Custer by Larry McMurtry (review)

Larry McMurtry takes what he calls a “literary” view of the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Custer, a pictorial biography of George Armstrong Custer. McMurtry admits that he is not a historian, and he demonstrates it with a cavalier handling of facts in both the text and picture captions.

He opens his story by describing the famous Otto Becker lithograph called Custer’s Last Fight that publicized the battle when it hung in taverns around the country in the nineteenth century. McMurtry mentions some of the many historical inaccuracies in the painting but calls it Custer’s Last Stand even though the correct title appears in the accompanying illustration. Captions are often incomplete or misleading, and worse, sometimes misidentify events and people, including Custer. For instance, McMurtry claims cameras were affordable for most people in the 1840s, and that newspaper headlines were invented around the time of the Little Bighorn. He asserts that the teetotal Custer was drinking at the battle.

McMurtry is less concerned with the accuracy of such details than with emphasizing his main point that the battle was significant “because it closed a great narrative; the narrative of American settlement.” He repeatedly returns to this theme, talking about the historical figures as if they were characters in a novel and at one point comparing Little Bighorn reenactments to the German Passion play in Oberammergau. McMurtry acknowledges that the idea that Custer’s Last Stand provides a final dramatic scene for westward expansion has already been touched on by historians. But he contends they didn’t make the argument as plainly as he has done because the short-form biography he is using forces the author to get to the point. However, McMurtry undercuts his point by too often using a flippant tone. Here’s McMurtry describing how the participants reacted to the battle: “Surprise, surprise, you’re dead!”

Custer contains no citations, so it’s impossible to tell where McMurtry got his information. The bibliography lists fifteen books with the comment that the Custer literature is extensive, “most of it peculiar and most of it cranky.” McMurtry sounds cranky himself when he writes that he often wonders why tourists visit the battlefield. He speculates that they want “to see what death left us: rows of crosses, mostly.”

McMurtry has left us with another peculiar book to add to the Custer literature. The author’s fame assures it will be read. Here’s hoping casual readers take it as literature rather than history.