Killing Mr Watson (Audible Audio Edition) Peter Matthiessen Mark Hammer Norman Dietz George Guidall Barbara Rosenblat Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : Killing Mr Watson (Audible Audio Edition) Peter Matthiessen Mark Hammer Norman Dietz George Guidall Barbara Rosenblat Recorded Books Books
When Peter Matthiessen was 17, he was told the story of Edgar J. Watson, a popular and successful planter who had been murdered by his neighbors in 1910. This novel is Matthiessen's attempt to piece together the life of a mysterious man who became a legend, and the dangerous legend that destroyed him.
During the Reconstruction Era, Edgar Watson grew up in the South at the mercy of a brutal alcoholic father and a vindictive mother. Witnessing the horrors of slavery, bilked out of his inheritance, and blamed in his youth for a murder he didn't commit, E.J. developed a reputation for violence that preceded him everywhere he went.
Finally, it brought him to a tragic and bloody end as his family watched in helpless horror. Borrowing an old local tale about a man who was killed by his neighbors, Matthiessen creates a powerful character. George Guidall's excellent reading brings this moving tragedy home to us with a passion.
Killing Mr Watson (Audible Audio Edition) Peter Matthiessen Mark Hammer Norman Dietz George Guidall Barbara Rosenblat Recorded Books Books
I have now finished all three books in this series. One...I love Matthiessen’s writing. Two...last year we spent six weeks on Marco Island visiting every single place and historical site referenced in this series BEFORE reading the books, (with the exception of Chatham Bend ... next trip!)How an author, even one as gifted as Matthiessen strings together a story like this told from multiple different perspectives over three books freaking amazes me.
This first book is engaging and it sucks you in with tons of unanswered questions. The second answers some of the questions and pulls at your heartstrings. The third is a long but remarkable literary slog that appalls but answers all the questions. Well, well worth the time and effort.
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Killing Mr Watson (Audible Audio Edition) Peter Matthiessen Mark Hammer Norman Dietz George Guidall Barbara Rosenblat Recorded Books Books Reviews
This is the story of Edgar Watson, a fugitive from justice who moves to as remote a place as could be found, the Everglades Chatham River in Southwest Florida. The remains of his homestead are still visible today as I often fish near there.
Watson was originally accepted by fellow pioneers, most of whom lived some distance away on Chokoloskee Island where Ed would occasionally visit to pick up goods at Smallwoods general store, which still exists today much as it was in 1910.
Bodies started turning up missing and/or dead, and it comes to be believed that Watson might have been the last man to see them alive. The locals, including some who had been friendly with Ed, decide to take matters into their own hands.
This book is an interesting character study of not only Watson, but of those who turned against him, with little or no evidence, and why. The reader is treated to some great insight as to how tough it must have been, during the first decade of the 20th century, for settlers to exist in such a dangerous environment.
Highly Recommended
This is a good book but it does drag/drone on. The author is (was) a little too fond of his ability to channel the characters in the book. It is an historical novel so the author creates much of it from limited known events. It is written in the voices of far too many witnesses/participants in the shooting of Edgar Watson. Each chapter is an account of the same event or same period so the book hardly ever progresses. Each chapter takes you back to where the previous chapter started until the latter part of the book where it starts to wrap up. Although the book starts with the title deed, it isn't till the end that the author explains why the good citizens of Chokoloskee Island would rise up against their neighbor. I purchased this book because I'm going to Marco Island for an extended period and wanted some of the historical perspective of the area. Absent that motive, I don't think I would have liked the book as much.
So, I read all about the great to-do being made by Matthiessen purists when the trilogy Shadow Country (of which this book is the first part) won the National Book Award last month. But, wait a minute; the thing that has the purists ready to kill Mr. Matthiessen is that he has edited out several hundred pages of the books as they were published separately. Thus, only part of this book is part of the trilogy that won the award. Mr. Matthiessen is now a practicing Zen monk somewhere in the state of New York. Zen monks aren't particularly known for their verbosity; perhaps that has something to do with Matthiessen's paring down of the novel. I simply don't know. But, purely a personal quirk, I detest any and all things that have been abridged, and I've never seen quite such a hullabaloo made over the National Book Award, so I decided to give this book a shot, so to speak.
The book - as all have noted here - is told by other persons and has a curious Rashomon effect to it. One doesn't know who is telling the truth at what time or, in the end, if there is any "objective truth" to be found in the first place. But what came across as most striking to me about the book are the richly detailed descriptions of the turn-of-the-century part of southwest Florida known as the ten thousand islands. The landscape has an eerie character of its own, described by Matthiessen (a naturalist with many non-fiction works to his credit) with deft precision. An example
"This sky in southern Florida is white with heat as if ash was falling from the sun. In the hot breeze, the spiky little palms stick up like clusters of black knives, and the fire ball coming up out of the palms sharpens their edges. With the sun up, the wind dies, and the redbirds and mockers fall dead quiet, and a parched heat settles in for the long day, just dry dry dry."
There's no plot to give away here. The title does that. What we have is a series of passages relating the history (again, from different perspectives) leading up to E. J. (or was it really E. A.?) Watson's shooting. What sort of man was Watson? Did he deserve to die? Who knows? But he's the sort of man around whom myths and legends are spun. Read and decide for yourself. I will admit that what I regard as the most revealing passage about him is the following
"And so he gave me that quick wink, the kind of wink that made all our hopes and struggles in this world seem kind of silly, due to our sinful foolishness and greed. I bit my lip so as not to giggle, I pretended I never even seen it, because NOTHING MATTERED, according to that wink. It didn't MATTER that our mortal days were bloodsoaked, cruel, and empty, with nothing at the end but disease and darkness."
A page-turning, solid read, this, full of historical interest, if a bit long on "cracker" phraseology.
This is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm reading it for the third time in anticipation of visiting 10,000 Islands next month. I read this years ago and it kicked off a continuing fascination with the history of Southern Florida. Peter Matthiessen was one of the finest American writers from the last century. He puts you into the world of his stories like few writers can. You feel like brushing aside the mosquitoes every time you turn a page. I'll be visiting the old Watson home site, and it will be interesting to see how my imagination compares with the reality.
I have now finished all three books in this series. One...I love Matthiessen’s writing. Two...last year we spent six weeks on Marco Island visiting every single place and historical site referenced in this series BEFORE reading the books, (with the exception of Chatham Bend ... next trip!)
How an author, even one as gifted as Matthiessen strings together a story like this told from multiple different perspectives over three books freaking amazes me.
This first book is engaging and it sucks you in with tons of unanswered questions. The second answers some of the questions and pulls at your heartstrings. The third is a long but remarkable literary slog that appalls but answers all the questions. Well, well worth the time and effort.
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