Creepy Crawling
Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family
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2.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his "girls."
Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles—what we now know as the "Tate-LaBianca murders"—the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Melnick, a professor of American studies at University of Massachusetts Boston, delivers a series of scholarly essays exploring the impact of Charles Manson on American pop culture. "It is creepy crawling that gives this book its frame," Melnick writes, referring to the technique used by Manson and his followers to secretly enter someone's house and rearrange the furniture, which, Melnick argues, serves as a metaphor for how the Manson family seeped into the collective unconscious. Part one of his book focuses on communal living in the 1960s; Melnick argues that Manson and his followers "emerged as a nightmare vision of what had gone wrong with American households in the late 1960s," inspiring films about parental failure such as Paul Schrader's Hardcore (1979). Subsequent sections explore the impact of the Manson family on popularizing the true crime genre. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who coauthored Helter Skelter, and provocateur Ed Sanders, who covered the trial for the Los Angeles Free Press, both recognized how captivating a character Manson was. Finally, Melnick discusses the influence of Manson on the work of creators such as filmmaker John Waters, who evokes the Manson "family" in Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Female Trouble (1971), and artist Raymond Pettibon, who frequently depicts Manson in his illustrations. Though the writing can be off-puttingly academic in tone, Melnick's book is a disturbing account of the many ways Charles Manson pervades American culture. B&w photos.
