Book Review: Starkweather

The 1958 killing spree by Charles Starkweather and his fourteen-year-old girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate ushered in our modern era of senseless mass murder. That, at least, is a premise of Starkweather: The Untold Story of the Killing Spree That Changed America, by Harry N. MacLean.

Whether MacLean makes his case, and how much of the story really is untold, is debatable. But I did learn a few things from reading this book. Before, I had only a vague sense of these horrific crimes. I’d thought that 19-year-old Starkweather killed a few people in Lincoln, Nebraska for no apparent reason, and then he and his young accomplice fled by car across several states, murdering others along the way: a hitchhiker here, a guy with a flat tire there, and so on.

What really happened is that one day, Starkweather murdered Fugate’s mother, stepfather, and two-year-old sister. Then he and Caril hid out at the Fugate home for the next five or six days, before fleeing on their cross-country rampage. Only then did Starkweather murder seven more people, most of them in the Lincoln vicinity. Both were in custody within a few days.

The real question is: did Caril Ann Fugate participate in the murders? She insisted she did not – that she hadn’t even known her family was dead. But the legal system didn’t believe her, and gave her a life sentence. Starkweather got the electric chair.

In spite of this book’s title, Starkweather is at least as much about Fugate, and perhaps moreso. She always maintained her innocence, and MacLean presents evidence for and against her. Though she was never exonerated, Caril Ann Fugate was released from prison after serving eighteen years. As of this writing she is still alive, but in declining health, living in a nursing home.

There are flaws in Starkweather, clumsy ones. This susprised me, because according to a jacket blurb, Harry MacLean is a prizewinning writer of True Crime stuff.

In spite of this credential he fails to explain certain things, and the book suffers for it. During that five to six day period between the first murders and leaving on their cross-country spree, for example, Starkweather and Fugate stayed at the Fugate home (the initial victims stashed in a shed behind the house). On several occasions people came knocking on the door, but Fugate got rid of them, explaining everyone inside was ill.

Among those calling were two cops. They left with the crimes undetected – but why were they there in the first place? MacLean doesn’t explain. Even in the context of a more innocent time, would two experienced cops really buy an “everyone is sick” story?

The book also throws a lot of names and details at the reader, but there is no index. It is hard, in places, to keep everything straight. An index would be invaluable. The same is true of citations: there are no end notes, no footnotes, no page references – only a brief Author’s Note at the end.

If there is anything missing from MacLean’s telling of the crime saga itself, it is motive. But it seems to be beyond us, at this late date. Starkweather gave conflicting accounts of why he did what he did, then went to the chair. Surviving records provide nothing conclusive.

All that said, readers interested in a detailed account of this horrific murder case will not be disappointed by Starkweather.

Wildfire: Two Years Later

This is a summary of how we escaped the Marshall Mesa wildfire that swept through parts of Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30, 2021 – and killed two people, caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and upended thousands of lives.

“We” is my wife and me and our cat, while “upended” is a very imprecise term to describe the trauma, psychological and otherwise, to specific individuals during and after the conflagration, and to the community at large.

It happened on a Thursday, the last day of the work week – Friday being the New Year’s Eve holiday. Sometime in mid-to-late morning le spouse and I, both working from home, detected the unmistakable smell of smoke – woodsmoke, like a campfire. As it persisted we looked out a front window, and saw what was reminiscent of coastal fog.

At some point my wife looked at social media. Someone had posted something about a wildfire that was burning across many acres of open space, a few miles west of our neighborhood. Winds in excess of 100mph whipped its intensity. We took solace in the knowledge that a six-lane highway separated us from where the fire appeared to be burning.

A little later le spouse checked social media again. Now someone had posted video of flames burning across a wooden fence in their back yard. That wide highway hadn’t stopped the fire’s progress, after all.

Before much longer it became obvious that we might have to flee. It felt premature – and in truth, unreal – but I gathered a few things, like a toothbrush and a change of clothes. Also got my guitar and camera (photo ops), and the pet carrier our cat despises.

Meanwhile the smoke visible out the front grew denser and, presumably, closer.

Finally, a little after 1pm, we got the inevitable emergency robocall telling us that if we valued our lives, we would get the hell out. There are certain things you only need to hear once. Amid ever-increasing fear and uncertainty, we piled our stuff into the car and pulled away.

“Which way shall we go?” asked le spouse.

My first thought: you’re joking, right? To the west, towering columns of dense smoke. To east, clear skies.

So I sang my reply: “Blue skies, smilin’ at me! Nothin’ but blue skies...”

She was not amused.

Thousands of others fled, too. The usual five minute drive out of town became half an hour, maybe longer. Finally we reached relatively open road – but had nowhere to go, so we zig-zagged aimlessly. I don’t remember how long that lasted, or how we learned of the emergency evacuation center set up at the local YMCA. But once we did we headed over, and spent several tense hours there. Few facts were available at this point. But we did learn that our grown-and-gone kids had heard of the fire and were tracking our movements via the Find My Friends app.

That night we wound up at a hotel, where we smuggled in the cat and got our first good look, on CNN, at the scope of the disaster: jaw-dropping video of familiar sites – buildings, shopping centers, neighborhoods – consumed by immense, wide-spread flames.

The next day I posted to social media that my wife and I were safe.

We spent a largely sleepless night of profound uncertainty. I sprawled on the bed like a body with chalk lines not yet drawn. The cat kept nestling against me in this nook, that cranny, before emitting a stressful yowl.

Returned home this morning to the immense relief of finding our abode unscathed. Reeks of smoke but our neighborhood survives. Yet we are surrounded by catastrophic, unimaginable loss.

One inevitably turns to truisms at such times: like the fleeting nature of life, and the difference between what is truly important and what only seems so.

Ultimately, the cause of the fire was pinned on smoldering, wind-whipped embers, and loose power lines. Many lawsuits are pending.

As the fire’s first anniversary approached, I talked to some people directly involved in these events. Can we ever recover? “We, as a community, are all irretrievably altered,” one said to me. “It’s a communal trauma.” Recovery is a relative term.

Now, two years after that devastating event, the trauma remains. To a casual observer the worst may seem over: homes being rebuilt, burned debris hauled off, once-charred open space covered in new growth.

But take a closer look, and the scars are plain as day. The wildfire is never far from my thoughts, and is never far, no doubt, from the thoughts of anyone else who lived through it. A windy day, common enough around here, is a psychological trigger. And probably always will be.

Ham On Rye: A Book Review

Early in his career, the novelist William Kennedy was a journalist whose writing included book reviews. In an essay collected in Riding The Yellow Trolley Car he describes how he hated writing bad reviews – probably because, as a fledgling author himself, he knew how hard the discipline is.

I find myself recalling this now as I begin my review of Ham On Rye, Charles Bukowski’s offensively ill-written novel from 1982.

I’ve never read anything by Charles Bukowski before, and maybe this novel isn’t the best way to ease into the work of someone I’d always thought of as a poet. I understand that he is highly regarded by many people; that he is viewed as a sort of poet-laureate of the Outsider. Maybe that’s why my expectations, in terms of literary merit, were so high.

There just isn’t much redeeming value to Ham On Rye, an autobiographical coming-of-age story. Bukowski had a crappy childhood. I get that. He grew up poor during the Great Depression, with an abusive father and almost no nurturing or encouragement. That much comes across. The novel’s big flaw is that its main character Henry Chinaski (Bukowski’s alter-ego) is nearly devoid of introspection, and is almost entirely unsympathetic.

As I see it, Chinaski/Bukowski decided very early on to more or less devote his life to excessive drinking, and to life on the outside. An unanswered question is, why?

In Chapter 22 (there are 58 chapters in all, many of them quite short, in this ordinary-length book) he describes his first encounter with alcohol. He's around twelve years old when a friend shows him his dad’s stash of homemade wine, and goads him into trying some. After a few glugs, Henry says, “I like this stuff.”

It was magic. Why hadn’t someone told me? With this, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him.

This may be Ham On Rye’s most worthy detail, even without accompanying exploration: Bukowski’s immediate reaction to, and affection for, alcohol. By now science may have answered the question of why some people are so drawn to alcohol, while others can take it or leave it. Bukowski’s recollection is a kind of case study, presented with elegant simplicity.

The novel ends in Chinaski’s young adulthood. On one hand, he seems to want to better himself – his education and station in life. On the other, he is critical of aiming too high, and happily devoted to self-destructive behavior. His greatest passion seems to be drinking. It may have been a choice, or it may have been surrendering to addiction. To me, it seems like a waste. Illustrating this may be Ham On Rye’s greatest value.