★★★★☆ Michener does nonfiction

Kent State: What Happened and Why

James A Michener

As a writer James A. Michener was primarily (indeed almost entirely) a novelist. Kent State: What Happened and Why is, as far as I know, his only nonfiction book, aside from a memoir (The World Is My Home: A Memoir). However, it will feel familiar to readers of his fiction. Most of his novels are long, deeply researched transgenerational sagas. To assemble these he worked with a team of researchers. (These are rarely acknowledged by name in the novels themselves, to the best of my memory.) To write Kent State, he set his team to uncover the facts of the events of May 4, 1970, when National Guard soldiers fired into a crowd of students protesting at Kent State, killing four. (I remember the number because of the song Neil Young wrote about it.)

The main thing I remember from Michener's book Kent State were the profiles of the individual students, and his attempts to figure out from very sketchy evidence (including a low-quality film -- remember this was long before people regularly carried videocameras disguised as telephones in their pockets).

Although it happened in 1970, most of us who heard the news at the time think of it as an event of the 60s. These student protests were a regular feature of the 60s. The protests were against many things. It was a time -- much like now -- when everyone saw enemies everywhere, enemies who, they were convinced, were destroying the USA. But the Vietnam War and racial justice were two of the most substantive causes. The protests were, as Douglas Adams would have said, mostly harmless.

Some of what Michener describes here shocked me. For instance, Michener's team interviews a woman who insisted (even given a chance to consider her words), that boys who wore their hair long should be shot. It is hard to remember this now, but men wearing their hair long was a potent symbol of rebellion in the 60s, and much resented by those who felt only short hair (very short hair -- you have to see the pictures of that time to appreciate it) was masculine. Others argued that a man has a right to kill anyone who calls him an obscene name.

Kent State was different from the regular American massacres we have become used to. (Only two days ago a man in Cleveland, Texas killed five neighbors with an AR-15 because they asked him to stop shooting his gun so their baby could sleep.) Kent State was a killing by the forces of our government who were nominally engaged in their duty. Still, one can't help feel that there is a line from those shootings to the more recent, free-lance style ones.

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