Cloudsplitter

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but what's true and what isn't?
Review: John Brown will remain a mysterious figure even after reading this story. It is difficult to get a true picture of the man without knowing which parts are fictional or not. The book does paint him as a sometime gentle, sometime fanatical character. At any rate, it is clear he was determined to abolish slavery at any cost, including loss of human life. If the information about his children is correct, the family had many tragic situations arise. I would recommend reading a concise non-fictional biography before tackling this one.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This is a very interesting novel, with emphasis on the word novel. It is not meant as true history. That being said, I enjoyed it. An equivalent book, with the same heft and clout -- but not a novel -- is Edward Renehan's THE SECRET SIX: THE TRUE TALE OF THE MEN WHO CONSPIRED WITH JOHN BROWN, published recently to wildly enthusiastic reviews. -- Arnold Roosevelt

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting from a CNY point of view
Review: I live near where the events of this story occured and it was very interesting. Even if you're not from upstate NY, you'll still love this interesting book!

Rating:
Summary: Why waste good money on this book?
Review: This is little more than fiction. If you are really interested in Captain John (Ossawatomie) Brown, buy a good history book. In addition, take time to look up the historical facts yourself. John Brown's son Owen Brown never reached the age of 90, he died 8 Jan 1889 at the age of 64 years, 2 months and 4 days (but his grave marker has the date of 9 Jan 1889). Some 2,000 people turned out for the funeral. About one half of the Brown family is buried on the West coast and the other half is buried on the East coast. Owen Brown did grant an interview where he told the story of his escape. However he gave the interview to Ralph Keeler while he was staying with his brother John Brown Jr. on the eastern shore of Put-in-Bay Island, on Lake Erie. The story was published March 1874. How do I know all of this? Well, it is simple. I am a descendant of three Quaker families... Wood, Mosher and Townsend. All three supported John Brown with the Underground Rail Road. The Townsend side of the family sent two Pall Bearers to Owen's funeral. My Second Great-Granduncle was Col. Samuel Newitt Wood of Kansas and founder of the Kansas Rangers. While the Honorable S. N. Wood was representing Wise county in the Legislature the hanging of John Brown had aroused the indignation of all liberty-loving people, he had a bill passed by which the name of the county was changed from Wise (Wise was the Governor of Virginia and had signed the death warrant for John Brown) to Morris, in honor of Thomas Morris, who was United States Senator from Ohio. In any case the historical value of this book is poor at best.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as it could be.
Review: I'm not a historian, but I've studied enough of it in recent years to have some very fundamental questions about how we, as pre-millenial liberal democrats (note: I don't mean this in the way of political affiliation), are supposed to approach history. I've been taught from both directions: the very revisionist perspective and the more traditional "Well, let's gloss over the bad stuff" perspective. I have disagreements with both. The revisionists tend to spend too much time playing with the facts, or at least overemphasizing some (example: my high school history teacher spent days discussing the role of women in 15th century Spain, yet failed to discuss the Inquisition). The other side, however, de-emphasizes certain facts that shouldn't be de-emphasized and resorts to a very disturbing position of just chalking all the bad stuff up to context and ignorance. This doesn't work. Neither in grade school nor in high schol was I ever taught, at least not directly, that the "freedom" the so-called fathers of our country had in mind did not extend to the slaves they owned at the time. And this can't, at least in my mind, be written off as mistakes looked at out of context. I find it nauseating that people can call George Washington or Thomas Jefferson "great men" and explain away their owning slaves (or even allowing slaves to be bought, sold, and owned) as something that was the norm, or "accepted". I don't buy it. I wish we just had pictures of birds on our currency. And this is where it all gets so confusing and I'm glad I'm not a history teacher. One can't edit these men out of the history books, but then one also can't say "Hey, they did enough good things, let's just focus on that." Okay, I'll let them off for a few chopped cherry trees, but holding slaves can't be downplayed. It truly outweighs whatever good they did--especially when they're supposed to have founded and fought for a "free" country. I've spent the last month reading more than I should about human rights violations and I'm at the point where nothing makes sense. The guard marching off a family to the gas chamber is as much at fault as the person who ordered him to do it. And with all this comes a disturbing sense of guilt. Which begs the seemingly more pressing question: What would I have done had American slavery not been in the history books, but rather something ongoing--with whips cracking as I read my novels, walked to school, lived my life, and enjoyed my freedom?

So enter Russell Banks, John Brown, and "Cloudsplitter". 758 pages of, well, I'm not sure. Here we have the story of John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, narrated in a somewhat epistolary form by his son, Owen Brown. And we learn about Owen and John Brown and what it means to live with a fanatic who regrets the time he must spend supporting his family, viewing it all as time that could better be spent freeing slaves and punishing slave owners. "Cloudsplitter" is, in many ways, an ode to fanaticism. Brown believes his work is God's work and is prepared to die for it. And that's noble--to some degree. Banks is a good writer. It takes some skill to pull off 758 pages of historical fiction--and not once does it falter stylistically or story-wise. It is a surprisingly quick read (I did most of it over the weekend) and compelling enough to keep you turning the pages. But I'm slightly confused, to be honest. Banks never goes all the way. We see episodes of almost insane religiosity and violence (oftentimes together), but Banks never seems to come to any conclusion. Was Brown right to do what he attempted to do? I know what I think, but I'd like to know what Banks thinks. So, taken by itself, "Cloudsplitter" is a great novel. It's big and exciting, interesting and engaging. There are times where you find yourself cheering Brown on, other times you're a little less enthusiastic. But...

...My biggest problem with "Cloudsplitter" is not what's in the book, but what's not. 758 pages about John Brown is material for more than one "great American novel"--it's cleansing and modern, yet true to history. And I think here is why Banks, back-cover blurbs aside, is not usually ranked alongside writers like DeLillo, Pynchon, and Ozick (among others). DeLillo could do wonders with this. And Pynchon: I often found myself thinking about "Mason&Dixon" (which I will recommend as often as I can) while reading "Cloudsplitter" because it sometimes felt as if the story of John Brown would serve as a wonderful sequel to that of Mason and Dixon. At the end of Pynchon's book, once their eponymous line has been drawn, Mason comes to realize what the line will come to represent. And, if anything, John Brown's goal was to erase that very line from the map.

(Metaphor ahead.) So, history's all around us, both the good and the bad. And to deal with all of it we must build ourselves a bridge, some big two- or three-lane bridge that can handle both all our cultural weight and all the stuff from the past we have yet to sort out. Banks builds the bridge just fine--it's big and sturdy and serves its purpose and gets us back and forth. But, here's hoping that someday someone like Pynchon will knock that sucker down--or at least go for some big renovations at taxpayer expense--and give us a bridge a little more stylish, a bridge that will attract commuters and readers not just for where it leads, but for how it gets us there.

Rating:
Summary: Bearing Witness
Review: _Cloudsplitter_ is presented as an account of the life and work of radical abolitionist John Brown by surviving son, Owen Brown, who hoped to offer his writings to would be biographers of his father. According to Owen, John Brown would have objected to being described as an "abolitionist," a term he associated with such theorists as William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, all who spoke eloquently of abolishing slavery but did nothing about it. John Brown preferred "action, action, action" in liberating blacks from their masters and destroying the slavocracy in pre-Civil War America. If accomplishing his goals meant murdering slave owners and their other male family members, then so be it. John Brown was true to his word when Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, after which drunken southern Border Ruffians and abolitionist free-soilers streamed into Kansas territory either to open Kansas to slavery or to keep it free. Many went into Kansas for the sole purpose of grabbing cheap land.

John Brown, as dramatized in Russell Banks's stirring and provocative novel, was more than just the crazed zealot portrayed in history books. He was above all a loving and devoted father and husband who suffered greatly at the deaths of a number of his children at very young ages. John Brown was a deeply religious man who preached and sincerely believed in freedom for the black man. John Brown also viewed the Bible as a handbook for waging war on slave masters and firmly believed that God spoke directly with him and chose him as His instrument of liberation. It is with this belief that Brown gathered together a small rag-tag army of men (including several of his sons) in the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Brown was certain that they would initiate a massive uprising of slaves against their masters. The great former slave, Frederick Douglass, while loving John Brown for his bravery and his great heart, understood both the white and the black man well and knew that Brown's efforts were doomed to failure.

What makes _Cloudsplitter_ more than just an in-depth, three dimensional biographical novel of John Brown is Owen Brown's telling of his personal relationship with his father. Owen Brown was more than just his father's right-hand lieutenant. Owen's actions and very thoughts were completely dominated by his father. Owen lived under the yoke of John Brown as much as any black man did under the yoke of his white master. Comparing Owen Brown to his father, John Brown's best friend, a black man, told Owen that he was not even half the man his father was. This remark haunted Owen for the rest of his life. Many years later, Owen Brown, a lonely old man living in a secluded cabin, questioned whether he were finally out from under John Brown's influence or if he should be dead, lying near his father "where I have always properly belonged."

Rating:
Summary: Banks's best
Review: About John Brown and his near-religious campaign to begin a slave revolution in the 1850s. The story is told through Brown's son Owen, who slowly succumbs to his father's zeal and vision until he himself becomes a slave to his father. The book is long (750 pages) and slow in development, but powerful and totally believable. Very detailed and extrememly well written; Banks's masterpiece. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST HISTORICAL NOVELS OUT THERE
Review: Initially intimidated by the size of this book, I nevertheless became quickly engrossed in it's detailed characterizations of the famous and the unknown people involved in the abolition movement prior to the Civil War. Even more interesting is the father-son conflict that drives the novel to it's conclusion at Harper's Ferry. This book will have me checking out more stuff on John Brown. Banks' insight on the problems of race relations in this country are amazing. This is the kind of book that you can recommend to someone not just for the history. Although long, it's a compelling read and one not soon forgotten.

Rating:
Summary: Fictionalized Fiction
Review: Scrutinize great men through average eyes and acts of courage are related as confused actions of a weak white guy, lusting after black flesh and, whining about daddy. Owen is a wishy-washy weak white-boy, led by a nose-ring pierced through the domineering finger of his father. This fictitious Owen Brown, full of unresolved emotions, commits passive-aggressive acts that contradict history and accounts of the real Owens; full of clarity and integrity. He believed in his the dream, willingly followed his father and, living puritanically, spoke eloquently and admirably to N. England abolitionists along side his Dad. On the other hand, Cloudsplitter's Owen drowned in weakness. The author disregarded the true Owen's documented sense of conviction and the real Brown family's oneness in goals. They were all most effective abolitionists and champions of the helpless slaves where this fake Owen acted unconscionably against a black family friend because of the former's perplexed inner racism and jealousy. This is a blasphemy against the Brown family legacy and this book, like the lies about John Brown, still perpetrated, actually started by federal agents against Senior Brown, when he was in Kansas, is great for proslavery readers. Then, pro-slavers, backed by bountie placed by the Missourian Governor and President Pierce, on Brown senior, for his having freeed slaves in Missouri, would love this book. History however shows the real Brown and his men fighting injustices and being martyred. Just as modern congressmen lack the perspicuity of our founders,that fashioned our founding documents so does this account. Many are unable to grasp the Browns; people devoted to laws beyond men or kings; willing to fight tyranny, committed to the tenets of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Unwavering, they executed their plans, ended slavery and changed our course as a country; making them permanent figures in an otherwise dishonest history. Cloudsplitter is for those who like revised history, characters with emotional uncertainty, cowardly dishonesty and for those who want to share in this fake Owens's failure as a man. Shame on the author for disgracing the Brown's family's reputation.

Rating:
Summary: HIGHLY RECOMMEND
Review: This is a rather disturbing work, as it should be. It certainly gives one food for thought. Of course Historical fiction, is just that, fiction, or at least speculation on the author's part. The books should be read with this in mind. That being said, I found very few instances where the actual historical facts did not jive quite well with the story the author was telling. This was a dark period in our nations history and the more we examin it, the more we will appreciate what we have today. I very much recommend you add this one to your bookshelf. Again, I highly recommend it.