Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America's Most Infamous Family

by Jeffrey Melnick

Overview

"Creepy crawling" was the Manson Family's practice of secretly entering someone's home and, without harming anyone, leaving only a trace of evidence that they had been there, some reminder that the sanctity of the private home had been breached. Now, author Jeffrey Melnick reveals just how much the Family creepy crawled their way through Los Angeles in the sixties and then on through American social, political, and cultural life for close to fifty years, firmly lodging themselves in our minds. Even now, it is almost impossible to discuss the sixties, teenage runaways, sexuality, drugs, music, California, and even the concept of family without referencing Manson and his "girls."

Not just another history of Charles Manson, Creepy Crawling explores how the Family weren't so much outsiders but emblematic of the Los Angeles counterculture freak scene, and how Manson worked to connect himself to the mainstream of the time. Ever since they spent two nights killing seven residents of Los Angeles—what we now know as the "Tate-LaBianca murders"—the Manson family has rarely slipped from the American radar for long. From Emma Cline's The Girls to the recent TV show Aquarius, the family continues to find an audience. What is it about Charles Manson and his family that captivates us still? Author Jeffrey Melnick sets out to answer this question in this fascinating and compulsively readable cultural history of the Family and their influence from 1969 to the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628728941
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	07/17/2018
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	10 MB

About the Author

Jeffrey Melnick has been thinking about the Manson Family since first encountering the book and mini-series Helter Skelter in the 1970s. Melnick is a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston and the author of 9/11 Culture: America Under Construction (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), Black-Jewish Relations on Trial (University Press of Mississippi, 2000), and A Right to Sing the Blues (Harvard University Press, 1999). He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Jeff Melnick has been teaching and writing about American cultural history for some 25 years. His books on Black-Jewish relations, 9/11, immigration, and popular culture have been widely reviewed and cited often in academic journals and mainstream journalism. His first book, A Right to Sing the Blues: African Americans, Jews, and American Popular Song was given a Booklist Editor's Choice Award for 1999 and his most recent book, 9/11 Culture: American Under Construction was translated into Arabic soon after its initial publication. Melnick currently serves as Graduate Program Director for American Studies at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Creepy Crawling through the Sixties: Charles Manson and History vii

Part I Creepy Crawling Family: Charles Manson in Our Homes 1

Mother Father Sister Brother 3

The Family That Slays Together 23

Ranch, Hill, Farm 32

Hush Little Dropout 49

The History of Consciousness 80

Part II Creepy Crawling Los Angeles: Charles Manson on Our Maps 93

High Rollers 95

Hippies with Power 113

Hungry Freaks 125

The Bad Fathers of the Feast 144

Family Affairs 163

Part III Creepy Crawling Truth: Charles Manson and Our Crime Tales 175

The Bug vs. the Fug 177

A Legion of Charlies 207

Hippie Ugly! Hippie Shit! Toothpaste Good! 221

A Newcomer, an Intruder 233

Not Just the Facts, Ma'am 243

Part IV Creepy Crawling Art: Charles Manson in Our Minds 259

Blood in a Swimming Pool 261

They Are Still among Us 278

He's a Magic Man 295

Waves of Mutilation 301

Desperados under the Eaves 325

Zeroville 335

Wrecking Crews 346

Endnotes 357

Works Consulted 382

Acknowledgments 401

Index 405

Editorial Reviews

07/01/2018
Melnick (U.S. culture, Univ. of Massachusetts Boston) delves into the cultural impact Charles Manson and his Family had on the United States, specifically in the 1970s, but also their lasting influence. Melnick divides the book into four parts—looking at how they twisted the definition of family, how California was seen after the murders, how true crime writing changed, and how members of Manson's circle endured through art. While the author does a good job recreating 1970s California and how the murders were a part of the cultural change from peace and love to fear and violence, each part works better as a separate essay than combined in a single work. This is most noticeable at the end, in which there's no conclusion that puts the pieces together for readers. Despite this, each part has a lot to say, leaving details of the murders to previous books and instead focusing on the relationships between Manson and his followers with some of the Hollywood members (aka Golden Penetrators). VERDICT This work succeeds in showing how this group embedded itself into the cultural conscious in a way that persists today. For readers interested in 1970s American culture and true crime.—Ryan Claringbole, Wisconsin Dept. of Pub. Instruction, Madison

Library Journal

07/02/2018
Melnick, a professor of American studies at University of Massachusetts Boston, delivers a series of scholarly essays exploring the impact of Charles Manson on American pop culture. “It is creepy crawling that gives this book its frame,” Melnick writes, referring to the technique used by Manson and his followers to secretly enter someone’s house and rearrange the furniture, which, Melnick argues, serves as a metaphor for how the Manson family seeped into the collective unconscious. Part one of his book focuses on communal living in the 1960s; Melnick argues that Manson and his followers “emerged as a nightmare vision of what had gone wrong with American households in the late 1960s,” inspiring films about parental failure such as Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979). Subsequent sections explore the impact of the Manson family on popularizing the true crime genre. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who coauthored Helter Skelter, and provocateur Ed Sanders, who covered the trial for the Los Angeles Free Press, both recognized how captivating a character Manson was. Finally, Melnick discusses the influence of Manson on the work of creators such as filmmaker John Waters, who evokes the Manson “family” in Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Female Trouble (1971), and artist Raymond Pettibon, who frequently depicts Manson in his illustrations. Though the writing can be off-puttingly academic in tone, Melnick’s book is a disturbing account of the many ways Charles Manson pervades American culture. B&w photos. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"Why is Charles Manson, the assassin of flower power, so impossible to bury? The answer according to Jeffrey Melnick is that the demon and his runaways carved their signatures into the very heart of a complicit counterculture. Riveting and unsettling, this book recalls another chilling classic: Thomas De Quincy's On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts." — Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

"Melnick retells the Manson saga not as true-crime investigation or psychological thriller, but as kaleidoscopic cultural history, unpacking how an indelibly American horror story has echoed down the years in our popular consciousness via books, films, and especially music. It's a fascinating book—and as unstable patriarchal white dudes of varying stripes continue to shape the national narrative, an inescapably timely one."—Will Hermes, author of Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years In New York That Changed Music Forever

"Jeffrey Melnick's Creepy Crawling is a compulsively-readable guide to the American fascination with the Manson Family. Expertly weaving psychology, sociology, history, and pop culture, Melnick's work covers everything from the Family's Freudian roots to its continued commodification, from Joan Didion to Nicki Minaj. We know the Manson Murders have been part of the cultural landscape for the past fifty years, but Melnick shows us why. The book is a must-read not only for those fascinated by the Manson Family, but anyone fascinated by America." — Allison Ummminger, author of the highly acclaimed Manson novel American Girls

" Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America’s Most Infamous Family , [is] a contentious, revisionist, often obnoxious, but thorough and undeniably important cultural-historical study of the era's other major American cult leader."—Devin McKinney, author of The Man Who Saw a Ghost: The Life and Work of Henry Fonda , in Critics-at-Large

From the Publisher