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God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale Of A White Supremacist, A Black Hustler, A Murder, And How I Lost A Year In Mississippi (2014)

by John Safran(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1594633355 (ISBN13: 9781594633355)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Riverhead Hardcover

review 1: I am what should probably be considered a casual reader of true crime books, meaning that I'll read them if they have an interesting hook for me, but don't seek them out. In the case of Murder in Mississippi, the sole reason I picked it up was the hook of John Safran. I know Safran from his television work (he's an Australian 'comedian' who seems to have just ended up doing first-person documentary series like 'Safran vs. God' and 'Race Relations'), and have found him an engaging and unflinching presenter/documentarian in what I've seen from him. My hopes weren't terribly high for this book, his first true-crime exploration in any medium and his first book. I hadn't heard of the case (which is kind of the point: Safran had a personal connection to the case, and felt he was... more being 'guided' to get involved) and there's very little memorable about it, but Safran's done his best to keep us engaged.The story begins when Safran met with white Supremacist Richard Barrett during the filming for 'Race Relations.' The footage he had of Barrett proved unuseable, but some time later he discovered Barrett had been murdered...by a young black man...in his own home. These slender threads prove enough for Safran to decide he's going to play Truman Capote and go talk to the killer, hardcore violent loser Vincent McGee, and get the Real Story. Once he's back in Mississippi, things naturally go a little pear-shaped: Safran is, after all, a white foreigner trying to work his way through the US legal system and black communities in one of the most openly casually-segregated populations in the country. A good deal of the book is taken up with him bumbling around, trying not to be the hardnosed asshole he'd been on his TV shows, and wondering why everything's being so strange and difficult. In itself, this aspect is only vaguely entertaining. These experiences are intercut with memories of his own life and how 'race' (i.e., being Jewish and eventually alienating his Jewish neighbours through his own showmanship) has affected his life. These memories are even less engaging and bear only the most tenuous connection to what's going on around him in Mississippi. I often found myself wishing he'd had a better editor to wrangle this mess into a coherent story.Safran's biggest hurdles to overcome are that the dead man's past is cloaked in mystery with no living close friends to give any insight into who he really was, and that the murderer has changed his story several times, is clearly not interested in giving an honest recount now and knows how to milk the Aussie cash-cow that's just dropped into his life (eventually taking Safran for the equivalent of at least several hundred dollars in exchange for information less valuable than the court documents Safran unearths).Overall, this is a bit of a failure as a true-crime book, largely because we never get to find out what really happened. In a reverse of, say, Jack the Ripper, we know who the actors were, we just don't get to see the play. By the end of it all, Safran essentially gives up (perhaps the visa he was on was expiring, so he had to leave; he fudges time a great deal, so it's hard to tell how long anything takes) without giving himself or us an acceptable version of the event.This also falls short as a book from Safran. His humour and insight is given only haltingly, and he seems to want to serve the vast library of past true-crime writers but loses his own voice as a result. The final product is muddled, inept and ultimately disappointing.True crime readers are bound to be let down by Murder in Mississippi, lacking as it does any sense of conclusion. Safran fans are likely to stop reading unless they (like me) are curious to find out what happens. What happens, regrettably, is he just goes home. So, I can't really recommend this book to anyone, though it was a brisk read with an engaging story at its core (and it helps that the entire thing's broken into bite-sized conceptual chunks with nice big headings, suggesting the actual text of this book would make it a considerably shorter book). That the story never gets told is ultimately the greatest failing of the book.
review 2: Incredibly entertaining "true crime" book, which ends up being more or less a book about John Safran. Safran makes some questionable choices and his journalism credentials are rather suspect, but he is charmingly upfront about all of this. Often hilarious, the narrative is occasionally poignant and generally depressing--as one would expect a book about both a murder AND race relations in Mississippi to be. less

Download links for: God'll Cut You Down : The Tangled Tale of a White Supremacist, a Black Hustler, a Murder, and How I Lost a Year in Mississippi

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