Evan Connell is primarily known as a novelist — Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge, et al — but he’s kind of a journeyman American letters guy who was interesting in a lot of different stories, ideas, histories, and places. This popular history of George Custer fits right along those. Custer occupies a curious spot in American history and speaks to some specific contrasts in American culture, if not straight up paradoxes or antimonies. Something that is often lost (at least to me) is the Custer stories is that he was quite young, and had fame from a young age. He’s more or less famous for being last in rank of his West Point class — which is always a funny way to catalog someone’s education as last still passes, but in particular he also graduated with one of the largest totals of demerits as well. It’s also well-known but also maybe not that he earned his rank as general during the Civil War. The Civil War did this a lot, became a testing ground for strategies and acclaim in later politics and also fighting against Native Americans in the “winning of the West”. So the first contrast here is that he was a partisan in the Civil War, and then a rallying cry for the whole (white) country after.
A second contrast is how revered he is some circles and how reviled he is in others. He earns his revilement, but I would argue his reverence is more suspect.
This book is neither a hagiography nor a polemic. It’s also not an attempt to split the difference. Connell wants to tell an accurate history, but not with the idea of balance or “correcting” any kinds of records. That approach works for me as history is not the middle between competing discourses. The story is quite a bit more fractured after that, but supremely interesting. If there’s fair criticisms of this book, I am not equipped to give them as I don’t know a lot of this history otherwise.
