Columbine (Cullen)
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Columbine
Dave Cullen, 2009
Grand Central Publishing
443 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780446546928
Summary
The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . .
So begins the epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders."
It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.
What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia.
Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings—several reproduced in a new appendix.
Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Dave Cullen is a journalist and author who has contributed to Slate, Salon, and the New York Times. He is considered the nation's foremost authority on the Columbine killers, and has also written extensively on Evangelical Christians, gays in the military, politics, and pop culture.
A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Boulder, Cullen has won several writing awards, including a GLAAD Media Award, Society of Professional Journalism awards, and several Best of Salon citations. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
Columbine is an excellent work of media criticism, showing how legends become truths through continual citation; a sensitive guide to the patterns of public grief, ... a fine example of old fashioned journalism . . . moving things along with agility and grace.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times Book Review
Exhaustive and supremely level-headed.... The ways in which the Columbine story became distorted in the retelling make for one of the most fascinating aspects of Cullen's book.... Hopping back and forth in time, Cullen manages to tell this complicated story with remarkable clarity and coherence. As one of the first reporters on the scene in 1999, he has been studying this event firsthand for a decade, and his book exudes a sense of authority missing from much of the original media coverage.... Cullen strikes just the right tone of tough-minded compassion, for the most part steering clear of melodrama, sermonizing and easy answers.
Gary Krist - Washington Post
Cullen's book is a nerve-wracking, methodical and panoramic account.... Columbine has its terrifying sections, particularly during Cullen's minute-by-minute rendering of the chaotic 49-minute assault. He puts us inside and outside the building, and he captures the disbelief viewers experienced in 'almost witnessing mass murder' live on television.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
A staggering achievement.... Rather than burden the deftly written prose with excessive footnotes, Cullen wisely includes a detailed timeline, bibliography and lengthy notes in the back of the book. The 417-page Columbine tears open old wounds but does so with an aching, unflinching clarity that's only possible with hindsight.... [An] admirable, harrowing work...one of the finer nonfiction efforts thus far in 2009.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Comprehensive.... It's a book that hits you like a crime scene photo, a reminder of what journalism at its best is all about. Cullen knows his material from the inside; he covered Columbine, for Salon and Slate primarily,
''beginning around noon on the day of the attack.'' But if this gives him a certain purchase on the story, his perspective is what resonates.
Los Angeles Times
A remarkable book. It is painstakingly reported, well-organized and compellingly written.... For any reader who wants to understand the complicated nature of evil, this book is a masterpiece.
Seattle Times
While the details of the day are indeed gruesome, Cullen neither embellishes nor sensationalizes. His unadorned prose and staccato sections offer welcome relief from the grisly minutiae.... Cullen's honor and reporting skills propel this book beyond tabloid and into true literature.
Newsday
Comprehensively nightmarish.... Cullen's task is difficult not only because the events in question are almost literally unspeakable but also because even as he tells the story of a massacre that took the lives of 15 people, including the killers, he has to untell the stories that have already been told.... Should this story be told at all? There's an element of sick, voyeuristic fascination to it—we don't need an exercise in disaster porn. But Columbine is a necessary book.... The actual events of April 20, 1999, are exactly as appalling as you'd expect, and Cullen doesn't spare us a second of them.
Time
The definitive account, [of the tragedy] will likely be Dave Cullen's Columbine, a nonfiction book that has the pacing of an action movie and the complexity of a Shakespearean drama.... Cullen has a gift, if that's the right word, for excruciating detail. At times the language is so vivid you can almost smell the gunpowder and the fear.
Newsweek
A chilling page-turner, a striking accomplishment given that Cullen's likely readers almost certainly know how the tragic story ends.... I knew Cullen was a dogged reporter and a terrific writer, but even I was blown away by the pacing and story-telling he mastered in Columbine, a disturbing, inspiring work of art.
Salon
From the very first page, I could not put Columbine Dave Cullen's searing narrative, down.... How the killings unfolded, and why, reads like the grisliest of fiction. Would that it were not true.
Entertainment Weekly
Leveraged for political ends by Michael Moore on film and adopted for convenience by the news media as shorthand for teenage violence, Columbine has begun to feel as impenetrable and allegorical as Greek myth. So the intensive reporting of Denver-based journalist Dave Cullen is welcome.... Cullen creates more than a nuanced portrait of school shooters as young men. He writes a human story—a compassionate narrative of teenagers with guns (and bombs, too), and the havoc they wreak on a school, a community, and America.
Esquire
(Starred review.) [R]emarkable.... Cullen not only dispels several of the prevailing myths about the event but tackles the hardest question of all: why did it happen?.... Readers will come away from Cullen's unflinching account with a deeper understanding of what drove these boys to kill..
Publishers Weekly
Library Journal
Comprehensive, myth-busting examination of the Colorado high-school massacre.... Poignant sections devoted to the survivors probe the myriad ways that individuals cope with grief and struggle to interpret and make sense of tragedy. Carefully researched and chilling, if somewhat overwritten.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
These questions were written and graciously shared with LitLovers by Jennifer Johnson, MA, MLIS, Reference Librarian at Springdale Public Library in Arkansas. Thank you (again), Jennifer.
1. Do you remember where or what you were doing when the Columbine massacre occurred? What were your thoughts about it?
2. How did Columbine impact your life?
3. As a reader, what was the hardest part to read? Did you skip any sections?
4. Teenagers often hide or conceal things about themselves from their parents or their friends. Given that, how are Dylan and Eric different from average teenagers? What were Dylan and Eric hiding from each other?
5. Of the many myths debunked in the book, what surprised you the most? After almost 18 years, why do those myths still exist and are assumed to be true?
6. What is the impact of this book? Did the author succeed in providing a comprehensive, candid portrayal of the events leading up to and after Columbine?
7. Looking at the various levels of trust and relationship, is there a pattern to how Eric and Dylan behaved and interacted with others?
8. How are men and women depicted in the book? Are there any stereotypes that can be identified in the book?
9. Did the author, at any time, glorify Eric and Dylan? Did the killers leave the legacy they had intended?
10. After reading Columbine, it is obvious that Eric Harris was the primary force behind the attack, but how did Dylan participate? Was his participation in the attack similar to his participation in the friendship with Eric?
11. Since Columbine, there have been many school shootings. Has society’s reaction to such events changed since Columbine? How does the response to Virginia Tech or Sandy Elementary differ from Columbine?
12. How are the killers’ parents depicted in the book? Does the author portray them fairly and equally or is there an undertone of parental blame?
13. Given the digital age and current privacy issues, how different would this attack have been if committed in 2016 instead of 1999?
14. Can any of the participants be considered heroes? Are any considered scapegoats? Is anyone else responsible for the killings, other than Dylan and Eric?
15. What lessons have we learned since Columbine?
16. Why do you think the Harris family has refused to publically discuss the actions and death of their son? Why do you think the Klebold family has actively and publically discussed the actions and death of their son?
(Questions courtesy of Jennifer Johnson, Springdale Public Library. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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