Little Big Man

This is the story of Jack Crabbe. Jack was reared by both white and Cheyenne folks.

His story is a masterpiece and describes the destruction of Native Americans along with their way of life (including the bison they relied on). According to Jack, he even participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn and was the only white man who survived.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in American history and who wants to read about it in an entertaining way. There’s no way to disguise the hateful way European settlers wiped out native tribes and/or enslaved… show more.

My reading follows the pleasure principle. This book is a joy—exuberant, funny, touching, outrageous. It’ll stay a friend for life (along with The Third Policeman).

Jack Crabb—“either the most neglected hero in the history of this country or a liar of insane proportions”—now aged 111, and sole white survivor of Little Big Horn, recounts his first thirty-odd years as a Forest Gump of the Wild West, whose acquaintances include Wyatt Earp, Calamity Jane, General Custer. 

At ten, Jack is adopted by the Cheyenne (they call themselves ‘Human Beings’, to distinguish themselves from the savage, white settlers). From then on… show more.

With great humor and deep empathy, Thomas Berger creates a vision of the Wild West not seen in any John Ford film. The eponymous hero journeys from his pioneer boyhood into the world of the Northern Cheyenne, who, despite slaughtering his family, adopt him as one of their own. There he learns their complicated ways. For example, “[While] Indians love war, … they don’t like to lose relatives to it. They really like one another in the same tribe, and while they hate their enemy, … they don’t want to change him into anything else.” Balanced between the Cheyenne and… show more.

When I say “more hysterical than historical,” what I’m talking about is satire. Satire is the way I mostly see the world, including the history of the world. Little Big Man is one of the great American novels, and it’s funny and brilliant. It’s a grab-you-by-the-shoulders-and-shake-you kind of Satire. Berger’s novel stitches a fictional tale onto the fabric of the Old West. It’s the story of Jack Crabb, a cranky 111-year-old adventurer, who narrates his long life in the colorful language of his time. Dustin Hoffman plays Jack in the movie, which you should see after you read the… show more.

If I were allowed a tie in my rankings, I’d put Little Big Man and True Grit side-by-side if, for no other reason than, IMHO, Thomas Berger is underappreciated. He starts his larger-than-life saga with his protagonist, the 111-year-old Jack Crabbe, stating, “I am a white man and never forget it, but I was brought up by the Cheyenne Indians from the age of ten.”

Berger saturated himself in diaries, memoirs, and letters of the 19th Century American West and it shows in the authenticity of Crabbe’s first-person narration as he details his purportedly true adventures that range from cheating… show more.

You won’t find many cowboys here, but almost every other character-type of the Western genre — gunfighters, snake oil salesmen, cavalry officers, preachers, prostitutes, schoolmarms, and merchants — are on display (and held up for ridicule). Written in 1964, the novel also represented a significant step forward for the genre with its well-researched and well-rounded portrayals of Native Americans. The story — about the lifelong identity crisis of a white orphan adopted by the Cheyenne — would be unbearably sad if Berger’s writing weren’t so very, very funny.