Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars
by Edward George, Dary Matera
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Book Summary Information
Author: Dary Matera, Edward GeorgeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1999-07-16
ISBN: 0312209703
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Book Reviews of Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars
Book Review: Charlie the hypnotist
Summary: 1 Stars
Charles Manson is another one of those fixed points in the American pseudo-mind. Everybody knows what to think about him. Madman, hypnotist, Svengali. Actually trying to think about Charles Manson would be a good exercise for Americans, those few whose minds still function. Manson was not present at the scene of either the Tate or Labianca murders. He wasn't there, period. He was convicted because a bunch of obviously mush brained kids said, after they were caught, "he made me do it!" Now Manson had no power over them other than his supposedly hypnotic personality. Manson was not like. say, Hitler, who was a head of state, could give orders, and could punish or kill those who disobeyed. Supposedly he hypnotized them and made them do it. Come on. Edward George is an obviously weak minded guy who immediately succumbed to Manson's antics. As another reviewer mentioned, Manson sounds sane, but George sensed some kind of overpowering weirdness. Anyone who wants to think for himself might do a little research on Tex Watson, the guy who was actually there and actually did most of the killing. Now that's the real mad killer for you. Was he under Manson's spell? Decide for yourself. Then you might ask yourself why Manson had to take the blame.
Summary of Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars
Edward George understand Charles Manson as few others ever will. Former prison counselor to the messianic killer, George enraged Manson as an agent of the state's criminal justice system, listened to him as a trusted confessor, spoke for him as an erstwhile press agent-and-almost-connected with him as a friend. George saw Manson in a way the public never would, witnessing the method to his madness, the charisma that underlies his sickness, the pathetic abandoned boy within the homicidal man. If you read Helter Skelter and think you know the whole story about Charlie Manson, think again. You don't know it all until you've read Taming the Beast: Charles Manson's Life Behind Bars.Edward George, who was Charles Manson's prison counselor for eight years during the late 1970s and early '80s, offers an insider's look at the creepy cult leader's day-to-day life behind bars. Although Charlie is literally a graybeard now, he's lost none of his knack for oddball ranting and dark and compelling personal magnetism. George conveys the riveting persona of the convicted killer--complex and arcane, by turns violent and easygoing, and in some ways even sensitive. In one bizarre incident, Manson, upon discovering a bird's nest outside his cell window, procures an egg from the nest to protect it from the prison's cleaning crews, who routinely swept such nests off the building. George stumbles upon Charlie expectantly warming the egg with his hands, hoping for a hatchling to emerge. "Charles Manson held that egg in his hands for weeks, cherishing it, talking to it, waiting for that bird to emerge," George writes. "It never did."
The portrait of Manson that emerges from Taming the Beast is largely one of a defanged, eccentric, and even comical man, a man who goes before parole boards every few years and, like an actor leaping onstage, performs for his captive audience, then chuckles about it afterward. Still, the author is careful to remind readers of the harsher reality of Manson's past, at one point promising to stick a "shank into that bastard's black heart" if Manson ever came after his daughter. Though George struggles mightily to emphasize Charlie's sociopathic nature, it becomes obvious very early on in the book that he has a fairly big soft spot for his former charge. Manson, it seems, despite being confined, still has his infamous powers of persuasion after half a life on ice. --Tjames Madison
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