Saturday, May 19, 2007
Don't Miss Ann Rule's list of the best
For true crime aficionados, I doubt that there is a current writer who is more respected than Ann Rule. At least among those who love modern page turners. If you haven't run across her list five favorite true crime books, the sooner you check it out the better. Who knows how long it will last as a free column at the Wall Street Journal site. To get it Goggle on the news side for "Ann Rule true crime list."
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Engaging portrait of the human mystery, yes, but what about the idea behind it?
Frequently we are stunned by examples of how evil strikes without warning to take away our loved ones. The shooting deaths at Virginia Tech are only the most recent example. Why? we ask. And Why? again. Paul LaRosa’s new book, Nightmare in Napa, is a sympathetic, human retelling of one of those stories, set in a middle class enclave of California wine country. All who knew the two young women who were brutally stabbed to death in a tiny Napa cottage they shared with a third girl friend could not have been more shocked by the murders. Family and some friends may never really recover from that shock. LaRosa details the lives of these people with an engaging, clear style of writing. He takes us through to the surprise confession of the murderer. He confronts the why. And still it hangs in the air. In the end, as with many a good true crime recounting, what remains with the reader are the questions not the answers.
Nightmare in Napa is a book is of more than passing interest because it grew out of a decision by the CBS TV show “48 Hours Mystery” to track the people involved during the investigation and to have a book written in connection with their production. In the end, the TV show’s staff members were shocked to learn that the murderer was so close to people involved that he had attended their tapings, urging one participant not to cooperate but otherwise attracting little attention. LaRosa writes of all of this without a trace of self indulgence. His book is a good piece of journalism but one that unlikely to be followed up with the same professionalism if the idea of writing books off true crime TV shows becomes a trend. Story tellers are just too tempted to make themselves the story and to hype the facts out of some misguided idea that leads to more sales.
Nightmare in Napa is a book is of more than passing interest because it grew out of a decision by the CBS TV show “48 Hours Mystery” to track the people involved during the investigation and to have a book written in connection with their production. In the end, the TV show’s staff members were shocked to learn that the murderer was so close to people involved that he had attended their tapings, urging one participant not to cooperate but otherwise attracting little attention. LaRosa writes of all of this without a trace of self indulgence. His book is a good piece of journalism but one that unlikely to be followed up with the same professionalism if the idea of writing books off true crime TV shows becomes a trend. Story tellers are just too tempted to make themselves the story and to hype the facts out of some misguided idea that leads to more sales.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
How true crime birthed the Western
On July 20, 1899, a robust hog farmer and prostitute and her innkeeper friend were strung up on a stunted pine overlooking Spring Creek Gulch. A detective working for the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association led the gang of lynchers..
Johnson County’s hard-up cowboys turned homesteaders, whom the cattlemen labeled cow “rustlers,” reacted with anger and fear and began arming themselves.
But the association initiated a plan to deal with that. It assembled a small army of 19 cattlemen, 21 Texas gunslingers, another hired killer brought in from Nampa, Idaho. Their intent was to eradicate somewhere between 19 and 70 Johnson County “rustlers” --- homesteaders the cattlemen decided didn’t deserve to occupy a piece of the open range.
Things came to a head during the blizzardy spring of 1892 when the cattlemen’s “army” detrained at Casper and rode off toward the town of Buffalo, Wyoming where its leaders hoped to corner most of their victims.
The army of “regulators” began by surrounding the small ranch of Nate Champion, labeled “the bravest man in Johnson County” by one of the newspaper writers who chronicled the Johnson County war from its roots in the 1890s spring roundups to the lawlessness that followed.
Warned by the slaying of Champion, a spontaneous citizen militia made up of homesteaders from Buffalo and environs, maybe 200 strong, surrounded the gunslingers at a cattlemen’s ranch and threatened to obliterate them.
President Benjamin Harrison was forced to send in the Calvary to rescue the cattlemen’s crew, marching it off to Cheyenne where the whole gang was more or less incarcerated (mostly less) until they were cleared of all criminal charges.
This true crime story --- if the West could have true crime before it actually had much law --- is recounted in wonderful detail by Helena Huntington Smith in her 1966 book, The War on Powder River, still available from the University of Nebraska press.
Smith tells this story with an engaging true to life flavor. To accomplish this she uses letters written by the cattlemen themselves, an abundance of not-quite-objective but many sided accounts by writers from the East and by Wyoming’s country editors at the time. All this is supplemented with information from a few books and “confessions” produced by participants.
For anyone who has been fascinated by Westerns in film and on TV, this book should become a must read. Larry McMurtry not withstanding, it is probably as close as anyone is likely to come to “the true story” behind the myth that underlies the West.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, I was tipped to Smith’s book by LSU film theorist Patrick McGee at the recent Colorado Springs conference on media and violence. In a 2006 book of his own, McGee traces how the events in Johnson County inspired the seminal Western novel The Virginian by Owen Wister and many Western films that followed. (McGee’s book is From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western.)
For a web-based quick history that may be intentionally short on some details, try out the “wyomingtalesandtrails” reference that comes up when you Google “The Johnson County War Wyoming.” Wikipedia also has a useful but incomplete rundown. It fails to mention Smith’s book but suggests that the disastrous 1980s movie Heaven’s Gate came close to following the true story, which is not correct. That flick is bad history as well as bad moviemaking. Somewhat ironically, the movie went so far over budget and did so poorly at the box office that Hollywood’s money men aren’t likely to have another go at the actual story anytime soon.
In his conference presentation, McGee discussed his personal fascination with the way the stories of the old west based on The Johnson County war have moved over time from being sympathetic to the capitalist cattlemen to showing how the common homesteaders were victimized. I have yet to read his book, but it has moved to the top of my list along with The Virginian.
Anyone interested in the story with plans to visit Wyoming might check out Buffalo’s city web site before heading out. It looks like some there are beginning to relish the story. They have just this spring erected a statue of Nate Champion.
Johnson County’s hard-up cowboys turned homesteaders, whom the cattlemen labeled cow “rustlers,” reacted with anger and fear and began arming themselves.
But the association initiated a plan to deal with that. It assembled a small army of 19 cattlemen, 21 Texas gunslingers, another hired killer brought in from Nampa, Idaho. Their intent was to eradicate somewhere between 19 and 70 Johnson County “rustlers” --- homesteaders the cattlemen decided didn’t deserve to occupy a piece of the open range.
Things came to a head during the blizzardy spring of 1892 when the cattlemen’s “army” detrained at Casper and rode off toward the town of Buffalo, Wyoming where its leaders hoped to corner most of their victims.
The army of “regulators” began by surrounding the small ranch of Nate Champion, labeled “the bravest man in Johnson County” by one of the newspaper writers who chronicled the Johnson County war from its roots in the 1890s spring roundups to the lawlessness that followed.
Warned by the slaying of Champion, a spontaneous citizen militia made up of homesteaders from Buffalo and environs, maybe 200 strong, surrounded the gunslingers at a cattlemen’s ranch and threatened to obliterate them.
President Benjamin Harrison was forced to send in the Calvary to rescue the cattlemen’s crew, marching it off to Cheyenne where the whole gang was more or less incarcerated (mostly less) until they were cleared of all criminal charges.
This true crime story --- if the West could have true crime before it actually had much law --- is recounted in wonderful detail by Helena Huntington Smith in her 1966 book, The War on Powder River, still available from the University of Nebraska press.
Smith tells this story with an engaging true to life flavor. To accomplish this she uses letters written by the cattlemen themselves, an abundance of not-quite-objective but many sided accounts by writers from the East and by Wyoming’s country editors at the time. All this is supplemented with information from a few books and “confessions” produced by participants.
For anyone who has been fascinated by Westerns in film and on TV, this book should become a must read. Larry McMurtry not withstanding, it is probably as close as anyone is likely to come to “the true story” behind the myth that underlies the West.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, I was tipped to Smith’s book by LSU film theorist Patrick McGee at the recent Colorado Springs conference on media and violence. In a 2006 book of his own, McGee traces how the events in Johnson County inspired the seminal Western novel The Virginian by Owen Wister and many Western films that followed. (McGee’s book is From Shane to Kill Bill: Rethinking the Western.)
For a web-based quick history that may be intentionally short on some details, try out the “wyomingtalesandtrails” reference that comes up when you Google “The Johnson County War Wyoming.” Wikipedia also has a useful but incomplete rundown. It fails to mention Smith’s book but suggests that the disastrous 1980s movie Heaven’s Gate came close to following the true story, which is not correct. That flick is bad history as well as bad moviemaking. Somewhat ironically, the movie went so far over budget and did so poorly at the box office that Hollywood’s money men aren’t likely to have another go at the actual story anytime soon.
In his conference presentation, McGee discussed his personal fascination with the way the stories of the old west based on The Johnson County war have moved over time from being sympathetic to the capitalist cattlemen to showing how the common homesteaders were victimized. I have yet to read his book, but it has moved to the top of my list along with The Virginian.
Anyone interested in the story with plans to visit Wyoming might check out Buffalo’s city web site before heading out. It looks like some there are beginning to relish the story. They have just this spring erected a statue of Nate Champion.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)