Reviews

• just started reading cloud splitter good read

• A book of overwhelming power and beauty. As the author repeats, this is a work of fiction, not a history. But it is a vivid, poetic yet stark depiction of the physical and social conditions of the time, as well as the interior psychologies, particularly of the narrator, John Brown’s son Owen, and of John Brown himself. Though Brown was a legend in his own time, to day he is opaque and this book helps us in the 21st century to get a bearing on him. The relationship of children to parents is radically different in today's largely urbanized society from what it was in the rural America of the mid 19th century. Subsistence farming was the basis; markets for cash crops were only just developing, together with commodities speculation; but farmers who were "just" subsisting were, as we forget, also that much more independent, of the markets and mortgages that turned them into trailer trash. The life of farming families was hard; children were expected to contribute to the extent of their physical capability; their moral or psychological readiness was assumed. Going forth and multiplying was a boon to any family, and they started early. While today we may think of Brown as a religious fanatic, this book shows how little understanding we have of how religion shaped lives then. It seems John Brown spent almost every living moment considering the way he lived his life and how that related to God. Every emotion, every thought, every action was scrutinized. This probably had a negative effect on Owen Brown, and definitely destroyed poor Frederick. Still, this self-awareness, so foreign in our age of self-indulgence and self-justification and at best, pragmatic self-interest, is I think admirable. I do not now think John Brown’s acts were religious insanity. Strangely, he was prescient enough to realize the importance of Kansas—if it became a slave state, the way would be paved for a slave state majority in Congress, just as the slave states realized that although Lincoln’s government was not at first asking them to abolish slavery, making slavery in new states illegal would only lead to further abolition. He is also seen as, after carrying out the infamous Pottawattomie killings, realizing that poor white people would never unite with blacks against the rich white capitalists, whether planter, banker, or trader who were exploiting them both. I suspect when he decided in desperation to become a terrorist, he lost the sense of moral righteousness that even got him to this point. Brown, so much in control when he maintained a station on the Underground Railroad, began to lose it in Kansas and totally lost it at Harper's Ferry, where he ceases to be a larger than life figure and becomes a little cog in an ultimately minor disturbance, as observed by Owen from a treetop. He didn't have to make the raid; he might have escaped Harper's Ferry before the train he released could report to Washington. Instead he became captive to his deluded dream--that after he liberated the weapons stored at Harper's Ferry, all the enslaved blacks in the South would rise up and start a revolution as many successfully did in Haiti. Even after Frederick Douglass warned him that the blacks he worked with, and exhorted and encouraged, would not rise up. Brown should have known from his own experience, how after his impassioned lectures, those few of any color brave enough to initially respond to his call finally winnowed themselves down almost to nothing. Brown is an overwhelming presence for most of the book, as he breaks rocks and bundles wool—yet after he goes to war in Kansas, and throughout Harper's Ferry he suddenly fades into a shadow, a myth as much as a little marionette. But in fact, the book reveals that he was in the end, just one human being, if an exceptionally brave and decent one. A splendid read. I think the title is meant to refer to a mountain in New York, but it could well describe John Brown's dreamer's soul.

• Von John Brown hat wohl jeder schon gehört. Der Autor beschreibt dessen Entwicklung und die seiner Familie in einer perfekten Mischeng auswahrer Geschichte und Fiktion. Ich konnte nicht aufhören zu lesen und war sehr berührt von dem Buch. Es hat einen bleibenden Eindruck hinterlassen!

• This is an impressive book in scope and execution. It's told through the tortured memories of John Brown's third son, Owen, who survived the doomed attack on Harper's Ferry. The book pays little attention to the Harper's Ferry adventure and to the Browns' adventures in Kansas, and concentrates instead of the social and familial context of Brown's actions. There is considerably more attention paid to Owen's relationship with his father and his obsessions about sex and human relationships than to the cowboy style adventures in Kansas. While it is written in a stately and measured tone, it does not have the feel of something written in the late 18th century, and Banks' narrator seems comfortable using words and constructions which sound quite modern. Perhhaps because of this, the book never drags in spite of its enormous length. The central question the book seems to me to ask his the eternal one about ends justifying means. The Browns' seemed to know that the actions that they took in Kansas were morally wrong--yet they believed, and Owen believes at the time of the writing, that had John Brown and his gang not perpetrated the Pottawatomie massacre that the entire course of American history would be different. They believed that the moderate free-soil politicians would have sold out, that Kansas would be admitted to the Union as a slave state, and that Lincoln would never have been elected and the NORTH would have seceded. Of course we'll never know, but we have to ask ourselves if their actions were justified given what they believed. Definitely shows you the terrorists point of view. Very good book on a fascinating subject.

• Very happy with book, slightly late but that was not a problem

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