Amazon Prime offers a memoir by Nick Mason, drummer for Pink Floyd. I had to get it. Rock memoirs are generally gold, tho Paul Stanley’s proved boring enough that I stopped reading. I did just finish an account of the Federman Massacre by Dee Brown and want to read something less light-hearted. I assume the contentions between the Floyds will prove salaciously brutal. Having read two pages, I sense that Mason can at least write a proper sentence. That assumed he’s the one who tickled the keyboard. I haven’t seen ghostwriter credit but maybe I missed it.
As to the Massacre, Federman himself actually plays a minor character in Brown’s book. He arrives late in the story, after much tension between the Sioux and the folks at Fort Phil Kearny. He presages Custer’s rashness by leading 80 soldiers to obliteration against thousands of hostiles. He had sworn that 80 soldiers could defeat the entire Sioux nation. His estimate fell short.
Brown details the bureaucratic dysfunction of the military as well as the heartlessness of the so-called manifest destiny empowering the westward thrust. To quote The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce regarding ABORIGINIES: ”Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.” And do it goes.
Brown’s sense of detail brings to mind Son of the Morning Star by Evan S Connell. Connell’s narrative is dramatic and compelling. He managed to unearth info about a vast amount of people involved in Custer’s plunge into history. I have read the book numerous times because it is so thorough, so sad, and so chilling.
I suspect Mason will have some chills to offer. I don’t, as it happens, care for Pink Floyd. The enormity of their popularity in fact baffles me but I suspect good tales can be told. And thus some peregrinations of my recent reading.
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