The Manson File, reviewed by Denise Noe

To give this book a fair review, it is necessary to discuss some history because a generation has been born and reached middle age since the events that catapulted the subject of “The Manson File” into worldwide infamy.

On the evening of August 9, 1969, five people were murdered at the Bel Air, California home of director Roman Polanski who was not present because he was away making a film. The victims were 18-year-old Steven Parent who had been visiting the resident’s caretaker, William Garretson; coffee heiress Abigail Folger; her boyfriend Voytek Frykowski; Hollywood hairdresser Jay Sebring; and Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate. Tate was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. The word PIG was printed in blood on a door. The male victims were shot with Sebring and Frykowski suffering stab wounds as well. Tate and Folger were stabbed many times.

The next night, two Los Angeles businesspeople, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, were tied up and then savagely stabbed to death in their home. Messages in blood were printed at the residence: RISE, DEATH TO PIGS, and HEALTER SKELTER (“helter” misspelled). The word WAR was carved in Leno LaBianca’s stomach.

A group was brought to trial in early 1970. One of them was Charles Manson, a lifelong petty criminal. According to the theories presented in court by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and later popularized in the book Helter Skelter, Manson was the charismatic and dictatorial leader of a cult of hippies. Manson had delusions of grandeur and believed he was some sort of messiah. He was supposedly obsessed by passages in the Bible’s book of Revelation and by the music of the English rock group, the Beatles. Bugliosi contended that Manson concocted a bizarre belief system based largely on his peculiar readings of Revelation in the Bible and his conviction that the Beatles were sending him secret messages through their White Album.

Indeed, to call that belief system “bizarre” is an understatement. Manson was alleged to have become convinced that both Revelation and the songs of the White Album prophesied a coming race war in which black people who annihilate white people – except for those who hid in a supposed “Bottomless Pit.” Manson told his followers that he and they would be in that sanctuary while the race war was fought. The blacks would win but would be too inexperienced to govern. At that point, Manson and his people would emerge from their hiding place, having grown from a couple of dozen hippies to a group 144,000 strong. Then they would take power and Manson would rule the world. He supposedly convinced his followers of the truth of that belief system and they committed the Tate-LaBianca murders in hopes of triggering a race war.

Some observers have concluded that the “Helter Skelter” theory of the Tate-LaBianca murders makes little sense as the murderers were not psychotic and they would have to be in order to literally and completely believe that theory. One of those is the person writing this review. I also wrote “The Manson Myth” that appears in a website called Crime Magazine.

However, there is no doubt that the dissemination of the “Helter Skelter” motive and the depiction of Manson as possessing special powers has made him a modern boogeyman.

“The Manson File” does not purport to be a history of either Charles Manson or the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders for which he is imprisoned. Rather, it provides a hodgepodge of writings by and about Manson along with statements he has made. Editor Nikolas Schreck writes that the purpose of the book is to acquaint the reader with “the authentic voice of the media’s favorite villain.”

The first chapter is called “Philosophy” and features statements Manson has made on a wide variety of subjects. Some of these statements are rather sensible: “Jealousy is not the barometer by which the depth of love can be read. Jealously merely records the degree of the lover’s insecurity.” Others bespeak a bitterness that might be expected in someone with a sad history: “My philosophy comes from underneath the boots and sticks and clubs they beat people with who come from the wrong side of the tracks.”

Often his statements are deliberately obscure yet possess a certain resonance: “Paycheck whore wears a dollar bill gown to the funeral of hope and love.” “Time is man-made and an illusion and controls must be put on it or it will spin the minds into destruction.” “I’m a guitar, a cup of coffee, a snake, a pocketful of names and faces.”

This is followed by the testimony he gave at his trial when he was allowed to make a statement outside of the hearing of the jury. Although Bugliosi found it “hypnotic” and the words of someone “trying to weave a spell,” it is more the rambling of a person who alternates between being afraid, confused, defiant, self-pitying, and angry. “I have spent my life in jail,” he says, “and without parents. . . . I never went to school, so I never growed up in the respect to learn to read and write so good, so I have stayed in jail and I have stayed stupid, I have stayed a child while I have watched your world grow up, and then I look at the things that you do and I don’t understand.”

Then there is a chapter about Manson’s music complete with lyrics to some tunes he wrote. In a song entitled “Never Say Never to Always,” he writes, “Always is always forever/As one is one is on/Inside yourself for your father/All is none all is none all is none.” His songs do not seem to be attempts to emulate the Beatles on whom he was supposedly fixated.

“Art” features sketches Manson has drawn. They neither brim with genius nor show evidence of a disturbed or evil mind. Rather, the drawings are the sorts of careless doodlings anyone might make when he or she is bored. There are also some figures he has woven out of the threads of his socks and they are also utterly unexceptional.

“The Manson File” also gives us several examples of Charles Manson’s creative writing. They include short stories, essays, and poetry. These pieces, particularly the short stories, show an appreciable, albeit not fully developed, talent. “The Black White Bus” tells an interesting and semi-autobiographical story, although, unfortunately for sensation-seekers, one having nothing to do with the Tate-LaBianca slayings. It has some of the earmarks of that literary genre called “magical realism” and is about a group of people living in and out of a (at least metaphorically) haunted bus. In this story, as well as in “The Way of the Wolf” and “Once Upon a Time . . .” Manson displays a gift for arresting imagery. Each story ends with a twist that suggests multiple layers of meaning to what has preceded it.

Writings about Manson are also reprinted in this volume, some of them from the sort of nutty political extremists who have been attracted by the pseudo-political quality that has become attached to him. Schreck also quotes from Lynnette “Squeaky” Fromme and Sandra Good, two women who were with him prior to the murders and still support him. Fromme is best known for pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford in an attempt to draw attention to what she saw as the injustice suffered by Manson. She is in prison serving a life sentence. Good went to prison for writing threatening letters to the heads of major corporations although she claims the epistles were intended as helpful warnings. She has been released from prison. Fromme’s writings, like Manson’s, show a certain flair: “You can orgy with your awkward paws and dance your frantic feet off, joke about his suffering, draw your very life from his blood. But you have not the soul to face him. He’s a genius you don’t recognize, in a ragged coat, with no tails for you to ride – or in secret, his majesty could blind you.”

Those who have a strong interest in Manson and/or the crimes for which he became infamous will want to read “The Manson File” and perhaps have a copy on their bookshelves.

Those who want to read more on what Denise Noe believes about this case should check out “The Manson Myth” at http://www.crimemagazine.com/04/manson,1212.htm.