The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara

 
The Killer Angels

A Novel of the Civil War

I last read The Killer Angles four decades ago. I liked it the first time, but really grew to appreciate it with this reading. Great story, well written, and enlightening. My project, Maelstrom, is also a historical novel that alternates between Union and Confederate viewpoints, so I appreciated the difficulty of portraying events in an entertaining manner while remaining historically accurate. 

The advantage of historical novelizations is that they can bring characters to life and allow the reader to feel like they were present when events unfolded. Novels are first and foremost stories, and stories must move. History has a way of happening in a haphazard fashion that hinders storytelling. The difficulty is to maintain good pacing while remaining faithful to the historical presentation. In this reading I could lift myself above the story and admire the craft.

Sharra does an excellent job and deserved the Pulitzer Prize he won for The Killer Angels.

Confederates in the Attic

Confederates in the Attic

Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War 

Tony Horwitz

Confederates in the Attic is a present day (1998) memoir of a Civil War tour. The book is appropriately titled. When you rummage around an attic, you find all kinds of junk. Junk that’s past it’s prime, odd reminders of bygone days, nostalgic twaddle, and utter fantasies. Tony Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, finds all of these and more. Unfortunately, he spends too much time in the shadowy recesses of his metaphorical attic.

The encountered characters and whimsical writing make the tour fascinating, but there’s not much substance added to lore of this bloody conflict. That’s not a criticism because the book’s intent is to investigate lingering sentiments, not to uncover facts or artifacts. The narrative actually references a lot of Civil War history and I found no errors of note. (The characters in this memoir would prefer the War Between the States, or even better, the War of Northern Aggression.)

Horwitz lives in Virginia, so he’s not exactly a Yankee peeking into odd corners to discover residue views on the war. Sometimes, however, Horwitz’s Northern education (Brown and Columbia), slants his perspective, especially when it comes to race. I found his condescending depiction of Southern racism off-putting, especially since in 1998, I lived in Boston, which was far more segregated than any Southern city. Horwitz described Atlanta as a bland and boring place unconcerned with the Civil War. My experience is that Atlanta is more representative of Southern attitudes than those portrayed by the enthusiasts for the “Lost Cause.”