Book Review: The Shooting Salvationist, by David R. Stokes

Article first published as Book Review: The Shooting Salvationist: J. Frank Norris and the Murder Trial that Captivated America by David R. Stokes on Blogcritics.

Late in 1926, Dexter Eliot (D.E.) Chipps, a divorced lumberman walked into the First Baptist Church office of the nationally renowned fundamentalist preacher J. Frank Norris. He was there to warn the preacher against his continuing his attacks on the Fort Worth mayor and other political crones that Chipps considered his friends. What exactly happened in that office is a matter of dispute, but what isn't in dispute, is that Chipps was never to leave that building alive. Either in self defense or with murderous intent, an unarmed D.E. Chipps was shot, shot three times, shot by J. Frank Norris, shot with a gun he kept in a drawer in his desk. The story of the killing, the tensions that caused it and trial that followed—a trial as notorious in its day as the trial of Casey Anthony today--is the subject of David R. Stokes' popular history, The Shooting Salvationist.

It is a remarkable story filled with religious and political conflict and Stokes does his best to milk it for all its drama, but unlike many of the more prominent legal battles of the early twentieth century some of the early parts of the narrative are burdened with the need for a good bit of exposition. People famous and infamous in their day have become meaningless names; institutions and organizations that once dominated the country have faded and disappeared. The modern reader needs a good deal of information to understand what is going on and why it's happening. This kind of background may be necessary, but it can stall the narrative. Stokes is very good at supplying the needed information, although there are times the reader might have hoped he could have done so with a bit more style and a little less repetition.

He is careful to set the story in its historical, cultural context, constantly relating it to some of the more well known events of the day: the death of Harry Houdini, the Dempsey, Tunney fight, the death of the last of Abe Lincoln's sons, the Scopes Trial. He talks about the influence of the Ku Klux Klan and anti-Catholicism in the fundamentalist churches. He describes the political infighting in the city of Fort Worth and in the state of Texas. He emphasizes the importance of the church in the lives of parishioners and in the community in general.

Norris, as the spiritual leader of the largest congregation in the city, indeed one of the largest in the nation, was one of the most prominent people in Fort Worth. His sermons and his writings were published around the country, and he was sought as a guest preacher all over the nation. Although earlier in his career he had been tried for arson and perjury, he had been acquitted and was now a community stalwart. Stokes describes his position: ". . . by the middle of 1924, J. Frank Norris had the largest Protestant church in America, a newspaper that went into more than fifty thousand homes, and a radio station and network that could potentially take his voice to millions."

That such a man should be on trial for his life was the kind of scandal dear to the hearts of the tabloids of the day, a fundamentalist sequel to the recently ended Monkey Trial, but this time with even greater personal stakes for the accused. If this trial didn't quite feature a battle between mythic giants like Darrow and Bryant, it did have the cream of Texas lawyers butting heads in an Austin courtroom. It is in the description of the trial, often using actual transcripts that Stokes is at his narrative best. He looks at the attorneys and their strategies. He looks at the press coverage. He shows the effects of the trial on Norris and his family, on Chipps' ex-wife and his friends. It is a comprehensive account, but it moves with the kind of pace and intensity that makes for truly exciting courtroom drama.

If The Shooting Salvationist doesn't quite match up dramatically with some of the top level popular historical accounts of recent years, books like Eric Larson's The Devil and the White City or even with Donald McRae's more scholarly The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow, it is still a book that will both keep you reading and teach you some things you may not have known about the first couple of decades of the 20^th century.

Friday Night Lights: On the Page and On the Small Screen

Article first published as Friday Night Lights: On the Page and on the Small Screen on Blogcritics.

Just as Rick Perry has been haunting the announced Republican candidates in Iowa in preparation for his own entry into the campaign, Texas has been haunting me in the past week. Everywhere I look: Texas. I got through a marathon viewing of season four of Friday Night Lights only to discover that Netflix wasn't making season five available for instant viewing and the network was only making the final few episodes available on the net. Most of Mao's Last Dancer, a film I picked up earlier in the week takes place in Houston. One of the books I have been reading The Shooting Salvationist deals with a true crime and trial in Midland and Austin; and the other which I have just finished in my Friday Night Lights binge is the H. G. Bissinger book on which the TV series was based.

While that may be just about as much Texas in one week as any Northeasterner can reasonably be expected to suffer without some long term damage, I must confess that the TV series sucked me in with a passion. If George Bush's Texas was anathema, Coach Eric Taylor's was another thing altogether. Sure they were football crazy, but here in Steeler country that isn't necessarily something to be disparaged. And, although as the episodes progressed with romances—teen and adult, divorces, and abortions, the series began to take on something of a soap opera aura, it was still compelling enough to keep this viewer watching, and intrigued enough to check out the original source even though it was now over 20 years old.

It is interesting how much more critical of Texas football and the social environment in general Bissinger's book is compared to the TV series. It is not that the TV series shies away from the problems. Race, economic disparity, fundamentalism, educational issues—all these problems are dealt with in one way or another in the course of the series. Indeed in many respects these are issues that become even more important than the fanaticism about football that is the major focus of the book. It is not that the series sugar coats these problems. It treats them as seriously as they are treated in the book. The difference is that the series creates a fictional Dillon, peopled with characters who may have their faults but who have their good points as well. They are shown trying to deal with all sorts of problems, often problems not related to football. The real Odessa is a much starker place. The only people Bissinger is really concerned with are the football players and perhaps some of their family members. Moreover everything is seen as it is related to football. It is always the game that is front and center.

Coaches in the book, for example, are much more callous than those on TV. Coach Taylor as played by Kyle Chandler is hard on his players but he cares for them deeply. He will go out on a limb for them; he is there for them when they need him. He is there for them even when they don't want him there. Coach Gaines, Odessa's Permian coach, is hard on his players, but once they can no longer help his team, he has no interest them. If he has any interest in anything beyond football we never hear anything about it. Coach Taylor has a home life; Coach Gaines only exists on the field and in the locker room. Gaines never really emerges as a human being.

It is by humanizing characters that the TV series takes a truly interesting sociological study and turns it into a work of dramatic art. It is by giving the coach a wife that has more to worry about than fans complaining that she stands in their way during the game. It is by giving him a teen age daughter with a mind of her own, and then adding a new born to deal with. Moreover, it is by making their problems just as important as his. And what is true for the coach, is just as true for most of the other characters on the show.

While traces of the characters in book seem to find their way into some of those in the series—the introverted under sized quarterback, the rowdy hard drinking running back with his string of girls, the black star looking for a scholarship to a major college, these are only traces. Over the weeks of the series, they develop; they become rounded individuals. Quality drama depends on character. It is in the careful development of character that the TV series excels. Bissinger is less interested in drama, not that he excludes it, he pumps the football games for all they're worth; his concern sociological reportage. What he wants is just enough drama to make his point. Obviously the book and the series are doing two different things, and they are both doing them well.