Customer Reviews

Crazy Horse: A Life (Penguin Lives)

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This is the third Penguin Lives volume I've read and I find the series is holding up to positive first impressions. The Lives books are short, averaging around 200 pages each, but are saved from being mere outlines by creative matchmaking of subject with author. In CRAZY HORSE, Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lonesome Dove, takes on one of the legendary Indians of the 19th century American west. Like the as yet unfinished monument of him that is being carved out of the Black Hills of the Dakotas, Crazy Horse looms large in oral tradition and is the subject of some weighty tomes, including a biography by controversial historian Stephen Ambrose. Despite the heft of the Crazy Horse canon, McMurtry says that the actual facts of his life are wispy and he chooses to devote his book to sorting the man from the fiction. In doing so, he offers up a lucid picture of the changing state of Indian culture as Manifest Destiny chewed its way across the plains. What facts do come to light reveal Crazy Horse as better suited to his culture's past, a reluctant though dutiful leader who preferred wandering alone in the hills. At one point, McMurtry makes a quiet observation of dust kicked up on a latterday trail ride, an image that becomes a central metaphor expressing the problem of retrieving a truth that has been filtered through so many biases. Some readers may be at a slight disadvantage because McMurtry assumes the reader possesses a certain amount of familiarity with the facts of Little Big Horn and the legends. Some may be disappointed that this book offers less about the man then about politics, both Indian and white, and the process of historical investigation and perspective. I think it is a fine meditation on all subjects. McMurtry is unafraid to express a controversial opinion.

The Sioux Christ

Crazy Horse was perhaps the most enigmatic - and celebrated - Indian leader. He was neither a chief nor a frequent combatant in the wars that emptied the West for white settlement. He was a loner and even a bit of an oddball. In the end, his own people despised him - and took part in his murder. Yet among Indians today, Crazy Horse is considered the greatest of warriors, a man who defiantly resisted white intrusion, who was so charitable he earned the nickname "Sioux Christ." Larry McMurtry embraces the unenviable task of distilling this man in "Crazy Horse," part of the Penguin Lives series. It's a rather interesting project, in which famed authors study the great figures of our past. (Jane Smiley, for example, will soon publish a biography of Charles Dickens.) McMurtry ("Lonesome Dove," "Terms of Endearment") isn't a historian. That's what makes this book compelling. Instead of the trudging prose of academia, we're treated to a more literary take on Crazy Horse - part storytelling, part analysis. This wasn't an easy job. Crazy Horse spent much of his life shunning whites. He also shunned most of his tribe, preferring to be alone. Hence, there's little documentation on his life. And most of what's been written since is wracked by speculation. Where McMurtry excels in dissecting the many myths. Unlike many Indian biographers, he doesn't fall for the idyllic "noble savage" viewpoint. He condenses Crazy Horse down to a good man, perhaps a great man, confused by an era of rapid change. McMurtry doesn't have a historian's zeal. He spends much of the book dissecting the work of others instead of producing his own. At 140 pages, this is something of a Cliff Notes biography - not commensurate with the $19.95 retail price.

A lean and powerful book very well written. Lean because the author wrote only what is actually know about Crazy Horse but places this information in the context of the places and events surrounding him. For the reader who wants to read more about those events and the speculations about Crazy Horse's participation in them as well as his character, a bibliography is included. I am a great fan of McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" trilogy and am certainly able to discriminate between fiction and the unadorned truth of "Crazy Horse". I recommend this book without reservation.

McMurtry writes a good, enjoyable, concise biography of Crazy Horse - he complains from time to time about other historians writing such extended works on a subject we know so little about, yet ocassionally I felt McMurtry himself skipped over some points without discussing things very much. Interestingly enough, it makes reading this book feel like writing history yourself - the facts are there, but always fragmentary, scattered, and contradictory. If nothing else, it's true to the feel of the source material - there are few hypothetical suggestions here, and when you do find one, it's clearly labelled as such.

Nevertheless, there are two distinct advantages this book has. First, the author, having travelled in the territories where these events took place, provides some wonderful and fairly insightful thoughts on several events, such as the role that dust would have played during the battle of Little Bighorn (the author rode horses over the field himself). Second, he actually provides a pretty good summary of some major written works concerning Crazy Horse prior to the time this was published (1999). Though a few important things have of course appeared since then, this is a great place to start if you're new to the subject. If you're not, then you should already know that the Penguin Lives series is not where to look for serious, in-depth research.

Overall - an enjoyable and concise read, which makes a good stepping stone to other works on Crazy Horse. Not an in-depth history, but a good meat-and-bones biography in the classic, old-school style. Definitely worth a spot on your bookshelf.

I read this slender volume on a whim after spotting it at a friend's beach house on a rainy day. Who hasn't heard of Crazy Horse? But who knows the first thing about him?

Like some other reviewers, I am struck by the paucity of facts at McMurtry's disposal, yet I found that McMurtry readily acknolwleged this shortcoming while creating a deeply moving narrative that brought home to me the "greek" tragedy in a larger story - the annihilation of Native American cultures - that is normally either glossed over or deeply fetishized by observers who describe people like the Lakota in hyper-idealistic terms.

The military and technological superiority of the Americans probably doomed the Lakota from the start. The reaction of Crazy Horse, while in many ways admirable, was futile in the face of it. The tragedy and the crime in the story was that appeasement did not prevent an old culture from having everything it knew and believed and practiced swept away before most of the participants had any appreciation for what was happening.

Crazy Horse has been one of my American heroes ever since I read about him in "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West" by Dee Brown back in the 1970's. When I discovered that Larry McMurtry, a favorite author of mine, had written a biography of Crazy Horse, the book immediately made the top of my TBR list! And glad I am that I did immerse myself in this brief but rich biography. As usual, McMurtry does not disappoint - nor does his subject.

Despite extensive writings about the great Sioux warrior Crazy Horse, there is actually a dearth of hard facts about his life. The man was born around 1840, at a time when the nomadic way of life of the Plains Indians was dying....or to be more accurate, at a time when the traditional way of life was stomped out though the US government's broken promises, lies, ineptitude, and the sheer number of US soldiers with rifles and their seemingly never-ending supply of ammunition. Manifest Destiny was very much a reality and it could not be fulfilled while nomadic tribes roamed the Great Plains hunting buffalo, "impeding progress," the westward march of settlers, the building of the railroads.

What kind of written historical record would there be of a man who lived the life of a Sioux warrior, "raiding and hunting on the central plains?" He rarely had contact with whites until the end of his life. And what translations exist are appalling.

Worm, his father was an Oglala healer; his mother was thought to be the sister of Spotted Tail, the Brule leader. From the first, Crazy Horse, called Curly as a boy, marched to the beat of his own drum. He was a loner and although he lived in the traditional way, he was not interested in the usual rituals of purification, like the sundance rite. "He took his manhood as a given and proved it in battle at an early age."

He went on a journey as a young man, to seek a vision. Never orthodox in his beliefs or behavior, Curly did not purify himself in the ancient ways nor did he speak with a holy man, such as his own father, before making the trip. The vision or dream he achieved on this quest, and the interpretation, were to prove very significant throughout his life. There are enough consistent reports about this episode to prove its authenticity.

The author takes the known facts about the period, as well as material garnered from documented interviews with Native Americans and whites who knew Crazy Horse, and recreates here a vivid portrait of the warrior, the human being who cared first and foremost for his people - for the very young, the sick and elderly - the man of such moral authority that he sparked deadly jealousy amongst some of his own men. "Among a broken people an unbroken man can only rarely be tolerated." Crazy Horse "became a too-painful reminder of what the people as a whole had once been."

McMurtry, also paints a clear and accurate picture of the place, the times, the large Native American councils, of the Ghost Dance, the battles, the parlays, the betrayals. He recounts a much reported conversation Crazy Horse, near the end of his life, had with his old friend He Dog. General George Cook wanted all the Sioux at Red Creek "to move across the creek, nearer to White Butte, so he would have them handy for a big council. He Dog thought it might be best to do as he was told." Crazy Horse did not want to make the move for his own reasons. He Dog, concerned about what the move might mean for their friendship asked Crazy Horse if "such a move on his part would mean they were enemies now. Crazy Horse laughed, perhaps for the last time; then he reminded He Dog that he was not speaking to a white man. Whites were the only ones, he said, who made rules for other people. Camp where you please."

Larry Mc Murtry invites the reader to camp where we please amid the recountings and recollections of the life of the legend who was Crazy Horse. This is a brief but beautifully written story of a life...and of a death. It is also a tribute to a great man.

Apparently Penguin has published a series of brief biographies called "Penguin Lives." James Atlas, the editor, plans for six volumes a year from "celebrated writers on famous individuals who have shaped our thinking." The list includes the Buddha, St. Augustine, Joan of Arc, Dante, Mozart, Jane Austen, Dickens and Chekhov. Unfortunately I only see two women on his list. I sincerely hope this grave omission is corrected.

JANA

This was the first of the exceptional Penguin Lives series of short form biographies. What differentiates this book from the others in the series is that very little information about its subject exists outside of legend. As such, this is one of the Penguin short biography books that a lengthier story is not likely necessary. Karen Armstrongs book on Buddha had a similar limitation, but she used the opportunity to lecture on the development and meaning of the Buddhist religion.

Several years ago, I read and enjoyed Mari Sandozs biography on C.H., but the book left me to wonder how much of the story was truth versus fiction. The novelist, Larry McMurtry, authored this Penguin Lives version and convincingly separated the C.H. facts from fiction. Far from diminishing the character, the author gives a more appealing portrait of the man who will always be an enigmatic historical figure.

I, for one, appreciate the authors honesty and the grayness of the characters story. I think it is more a sign of weakness for a biographer to invent facts to enhance the story. It is certainly disingenuous and non-academic. McMurtry gives more than one example of this form of literary excess especially when mentioning Stephen Ambroses biography on C.H. Interestingly, the latters excesses seem to now have caught up with him as shown in the plagiarism charges that have followed his more recent works.

The quality of this book, though, is in the warmth and dignity that the author gives to his subject. Crazy Horse was a solitary and misunderstood figure to even his own people. His is also a story of how greed and jealousy by his people led to his early death. McMurtry does not try to make the man more than what he was or would have been. The book gives the reader the opportunity to appreciate the simplicity of Crazy Horse. By not engaging in pseudo psychoanalysis, and literary commercialism, the author gives his subject what C.H. seemed to have always wanted when alive, his privacy.

Why write hundreds of pages about a man who died young and shunned the public? Should one spend time to digest one author's guesswork, maybe comparing it to another author's? McMurty did us all a favor by cutting out everything not known as fact. So little is known about Crazy Horse that it can easily contained in this small volume. We are given a concise portrait of the man, his life and his aspirations. We are also given an almost poetic feel of his surroundings and the struggle to hold on to it. If you want to learn about Crazy Horse, this book will not lead you astray. If you want bells and whistles, look somewhere else.

Crazy Horse has been puzzled over by genertions of historians. Larry McMurtry gives a sensitive portrait of the great Sioux warrior who became a reluctant leader at the battle of the Little Big Horn. It is a short biography with a wonderful story teller's touch! It's worth the read.
Evelyn Horan - teacher/counselor/author
Jeannie, A Texas Frontier Girl Books One - Three

Near the beginning of "Crazy Horse" Larry McMurtry points how little is known about Crazy Horse. A loner in a non-literate community, even the stories of Crazy Horse's sparse interactions with whites were often based on speculation and conjecture.

I did find this book to provide an interesting narrative of the life and warfare of the Plains Indians in the period after the Civil war.

In this book we see the Indians as very individualistic. The Indian Chiefs, of which Crazy Horse was not one, while exercising considerable influence, could not, in many cases, control the actions of individual braves. While we often tend to think of the Indians as a monolithic nation opposing white expansion, they consisted, in fact, of independent, autonomous bands which would fight limited struggles against whites over specific territories or grievances. The struggle by the Indians under Red Cloud over the forts on the Bozeman trail was one instance in which the Indians were successful in turning back the tide of white expansion for several years.

Individual battles, such as the Fetterman massacre, are described in interesting detail.

As for Crazy Horse himself, such details of his life as are known are related. The details of his names, his dream experience, his romantic entanglements and finally his death from stabbing by a soldier while being held by an Indian, are described in detail. The obscurity of Crazy Horse's life may be one of his most alluring qualities, for by permitting each of us to impute to this Indian hero the attributes which seem most attractive to us, he grows from a man to a legend. As he rides out of the mists of history, Crazy Horse can be seen as the heroic warrior who never compromised or surrendered. That is the Crazy Horse portrayed by Larry McMurtry and the legend who, when his statue is completed, will ride forever over his Black Hills home.