I was a Dave Cullen fan before I read Columbine. He once very generously sent me an extremely thorough and interesting note explaining the inner workings of publishing to me. It was more useful than anything anyone told me in five years of graduate school. I was biased when I picked up Columbine. I wanted to like it because I like Dave.
That combination doesn’t always translate into a successful read. This time, though, I can honestly say that Dave completely fulfilled my expectations. More than anything, I was amazed at the breadth and depth of his research. Dave’s goal here was to explain the myths of Columbine, how they came to be, and then lay out the reality as honestly as possible.
He manages to do this a clear-eyed way that doesn’t allow anyone, especially local law enforcement, to completely escape whatever culpability they may have had in the situation. At the same time, he presents almost everyone with an exquisite sense of sensitivity. Dave is interested in the humanity of his subjects, not just in their status as victim, parent, principal, or killer. He gives everyone, except maybe those folks who deliberately engaged in various cover-ups related to the case, the benefit of the doubt.
His portraits of Harris and Klebold have the same quality. Dave isn’t afraid to draw conclusions where they are clearly warranted: Harris was a psychopath; Klebold was suicidal and easily manipulated. At the same time, he refrains from drawing conclusions where they aren’t – since no one has ever spoken to the Harris family in depth and on record, there’s no way to explain how his family life may or may not have had anything to do with the tragedy.
I am an everywoman reader in this sense: The closest I came to a school shooting is to have been a media witness – meaning I watched on TV with everyone else – to the Jonesboro shootings. A couple of friends are faculty members at Virginia Tech. Other than that, I am simply a member of what Dave calls Eric Harris’s “audience” – the masses that consume and repeat media characterizations. I appreciate Dave’s book because it speaks directly to someone who wants to understand the complexity of Columbine, or anyone who wants a case study in how “myths” stick to our popular history.
One myth that I enjoyed having corrected was the notion that Harris and Klebold picked April 20 for some deep symbolic reason. I am one of those people who have lived under the (apparently mistaken) belief that there is something special about the month of April, that is holds some special significance for militia types.
Dave presents aftermath of the tragedy as equally important as the moment itself. He carefully outlines the reaction of various factions and personalities within the community to law suits, the ongoing investigation, the “Christian martyr” story, the rebuilding of the library. The structure of the book saves the final judgment, the answer to the “why” question for last. It was the most difficult part of the book for me.
Dave doesn’t ever say it exactly the way I’m going to summarize it, but I think I’ve managed to understand his overall gist. Eric Harris was a psychopath who manipulated, as psychopaths will do, to fulfill a fantasy only a psychopath could really conjure up. There’s no way to guard entirely against this sort of killer. The only thing we can really learn is that we have much more to learn.
Obviously, my reading of Columbine is colored by recent events. Just days ago, there was a murder-suicide on a community college campus in Michigan. Two teenagers in Colorado were recently arrested for planning a Columbine-style attack against Dove Creek High School. A decade after Columbine, I think that point stands in sharp relief.
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
D Art
Steve Blevins
SCGA
teendoc
Ms. Snitten
tr ig
Salon.com
Comments
http://columbinefamilyrequest.org/
"I have just read the book by Dave Cullen on Columbine. I was angry at first, and then just disappointed.
I read it knowing that this was not a novel, not fictional, but a story about a real tragedy, with real people involved. I read it knowing that the story is so complicated that some errors are expected. I read it with the expectation of imperfection, but with the assumption that the author would research his story, and try to get as close to the truth as possible.
What I have found is just the opposite. The author relied on two main sources for his book, a police officer from Jefferson County and the lead FBI Agent for the investigation. Both are not reliable sources without some corresponding research into the other facts that exist, and they both certainly have a biased agenda.
The police officer and the FBI Investigator both have slanted agendas, biased by the Law Officers point of view, and both should have been kept out of any objective story about Columbine. At the very least they should have been interviewed, and their interviews weighted with the real facts as they were revealed years later. I am not saying they are dishonest, just that they have such specific agendas that the story shouldn’t rely on their input for its soul. Unfortunately it does.
The bullying, which is such a large part of Columbine, is dismissed by the FBI agent and the author, and that glaring omission changes the story of Columbine to a work of fiction. So many students from the school have told us about the bullying, and so many interviews by the police during the tragedy mention the bullying that it is inconceivable to me that this was left out of the book and dismissed in its entirety. There is actually a report made during the Governors investigation with Chief Justice Erickson that mentions and explains the bullying, from the constant fear to the persecution of a Jewish student by the school athletes. Perhaps the author should have read the Regina Huerter Report. To leave this major part of the tragedy out of the story is to rewrite history.
That is what this book is, a revisionist version of the Columbine Tragedy, which leads the reader to believe so many falsehoods that, upon completion of the book, I even questioned all of the things I know to be facts. I even questioned my knowledge of Columbine, and I lived it. In fact, I not only lived it, I researched it for years. This book, and the stories in it, will change the way people look at Columbine, and it will forever confuse researchers and lead them down false paths that are not the real truth.
Yes, I know that some truths can be perceptions, and can be discussed by experts for many years. I understand that some theories are going to vary about the two killers, and about the way Columbine is perceived.
As an example, the failure of the police to go into the school for hours is seen by many as cowardice. It is the glaring example of the failure of the police to protect children and citizens, and the failures at Columbine led to drastic and serious changes to first responder methods. That is basically a truth. But, the book makes light of this failure, and doesn’t clearly show the terror and the abandonment of the children left alive in the library that were rescued many hours later. The name Lisa Kreutz is barely a footnote, and she is the best example of the failure of the Sheriff’s department. Ignored are the wounded children who may have died while waiting for the police. Ignored is the complete absolvement of the SWAT team by the D.A. before the ballistics report was returned from the CBI, a most questionable and suspicious situation.
In addition to the failure to police mistakes, is the absurd way he gives the two killers emotional responses and feelings of regret, when no evidence exists to support this. It is akin to a WW2 reporter saying that the Nazis’ were sorry, and that they didn’t really mean it. Really?
As a Columbine parent, I find this book repulsive, for the main reason that it rewrites the Columbine tragedy.
The author doesn’t owe me anything, even though I was interviewed for the book. The author owes the public an attempt to tell the true story about Columbine, not an agenda influenced version based on the stories of two policemen and some incomplete research.
I am disgusted, discouraged, and disappointed� and sorry that this book fails the people of Columbine in so many ways.
I am mostly sad that some reader will read it in 3 years or 25 years, and think that this is the truth. They will be very wrong.
The people who lived through Columbine know parts of the truth. Everyone knows a different story, and every story is painful and sad. It is better not to tell the story of Columbine if the truth about bullying, the environment at the school, and the causes for the murders are diminished by pseudo-experts who use the tragedy to further their own career or to rewrite history to make the police look good.
Anyone who watched the police response at Columbine for hours, and saw staging but no activity, knows the truth about the police response. It is described in one word: Failure. In fact, the police failed us before, during and after Columbine. In their defense, the new first-responder policies are a direct result of brave policemen watching the failure at Columbine and correcting the problem with new policies designed for a quick, direct and effective response to a school shooter situation.
But, the biggest problem I have with the book is the easy summary that the author and his expert arrive at: There was no bullying, Eric was just crazy. That is so easy it is banal. That is so easy and so convenient.
If the one of the killers was crazy, then we can all relax. It is beyond our power to change it. It is an act of God, and craziness stands as the panacea for all of the worried parents.
“Crazy“ means that we do not need to acknowledge our part in this tragedy. We do not need to acknowledge our violent world, the environment of bullying and humiliation in the school, the alienation, the loneliness, the depression, the failures of the psychologists and counselors before Columbine and the pain. We do not have to change. We do not have to try to stop the next school shooting, because you can’t stop “crazy.”
Crazy is easy. Self analysis and acknowledging our failures is very difficult and very painful.
How will we ever learn from this, and stop the next school shooter, if crazy is the final analysis? That is the source of my disgust. This is a revisionist story about Columbine that does not acknowledge the many truths about the Columbine tragedy, which actually dismisses the real cause of the tragedy, in print for the parents, principals, psychologists, counselors and others to read. This Columbine story, told by an outsider without the complicated and multiple causative factors explained, leaves the reader with a misconception that will last forever.
It was a real tragedy. If the author can’t tell the truth, he should have written a fictional novel.
Randy Brown
A Columbine Parent"
Thanks very much for that wonderful review. It was very thoughtful and you really captured what I was trying to do.
I just stumbled upon it. (Things were crazy on the book tour when you posted, but I'm so glad you did.)