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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThomas Berger, ‘Little Big Man’ Author, Is Dead at 89
Thomas Berger, the reclusive and bitingly satirical novelist who explored the myths of the American West in Little Big Man and the mores of 20th-century middle-class society in a shelf of other well-received books, died on July 13 in Nyack, N.Y. He was 89.
His agent, Cristina Concepcion, said she learned of his death, at Nyack Hospital, on Monday. Mr. Berger lived in Grand View, a village in Rockland County, N.Y., where he had remained fiercely protective of his privacy.
Mr. Berger fell into that category of novelists whose work is admired by critics, devoured by devoted readers and even assigned in modern American literature classes but who owe much of their popularity to Hollywood. Little Big Man, published in 1964, is widely known for Arthur Penns film adaptation, released in 1970, starring Dustin Hoffman as the protagonist, Jack Crabb.
The novel, told in Crabbs voice at the age of 111, recounts his life on the Great Plains as an adopted Cheyenne and makes the claim that he was the only white survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. But Mr. Bergers body of work was far broader than that, and it earned him a reputation as an American original, if an underrecognized one. The author and scholar Thomas R. Edwards, writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1980, called him one of our most intelligent, witty and independent-minded writers. Our failure to read and discuss him, Mr. Edwards added, is a national disgrace.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/books/thomas-berger-little-big-man-author-is-dead-at-89.html
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)RainDog
(28,784 posts)Hekate
(90,793 posts)It is exceptional. The movie is good too, very, and I'm glad it brought more people to the book.
Old Lodge Skins: It makes my heart sad, a world without human beings has no center to it.
Rest in peace, Mr Berger, you and Old Lodge Skins and Jack Crabb together in the Happy Hunting Grounds.
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)Hissyspit
(45,788 posts)Haven't read the book, though.
Hekate
(90,793 posts)I've been meaning to replace my copy for years, especially once the masking tape fell off with age.
Unknown Beatle
(2,672 posts)RIP Mr. Berger
randome
(34,845 posts)[hr][font color="blue"][center]Everything is a satellite to some other thing.[/center][/font][hr]
Martin Eden
(12,875 posts)I was 12 or 13, and it had a lasting impression on me.
I never again saw Indians on TV as simple targets for cowboys to shoot at; they were human beings forced into extreme situations through inustice and the inexorable destruction of their race and their culture.
If that same lesson were applied more thoroughly, perhaps it would not be so easy to glorify the military and proudly wave the flag as we drop bombs on brown people.