for $2, having had enough experience with books about American outlaws to know not to expect much. But it was a delight to read, well-written and carefully researched, and interested in exactly the same thing I'm interested in: how can we assess and sift the primary sources on an event like the Northfield bank robbery and subsequent manhunt and how much of the truth can we recover?

Smith has no patience for Jesse James (neither the legend nor the man) and not the slightest desire to romanticize bank robbers; I appreciated his dry, down-to-earth tone, particularly as a corrective to the self-romanticization of (especially) Cole Younger. He errs slightly in the other direction, but the citizens of Northfield were heroic: Heywood and Bunker and Wilcox inside the bank, all of whom refused to tell the robbers that that closed safe door with its fancy combination time lock didn't mean a thing because the dial hadn't been spun to lock it; Manning and Wheeler and the other men outside the bank who armed themselves and shot back. And Smith is over-emphatic because he is so insistent that we recognize the James brothers and the Younger brothers for what they were--not Robin Hood, not Confederate heroes unjustly driven to bank robbery by the government and the carpetbaggers, but parasites, men who chose to survive by stealing from the very people who looked on them as heroes (being pre-FDIC, the money that the Jameses and the Youngers stole was the money of the depositors, not the money of the (conveniently reified) Bank).

(There's a parallel here with people who have I STAND WITH SCOTT WALKER bumper stickers, but I should probably put it down and back away slowly.)

Smith does an excellent job of assessing the primary sources against each other, surviving bank employees and citizens against surviving bank robbers: Clelland Miller and Charlie Pitts and Bill Chadwell not being able to speak for themselves--and, although that's pure happenstance, it's a pity, because all we have left are the Younger brothers and the James brothers with no chance of a dissenting voice--Joseph Lee Heywood and Nicolaus Gustafson not being able to solve the mystery of which of the outlaws murdered them.

Smith's narrative is engaging and easy to follow and does an excellent job of explaining why an experienced and successful gang of bank robbers ran so grievously aground in Northfield, Minnesota.



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UBC: Farrell, Swift Justice

Swift Justice: Murder & Vengeance In A California Town by Harry Farrell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Swift Justice is the dissection of a double-headed atrocity: the kidnapping and horrific murder of Brooke Hart, and the equally horrific lynching of his murderers by the citizens of San Jose. It's compelling, cleanly-written, and even-handed. Farrell offers as many perspectives as he can and is clearly doing his best not to pass judgment on the choices and ambiguous motivations that allowed the lynching to happen.

There isn't really much doubt that Jack Holmes and Harold Thurmond murdered Brooke Hart. The discrepancies in their stories are the sort of discrepancies that are bound to surface (each man insisted the other was the one who actually had the (missing) gun), and Jack Holmes' insistent claims that he was innocent and that his confession was tortured out of him are exactly the sort of thing a guy like Jack Holmes would say, especially to his father and (semi-estranged) wife. I'm not buying. And given the picture Farrell paints, I don't think Harold Thurmond was capable of the kind of sustained lying that would have been necessary to incriminate an innocent Holmes.

With all that said, and given that what Holmes and Thurmond did was unforgivable (kidnapping for ransom where the victim is dead before the ransom demands have even been made is peculiarly horrible, and the circumstances of Brooke Hart's death--the callous, deliberate brutality; the fact that it's impossible to tell whether the pistol whipping, the fall from the San Mateo Bridge into San Francisco Bay, or drowning was the actual cause of death; the horrible fact that Brooke Hart lived long enough to call for help but not long enough to be found and rescued--make it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for Holmes and Thurmond), the lynching is unforgivable in its own right. Farrell's description of the death of Jack Holmes chilled me to the bone.

As Farrell points out, Thurmond and Holmes are unusual for victims of lynching in that they were white men. And--if proof were needed that lynching has nothing to do with justice--there was barely a whisper of a wisp of a question about what was going to happen to them if due process of law was served. These weren't men who had been pronounced innocent against a community-wide belief in their guilt. They hadn't been pronounced anything. They hadn't even been arraigned. And Farrell makes it very clear that there were back up plans on all sides to make sure that Thurmond and Holmes did not wiggle off the hooks the law had in them. The lynching came from a completely different set of motivations, ones which Farrell points to but never quite discusses when he talks about California history and the never quite articulated idea of "frontier justice." The people of San Jose--not a majority, but certainly a diverse cross-section from university students to pillars of the business community to roughnecks and petty criminals--were denying the right of the law to deal with Thurmond and Holmes. And the conspiracy of silence--a conspiracy that was so strong fifty years later that there were only four men Farrell could name as being part of the lynch mob: two teenagers who were stupid enough to brag about it, one adrenaline-junkie ("a man irresistibly drawn to any scene of violence, disorder, bloodshed, or fire--an affinity that would later make him one of San Jose's most visible news photographers" (220)) who simply admitted it, and Jackie


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Reminder: Con or Bust

The Con or Bust auction ends tomorrow at 4 p.m. EDT. The items I am offering are:

A Companion to Wolves, The Tempering of Men, and An Apprentice to Elves (which I am, semi-facetiously, calling the Iskryne edda), by Elizabeth Bear and me, in hardback, signed by me.
The Goblin Emperor, in paperback, signed by me.
The Bone Key, trade paperback, 2nd edition, signed by me.

There are hundreds of other items, each more fabulous than the last. Browse quickly!

UBC: Dean King, The Feud

The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys, The True Story by Dean King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is a well-written, entertaining and (relatively) easy to follow history of the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. (I say "relatively" only because the material itself is so confusing that no account can possibly be an easy read.) King has assembled an impressive array of primary sources and it's only toward the very end, after the execution of Ellison "Cotton Top" Mounts, that the book slips and starts to read like a collection of anecdotes instead of a history---which is to say that King stops assessing his sources and merely relays them.

King does a good job of showing the links between the fortunes of the two families and the late nineteenth-century despoliation of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky: timber and coal and corruption (holy buckets the corruption) run like leitmotifs through the opera-worthy goings-on: betrayals and murders and star-crossed lovers and shoot-outs and biased trials and one execution. And under it all, like the beat of a big hollow-voiced drum, the aftermath of the Civil War keeps unspooling.

For the most part, Jacobean revenge tragedy (my academic specialty) has only the most fleeting of acquaintances with verisimilitude, but in this one way, life and art are indistinguishable: revenge may feel like a solution in the short term, but in truth it does nothing except compound destruction with destruction. No one wins. No one triumphs. There is no kind of satisfaction in the three-on-one murder of Ellison Hatfield or in the "executions" of his murderers (and don't forget the innocent Bud McCoy, murdered in mistake for his brother Bill). Only by the cockeyed internal logic of the feud does the cold blooded murder of Alifair McCoy make any kind of sense, but the judicial execution of her murderer, Cotton Top Mounts isn't a fair answer, either. The only people who "win" are the ones who survive long enough to outlive the dying-snake paroxysms of their family enmity, and even then, there was no survivor who had not lost a sibling, a parent, a child, or a spouse (or any combination of the above) to an absolutely pointless exchange of violence. And that's not winning, either.



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UBC: McLaughlin, The Postcard Killer

The Postcard Killer: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey by Vance McLaughlin

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



McLaughlin has two problems:
(1) He has no idea of how to organize his facts to make a coherent and followable narrative. (Yes, o text editor, I know that "followable" isn't a real word. Hush.)
(2) He tries to present Hickey as a serial killer a la Jack the Ripper or Ted Bundy, and his evidence, while it doesn't disprove the idea, doesn't support it, either. He has a man who clearly murdered three people and who may have murdered god knows how many others. The police of Buffalo, Lackawanna, Boston, Cleveland, Whiting and pretty much every point in between had lists of unsolved murders and disappearances they wanted to question J. Frank Hickey about. But he didn't confess, and the only thing they actually had to go on was that he was the kind of person who would have done it, not any real evidence that tied him to any of the crimes.

So. J. Frank Hickey was a horrible little man who raped and murdered at least two children and then blamed it all on the demon rum. Oh and then started sending taunting postcards to the parents of his final victim, leading to the discovery of the child's body (concealed, like Francis Saville Kent, in the vault of an outhouse) and ultimately to the discovery of Hickey himself. The evidence of his life indicates that he was both a sociopath and an alcoholic. He committed his first murder in 1883, when he was eighteen (unlike the others, this one had an adult victim and was not sexually motivated). He spent his adult life drifting from job to job (he learned very quickly that it was much better to quit before his erratic behavior got him fired) and preying haphazardly on boys. His second confessed murder was in 1902 and the third in 1911. I absolutely 100% agree that it seems likely Hickey committed other murders that could never be pinned on him, but discussing him as if we know for a fact things we can only speculate about makes me suspicious and untrusting, like a mule faced with a tarpaulin.

Hickey was not executed. The jury could not agree on whether he was sane or insane in the legal sense, and the judge, reprimanding them like a pack of schoolboys who'd broken a window pane and wouldn't 'fess up, told them pretty much flat out that he wouldn't dismiss them unless they reached a verdict. McLaughlin seems to feel that Judge Brown didn't mean it that way, but I read what the man actually said and I agreed with the jury: I do not feel justified in discharging you. It seems to me if you could consider with rational and common sense the logical phases, stripped of their undue excitement and passion, or anything preventing the application of the ordinary rules of common sense, that you ought to be able to agree. [...] It is too distressing a thing to send out to the world that a jury of Erie County could not agree in a case of this kind, and I am not going to send you out (McLaughlin 165). What recourse did the poor jury have? They battled grimly on, sane vs. insane, until someone suggested a compromise on second-degree murder. None of them believed in it, but they were all beaten down to the point of accepting it as a compromise.

And then--how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless judge--the judge reprimanded them for that, saying: Ordinarily it is quite the uniform practice to extend the thanks of the court to the jury for their care and consideration in reaching a conclusion. [...]The public and the court do not feel satisfied with this result. For those of you who have earnestly endeavored to provide a different result, the court extends the most appreciative and sincere thanks for your efforts.
Hickey spent the last nine years of his life in prison--which at least meant that he could not find any more boys to prey upon.

McLaughlin's narrative is hard to follow and surfacey. He wants to analyze Hickey, throwing around modern psychiatric and criminal profiling terminololgy, but he doesn't, for instance, spend any time talking about the more distressing contents of the postcards Hickey sent George Joseph, thereby bowdlerizing his own research before anyone else has a chance to complain. This book should have been fascinating, but was only disappointing.



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