Thomas Berger

I don’t know what got me thinking today about Thomas Berger (1924-2014). Could it be that I’m sitting right across the room from his shelf of books?

Could be.

I first became aware of him when I read Little Big Man, 1964, a novel about Custer’s Last Stand, a novel purportedly told (humorously and movingly) by a very aged man, Jack Crabb, who claims to be the last survivor of that battle, a man who was captured and adopted by a Cheyenne tribe in his early years.

Crabb also meets about every other famous gunfighter who once roamed the West.

Dustin Hoffman starred as Crabb in the very popular 1970 film directed by Arthur Penn. (Link to film trailer.)

Joyce and I were married in late 1969, and it’s one of the first books I told her that she must read. She did—and loved it, too, and taught it in her frosh English course she was teaching up at Kent State as she began her doctoral program there.

I went back and read Berger’s other novels (some dealing with his experiences in WW II), and then on and on until he quit. (And I read Little Big Man several times.)

And one thing I noticed: They were all different—each from the others. He has a King Arthur novel, and he explored about every genre after that, each novel displaying his characteristic wit, each novel making me shake my head in wonder and admiration.

I have a college friend, Bill Heath, who got to know Berger well and did some writing of his own about him. And I think it was Bill who first told me about him. That’s a gift I can’t repay

But the appeal of Little Big Man?

A lot of it has to do with my long fascination with Custer’s Last Stand. Early in my boyhood I read a book about that battle (written by Quentin Reynolds), and I re-read it about a dozen times.

As my life went on, I read scores of Custer books (fiction and non-). I read his own books—and his widow’s. I visited the actual battlefield several times. Bought a Custer Toby jug. Oh, and I took our family a few times down to see New Rumley, Ohio, where he was born and where stands a large statue even now.

Of course, the more I read about him the more I realized he was not always the Good Guy. He did some heinous things to Native Americans.

But he also was a major factor in winning the Civil War battle at Gettysburg.

Still ...

So, my fascination has cooled with Custer.

But not with Thomas Berger, whose work delighted me throughout my middle years. No way to thank him for that.