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Ladataan... Dead and Gone (1954)Tekijä: Manly Wade Wellman
   Edgar Award (341) Ei tämänhetkisiä Keskustelu-viestiketjuja tästä kirjasta.  waltzmn | Oct 17, 2021 |  ei arvosteluja | lisää arvostelu
Palkinnot
Violent dealth is amazingly apt to remind us of vigorous life; these ten stories of classic North Carolina murders which occurred between 1808 and 1914 represent a much neglected part of the exciting history of the state. Victims include a Confederate general, a lovely orphan girl, a pathetic little boy, and a highly offensive political boss. The motives are the usual ones -- gain, revenge, "elimination," and jealousy. The plaintive history and untimely death of Naomi Wise -- "poor 'Omi" they called her in Randolph County over five generations ago -- strikingly counterparts Dreiser's An American Tragedy; Ida Bell Warren, the veritable Lady Macbeth of Forsyth County; the arsenic poisoner of old Fayetteville; the kidnapping of Kenneth Beasley near the site of the Lost Colony; the almost perfect crime, the murder of the hated Reconstruction Senator "Chicken" Stephens of Caswell County, which in spite of the efforts of Claude G. Bowers and others went unsolved for years; the mad jealousy of Frankie Silver of Burke County which ended with bitter justice at the end of the law's noosed rope, the first woman hanged in the state -- these and other lively stories of famous North Carolina murders make fascinating reading. The stories, told with authority and inviting informality, employ material from newspapers, court records, letters, family collections, and numerous works of local history. They evoke a feeling for a past time and place as well as for the untidy events themselves. Kirjastojen kuvailuja ei löytynyt. |
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1
Manley Wade Wellman was probably best known as a writer of fantasy and science fiction, but he was also interested in folklore (his work appeared frequently in the North Carolina Folklore Journal) and history. This book seems to have been his attempt to combine the latter two.
Unfortunately, the folklore won. And it was the worst sort of folklore: The kind that didn't just evolve but was made up.
I can't say much about most of the events described in this book; I don't have any other sources about them. But I do know about the murders of Naomi Wise by John Lewis, of Charles Silver by his wife Frankie, and of Laura Foster by Thomas Dula ("Tom Dooley"). And in all cases Wellman has reached for the most readily available sources and not tried to research further. In the case of Frankie Silver, there isn't much we can add to those sources, for the good and simple reason that very little is known; Wellman may have the facts right, although I'm dubious about his interpretations. In the case of Dula, the broad outline is right but a lot of the details are wrong, sometimes in a way that is somewhat prejudicial to our understanding. In the case of Naomi Wise, the result is pure garbage. He took his "facts" from the account written by Braxton Craven, and Craven's story is pure fiction with about eight accurate words in it "Naomi Wise," "John Lewis," and "drowned in Deep River." It's true that the Wise case is another one where the truth mostly eludes us, because it was long ago and records are few, but we can prove Craven was wrong. (For an obvious example, Craven said Wise was a 19-year-old "maiden." But she had two illegitimate children, the older of whom would have had to have been conceived when Wise was nine years old if Wise had been 19 when murdered!)
The writing is good. The subjects interesting. But if the book is wrong when I know the truth, how can I trust it in cases where I don't? If you want to read this as fiction, great; it has several interesting crime tales. But don't believe anything it says without verifying it. (