 Book cover | |
| Author | Dave Cullen |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Henry Sene Yee |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Columbine High School massacre |
| Publisher | Twelve (Hachette Book Group) |
Publication date | April 6, 2009 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardback, paperback, audiobook, Kindle, Nook, large-print |
| Pages | 432 |
| ISBN | 978-0-446-54693-5 |
| OCLC | 236082459 |
| 373.788/8 22 | |
| LC Class | LB3013.33.C6 C84 2009 |
| Part ofa series of articles on the |
| Columbine High School massacre |
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Location: Perpetrators: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold |
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Columbine is a non-fiction book written byDave Cullen and published by Twelve (Hachette Book Group) on April 6, 2009. It is an examination of theColumbine High School massacre, on April 20, 1999, and the perpetratorsEric Harris and Dylan Klebold.[1] The book covers two major storylines: the killers' evolution leading up to the attack, and the survivors' struggles with the aftermath over the next decade. Chapters alternate between the two stories. Graphic depictions of parts of the attack are included, in addition to the actual names of friends and family (the only exception being the pseudonym "Harriet", which is used for a female Columbine student referred to in Klebold’s journal entries, with whom he was obsessively in love).
Cullen says he spent ten years researching and writing the book. He previously contributed toThe New York Times,The Washington Post,The Times of London, andThe Guardian. He is best known for his work forSlate andSalon.com. HisSlate story "The Depressive and the Psychopath" five years earlier, offered the first diagnosis of the killers by the team of psychologists and psychiatrists brought into the case by theFBI.[2] Publication was timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the massacre, which occurred on April 20, 1999. The book spent eight weeks onThe New York Times bestseller list in the spring of 2009, peaking at #3.[3][4]
The book gained considerable media attention for addressing many of the so-called Columbine myths widely taken for granted. According to the book, the massacre had nothing to do withschool bullying,jocks, theGothic subculture,Marilyn Manson or theTrench Coat Mafia.[5] Cullen also writes that the attack was intended primarily as a bombing rather than a school shooting, and that Harris and Klebold intended to perpetrate the worst terrorist attack in American history. The book garnered glowing reviews fromTime,Newsweek,People,The New York Observer andEntertainment Weekly.[6] One of the few dissenting views came fromJanet Maslin, who wrote inThe New York Times, "What good can a new book on Columbine do? Mr. Cullen's Salon coverage had already refuted some of the worst misconceptions about the story by the fall of 1999... Emerging details mostly corroborate what was already known."[7]
Columbine won a bevy of awards and honors, including theEdgar Allan Poe Award,[8]Barnes & Noble's Discover Award,[9] and theGoodreads Choice Award.[10] It was a finalist for theLA Times Book Prize,[11] theAudie Award and the MPIBA Regional Book Award. Additionally,Columbine was named on two dozen Best of 2009 lists, includingThe New York Times,Los Angeles Times,Publishers Weekly,iTunes and theAmerican Library Association. It was declared Top Education Book of 2009, and one of the best of the decade by theAmerican School Board Journal.
In a 2015Vanity Fair essay, the author described the powerful impact his mentorLucia Berlin had on the creation of the book and on his ability to vividly portray such characters as Klebold and teacher Dave Sanders, describing Berlin as “the guiding force in my work, and my life” even long after her death.[12]
Columbine has two main storylines, told in alternating chapters: the 'before' story of the killers' evolution toward murder, and the 'after' story of the survivors. There are shorter 'during' accounts, describing the attack itself, dispersed throughout the book. Formally composed of 53 chapters divided into five parts, the book also includes a timeline, 26 pages of detailed endnotes, and a fifteen-page bibliography organized into topics.
The 'before' story focuses primarily on the killers' high school years preceding the massacre. According to the experts cited on the book,Eric Harris was a textbookpsychopath, andDylan Klebold was an angrydepressive.
The 'after' story is composed of eight major sub-stories, focused on individuals who played a key role in the aftermath of the attack, including Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis, alleged Christian martyrCassie Bernall (another myth, according to the book), "the boy in the window", Patrick Ireland, FBI Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, and the families of victim Daniel Rohrbough and teacher Dave Sanders, who died saving students from the gunmen. The Evangelical Christian community's feverish response to the alleged "martyrdom" issue is also chronicled.
Columbine begins four days before the massacre, at a school assembly hosted by Principal DeAngelis just before Prom weekend. Scenes from the massacre are graphically depicted in the early chapters, and later through flashbacks.[13]
Published byTwelve (Hachette Book Group) on April 6, 2009,[14]Columbine debuted at number seven on the bestseller list forThe New York Times in the United States.[3] It peaked at number three,[15] and spent eight weeks on the list.[4]
The book was very well received by critics, and by news media, which focused heavily on the dispelling of numerous Columbine myths, and also the extensive portrayal of the minds of the two killers. InThe New York Observer, Stephen Amidon describedColumbine as a "gripping study... To his credit, Mr. Cullen does not simply tear down Columbine's legends. He also convincingly explains what really sparked the murderous rage... disquieting... beautifully written."[16]
Several critics compared the book toIn Cold Blood, including formerPublishers Weekly Editor-In-Chief Sara Nelson, who reviewed it forThe Daily Beast and called it "a riveting read, on a par with the greatest crime analysis fromIn Cold Blood orThe Stranger Beside Me."[17] A debate sprang up on the issue, with some critics concurring, and others arguing that Cullen's artistry fell short ofTruman Capote's.
Jennifer Senior, inThe New York Times Book Review, resisted the Capote comparison, but offered high praise. She observed that: "Had Dave Cullen capitulated to cliché while writing ‘Columbine’, he would have started his tale 48 hours before Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's notorious killing spree, stopped the frame just before they fired their guns, and then spooled back to the very beginning, with the promise of trying to explain how the two boys got to this twisted pass. But he doesn't. As Cullen eventually writes, ‘there had been no trigger’ — at least none that would be satisfying to horrified outsiders, grieving parents or anyone in between. Eric Harris was a psychopath, simple as that. Dylan Klebold was a suicidally depressed kid who yoked his fate to a sadist. Instead, what intrigues the author are perceptions and misperceptions: how difficult a shooting spree is to untangle; how readily mass tragedies lend themselves to misinformation and mythologizing; how psychopaths can excel at the big con... Yet what's amazing is how much of Cullen's book still comes as a surprise. I expected a story about misfits exacting vengeance, because that was my memory of the media consensus — Columbine, right, wasn't there something going on there between goths and jocks? In fact, Harris and Klebold were killing completely at random that day. Their victims weren't the intended targets at all; the entire school was."[18]
Janet Maslin published one of the book's few negative reviews. In the daily issue ofThe New York Times, Maslin wrote: "And now that books as commercially ambitious asColumbine are marketed like movies, an online video advertisement for the book touts its '10 years in the making', calling it 'the definitive story of an American tragedy'. For the same YouTube trailer, Cullen allowed himself to be filmed sitting at his desk amid potted houseplants, scrolling solemnly through a computer-screen copy of one of the killers' hate-filled journals."[19]
Maslin wrote, "But Mr. Cullen has not written this book solely to dissect the events of Columbine. He also invites his readers to relive them. So he replays the planning and execution of the killings for maximum dramatic impact, trying to get right inside the killers' heads."
Newsweek essay by Ramin Satoodeh stated: "In the decade since Columbine, there have been countless efforts to make sense of that day: memoirs, books, movies, even a play opening in Los Angeles in April. The definitive account, however, will likely be Dave Cullen'sColumbine, a nonfiction book that has the pacing of an action movie and the complexity of a Shakespearean drama... Cullen has a gift, if that's the right word, for excruciating detail. At times the language is so vivid you can almost smell the gunpowder and the fear... The Columbine killers were a strange and deeply disturbed pair, right out of a Truman Capote book. We've heard plenty of the details about Klebold and Harris—their fixation with the Nazis, their lust for violence, the homemade tapes in which they laid out their grand scheme for us to watch later—but Cullen, despite all odds, manages to humanize them... Cullen also debunks some of the biggest fallacies."[20]
Columbine has won the following awards.
Columbine was a finalist for the following awards.
Columbine was named on many Best of 2009 lists, including these.
TheColumbine paperback edition (released in 2010) reveals details of four secret meetings involving all four parents of the killers. This unforeseen development provided the first real public insight into the mindsets of Wayne and Kathy Harris. The awkward encounters play out in the new "Afterword" added to the paperback.[46] Further descriptions of the meetings with Wayne and Kathy Harris appear in The Daily Beast feature, "The Last Columbine Mystery," by the same author, published at the time of the paperback release.[47]
The Afterword also includes updates about two bereaved parents and one wounded survivor of the Columbine shootings, and their starkly different perspectives on "forgiveness". The three individuals in question are Linda Mauser (mother of victim Daniel Mauser), Bob Curnow (father of victim Steven Curnow) and Valeen Schnurr, respectively.
The expanded paperback edition of 2010 also adds scans from the killers' numerous journals,[48] a diagram of the attack,[49] and book club questions.[50]
Columbine has been widely adopted as a textbook in high school English and Social Studies classes, as well as college journalism classes. The author created a free Columbine Teacher's Guide, as well as classroom videos and related material which have been widely downloaded from the internet.[51] The guide includes units on teen depression, P.T.S.D. and overcoming adversity.
Several educational associations singled out the book for students and teachers. TheAmerican School Board Journal chose it as the "Top Education Book for 2009". It also called it "one of the best education books of the past 10 years."[52] The American Library Association selectedColumbine as a finalist for its "Alex Award for Young Adult Readers."[23] In 2011, the Illinois School Library Media Association nominatedColumbine for its "Abraham Lincoln Award: Illinois' High School Readers' Choice Award", which was open to student voting through February 2012.[25]
The book has been under development for television with Killer Films, Lifetime and NBC Universal.
The theatrical rights to the book were briefly acquired after the book's publication, byKathleen Kennedy andFrank Marshall. The producers instead chose to adapt the book into a one-act play entitledThe Library. The play was written by screenwriterScott Z. Burns and directed bySteven Soderbergh. The original ensemble cast includedChloë Grace Moretz,Lili Taylor andMichael O'Keefe.[53]
The book has been translated into Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Russian, with translations underway inSimplified Chinese and Polish.[54]