The Return Of Little Big Man

Rating:
Summary: I Waited 35 Years for This?
Review: "Little Big Man" is easily one of my top ten all time favorite books. I also enjoyed the movie with Dustin Hoffman. Without a moments hesitation, I scooped up this book and settled down for what I hoped was another wild adventure with Jack Crabb. Sadly, I think I would have been better off having left the book in the remainder bin where I found it and watched the original on DVD instead.

Without rehashing the plot that other reviewers have already gone over, I would describe RoLBM as "more of less". More of the Old West stories without the compelling drama. Famous names wander into view from stage left and exit stage right without giving the reader any sense of awe. "Oh look, here comes Sitting Bull. There he goes. How nice."

It is my personal opinion that the main reason an author waits 35 years to publish a sequel to his most famous work is due less to need for creative outlet and more the desire for financial gain. That the author broadly hints at yet a third book tends to back my theory up. Not that authors aren't entitled to make money but art should fall in there somewhere.

Rating:
Summary: I Waited 35 Years for This?
Review: "Little Big Man" is easily one of my top ten all time favorite books. I also enjoyed the movie with Dustin Hoffman. Without a moments hesitation, I scooped up this book and settled down for what I hoped was another wild adventure with Jack Crabb. Sadly, I think I would have been better off having left the book in the remainder bin where I found it and watched the original on DVD instead.

Without rehashing the plot that other reviewers have already gone over, I would describe RoLBM as "more of less". More of the Old West stories without the compelling drama. Famous names wander into view from stage left and exit stage right without giving the reader any sense of awe. "Oh look, here comes Sitting Bull. There he goes. How nice."

It is my personal opinion that the main reason an author waits 35 years to publish a sequel to his most famous work is due less to need for creative outlet and more the desire for financial gain. That the author broadly hints at yet a third book tends to back my theory up. Not that authors aren't entitled to make money but art should fall in there somewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Berger returns to his oldest glory with splendor
Review: "little, Big Man" was undoubtoubly one of the seminal novels of the later half of the twentyith century. Few if any novelists would risk their earned positions among the literate elite. Yet Berger does.....and does it so well. As a set the two books deserve a place in all our futures....and should wind up in those tomes that you would pass to generations yet born. If Berger(and all his many great works) and Jack Crabb are not a national treasure. Then I am hard pressed to make a case for much of anything in American Lit. These two books speak more than volumes........much more. Gary Hill [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Worth the wait
Review: 36 years is an astonishingly long time for a sequel, and there are siginificant differences between Berger's 1964 original (which inspired a movie of the same name, starring a young Dustin Hoffman) and the Return. The Return of Little Big Man, as entertainment, is as entertaining as the original: what I am concerned about here is situating the two books in MODERN American history, and a flaw in character development.

Although historical romance can be a good guide to real history (and George MacDonald Fraser, whose Flashman series bears more than a passing resemblance to Lttle Big Man, has pointed this out in Fraser's Hollywood History of the World), it is in a sense impossible to extricate the historical romance from its own time.

The original book and the movie appeared at a time, the 1960s, in which the American story of the frontier was undergoing a rapid change as a consequence of the Vietnam war. In a sense, our adventure in Vietnam was a continuation of our Western adventures which attempted to transfer Manifest Destiny across a rather large ocean...and which failed.

There are echoes of these concerns in the book and the movie Little Big Man (which came out about 1969) made a conscious comparision of our Western policies with our Vietnam policies.

Thirty years on and partly as a consequence of the many social changes that occured in the 1960s, a sort of Victorianism has returned to the USA: for one thing, sheer hypocrisy is no longer laughed out of court...as evidenced by the Starr investigation of Clinton.

As a result, Berger's latter-day Jack Crabbe, the "sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn", is a different persona than the picaresque individual of the first book [parenthetically, and judging from Berger's first novel, George MacDonald Fraser's "Flashman and the Redskins" and many other works, Greasy Grass was quite crowded with white survivors. Apparently there were dozens of unaccounted scouts, 'breeds, British officers, mad bishops and perhaps a German band present at the battle :-).]

A "picaresque" novel, which the original novel was and the sequel isn't, is at least supposed to be the comic adventures of a character of lower morals than ours. Fraser carries this off quite nicely in Flashman, and has an attractive breeziness with regards to his character (the bully of the 19th century book by Thomas Arnold who in Fraser goes on to be present at most military disasters of the 19th century British empire.)

Fraser does not judge Flash Harry and Flash Harry, speaking through Fraser, does not try to be better than he is. Flashy honestly loves, lusts, and sees the dawn "come up like thunder outer China 'crost the Bay."

But the latter-day Jack Crabbe seems to strain away from the Wild West towards something finer and to at one and the same time want a more gilded and virtuous existence...yet betray himself at the critical point.

The original Jack Crabbe "knowed Custer for what he wuz" and knew hisself for what he wuz. The latter day Jack Crabbe is much more ambivalent about his existence on the frontier and somewhat contemptuous of men like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. He judges them harshly, when he himself gets drunk in New York when he thinks his inamarota (Amanda Teasdale, a defender of the Indians and a precursor of the Politically Correct) has gotten married.

I cannot tell Mr Berger, who has written an excellent and entertaining book, how to build a character. But I do notice that whereas the first Jack Crabbe reserved his judgement for societies that exterminated the native peoples of this continent, the latter day Crabbe tends more to judge people. This is less an artistic flaw than an indication of how America has changed from 1964 to 1999. It does deprive us of the pleasure and scandal of the picaresque, and, in Victorian terms, The Return of Little Big Man is less titillating and more of an Improving Moral Tale.

I am old enough to have lived in certain dying embers of the Victorian age: my grandparent's parlor was in that style. This is probably why I am titillated by the picaresque in the first place. To relate to Flash Harry, one has to have, like Clinton and I, scuttled for cover during the Vietnam war. Berger's first novel constructed, in the figure of the Hehmaneh, an alternative to the modal midcentury American male. Nowadays, absent the military draft, this is probably not as attractive to younger readers...and it seems that Berger is at pains to tell us in this book that the Hehmaneh were uncommon, and to have Jack Crabbe be positively contemptuous of "queeries" (Crabbe's hilarious mispronunciation of the Prince of Wales' "equerries") who Jack thinks are tutti-fruity. Here there is a shift back to intolerance.

It is my view that a novelist, if the novelist is constructing a non-picaresque role model character, should not in any way have that character, at the end of the day, have unattractive personal traits...but Crabbe's limitations are just these. Shakespeare's Hamlet says, use every man according to his deserts, and none of us should 'scape whipping...not Flash Harry, nor Wyatt Earp. In the great desert of American fiction, in which unattractive-but-cool characters are more or less force fed to the reader (as in the unspeakable Tom Wolfe) one does look in vain for Flashman, or Hamlet, or even Captain Ahab.

Rating:
Summary: Not sure why this was necessary
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A well received sequel to an American Classic
Review: A great sequel to the first, which is an American standard. Hopefully Mr. Berger won't make us wait another 30 years for the last book of the trilogy. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Best sequel I have ever read.
Review: As a high school freshman the good sister took Little Big Man from me because she said it was trash. Naturally I couldn't put it down. What a great way to get a student interested in history. Since then I have read countless history books while awaiting this sequel. It is not disappointing at all, it's still "trash", the kind of trash that will encourage countless students to read more about our history. Crabb is back and as wiley, scatalogical and hyberbolic as ever. With humor, pathos and drama Crabb bounces around to the historical high lights of the late nineteenth, early twentieth century with agility and keen observation. Right up until the final tragedy of Sitting Bulls death Berger delivers great entertainment.

Rating:
Summary: A delightful romp through the late 19th Century!
Review: Berger has made us wait 35 years for more of Jack Crabb's story. It's tone is less active, more somber and slightly less fun than "Little Big Man" but the revisionist look at the events depicted in the novel are worth the time spent in reading. I suspect that Mr Berger will give us another volume, but hope he will put more of the original spark in the tome.

Rating:
Summary: It's not as good as the first book...
Review: But it's still worth a look. The history is interesting; but, Jack Crabb's speech patterns get a little tedious. The sequel just doesn't hang together as well as the first one. That said, if you liked Little Big Man, you'll probably enjoy this one, too.

Rating:
Summary: Myths and realities
Review: Even in this technological age, North America frontier mythology remains strong. Star Trek, that manifestly American idea, proclaimed space as the 'final frontier'. As Berger states, the North American frontier experience was unique and permeated popular thinking. No other culture has so staunchly believed in the ideal of expansion into 'empty lands' and 'development' of physical resources. However, as Berger's two part story of Jack Crabb reminds us, the land wasn't empty. An indigenous population vainly resisted European encroachment for over two centuries. Failure to hold their territory left them scornfully dismissed as 'backward'. Film, radio, books and finally, television combined in reinforcing the image of 'savages' being replaced by triumphant civilization.

Berger's Little Big Man probably did more to disabuse the North American public of its misconceptions of Native Americans than any other single work. Assigning this book to students in the 1960's resulted in shock and not infrequently, resentment, at the distruction of closely held myths. Berger's depiction of the Cheyenne made them truly 'human beings', not hostile savages. The Washita and Sand Creek massacres were big news to students of the '60s who ardently believed Indians 'got what they deserved' after the Little Big Horn.

The Return of Little Big Man takes us beyond the slaughter at the Greasy Grass [Little Big Horn] into that era when North America was realizing the frontier was closing. With the Indians driven to reservations or into Canada, Jack finds himself moving through such notorious sites as Dodge City, Deadwood and Tombstone. Berger uses Crabb's wanderings to move the focus from Native Americans to the 'gunslingers' and opportunists who provided the foundation of the frontier myth. Crabb encounters Hickock, Cody, the Earps and others any North American will readily identify. Skillfully keeping Crabb merely an observer of the Western scene, Berger's careful research begins to peel the patina of sanctity held by these figures for several generations. He condemns none, but paints them in more realistic hues, even modifying his earlier opinion of Custer.

Berger employs Cody's Wild West show as a vehicle for broadening Crabb's views of people and places. In an era when noveau riche Americans were taking Grand Tours of Europe, the show paralleled those journeys while introducing an image of frontier life. The validity of the image is irrelevant, the show was a huge success. Crabb acts to typify American attitudes about Europeans. Berger adds the Sioux for still another viewpoint, and the visit with the Pope is a high point of the book. This aspect alone should give this book greater appeal with readers in Europe. More to the point, these same readers may finally glean a clearer knowledge of the North American frontier. The judas kiss given the Native Americans by Hollywood and television will not be an easy stigma to erase without extensive research. Clearly, Berger has done the research, presenting the results in his usual lively manner.

There is no doubt that The Return of Little Big Man fails to equal the novelty value of the first volume of Crabb's biography. While the Sioux somewhat replace the Cheyenne of the earlier work, clearly their life has been changed by the closing of the frontier. The episode of Sitting Bull points up many facets of these changes. The focus on legendary white figures of the post-Civil War era is extensive. While a good background in frontier history enhances the reading of the story, it isn't a requirement. The story of Jack Crabb stands quite alone in itself.