Review
'Svenvold brings a poet's touch to the western mythopoeia. He presents a decidedly entertaining chunk of American pop culture. R.I.P., Elmer McCurdy.' KIRKUS
Think of Mr Bean in the Wild West, and there you have Elmer McCurdy. A hapless failure at everything he tried, he decided to give up mining, plumbing and odd-jobbing, and to become a bank robber instead. On failing spectacularly at that - and also at robbing trains - he ended his days gunned down by a posse while too drunk to defend himself. But it is what happened over the next 65 years that makes Elmer McCurdy's story so interesting. A succession of shady characters decided they could make a quick buck from his corpse. Then, realizing there wouldn't be as much kudos in exhibiting Elmer as there would have been in, say, Billy the Kid, they talked up his adventures. Before long the public was flocking to see 'the meanest outlaw in the West' rather than the has-Bean of reality. From funeral parlours to freak shows, from film sets to funfairs, Elmer earned far more in death than he could ever have imagined in life. He finally ended up in the ghost train of a California carnival where a film crew discovered him by accident while shooting an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man. They were shocked to find that the desiccated papier-mache figure painted in fluorescent colours was actually a mummy. Mark Svenvold, best known as a poet, has tried to put a social spin on this study. He declares that the book tells us much about the American obsession with death, celebrity and the weird. Perhaps it does, but Svenvold has his tongue in cheek for much of the time. What the book really shows is that those with an eye for exploitation will hold nothing sacred. Some of the photographs are gruesome and explicit. The 'happiest' of them shows Elmer's funeral, when the wretched outlaw's remains found peace and dignity at last. (Kirkus UK)
Susan Corrigan, The Times
'A rigorous, honest look at how the West was won.'
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