Post #5, Comments on Johnson and Lubet (for 3 Oct seminar)
I commented on Dave's site and on Dan's site .
In keeping with the themes of “meeting and conflict” previously addressed in One Vast Winter Count, Susan Johnson’s bottom-up history of life in the camps gives voice to those denizens of the mining communities who heretofore have been silenced in history. In Roaring Camp, she underscores the transitory nature of society on the fringes, as successive periods of exploration, settlement and finally civilization shape the character of the towns in question.
In Murder in Tombstone, however, Lubet deals not with the temporal quality of the character of the town of Tombstone, but instead serves up a layered and subtle depiction of the more nefarious backstory of one particular period. Other than the explanatory pre-story and the denoument, Lubet focuses most of his book on the infamous day of the shootout at the O.K. Corral and the following inquest and findings; he covers a span of a few months. What I most thoroughly enjoyed about this work was the effort the author went to portraying the events from the viewpoint of both an advocate and a detractor. With a bit of supposition and counterfactual postulating, Lubet does yeoman’s work in ferreting out the story as seen by both the Earp-sympathizers in 1891 Tombstone, and the concerned citizens who were as concerned by the law as the lawless.
What both these books add to our discussion, and my education, it a understanding of the complexity of these stories, and by extension of the history of the American West. Suffice it to say that I will be giving a closer read to accounts that I may have previously taken at face value, and will also strive to discover the story behind the story.
I commented on Dave's site and on Dan's site .
In keeping with the themes of “meeting and conflict” previously addressed in One Vast Winter Count, Susan Johnson’s bottom-up history of life in the camps gives voice to those denizens of the mining communities who heretofore have been silenced in history. In Roaring Camp, she underscores the transitory nature of society on the fringes, as successive periods of exploration, settlement and finally civilization shape the character of the towns in question.
In Murder in Tombstone, however, Lubet deals not with the temporal quality of the character of the town of Tombstone, but instead serves up a layered and subtle depiction of the more nefarious backstory of one particular period. Other than the explanatory pre-story and the denoument, Lubet focuses most of his book on the infamous day of the shootout at the O.K. Corral and the following inquest and findings; he covers a span of a few months. What I most thoroughly enjoyed about this work was the effort the author went to portraying the events from the viewpoint of both an advocate and a detractor. With a bit of supposition and counterfactual postulating, Lubet does yeoman’s work in ferreting out the story as seen by both the Earp-sympathizers in 1891 Tombstone, and the concerned citizens who were as concerned by the law as the lawless.
What both these books add to our discussion, and my education, it a understanding of the complexity of these stories, and by extension of the history of the American West. Suffice it to say that I will be giving a closer read to accounts that I may have previously taken at face value, and will also strive to discover the story behind the story.
posted by john | 8:30 PM
3 Comments:
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John, your comments really got me thinking about the sources in our two books, and how much I admire the historians for what they have done with their materials. Diaries and letters in Roaring Camp are used to amazing effect by Johnson and, of course, how the materials are used in Murder in Tombstone is just terrific. In a way I'm a little sad at not getting to ferret out sources for this class (since for both research papers the materials are being provided). Maybe it is because I read this week's selections at the same time I'm looking for sources for my other class's final project. I could sense that Johnson and Lubet have a real love for the hunt, the quest we go through when we research. I was reminded that those amazing sources are why a lot of us are historians in the first place.
Hi John,
Real nice post…I thought you made a number of strong points. As I read Johnson’s work, it occurred to me that in some ways, the gold rush itself was almost incidental to her. She seemed to stress the unique nature of an event, where large numbers of dissimilar men, rushed into an area, and created a societal framework in a decade, torn it down, and then built another to replace it. This experience, created a set of forces and effects that had not been seen before in modern times…this is what made the gold rush special. Gold and California could almost be replaced with any of similar factors.
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