Texas Talent: Jeff Guinn

Photos by Lisa Saleme

Jeff Guinn spent 25 years as a journalist in Texas, winning numerous awards for his investigative reporting and feature stories. Twelve years ago, he retired from newspapers to devote himself full-time to writing books, and has launched a string of best-sellers including Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson; Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde; The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Gunfight at the OK Corral—and How it Changed the American West; as well as a series of books on Santa Claus and a dozen or so additional books. Mr. Guinn spoke with Postcards about his writing and his subjects.

You’ve written numerous books, but your nonfiction works address mythic events. Do you consciously seek those topics?

I didn’t realize it at first, but I think I do try in both my fiction and non-fiction to show the difference between mythology and real history. Mythology is what’s most convenient to believe or what’s most fun to believe. And when we let history stray into mythology, we cannot learn anything from it. So, I’ve always found that the real thing—done right—is actually much more fascinating and interesting than the made-up stuff.

How do you separate man from myth, particularly when writing about people such as Bonnie and Clyde, Wyatt Earp, or Charles Manson?

You have to provide context. You have to capture the times accurately, then show how mythology grows out of it. The readers then get the whole picture, and they understand better. Real history doesn’t have to be boring. If you tell the story in an entertaining way, if you push yourself to present the facts in a manner that keeps the reader interested without making up stuff, people will start looking for real history.

On a more technical level, does the writing—or presentation of the information—differ when people think they know a topic, but they have preconceptions about the topic?

You will always have readers who prefer mythology to the facts. They prefer to hold on to their preconceptions. In one of my books on Santa Claus (a historical tracing of Santa Claus from an autobiographical perspective), I actually had a prominent politician write on Amazon and say something like, “How can anyone write a book saying Santa Claus originated in Turkey, when everyone knows Santa is an American!” But the vast majority of people who have bought into the mythology will enjoy learning what really happened, if you can present it to them in a readable fashion. We read books, whether fiction or non-fiction, to be entertained, but there’s no reason we can’t learn a lot while being entertained.

What I try to do is first show what really happened, then demonstrate how mythology evolved from that. You can’t start off by saying, “Okay, everything you know about the OK Corral, or Santa Claus, or Charlie Manson, or Bonnie and Clyde, is wrong. That’s just insulting the reader.” You want to give the readers the opportunity to judge for themselves how things really happened.

Bonnie and Clyde are of particular local interest because Clyde spent time in Huntsville’s prisons. But they were also regional then national icons. Can you discuss the historical context that allowed them to transcend regional notoriety?

Well, one development of the times was the ability to wire photographs across the country. Who wants to read, in 1930, about more farm foreclosures, when you can read about a cute girl and her boyfriend who are going around sticking it to the government and the police? The coincidence was just not that Bonnie and Clyde were there to be written about, but that they had this habit of taking photographs of themselves. If we didn’t have that iconic photograph of Bonnie with a handgun and a cigar hanging out of the corner of her mouth, they probably would have ended up being regional legends. But Bonnie being photographed with a cigar in her mouth, at a time when nice girls didn’t smoke in public? You see it, too, in the life of Charles Manson. I wrote that he became as notorious as he did is because he was always the wrong man at the right place at the right time. Anybody, good or bad, that has had a tremendous effect on our culture appears in a specific context. The fascinating thing is showing the confluence of events that makes the phenomenon possible. It may take three full years to research and write a non-fiction book, but it’s worth it.

You mention the connections in history that lead to events. For the reader, there’s often a sense of discovery. Is that true as you are writing, also?

That’s the wonderful thing about writing. I select topics I want to know more about. When I picked Bonnie and Clyde, I wanted to know more about growing up poor in the depression and dustbowl. So, I pick an iconic event or subject I think might draw in mainstream readers, then I try to immerse myself in that time and place, and I try to write the book so that readers feel they are actually there. That’s the wonder of history, if we approach it that way. If I feel astonished and excited about learning things, then perhaps it helps me communicate the same sort of excitement and astonishment to readers.

People are often drawn to sensationalism, but in your book on Manson, you provided the history and context without being graphic.

Before I commit to a non-fiction project, I try to read as many existing books as possible. If those authors approached the topic the way I would, there’s not much reason to write. But Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi’s book about Manson, is a classic. For readers who want every stab wound and where every blood drop fell, Helter Skelter is a good place to start. I didn’t need to tell that story. I think you can make just as great an effect on the reader by alluding to things and offering a clear picture without overdoing it.

You worked closely with members of the “Manson Family.” Many of them now profess to be horrified by their actions, and a couple have converted to Christianity. Do you believe these conversions are real?

As an investigative reporter, I learned that it’s hard to look into someone’s heart and know what’s there. I spent significant time with Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkle (two of Manson’s “family”), four or five weekends, plus letters and phone calls. They still write and talk to me now, and the book has been out a while. Do I think they genuinely regret what they did and accept responsibility for it? As an individual, yes I do. But I’m not qualified to make that judgment as a member of, say, a parole board. I haven’t dealt with all types of people in those situations. It is my belief, that if Krenwinkle and Van Houten were released tomorrow after serving forty-five years in prison and suffering greatly—as they should have, and as they admit they should have—I don’t believe they would represent a danger to society. I believe they would try to find some way to make a contribution to society. But, again, I am a layperson, and I don’t understand a lot of prison psychology in terms of parole. When Leslie’s lawyer asked me to testify on her behalf at her parole hearing, I said the only thing I felt qualified to say was that she had no idea of the depth of my research, and if she had lied to me about anything, I probably would have caught it. But what she and Krenwinkle told me checked out 100 percent.

Tell us more about staying in touch with Van Houten and Krenwinkle.

A lot of researchers pick people’s brains, and then they’re gone. My feeling is that if someone cooperates with me on my research and wants to stay in touch, I’ll do that. I don’t want to give them the impression that I am just trying to milk them for everything they can give me, and that I don’t have consideration for them as human beings.

Have you seen the movie Bernie?

Yes.

You may have seen that the director, Richard Linklater, is allowing the murderer to live in his garage. Would you go that far?

(Pause) Let me just say (laughs), everyone has to make their own decisions.

Was Charles Manson crazy, a product of his environment, or just evil?

People want to know the answer to that, and it’s the reason I used space in the book to offer my opinion. I do not believe Charles Manson is now or ever has been crazy, and that makes him more frightening. He did horrible things because he simply has no conscience; he is a sociopath, not a lunatic. Whatever environment or society Manson would have come from, he would have done terrible, evil things. And if you let him out of prison now, he would try to gain followers and do terrible, evil things. Before I wrote Manson, I was 100% against the death penalty. Having dealt with Manson now, I waver. I do think it is possible there are some people who, for whatever reason, are bad from birth. It’s unfair to burden society by asking them to support them throughout their life in prison. That sounds terrible, but Manson had that effect on me. He is not crazy; he is evil, and it is possible to be evil without being insane.

How do you decide on your topics from one book to the next?

I first decide on an era I want to write about. I grew up in the 1960s, and I wanted to write about that era. I thought about the Weathermen. There were sometimes a dozen terrorist attacks per week in the U.S., and people forget that. But while the Weathermen were interesting collectively, there wasn’t a single individual I felt like I could focus a book on. I was able to do that with Manson, who also illuminated the 1960s, and everyone knew who he was.

In moving forward to the 1970s, I thought of the iconic phrase, “drink the kool-aid.” That comes from Jim Jones and, so reluctantly, I followed my non-fiction work on Manson with research on Jones. But when I am done with that, I want to go back to the 1950s and Civil Rights, and I’d like to do Rosa Parks. She’s not only an icon, but also a wonderful person.

I will say that, after writing about Manson and Jim Jones, I am going to take a long break from writing about this sort of cultural criminal. Six years of Manson and Jones is pretty much enough for anyone.

Guinn’s latest book, Buffalo Trail, is the second installment in a Western trilogy that takes place in Arizona and Texas and other parts of the west. His book on Jim Jones will be released in 2016.