"The Osage Indians Struck It Rich, Paid the Price"

Question

by Dwight Garner

If you taught the artificial brains of supercomputers at IBM Research to write nonfiction prose, and if they got very good at it, they might compose a book like David Grann’s “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.”

This is not entirely a complaint. Grann’s new book, about how dozens of members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s were shot, poisoned or blown to bits by rapacious whites who coveted the oil under their land, is close to impeccable. It’s confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet.

What it lacks is the soulful, trippy, questing and offhandedly cerebral quality of his last and best-known book, “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon” (2009). That volume is deservedly regarded as one of the prize nonfiction specimens of this century.

That was a book with a personality. It seemed to be written by someone who was, as Charles Lamb said of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an archangel a little damaged. There was some strange junk in its cupboards.

“Killers of the Flower Moon” has cleaner lines, and it didn’t set its hooks in me in the same way. But the crime story it tells is appalling and stocked with authentic heroes and villains. It will make you cringe at man’s inhumanity to man.

About America’s native people, Saul Bellow wrote in a 1957 essay, “They have left their bones, their flints and pots, their place names and tribal names and little besides except a stain, seldom vivid, on the consciousness of their white successors.”

The best thing about Grann’s book is that it stares, hard, at that stain, and makes it vivid indeed.

"The Osage Indians Struck It Rich, Then Paid the Price" by Dwight Garner, from THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 12, 2017. Copyright © 2017 by The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license.

Answer 1

In his review titled "The Osage Indians Struck It Rich, Paid the Price," Dwight Garner reflects on David Grann's book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” Garner acknowledges the quality of Grann’s writing, describing it as confident and fluid. However, he contrasts it with Grann’s previous work, “The Lost City of Z,” noting that the latter possessed a more personal and nuanced style.

Grann’s current book deals with the tragic history of the Osage Indian nation in the 1920s, where many members were murdered for their oil-rich land. Garner finds the narrative appalling and filled with real heroes and villains, effectively highlighting the inhumanity faced by the Osage people. He appreciates how Grann’s work confronts the historical injustices faced by Native Americans, making their struggles and the resulting “stain” on American consciousness strikingly vivid.

Overall, Garner's assessment indicates a well-crafted narrative that, while lacking the same personal touch as Grann's earlier writing, effectively sheds light on a dark chapter of American history, invoking a strong emotional response regarding humanity's cruelty.