Customer Reviews

Return Little Big Man (Thorndike Core)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In Twain's footsteps

Critics tend to gush over Thomas Berger. He's been called the new Mark Twain. One of the most important writers of this century. Read "The Return of Little Big Man." You'll understand why. In his latest work, the author of 20 novels returns to the story of Little Big Man (a.k.a. Jack Crabb). We first met Crabb in 1964 in the original "Little Big Man." Thirty-five years later, Berger reprises the character in an effort that brings honor to the tattered reputation of sequels. Again, Crabb, who's well past his 100th year, is reminiscing about his life in the Old West. And an adventurous life it is. In many respects, he is the Forrest Gump of his time. Despite being a lowly bartender, his path continually crosses the biggest names in the West: Buffalo Bill Cody, Wild Bill Hickock, Annie Oakley, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Sitting Bull and, for good measure, the Pope and the Queen of England. The result is a personalized, everyman's perspective of the era's legends. The plot is delivered in a series of encounters with such notables. But where Berger truly shines is in Crabb's observations on life. He speaks in the rich, unlettered voice of another time - hence the Twain comparisons. Yet he manages to be insightful, educational and disarmingly funny all at once. Crabb bounds about the West, busting myths, telling tall tales and offering eccentric commentary on the period. This is fiction at its best. Don't let the Western theme put you off. Berger ably meshes biography with comedy, love stories with history, without any one element pushing another away. Best of all, you'll get to see Berger, one of the great craftsmen of our time, at work.

Those who read and re-read Little Big Man every decade or so over 40 years were probably as delighted as I was when Return of Little Big Man appeared in 1999. Jack Crabbe, the geriatric home resident of the original novel who'd told of his experiences in the West, always peripheral to the events we all know of, returns in this sequel to tell of his life after the Little Big Horn fight.

As the only white survivor of Little Big Horn, Jack wanders broke and almost naked into Deadwood, SD, to encounter his old acquaintance from Dodge, City, KS, Wild Bill Hickock, in time to be present for the Aces and Eights scenario. Naturally, Crabbe gives the eye-witness account of the even a bit differently than you've heard before.

Thereafter, Crabbe wanders back to Dodge, Tombstone, elsewhere, in time to be present for the OK Corral fight, offering up another side of the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, the Clantons and Bat Masterson. Then eastward to the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, Queen Victoria, Bertie, Sitting Bull and Elizabeth Custer.

As a grand finale he manages to be with Sitting Bull for the assassination of the great chief of the Souix.

A great follow-up book to Little Big Man. Too bad it took so many decades to appear.

In order to fully enjoy "Return" you'd have to read the original, "Little Big Man." However, having read Jack Crabb's earlier adventures (living among the Cheyenne, consorting with Wild Bill Hickock and surving Custer's Last Stand) readers will find that there's nothing like the first time. After all, which is more interesting, living in the Wild West or performing with a Wild West show? Living among the Plains Indians on the plains or in late 19th century New York?

All that said it's nice to hang out with Crabb again. Author Thomas Berger has created one of American literatures greatest characters. In this chapter of his life (1876 through 1892) our narrator tells of more encounters with famous Americans ranging from Bat Masterson to Jane Addams and including Wyatt Earp and Sitting Bull. Mostly we hang out with Buffalo Bill Cody (a bit too much for taste). Cody's Wild West show is a splendid vehicle for Crabb's further adventures but a few detours along the way would have been welcome.

Crabb/Berger hint broadly at a third installment. Reading that I get the same twin feelings of anticipation and dread as I do with the coming of movie sequels. All that said, if you've read and enjoyed "Little Big Man" then this sequel is must reading.

Return of Little Big Man is not as good as Little Big Man, but since Little Big Man easily ranks among the ten greatest American novels ever written, that is not strong criticism. RLBM is a bit too long - it drags somewhat between the point at which Jack Crabb joins Buffalo Bill and the point at which he witnesses Sitting Bull's death. But otherwise it is superior in every way.

There is a change of focus here. Unlike LBM, RLBM is less a revisionist history of the Old West and has changed its focus to the encroaching Twentieth Century. Best of all, it introduces a romantic element in the form of Amanda Teasdale, who will surely prove a match for Jack Crabb. The author promises additional installments of Crabb's life. I look forward to them. I wish he'd produce a nonfiction companion volume (or footnotes a la Flashman) so the reader could determine what is fact and what is fancy.

This sequel was well worth the wait. Although I found the later chapters to move slow at times this is Berger at his best. The chapters dealing with Tombstone are as charming and witty as the material in the original story. An enjoyable read!

I remember quite fondly the movie "Little Big Man" with Dustin Hoffman, so when I discovered that there were further adventures of Jack Crabb I purchased this sequel. It reveals more tales of Jack's adventures with some of the Old West's most colorful characters such as Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, Chief Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley, etc.. It's a book that is never dull, and the characters, both real and invented, mesh seamlessly in the narrative. It's not the West that you might remember from the old cowboy shows on television, but it's certainly a more vibrant place, and definitely more true to life. The book only takes us up to about 1893, so I sincerely hope that ol' Jack has more tales to tell, and that we'll see them in book form shortly.

I first encountered Jack Crabbe about 35 years ago, and later enjoyed the loose and anachronistic film adaptation of the novel, starring Dustin Hoffmann, so I looked forward to finding out what happened to Jack after the death of Old Lodge Skins. Alas, Jack has changed a lot. The latest installment of his adventures (to use the word loosely) runs nearly 450 pages, and to call it plodding and largely eventless is to err on the side of complementary. Bookended by the deaths of Wild Bill Hickock and Sitting Bull, Crabbe's tale this time is largely about his travels with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The author succeeds best on the very small scale of specific incident--- Crabbe's interactions with Prince Bertie and Queen Victoria, for example, are priceless. But by and large, the novel is just an "info-dump," with dozens of pages of fairly undigested research narrated fairly humorlessly by Crabbe, interspersed with episodes of self-pity and a general and well-deserved feeling of worthlessness on Crabb's part--- he never finds work as anything more than a bartender.

As in many recent novels, such as THE YEAR THE CLOUD FELL, the plains Indians are given preposterous New Age supernatural powers, which fit incongruously with the totally hum-drum and tedious events being narrated. The novel lacks a villain, other than the odious Wyatt Earp, and he never really gets onstage, nor does he get a satisfactory comeuppance.

At the novel's end, Jack threatens either to die in his sleep, or to give vent to yet another 450 pages on events between 1893 and 1950. I am afraid it is pretty much a tossup as to which I would prefer to see happen!

I was surprised to learn that Little Big Man, in fact, returned. So I dove into this book, after rereading the original, naturally. I was disappointed, only due to the relative brilliance embodied within the covers Little Big Man itself. It may be the change in the fictional editor, but the new, older Jack Crabbe is far more judgmental of his compadres and enemies than the Jack Crabbe who had dictated for us his life experiences just one year earlier. Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and Buffalo Bill, both of whom Crabbe gets to know quite well, are far shallower characters than were Old Lodge Skins and Wild Bill Hickok. Indeed, Jack seems to have disengaged himself from his social contacts and become less interesting himself...having settled into the white lifestyle and rejected that of the Native American with the death of Old Lodge Skins.

In summary, while the book is interesting in its own right, it lacks the depth of its predecessor and is at best merely an average read, rather than the superb wonder Little Big man was.

A bit of a let down after the classic "Little Big Man," the further adventures of Jack Crabb are, as is true of any Berger novel, so well written you'll be drawn into it. Yet I found the plot curiously lackluster. If you are a Berger fan, you'll pick this one up, but don't dive into it if you've never read anything of his. You'd be better off with nearly any of his others.

My favorite historical fiction novel of the last year or two is The Triumph and the Glory, but Berger's fine book is a close second. The appeal of this genre is the transportation of the reader to other times and places with style and compelling realism, and Berger accomplishes this task 100 percent. Great reading, well-developed characters, a solid four star book.