Still an Enigma

I know many people consider Larry McMurtry a great Western writer. "Lonesome Dove," to name just one. I'm not a fan of western fiction, Louis L'Amour or any of the others. I think the true stories of the West are remarkable enough in themselves. Certainly the story of Crazy Horse, the great Sioux chief.

So I checked this out at once and at once was disappointed. McMurtry needs to stick to what he does best and biography is not it. Reading through this book I kept getting the definite impression that the author took this on as an assignment and nothing more. There was no feeling or heart behind it, almost as if he wasn't really interested in the subject. Of all the personalities of the American West, Crazy Horse is one that certainly deserves feeling and heart.

Mari Sandoz has such a biography. Part of the problem for a modern biographer is the continuing enigma of Crazy Horse. He wanted to keep his identity separate from the whites, and it is said the huge statue being blasted out of the mountain in South Dakota will never be finished for that reason. McMurtry doesn't even come close to understanding Crazy Horse. It may take a Native American writer, perhaps not yet born, who can convey to the rest of us the essence of this great, mysterious holy man of the Sioux.