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The Manson File
8.5"x5.5"x.5" paperback edition
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Published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Nikolas Schreck
9 books629 followersAmerican writer, musician, film-maker, and spiritual teacher whose work focuses on magic, mysticism, mythology and the macabre. Schreck is married to Zeena Schreck (Formerly LaVey) the daughter of the founder of the Church of Satan, Anton Lavey
Together with his wife he founded the Sethian Liberation Movement and wrote books about sex magic, portrayal of Satan in cinema and Charles Manson.
He is also the founder of the gothic-industrial band Radio Werewolf, which was active from 1984 to 1992.
Together with his wife he founded the Sethian Liberation Movement and wrote books about sex magic, portrayal of Satan in cinema and Charles Manson.
He is also the founder of the gothic-industrial band Radio Werewolf, which was active from 1984 to 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 8, 2022
There has always been a war between poor powerless people and the rich and powerful. It gets expressed in a whole variety of paranoid fantasies and delusions, the latest of which is QAnon. They were the people who made a ridiculous attempt to Stop the Steal on 6 January last year. When you ask who QAnon is and what they believe you get some truly off the wall answers. I was listening to a BBC (aka Main Stream Media) series about the history of this group. It begins with an obsession with the Clintons and exfoliates into a conviction that the elite of American politics, the ruling class, are Satan-worshipping paedophiles, murderers and blood-drinking cannibals. Kind of hard to imagine any sane person would entertain such notions, but it’s widespread in the current Republican Party.
On 3 January 2022 Ipsos polled Republican party members and found two thirds believe the election of Biden was a colossal fraud. Whatever judges and courts have said about the many challenges to the result in various states, doesn’t matter. There is no proof you could bring to convince anyone that there aren’t Satanists in Washington or that Biden won the election.
So we get to a disturbing realisation that we are living in what someone called “the eclipse of reason”. There is a moment when the floor drops away and you realise that the actual fundamental ideas of reason, proof, logic and truth are paper-thin in many people’s minds. A QAnon or a Charlie Manson can tear reason, proof, logic and truth to tatters easily. Manson was a great spinner of paranoid fantasies, one of which was the coming Helter Skelter race war which (maybe) the murders were done to kickstart. Or maybe the murders were done because Charlie, a little old scroungy nobody who eats out of a garbage can, that nobody wants, that was kicked out of the penitentiary, that has been dragged through every hellhole you can think of (in his own words) hated those rich Hollywood types so much.
FANTASY AS METAPHOR
But one guy explained it this way : he said that the baby-eating Satanist paedophile stuff is a metaphor, it’s actually not to be taken literally. It’s an expression of hatred of the powerful by the powerless. If you can buy that, it’s a way of being able to avoid thinking that many people these days have taken leave of their senses.
MORE PARANOID FANTASIES
You don’t have to look far in history to find lots of other conspiracy fantasies. There was the witch craze in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion mania of the 20th century, more recently the Satanic Abuse panic of the 1980s. Every cult invents its own enormously powerful enemies, like the Branch Davidians in Waco and the People’s Temple in Guyana. Conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination are so elaborate that it turns out the only guy who wasn’t guilty was Lee Harvey Oswald. I was thinking as I listened to the BBC series how different I was to these paranoid types, but then I remembered a review I wrote in 2010 of a novel called The Privileges by Jonathan Dee:
I believe that whatever disasters strike this small blue planet of ours, global warming, a new pandemic, whatever, the rich will not only sail though unaffected, they’ll hardly notice what’s killing the rest of us. … The rich are in the process of spinning off into their own sealed world where nothing , no revolutions, no catastrophes, no diseases, can touch them anymore. They live longer than us, they’re taller, they’re more intelligent and obviously more beautiful. If they’re not, they fix it,
That’s pretty paranoid!
THIS BOOK
Is an excellent collection of Manson’s gibberings and the deluded ramblings of his followers.
SOME OTHER RELEVANT BOOKS
The Malleus Maleficarum By Heinrich Kramer (1485)
The Pursuit Of The Millennium Revolutionary Millenarians And Mystical Anarchists Of The Middle Ages By Norman Cohn (1957)
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter (1964)
The Underworld Trilogy (American Tabloid (1995) The Cold Six Thousand (2001) Blood’s A Rover (2009) by James Ellroy
Making Sense Of The Alt-Right By George Hawley (2017)
Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy, & The Deep State: Tracing The Ruling Elite’s Pedophile Bloodlust For Children From Antiquity To Today By Joachim Hagopian (2017)
On 3 January 2022 Ipsos polled Republican party members and found two thirds believe the election of Biden was a colossal fraud. Whatever judges and courts have said about the many challenges to the result in various states, doesn’t matter. There is no proof you could bring to convince anyone that there aren’t Satanists in Washington or that Biden won the election.
So we get to a disturbing realisation that we are living in what someone called “the eclipse of reason”. There is a moment when the floor drops away and you realise that the actual fundamental ideas of reason, proof, logic and truth are paper-thin in many people’s minds. A QAnon or a Charlie Manson can tear reason, proof, logic and truth to tatters easily. Manson was a great spinner of paranoid fantasies, one of which was the coming Helter Skelter race war which (maybe) the murders were done to kickstart. Or maybe the murders were done because Charlie, a little old scroungy nobody who eats out of a garbage can, that nobody wants, that was kicked out of the penitentiary, that has been dragged through every hellhole you can think of (in his own words) hated those rich Hollywood types so much.
FANTASY AS METAPHOR
But one guy explained it this way : he said that the baby-eating Satanist paedophile stuff is a metaphor, it’s actually not to be taken literally. It’s an expression of hatred of the powerful by the powerless. If you can buy that, it’s a way of being able to avoid thinking that many people these days have taken leave of their senses.
MORE PARANOID FANTASIES
You don’t have to look far in history to find lots of other conspiracy fantasies. There was the witch craze in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion mania of the 20th century, more recently the Satanic Abuse panic of the 1980s. Every cult invents its own enormously powerful enemies, like the Branch Davidians in Waco and the People’s Temple in Guyana. Conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination are so elaborate that it turns out the only guy who wasn’t guilty was Lee Harvey Oswald. I was thinking as I listened to the BBC series how different I was to these paranoid types, but then I remembered a review I wrote in 2010 of a novel called The Privileges by Jonathan Dee:
I believe that whatever disasters strike this small blue planet of ours, global warming, a new pandemic, whatever, the rich will not only sail though unaffected, they’ll hardly notice what’s killing the rest of us. … The rich are in the process of spinning off into their own sealed world where nothing , no revolutions, no catastrophes, no diseases, can touch them anymore. They live longer than us, they’re taller, they’re more intelligent and obviously more beautiful. If they’re not, they fix it,
That’s pretty paranoid!
THIS BOOK
Is an excellent collection of Manson’s gibberings and the deluded ramblings of his followers.
SOME OTHER RELEVANT BOOKS
The Malleus Maleficarum By Heinrich Kramer (1485)
The Pursuit Of The Millennium Revolutionary Millenarians And Mystical Anarchists Of The Middle Ages By Norman Cohn (1957)
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter (1964)
The Underworld Trilogy (American Tabloid (1995) The Cold Six Thousand (2001) Blood’s A Rover (2009) by James Ellroy
Making Sense Of The Alt-Right By George Hawley (2017)
Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy, & The Deep State: Tracing The Ruling Elite’s Pedophile Bloodlust For Children From Antiquity To Today By Joachim Hagopian (2017)
April 9, 2022
"I got the vibes. I got the vibes from Charlie."
~~ Karl Fleming, Newsweek
Over 50 years removed from the Tate/LaBianca murders, the public imagination still reserves a special place for Charles Manson as the embodiment of evil in miniature: an impish mastermind of murder not proven to have personally killed anyone but to have directed his followers to do so. His iconic status has been helped along by an endless supply of books, movies and TV documentaries that emphasize his manic, magnetic persona while revelling in the gory details of "his" crimes. Most of these books and movies take a decidedly anti-Manson stance, but there are those that can be broadly interpreted as pro-Manson. Some paint him as wholly innocent whereas others offer dubious justifications. I've yet to read/see one that makes much sense.
The Manson File is one of the pro-Manson takes, and it's a doozy. This is a work that tries to portray Manson as an inspired philosopher and a visionary musical artist, presenting in support of its thesis ample evidence that he really wasn't. Whereas a cynic might suggest that the likes of Terry Melcher and Dennis Wilson found themselves in Manson's orbit on account of his proximity to young, promiscuous girls, The Manson File insists that Manson was a muse and an inspiration to them (in fairness, The Beach Boys did trick up one of his songs). It then presents us with a collection of Manson's execrable songs and poetry. "You be the judge," the book says. I judge him to be pretty lacking in talent. I judge that the Hollywood types who associated with Manson and his girls wanted to get their rocks off.
If you've been exposed to the sensational appearances of Manson and his followers on trashy TV talk shows then you can probably excuse the authors of this book for thinking there might be something to Manson's way of thinking. Put Manson in a room with Geraldo Rivera and he'll come out of it looking like the sane one. Have his followers defend him in front of a braying audience and they'll look like the rational ones. Give them some blank pieces of paper and they'll produce, well.. this. The chapter titled "The Philosophy" is a collection of Manson's boilerplate observations and theorising that the authors don't even attempt join up in a coherent way. I don't really blame them; it would be an impossible task.
Manson is a ten-a-penny philosopher at best but he does come out with a few bangers:
"In your world you can take a pen and write on a piece of paper and destroy 200,000 people and it's okay because you don't have to see it."
"Prison's in your mind ... Can't you see I'm free?"
Right on.
For a book that (not without cause) denigrates as fiction such entries into the Manson canon as Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders and Ed Sanders' The Family , The Manson File demands some suspension of disbelief from its readers. We are told that Walt Disney once owned the LaBianca house (I couldn't find proof of this) and encouraged to believe that the opening of the Disney Haunted Mansion ride on the same weekend as the murders is of relevance somehow. "Psychedelicized witnesses" are cited in support of claims that Manson was able to perform miracles such as regrowing his own severed penis and reanimating corpses. There's some numerology thrown in too. It's this kind of insanity that almost makes the book worth reading.
The book's apparently ingenuous devotion to Manson is almost cute. Alas, this has a side to it that goes beyond mere edginess and naiveté. Manson didn't just like to refer to himself as Jesus... He also described Hitler that way too. Something of a white supremacist himself, Manson was fond of the swastika and featured it on both his forehead and in his artwork (sampled in the book). He subscribed to conspiracy theories about nefarious Jews controlling the world and media. The book doesn't critique any of this, simply reproducing it without comment. Oh, and it features pro-Manson contributions from American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Yikes.
One of my GR friends, rightly disappointed with Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties , responded to my recommendation of Jeff Guinn's excellent Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson by saying thanks, but they'd had their fill of crazy Charlie. I should be so lucky. Personally, I can't get enough of Manson media and, for all its flaws, The Manson File has irresistible treasures for the hooked. The extemporaneous speech Manson gave at his trial is reproduced in full and is impressive in its own, meandering way. A handful of fables written by Manson are included, proving he was a much better storyteller than songwriter or poet. Finally, an overview of books, movies and TV shows about the Manson family will expand the wishlists of any Mansonphiles, provided they can take the author's critical appraisals with a pinch of salt.
3 stars for a silly, fascinating book.
December 12, 2008
Probably the only out and out pro-Manson book that has ever been published. Contributers range from Manson sympathizers to out and out "family" members in essays and art. The good bulk of this book however is straight from Charles Manson himself. Interviews, quotes, transcripts of court and parole hearings, poetry and fiction written by Charles Manson, even artwork by him. The Manson File is probably the best book you can get to learn anything about Manson and his philosophy.
April 1, 2008
I don't really have anything original to say about this. I'm only likely to add my voice to an already pretty substantial chorus of babble. This might be the most fair-minded compilation of Manson-related materials that I know of. I'd certainly recommend it over Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter" (wch I can't remember if I 've read but I've seen him on TV & that was disgusting enuf) or even over Ed Sanders' "The Family".
The people who compiled this know the subject. There's 'ephemera' here that only a dedicated researcher wd've found. The editors have obviously found more truth & wisdom in what Manson had to say than the mainstream press cd ever admit. Lt. Calley served a light sentence for the My Lai massacre & went on to a lucrative career as a jeweler. Manson's still in jail. That isn't justice.
Manson sd in his testimony of November 19, 1970: "I have killed noone and I have ordered noone to be killed." I believe him. Nonetheless, people were killed & the killers were part of a group that Manson was a leader of. Lt. Calley DID kill people & DID order people to be killed. He was part of a group that had a slew of leaders but these were all 'good citizens' - all the killing was done in the interests of the ruling elites so it's all A-OK.
Manson testified: "I am whatever you make me, but what you want is a fiend; you want a sadistic fiend because that is what you are." I agree w/ him. I agree w/ much of what Manson says - mainly in his observations about society & his role in relationship to it. Manson: "My philosophy comes from underneath the boots and sticks and clubs they beat people with who come from the wrong side of the tracks."
Manson is quoted here as saying or writing: "If I were boss I would take your toys - no cars no lights no power plants no electricity". It's the "If I were boss" part of this that bothers me. People who have fantasies of being the "boss" are people who want the power. Regardless of the value of Manson's ecological philosophy, I don't trust ANYONE who wants to be boss.
The tragedy here isn't just that the Tate-LaBianca murders happened. A further tragedy is that if Manson had been rich or a 'good citizen' he wd've never gone to jail. The tragedy is that if Manson had been less beaten down & more aware of just how much society wanted him & the Family to be fiends he might've succeeded in staying out of the trap. Manson's philosophy is worth studying but I wish he'd had more of the psychopathfinder in him, more of the inclination to use his energy to keep away from being "the fiend", to change this society in more subtly subversive ways.
Instead, too many disorienting drugs, too much alienation, too much hate, too much being trapped in being scapegoated results in people like prosecutor Bugliosi making his name & fortune off vicious murders & being able to point the finger of guilt at the outsider while he stays safely inside the society that created that outside w/ a viciousness rarely acknowledged.
I wish the Family members had never murdered anyone. I wish Manson had had someone produce his music. It certainly deserves it as much as many a more 'successful' pop musician's music does. But this just ain't what happened & it's too late to change it now.
The people who compiled this know the subject. There's 'ephemera' here that only a dedicated researcher wd've found. The editors have obviously found more truth & wisdom in what Manson had to say than the mainstream press cd ever admit. Lt. Calley served a light sentence for the My Lai massacre & went on to a lucrative career as a jeweler. Manson's still in jail. That isn't justice.
Manson sd in his testimony of November 19, 1970: "I have killed noone and I have ordered noone to be killed." I believe him. Nonetheless, people were killed & the killers were part of a group that Manson was a leader of. Lt. Calley DID kill people & DID order people to be killed. He was part of a group that had a slew of leaders but these were all 'good citizens' - all the killing was done in the interests of the ruling elites so it's all A-OK.
Manson testified: "I am whatever you make me, but what you want is a fiend; you want a sadistic fiend because that is what you are." I agree w/ him. I agree w/ much of what Manson says - mainly in his observations about society & his role in relationship to it. Manson: "My philosophy comes from underneath the boots and sticks and clubs they beat people with who come from the wrong side of the tracks."
Manson is quoted here as saying or writing: "If I were boss I would take your toys - no cars no lights no power plants no electricity". It's the "If I were boss" part of this that bothers me. People who have fantasies of being the "boss" are people who want the power. Regardless of the value of Manson's ecological philosophy, I don't trust ANYONE who wants to be boss.
The tragedy here isn't just that the Tate-LaBianca murders happened. A further tragedy is that if Manson had been rich or a 'good citizen' he wd've never gone to jail. The tragedy is that if Manson had been less beaten down & more aware of just how much society wanted him & the Family to be fiends he might've succeeded in staying out of the trap. Manson's philosophy is worth studying but I wish he'd had more of the psychopathfinder in him, more of the inclination to use his energy to keep away from being "the fiend", to change this society in more subtly subversive ways.
Instead, too many disorienting drugs, too much alienation, too much hate, too much being trapped in being scapegoated results in people like prosecutor Bugliosi making his name & fortune off vicious murders & being able to point the finger of guilt at the outsider while he stays safely inside the society that created that outside w/ a viciousness rarely acknowledged.
I wish the Family members had never murdered anyone. I wish Manson had had someone produce his music. It certainly deserves it as much as many a more 'successful' pop musician's music does. But this just ain't what happened & it's too late to change it now.
October 8, 2013
I feel like this was more of a scrap book than actual attempt at scholarly research. Better books on Manson (in my humble opinion) would include The Family, Shadow Over Santa Susana, and even the Bugliosi book. All of these books offer a more even handed account of the thinking behind Manson's philosophy of environmentalism and strange racial dialectical ism, as well as the actual events surrounding Spahn Ranch and the Tate-LaBianca murders. A dear friend of mine let me borrow all three of those books many years ago. When I think about why I have read so much about ol uncle Charlie, I suppose it's mostly morbid fascination. I'm also a sucker for a good American horror story. It's got all the ingredients: Hollywood players, gutter folks, motorcycle gangs, dune buggies, rock 'n' roll, a cadre of murderous hell cats, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. This book did have some interesting pro ATWA (air trees water animals) art work and some rare letters of Manson discussing his often self contradictory thinking, but all in all I just didn't care for the unabashedly pro Manson outlook. I think Schreck borders on hero worship, even when discussing Manson's loose affiliation with the Ayrian brotherhood or his assertion that Hitler was Jesus returning and that we all should have embraced his vision. Pardon me, but what the fuck!? My friend said it best, if they let Manson out today, he'd go right back to it! Some people are too dangerous to be free. As much as I dig the man's music, I'm glad he's San Quentin's most famous resident. Oh yeah, there is a funny excerpt of Neil Young praising Manson (before the murders); talking about what an amazing guy he was-a mystic, a visionary. Woah. Strange times indeed.
April 7, 2013
Helpful for the completist looking for obscure material about Manson. Suffers from sloppy presentation and puerile pro-Manson stance. Sure to be the bible for poseurs trying to show how edgy they are.
September 5, 2009
Click here for my conversation with Michael Channels, currently in contact with Manson: http://www.mightymercury.com/home/277...
I found this last week checking behind my bookcase for something, and realized I'd never finished reading it. It's the most authentic overview of Manson's whole trip, equal parts foolish/evil/whatever and sensible--for instance he seems to have always had a deeply-rooted concern for the environment and ecology (sensible), but he also believes Hitler was Christ and Nazis were just trying to "bring order to the world" so he has some unsavory hangups, too. This book delves more deeply into the particulars of his occult orientation--he apparently experienced witchcraft and psychic phenomena on a regular basis, believing himself to be possessed at times by the spirit of 16th century Italian heretic Giordano Bruno. Also freaky is its revelation of his extensive contacts with celebrities of the period (including Elvis, Peter Sellers and Yul Brynner), not just The Beach Boys. Especially interesting for the curious.
Please click here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...
I found this last week checking behind my bookcase for something, and realized I'd never finished reading it. It's the most authentic overview of Manson's whole trip, equal parts foolish/evil/whatever and sensible--for instance he seems to have always had a deeply-rooted concern for the environment and ecology (sensible), but he also believes Hitler was Christ and Nazis were just trying to "bring order to the world" so he has some unsavory hangups, too. This book delves more deeply into the particulars of his occult orientation--he apparently experienced witchcraft and psychic phenomena on a regular basis, believing himself to be possessed at times by the spirit of 16th century Italian heretic Giordano Bruno. Also freaky is its revelation of his extensive contacts with celebrities of the period (including Elvis, Peter Sellers and Yul Brynner), not just The Beach Boys. Especially interesting for the curious.
Please click here:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...
November 24, 2012
Just a rehash of old information
Though I can't fault the book it was written in 89 Still proved disappointing Looking forward to the updated version though pricey it's 900 plus pages compared to this version at a mere 197 pages
Though I can't fault the book it was written in 89 Still proved disappointing Looking forward to the updated version though pricey it's 900 plus pages compared to this version at a mere 197 pages
August 18, 2012
A very good book overall, and because it actually saw a significant printing it's not as hard to find as the author's other works.
However this version has largely been replaced by the 2011, expanded Manson File, as the newer edition contains a lot of material which in the 1980s was not available.
However this version has largely been replaced by the 2011, expanded Manson File, as the newer edition contains a lot of material which in the 1980s was not available.
May 27, 2008
One of the definitive books about Charles Manson and the Family murders. Recommended!
January 23, 2009
Strange scrapbook which I was glad to find up at Powell's in PDX.
August 19, 2012
A good look into the man that is Man-son, although it's much smaller than the 2011 update.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews