Martha’s Comments (group member since Jun 09, 2009)

Martha’s comments from the Q&A with Dave Cullen group.

Me too and now I have to get busy and update my reading list! This motivates me.

Dave,

That is super. I think you really showed us all and Goodreads what an author/book discussion can be. It was a real pleasure to be able to converse with you and it expanded the experience of the book and the event for me. All best with your writing career.
Martha Burns

Hi. I'm Martha's friend April and I'm in charge of a New Jersey National Reading Group Month event. She suggested that you might want to participate in this all day event. It's for librarians who run reading groups. Not sure where you are located but if its close to NJI can give you more details if you're interested. She raves about the book although I haven't yet read it it's on my list of to reads. My email is bookdirector@yahoo.com. Thanks for your consideration-April Judge

Dave & Goodreaders,

A few years ago I used a book by Lionel Dahmer in my thesis - he was the father of Jeffrey Dahmer. I used this quote in particular:
"As a scientist, I further wonder if this potential for great evil also resides deep in the blood that some of us fathers and mother pass on to our children at birth. If we are fortunate we pass our gifts, not only spiritual, intellectual, and physical gifts, but our gift for love and sympathy, our gift for enduring misfortune, for sustaining life, and for honoring it. But some of us are doomed to pass on a curse instead."

Dahmer, Lionel. A Father’s Story. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994.

I was actually looking not at anything scientific at all but rather at the Imagery of Passing in Literature. His book was stunning and I saw it as literature. It was an attempt to make amends in some small way. Dave, you may have already found your way to that book but if not I think you would find it fascinating.

That is so interesting that you worked with the placement of the "psychopath" chapter and I had forgotten the letter Eric wrote to the owner of that car they broke into. To be used - to be made a fool of- by such a cold person would be something that other victims are probably never going to get over. I had not thought of that before.

Thanks again for this dialogue.

Martha

Dave wrote: "I will keep answering, but I also have some questions I hope you'll help me by answering.

It's important for me to know how people are experiencing the book (and how they might respond on my futu..."

Hi Dave,

I have been wanting to respond to your 3 questions- and wish I had my copy of the book handy for a more precise response. As to my expectations- I was looking not for the Where, When, How or Who but the WHY. I had no idea if I would get that but I think something I read on the publishers website must have caught my attention. I did not know what to expect. But the experience of reading the book was - well it was as if I had done the research and made the "discoveries" as to why myself....

The characters who made the biggest impression on me were first the two boys. I was drawn to the mothers though.

I was not all that interested in some of the back stories of the students who were shot but that is not because they were not interesting people (and of course I am heartsick for them) but rather because I was interested only in the why. Those who were shot - as you so expertly convinced me - had nothing to do with the why. But I think you were right to include all these stories because in some ways this book is also a lament for the dead and injured.

But what I admire most in this book is that by the time you began to discuss the mental disorder - you had already described a psychopath- I already saw Eric as a predator. I had read an article last fall on psychopaths - and found it fascinating. I then read Snakes in Suits and Without Conscience and so when I began reading this book I recognized Eric as a psychopath and I grieved over what I thought I was recognizing. I wanted to warn Dylan that he was being conscripted. And what I think you did so well, Dave, is that you did not first label Eric as someone with any sort of personality disorder but rather you displayed his character and his behavior.

I guess what I still ask is why more people did not recognize Eric's ruthlessness. One person I wanted to know more about was Eric's father. I keep wondering if he understood that his son lacked empathy. As a parent I have empathy for all the parents including Eric's parents.

I would think that if Eric's parents were able to read and CONSIDER this book and then enter into a dialogue with experts who are studying psychopaths that they would have a chance to give something back to those who lost so much. That could be just one more outcome of this important piece of literature.
Martha

Dear Kittyhawk all Goodreaders and Dave - of course,

I heard the same thing from a dear friend that she simply could not read this book and it was because she cannot read anything that is about "children being hurt." That is a fair comment.

With that in mind the way I have approached other friends who I think would ultimately be thankful that they had read this book, is to simply begin to discuss it. In my opinion readers in Reading Groups should be discouraged from ever saying they loved or hated a book. It really does not matter. The questions I open with in a group are: "What did this book leave with you? What did it give you to weigh and consider? What did you admire about the writing? What did not work for you?"

Columbine leaves us so much to lament- so much to consider and even many things to celebrate. Even for my friend who cannot read about children being hurt - I might be inclined to say to her that still those children WERE hurt - it happened and that in reading such a book we might all better understand this human race of ours. Also I think that coming to an "understanding" of any big event in our lives - even in our public lives - is a way of coming to terms with it. And this sounds a little bit new age or whatever but sometimes I think understanding is a prerequisite to forgiving. In reading this book I felt more forgiving of the parents of Eric and Dylan than I had before. Anyway, all of these things I would love to hear discussed in a reading group.

Well, I am not a reviewer but this book reminded me of In Cold Blood and so I reread that book - looking mostly at style and approach and as you said, Dave, tone. Both Dave Cullen and Truman Capote are storytellers. Both books are what I would call Literary Nonfiction or maybe a better term is Narrative Nonfiction. An agent I admire who represents this genre said it is "the telling of an actual event in a compelling, dramatic, and character-driven narrative, using scenes, and literary devices to bring he subject alive in much the way fiction does, although it is not fiction." I think that fits Columbine. I think it was brave to do tell the story in this manner.

This book gives us character markers- it has driven me to shake my head in utter despair that these two young men could have been so utterly unable to love this world. But then I think of the other kids- and the principal - and that neighbor and mother who fought so hard to make someone understand what Eric was capable of. I think this book could have been dedicated to that woman.

Finally - I will quote my favorite favorite favorite writer - who wrote mostly fiction- Wallace Stegner. He said, "A work of art is not a gem - it is a lens." This book is a lens on life----

Again, thanks for the forum. I'm enjoying all the entries.
Martha

Hi Dave and GoodReaders,
I have been eager to discuss this book from the moment I found it on the publisher's (TWELVE) web site. I do not have my copy because I let it fly as soon as I read it. My daughter has it now - she also read it in about 3 days. She was a HS Senior the same year of Columbine. . . Next it will go to a life long friend and teacher - we have already discussed it at length and then to my nephew who is a principal for a small town high school. This book begs to be discussed - I have recommended it to my LIbrary reading group. And my sister and I are the founders of National Reading Group Month (see it online) and I hope that many groups will consider it for their October when we celebrate shared reading.

As for libraries - I've worked in two lovely New Jersey libraries. They are alive and vibrant. Books like Columbine however are problematic in libraries and for this reason: In most libraries after the book comes off the NEW RELEASES shelves it then gets shelved with fiction or non-fiction and I cannot help but wonder where this book will be shelved. Probably in True Crime? It is just like Angela's Ashes - that now resides in many libraries with Irish HIstory - or In Cold Blood....So when people then go into browse the book gets lost. I think it falls in the category of Literary Non Fiction much like many memoirs and In Cold Blood comes to mind. But for now I can tell you there is a waiting list at my little library for Columbine.

But onto the book itself. Brilliant. It will stay with me as part of my living experience- which I think is what Literature is supposed to do. For a first book (it reads like a novel) it is amazing - it is the voice that you adopted that I most admire. If I had my copy I would add examples. But you are absent as the narrator (not central and not a character) and yet a voice emerges that I find consistent- informed and empathetic. Did you consider other voices such as using a reporters voice or one of the victims? Have you considered writing fiction next?

Other people have commented on this but I wonder how you were able to live with this for all these years? Did you ever think - No I do not want to live with this?

I think you handled not just the story of a tragedy but the big things: The way past impasse in every life you studied, grief and if there is any consolation and Hope. I think it is the writer's task to take help take us as readers past impasse - bravo.

And a publishing question - who found who? Did your publisher ask for the book? Did you find them after you decided to write a book?

Martha