Son of the Morning Star is the nonfiction account of General Custer from the great American novelist Evan S. Connell. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as "one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers," wrote what continues to be the most ...
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Son of the Morning Star is the nonfiction account of General Custer from the great American novelist Evan S. Connell. Custer's Last Stand is among the most enduring events in American history--more than one hundred years after the fact, books continue to be written and people continue to argue about even the most basic details surrounding the Little Bighorn. Evan S. Connell, whom Joyce Carol Oates has described as "one of our most interesting and intelligent American writers," wrote what continues to be the most reliable--and compulsively readable--account of the subject. Connell makes good use of his meticulous research and novelist's eye for the story and detail to re-create the heroism, foolishness, and savagery of this crucial chapter in the history of the West.
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Recent contrasting highly perceptive reviews of Evan S. Connell's "Son of the Morning Star" (1984) prompted me to read the book. Connell's book is difficult to classify because it is a broad meditation on Custer, the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the American West. The book is too digressive, introspective, and meditative to be considered a historical narrative. The description of the event at the focus of the book -- the massacre of Custer's Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn -- on June 25, 1876, is hazy indeed. Connell largely talks around the famous battle. The book lacks an index to allow the reader to track the specifics of the discussion and to return easily to particular topics --- and I think this is deliberate rather than an oversight.
Apart from this book, Connell is most famous as the author of the novel "Mrs. Bridge" (1959) which I read many years ago. In understated, eloquent writing, Connell's novel tells the story of an upper middle-class American family with its characters limited in their outlook on life, overly cautious, lonely, unfulfilled, bored, and sexually frustrated. The subject of Connell's history could not be more different than that of his novel. Whatever else it may be, in Connell's West we have vigorous, passionate, free-wheeling, and romantic individuals, both Indian and non-Indian. At one point, a character in the history remarks in impeccable French to the effect that "here we are all savages." The West is a large-scale world of passion and action. Describing its excesses, brutality, cruelty, and stupidity, Connell seems to me a romantic, preferring the vigor and eccentricities of these days and people to the quiet conformity of the Bridges. The title of the book, "Son of the Morning Star" bears comparison with the prosaic title "Mrs. Bridge". The Indians bestowed this poetic nickname on Custer. He was a man of notoriety during his short life and of many nicknames, including "Long Hair" or "Yellow Hair" and the cruder sobriquet, "Iron Butt".
Literary works are made by style. Connell's organization of his material and his apparent prolixity can create a sense of frustration and disjointedness in reading; but it makes his tale. Without an introduction or other preliminaries, Connell begins in the middle of his story with the fate of Custer's subordinates, Reno and Benteen, at Little Big Horn. Custer's own fate is indirectly described, through their eyes. The author presupposes, as he may for this event, that the reader already knows the outlines of the famous story. The book then flits forward in time to discuss Reno's subsequent Court of Inquiry over his role in Little Bighorn and the lives of both these characters in the story. Then, Connell leaves Little Bighorn to move back in time to the early days of settlement. We get an introductory overview of Custer's early life, his West Point days, his Civil War service, his courtship, and then the book moves on to other things.
In the process, Connell offers portraits of many participants in Little Bighorn. There are innumerable digressions. Connell picks up a character or event and cannot let it go. The reader learns a great deal and also sees the conflicting evidence and the many different ways of understanding a historical situation. The book does not work as a narrative that tells a coherent story from beginning to end with a perspective that the author outlines for his reader in advance to ease the way. Instead Connell offers a circular account, that shifts focus and time frames and that remains as obscure as does Little Bighorn itself, for all the iconic and legendary character it has assumed. As the book progresses, we get a history of Custer's life in pieces, as well as the of the conflict that led to Little Bighorn and its aftermath. I described Connell as a romantic above for the passion he brings to his story and for the life of adventure, risk-taking and feeling that he obviously treasures. But he does not romanticize characters and events. Gruesomeness, wantonness, death, and human pettiness pervade his account.
Besides its digressive character, Connell's writing is also understated and subdued. His writing is unobtrusive and allows the events and characters he portrays to be shown in their complexity. The book is difficult because it is history, a book about the history of a history, and a personal reflection. More than on Little Bighorn or on the West, Connell shows the reader how perspectives on Custer and on the Battle have changed with time, especially as reflected in art and literature. Many passages of the book explore his own attitude towards Custer and his other protagonists. As battles go, Little Bighorn was small. Custer himself could fairly be regarded as a minor figure rather than as the stuff of legend. Connell shows why Custer, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the many other characters in his book matter.
"Son of the Morning Star" is not the work to read for a basic history. But it is a work of art and a meditation on the American experience.
