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Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, a Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation
In the summer of 1823, a grizzly bear mauled Hugh Glass. The animal ripped the trapper up, carving huge hunks from his body. Glass's fellows rushed to his aid and slew the bear, but Glass's injuries mocked their first aid. The expedition leader arranged for his two men would stay behind to bury the corpse when it finally stopped gurgling; the rest would move on. Alone in Indian country, the caretakers quickly lost their nerve. They fled, taking Glass's gun, knife, and ammunition with them. But Glass wouldn't die. He began crawling toward Fort Kiowa, hundreds of miles to the east, and as his speed picked up, so did his ire. The bastards who took his gear and left him to rot were going to pay.Here Lies Hugh Glass springs from this legend. The acclaimed historian Jon T. Coleman delves into the accounts left by Glass's contemporaries and the mythologizers who used his story to advance their literary and filmmaking careers. A spectacle of grit in the face of overwhelming odds, Glass sold copy and tickets. But he did much more. Through him, the grievances and frustrations of hired hunters in the early American West and the natural world they traversed and explored bled into the narrative of the nation. A marginal player who nonetheless sheds light on the terrifying drama of life on the frontier, Glass endures as a consummate survivor and a complex example of American manhood. Here Lies Hugh Glass, a vivid, often humorous portrait of a young nation and its growing pains, is a Western history like no other.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 24, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
February 9, 2016
When I picked this book up I was expecting a epic tale of Hugh Glass and his fight for survival in the wilderness and revenge on the jerks who left him to die. I got this expectation from the recent "Revenant" movie and thought that this book was what the movie was based on.
While it did tell the story of Hugh Glass and his life (What little is known about it), the story was more about the history of the mountain men and survivors in general with Glass playing a very small part (Popping up here and there to cement the story together) in the story. The biggest discovery for me in the true story of Hugh Glass was that he didn't kill the men who left him behind to die but instead forgave them. The author didn't really clarify on this aspect of the story and why he thought that he forgave the men instead of 'exacting revenge' but I thought that this was the most beautiful and telling part of the story. I don't know Glass's reasons for forgiving the men but all I can say is I commend him for his grace and compassion in forgiving his enemies instead of doing what the world always wants us to do 'exact revenge' on our wrongdoers.
Overall this was a very interesting book into the history of the mountain men although it did have a lot of the authors own personal opinion in it.
The other thing I enjoyed in this book were all the 'big' words which give me a chance to expand my vocabulary although the author did tend to use his words multiple times in the same sections which lent the story a bit of a 'repetitive' feeling.
While it did tell the story of Hugh Glass and his life (What little is known about it), the story was more about the history of the mountain men and survivors in general with Glass playing a very small part (Popping up here and there to cement the story together) in the story. The biggest discovery for me in the true story of Hugh Glass was that he didn't kill the men who left him behind to die but instead forgave them. The author didn't really clarify on this aspect of the story and why he thought that he forgave the men instead of 'exacting revenge' but I thought that this was the most beautiful and telling part of the story. I don't know Glass's reasons for forgiving the men but all I can say is I commend him for his grace and compassion in forgiving his enemies instead of doing what the world always wants us to do 'exact revenge' on our wrongdoers.
Overall this was a very interesting book into the history of the mountain men although it did have a lot of the authors own personal opinion in it.
The other thing I enjoyed in this book were all the 'big' words which give me a chance to expand my vocabulary although the author did tend to use his words multiple times in the same sections which lent the story a bit of a 'repetitive' feeling.
October 6, 2013
Deconstructing the America West, one legend at a time
The Hugh Glass story doesn’t need much embellishment to catch your attention: Glass was a seasoned trapper who, in 1823, was attacked by a grizzly, horribly mauled and then left for dead by his treacherous companions who, to add insult to injury, stole his clothes and all his provisions, including his weapons. That should have been the end of the story, but Glass lived and battled open wounds and massive trauma, warring Native Americans out to lift his scalp and the unforgiving elements as he crawls — and later runs — hundreds of miles, stark naked, to the safety of a fort. It’s a story of grit, survival and stubborn tenacity, the stuff of legends. In the hands of author Jon T. Coleman, it’s transformed into a weird, manic, breathless — and at times exasperating — musing of what it means to be a westerner and a nuclear deconstruction of the west.
I grew up in Montana and learned the Hugh Glass story early on (middle school?), so when I saw this in a bookstore at the Anchorage airport, I expected a detailed analysis of the life and times of Hugh Glass, an exposition on the political climate at the time and theories about the friction of expansionism against Native American life. Be warned, this books is not history — it’s more like cultural archaeology with dynamite rather than rock hammers, and the author sets out to uncover some of the darkest chapters and most sordid undercurrents of the American west.
Coleman uses the story as nothing more than a jumping off point to examine the west and the roots of its unique culture. He is long on examining the evolution of the story from fact into near-myth, carefully analyzing the subsequent generations of retelling — written, and later on the screen — and peppering (spiking?) that with detours into speculative historical analysis.
It’s more of a creative, academic exercise in making (forcing?) connections that exist nowhere except in the mind of the author. No one (Daniel Boone, for example), no institution, is safe as he races down unexpected tracks that tackle racism and slavery, capitalism, religion and personal transformation, culture — then and now, education and literature and a thousand other topics.
The pace is frenetic, the writing sure, the cultural observations entertaining, but the whole thing rests on assumption after assumption that can’t stand up to deeper historic scrutiny — for example, the language used on runaway slave fliers is somehow connected to the transformative power of being stripped of cultural mores by depravation in the west which is somehow linked to eating too much buffalo meat which is somehow how linked to the conscious choice of a writer to tell the Glass story though the lens of psychoanalysis, etc. That doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable, however —it’s exhausting, frustrating and memorable.
It’s hard to recommend the book, because reading it feels like being trapped in a conversation with someone who is on speed and possibly suffering from paranoid delusions — but if the topic is interesting enough, those conversations can be rewarding. So if you think getting a three-hour diatribe from an interesting but probably unbalanced person might be worth your time just to look at a topic from a wildly unconventional perspective, give this book a try. Sometimes, I don’t mind those conversations at all, as with this book.
The approach won’t resonate with those who like their history fact-based, nor will it make any friends with the western exceptionalism crowd, but I enjoyed the read, even the places that got my hackles up a little.
The Hugh Glass story doesn’t need much embellishment to catch your attention: Glass was a seasoned trapper who, in 1823, was attacked by a grizzly, horribly mauled and then left for dead by his treacherous companions who, to add insult to injury, stole his clothes and all his provisions, including his weapons. That should have been the end of the story, but Glass lived and battled open wounds and massive trauma, warring Native Americans out to lift his scalp and the unforgiving elements as he crawls — and later runs — hundreds of miles, stark naked, to the safety of a fort. It’s a story of grit, survival and stubborn tenacity, the stuff of legends. In the hands of author Jon T. Coleman, it’s transformed into a weird, manic, breathless — and at times exasperating — musing of what it means to be a westerner and a nuclear deconstruction of the west.
I grew up in Montana and learned the Hugh Glass story early on (middle school?), so when I saw this in a bookstore at the Anchorage airport, I expected a detailed analysis of the life and times of Hugh Glass, an exposition on the political climate at the time and theories about the friction of expansionism against Native American life. Be warned, this books is not history — it’s more like cultural archaeology with dynamite rather than rock hammers, and the author sets out to uncover some of the darkest chapters and most sordid undercurrents of the American west.
Coleman uses the story as nothing more than a jumping off point to examine the west and the roots of its unique culture. He is long on examining the evolution of the story from fact into near-myth, carefully analyzing the subsequent generations of retelling — written, and later on the screen — and peppering (spiking?) that with detours into speculative historical analysis.
It’s more of a creative, academic exercise in making (forcing?) connections that exist nowhere except in the mind of the author. No one (Daniel Boone, for example), no institution, is safe as he races down unexpected tracks that tackle racism and slavery, capitalism, religion and personal transformation, culture — then and now, education and literature and a thousand other topics.
The pace is frenetic, the writing sure, the cultural observations entertaining, but the whole thing rests on assumption after assumption that can’t stand up to deeper historic scrutiny — for example, the language used on runaway slave fliers is somehow connected to the transformative power of being stripped of cultural mores by depravation in the west which is somehow linked to eating too much buffalo meat which is somehow how linked to the conscious choice of a writer to tell the Glass story though the lens of psychoanalysis, etc. That doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable, however —it’s exhausting, frustrating and memorable.
It’s hard to recommend the book, because reading it feels like being trapped in a conversation with someone who is on speed and possibly suffering from paranoid delusions — but if the topic is interesting enough, those conversations can be rewarding. So if you think getting a three-hour diatribe from an interesting but probably unbalanced person might be worth your time just to look at a topic from a wildly unconventional perspective, give this book a try. Sometimes, I don’t mind those conversations at all, as with this book.
The approach won’t resonate with those who like their history fact-based, nor will it make any friends with the western exceptionalism crowd, but I enjoyed the read, even the places that got my hackles up a little.
April 29, 2019
As I love a good biography- and anything about the Wild West, I relished devouring this book based on the implied title. 10 pages into it I now realize this is someone's Alice-In-Wonderland revisionist history that is written more as a political tome than an actual history book. It is doubtful the author even ventured into the territory occupied by Hugh Glass as part of his research; his rhetoric is basically a runaway grass fire of condemnation and social critique of everything that makes the Wild West so appealing to red blooded Americans who thirst for adventure.
Do yourself a favor, dont even open the fly leaf. This book's only purpose is to begat a campfire as kindling, or be used in the outhouse of your favorite deer camp as fodder for your dirty backside.
#Worthless
Do yourself a favor, dont even open the fly leaf. This book's only purpose is to begat a campfire as kindling, or be used in the outhouse of your favorite deer camp as fodder for your dirty backside.
#Worthless
September 4, 2014
Coleman, Jon T. Here Lies Hugh Glass: A Mountain Man, A Bear, and the Rise of the American Nation, Hill and Wang, New York, 2011 (252pp.$28)
In 1823 Hugh Glass, journeyman hunter and trapper, signed up to serve the American Fur Company as a hunter on its spring expedition up the Missouri River to the Arikira country and beyond, where a hundred men young and old (Glass was old) would find beaver pelts for the New York and European hat trade. Led by William Ashley and Andrew Henry, both members of the St. Louis political and business aristocracy, the American Fur Company was a purely capitalist enterprise and the hundred men young and old were purely the piece-paid proletarians.
Glass was lucky to be a hunter. Others that spring had worse jobs, dragging the flat-bottomed trade boats upriver against a strong spring current, or cooking, or worse, fighting the Arikiras and Blackfeet, who, rightly, resented the upstart Americans raider their beaver streams.
Two months later Glass found himself wading through willows in the company of two other hunters who would become legendary---Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick. Suddenly, Glass found his head inside the mouth of a big blond Griz (hunters called the “white bears), then thrown like a rag doll, ending up on the ground with a gash down his entire body, head to ankle. With Glass near death, Ashley instructed Fitzpatrick and Bridger to remain with Glass until he died. Instead, Glass’s two companions left him after a day, thinking he was sure to pass. Alone, he crawled 325 miles to Fort Atkinson and survived, only to be killed by Arikira 10 years later along the Yellowstone.
Coleman, an associate professor of history at Notre Dame, has written a book about Hugh Glass in which Hugh Glass hardly appears for the simple reason that the “real” Hugh Glass is known to history only through a few scattered tales along the frontier and one letter of condolence he wrote to the parents of a hunter slain by Indians. What looms large, however, is the conflated, overblown legend of Hugh Glass as a man who endured a bear attack, fought Indians, overcame harsh environmental conditions, cold winters, bitter thunderstorms, and, at the end, became the message-bearer of American exceptionalism and Symbol of the Nation. Like Davy Crockett, Mike Fink, and Daniel Boone, Glass made the American case against the native peoples, free blacks, slaves, Mexicans and British, who all stood in the way of an American Empire, sea to shining sea.
Coleman is a deconstructer of our National Frontier Myth and draws into his sometimes quixotic, sometimes colloquial, and sometimes compelling argument, a close examination of newspapers, regional literary journals, and even the works of writers like Herman Melville. Glass was a Nobody made into a Hero by hack writers like James Hall and Timothy Flint (who simply made up Hugh Glass out of whole cloth) and foreign adventurers like George Ruxton whose published diaries interpreted the American West through the prism of an already inflated and vividly panoramic European imagination of the frontier.
Glass’s journey form anonymity to minor celebrity, writes Coleman, “opens new sightlines on the interplay of culture, labor, nationalism and nature in the American conquest of the West.” Glass, as late as 1971, was being portrayed in the movies by none other than English actor Richard Harris (“Man in the Wilderness”).
“Here Lies Hugh Glass” is hampered by the author’s recondite style and his self-inflated sense of humor. Read carefully, however, it shines a pure light on the actual conditions of the working man in the American West, on the fundamental relation between men, animals, and Native Americans, and on the many rascals and scamps, not to mention confidence men and counterfeiters, who are the real source of our greatest national myths.
In 1823 Hugh Glass, journeyman hunter and trapper, signed up to serve the American Fur Company as a hunter on its spring expedition up the Missouri River to the Arikira country and beyond, where a hundred men young and old (Glass was old) would find beaver pelts for the New York and European hat trade. Led by William Ashley and Andrew Henry, both members of the St. Louis political and business aristocracy, the American Fur Company was a purely capitalist enterprise and the hundred men young and old were purely the piece-paid proletarians.
Glass was lucky to be a hunter. Others that spring had worse jobs, dragging the flat-bottomed trade boats upriver against a strong spring current, or cooking, or worse, fighting the Arikiras and Blackfeet, who, rightly, resented the upstart Americans raider their beaver streams.
Two months later Glass found himself wading through willows in the company of two other hunters who would become legendary---Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick. Suddenly, Glass found his head inside the mouth of a big blond Griz (hunters called the “white bears), then thrown like a rag doll, ending up on the ground with a gash down his entire body, head to ankle. With Glass near death, Ashley instructed Fitzpatrick and Bridger to remain with Glass until he died. Instead, Glass’s two companions left him after a day, thinking he was sure to pass. Alone, he crawled 325 miles to Fort Atkinson and survived, only to be killed by Arikira 10 years later along the Yellowstone.
Coleman, an associate professor of history at Notre Dame, has written a book about Hugh Glass in which Hugh Glass hardly appears for the simple reason that the “real” Hugh Glass is known to history only through a few scattered tales along the frontier and one letter of condolence he wrote to the parents of a hunter slain by Indians. What looms large, however, is the conflated, overblown legend of Hugh Glass as a man who endured a bear attack, fought Indians, overcame harsh environmental conditions, cold winters, bitter thunderstorms, and, at the end, became the message-bearer of American exceptionalism and Symbol of the Nation. Like Davy Crockett, Mike Fink, and Daniel Boone, Glass made the American case against the native peoples, free blacks, slaves, Mexicans and British, who all stood in the way of an American Empire, sea to shining sea.
Coleman is a deconstructer of our National Frontier Myth and draws into his sometimes quixotic, sometimes colloquial, and sometimes compelling argument, a close examination of newspapers, regional literary journals, and even the works of writers like Herman Melville. Glass was a Nobody made into a Hero by hack writers like James Hall and Timothy Flint (who simply made up Hugh Glass out of whole cloth) and foreign adventurers like George Ruxton whose published diaries interpreted the American West through the prism of an already inflated and vividly panoramic European imagination of the frontier.
Glass’s journey form anonymity to minor celebrity, writes Coleman, “opens new sightlines on the interplay of culture, labor, nationalism and nature in the American conquest of the West.” Glass, as late as 1971, was being portrayed in the movies by none other than English actor Richard Harris (“Man in the Wilderness”).
“Here Lies Hugh Glass” is hampered by the author’s recondite style and his self-inflated sense of humor. Read carefully, however, it shines a pure light on the actual conditions of the working man in the American West, on the fundamental relation between men, animals, and Native Americans, and on the many rascals and scamps, not to mention confidence men and counterfeiters, who are the real source of our greatest national myths.
January 21, 2016
Here Lies a Glass Entirely Empty
Damn, Jon Coleman, lay off the speed. I picked up this book (complete with striking comic book-style cover) because not only did the design appeal to me, but also because I consider myself a scholar of early 1800s America. I'd never heard of Hugh Glass, but I wanted to know more about him. Unfortunately, Coleman had other ideas.
In the author's estimation, Hugh Glass really is an empty vessel, through which to discuss American exceptionalism and the concept of Frontier History. This book is never really about Glass, though Glass periodically shows up to remind us all that he was a real person. It reminds me of Meanwhile Back At The Ranch, where ridiculous things are happening at the ranch, or in this case, on the frontier and all around Glass. Meanwhile, Glass is perpetually, painfully, and boringly crawling through the high prairie, punctured trachea and all.
The vast majority of the book examines the movies and poems that have been made about Glass, about other larger-than-life figures such as Jim Bridger and Davy Crockett, and about the actuality of life on the "frontier." Primarily, Coleman discusses how Americans felt and acted, in the thick of things in Indian Country, in the trans-Mississippi west next door, and safely back on the East Coast and further east. The author shows how the West got more and more romantic the further away a viewer got - unsurprisingly - and how the individual trials of people actually on the frontier were transmogrified into something larger than life. Hugh Glass' poor luck, weak-willed companions, injuries, and infections, and his perseverance, guts, and eventual forgiveness all became metaphors for why Americans were different and better.
It was difficult to follow this story, though. Coleman really does act like he's been snorting something, since he hops from bears to the Arikara Nation to whiteness vs. blackness to Hollywood movies with barely a breath between. Hugh is usually relegated to the background, which seems to have been the author's deliberate decision (since that's where Glass was in real life), but it's disappointing to not see him more. Coleman also name-drops artlessly, throwing Herman Melville, David Crockett, Cary Grant, William Clark (of Lewis & Clark), Bear Grylls, Henry David Thoreau, Andrew Jackson, Col. Henry Leavenworth (of the Fort and Kansas city), and John Sanford (of Scott v. Sandford, the celebrated/reviled case where the Supreme Court denied Dred Scott his freedom and guaranteed the Civil War) into this cooking pot, cranking up the heat, and hoping it melts down into something digestible. He only partially succeeds - there's still a lot of gristly bits that the reader has trouble reconciling with the theme of the volume.
For students of 1800s America, the fur trade, racial inequity, or any related theme, this book is a must-read. If nothing else, you'll make connections between people in western North America that you had no idea existed before. But be warned, it's frenetic, difficult to follow, and very wide-ranging. Happy hunting, and beware the bear.
Damn, Jon Coleman, lay off the speed. I picked up this book (complete with striking comic book-style cover) because not only did the design appeal to me, but also because I consider myself a scholar of early 1800s America. I'd never heard of Hugh Glass, but I wanted to know more about him. Unfortunately, Coleman had other ideas.
In the author's estimation, Hugh Glass really is an empty vessel, through which to discuss American exceptionalism and the concept of Frontier History. This book is never really about Glass, though Glass periodically shows up to remind us all that he was a real person. It reminds me of Meanwhile Back At The Ranch, where ridiculous things are happening at the ranch, or in this case, on the frontier and all around Glass. Meanwhile, Glass is perpetually, painfully, and boringly crawling through the high prairie, punctured trachea and all.
The vast majority of the book examines the movies and poems that have been made about Glass, about other larger-than-life figures such as Jim Bridger and Davy Crockett, and about the actuality of life on the "frontier." Primarily, Coleman discusses how Americans felt and acted, in the thick of things in Indian Country, in the trans-Mississippi west next door, and safely back on the East Coast and further east. The author shows how the West got more and more romantic the further away a viewer got - unsurprisingly - and how the individual trials of people actually on the frontier were transmogrified into something larger than life. Hugh Glass' poor luck, weak-willed companions, injuries, and infections, and his perseverance, guts, and eventual forgiveness all became metaphors for why Americans were different and better.
It was difficult to follow this story, though. Coleman really does act like he's been snorting something, since he hops from bears to the Arikara Nation to whiteness vs. blackness to Hollywood movies with barely a breath between. Hugh is usually relegated to the background, which seems to have been the author's deliberate decision (since that's where Glass was in real life), but it's disappointing to not see him more. Coleman also name-drops artlessly, throwing Herman Melville, David Crockett, Cary Grant, William Clark (of Lewis & Clark), Bear Grylls, Henry David Thoreau, Andrew Jackson, Col. Henry Leavenworth (of the Fort and Kansas city), and John Sanford (of Scott v. Sandford, the celebrated/reviled case where the Supreme Court denied Dred Scott his freedom and guaranteed the Civil War) into this cooking pot, cranking up the heat, and hoping it melts down into something digestible. He only partially succeeds - there's still a lot of gristly bits that the reader has trouble reconciling with the theme of the volume.
For students of 1800s America, the fur trade, racial inequity, or any related theme, this book is a must-read. If nothing else, you'll make connections between people in western North America that you had no idea existed before. But be warned, it's frenetic, difficult to follow, and very wide-ranging. Happy hunting, and beware the bear.
Read
December 31, 2012A pretentious pile of grizzly bear shit. Coleman showed how much he knows regarding obscure subjects that are totally unrelated to the title character of the book. I rarely stop reading before I finish and am generally am a better judge of material. I wanted to quit earlier but forced myself to go two thirds of the way in hope of improvement. Improvement never came, I stopped with about 75 pages left. Worse than the most boring lecture I sat through in college. No Stars!
January 26, 2019
Although Glass' story peeks through the pages, this book is certainly not a biography of Glass and his story as other reviewers have warned. I am certain that there are other tellings that would be better received.
The best summary of the book is on the last page when Coleman says the opposite of what he has actually done:
"...I didn't write this book only to bemoan what nationalist hacks, modernist twits, and survivalist wackos did to Hugh Glass."
The best summary of the book is on the last page when Coleman says the opposite of what he has actually done:
"...I didn't write this book only to bemoan what nationalist hacks, modernist twits, and survivalist wackos did to Hugh Glass."
February 26, 2025
My favorite college professor was a poet capable of weaving vast sums of literary philosophy, and every class was filled with this. Until he went on sick leave. Then we rounded out the rest of the semester with grad students who ground the experience to what it actually was: reading weird stuff none of us (or certainly the grad students) had any clue how to interpret.
I start a review of Here Lies Hugh Glass with such a thought because that’s the summation of Jon T. Coleman, an actual professor, his educational worth as represented in this book. It’s nothing but well-researched drivel, and he does nothing but ramble and amble through his utter lack of real insight…
I pause, here to apologize to my old English teacher. He was at least highly entertaining, and I did learn how expansive literary thought could be from him. Which is to say, there’s nothing worth learning from Coleman.
When we talk about college today, we’re talking about the effect of shoving everyone possible into its halls. We’re talking about the effects of shoving everyone possible into its halls. We’re talking about the teachers as well as the students. A lot of the teachers have axes to grind. Coleman, for example, in his conclusion happily attests to his anti-authority tendencies, made somewhat curious by his repeated elitist stance in the pages of this book, how he assumes that if you’re a dumb rural hick who didn’t have the good sense to leave your thoughts in extended posterity (he actually despises his subject matter; the whole book is an indictment, as far as Coleman is concerned, of Hugh Glass), you don’t matter.
I had a teacher who was worth plenty, in a college class, who with a straight face dismissed “Dancing Cheek to Cheek” as “an ode to heterosexual love.” How and why he even needed to phrase it that way is still well beyond me, and this is with more than two decades and a culture that has certainly tried very hard in the meantime to justify it between. When people talk about college being a cesspool of ideological corruption, they’re talking about agendas being pushed on kids who are supposed to be learning how to think critically instead being asked to accept ideas they’ve likely never encountered before, codifying the idea of rebellion as its own reward and cloaking it in the veneer of righteous indignation.
Progress doesn’t look like this. Coleman is so busy finding what he wants to in the scrapbooks of history he’s entirely ignorant of what’s just happened in the last few years. No reference at all to the book recently published that inspired the movie (The Revenant) his publishers in this edition expected to be the whole reason anyone would read it.
Friends, that is called irony.
I start a review of Here Lies Hugh Glass with such a thought because that’s the summation of Jon T. Coleman, an actual professor, his educational worth as represented in this book. It’s nothing but well-researched drivel, and he does nothing but ramble and amble through his utter lack of real insight…
I pause, here to apologize to my old English teacher. He was at least highly entertaining, and I did learn how expansive literary thought could be from him. Which is to say, there’s nothing worth learning from Coleman.
When we talk about college today, we’re talking about the effect of shoving everyone possible into its halls. We’re talking about the effects of shoving everyone possible into its halls. We’re talking about the teachers as well as the students. A lot of the teachers have axes to grind. Coleman, for example, in his conclusion happily attests to his anti-authority tendencies, made somewhat curious by his repeated elitist stance in the pages of this book, how he assumes that if you’re a dumb rural hick who didn’t have the good sense to leave your thoughts in extended posterity (he actually despises his subject matter; the whole book is an indictment, as far as Coleman is concerned, of Hugh Glass), you don’t matter.
I had a teacher who was worth plenty, in a college class, who with a straight face dismissed “Dancing Cheek to Cheek” as “an ode to heterosexual love.” How and why he even needed to phrase it that way is still well beyond me, and this is with more than two decades and a culture that has certainly tried very hard in the meantime to justify it between. When people talk about college being a cesspool of ideological corruption, they’re talking about agendas being pushed on kids who are supposed to be learning how to think critically instead being asked to accept ideas they’ve likely never encountered before, codifying the idea of rebellion as its own reward and cloaking it in the veneer of righteous indignation.
Progress doesn’t look like this. Coleman is so busy finding what he wants to in the scrapbooks of history he’s entirely ignorant of what’s just happened in the last few years. No reference at all to the book recently published that inspired the movie (The Revenant) his publishers in this edition expected to be the whole reason anyone would read it.
Friends, that is called irony.
January 26, 2019
If you are looking for a biographical history of Hugh Glass, this book is the most long-winded way to say "we don't know much" that you can find. If you're looking for "The Yellow Wallpaper" with some history sprinkled throughout, then this is the book for you. The author spends much of his time picking apart the American westward expansion and attempting to make literary connections between bear attacks and the mutilation of Native Americans. Very disjointed read, but there is some interesting information on trapping and the fur trade in early America.
April 27, 2024
Coleman looks to wrestle with both the legend of Hugh Glass, as well as the legend of the American frontier. With that, he does a better job at capturing the time and undercurrent of history and how national narratives can shape a story and turn men and ideas into legends. But when I came into this book, I was hoping to get a rousing true story that the movie The Revenant was based off of. I was instead met with a meditation on America's young days and how little we actually know about Hugh Glass.
March 3, 2018
This book gave me diarrhea.
January 18, 2021
I am not a fan of the book. A lot of the time it feels like the author is rambling or using words to try and sound smart. All in all I would avoid the book.
September 8, 2015
Mr Colman writes a rambling and disjointed, confusing telling of how the stories of the mountain men effected how Americans view themselves. He retells a number of times in the book of Hugh Glass. Mixing that story with others from the years 1820 through the 1830's, men who went through hard times and survived.
Glass went on a trapping expedition in 1823 that went to the Rocky Mountains. Along the way Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear. Two men were left to nurse him, but left after a few days. He somehow survived and eventually found those who left him.
Colmans writing style seemed rushed and a bit confusing. While there is some good information about life in St Louis and the fur trade, and those who wrote about it. It did not live up to the potential story it could have been.
The Mountain man era of the fur trade, about 1806 - 1840's, is full of colorful people from many places around the world. Good books on the people and the time are very informative, interesting and often funny. This isn't one of of them.
Glass went on a trapping expedition in 1823 that went to the Rocky Mountains. Along the way Glass was mauled by a grizzly bear. Two men were left to nurse him, but left after a few days. He somehow survived and eventually found those who left him.
Colmans writing style seemed rushed and a bit confusing. While there is some good information about life in St Louis and the fur trade, and those who wrote about it. It did not live up to the potential story it could have been.
The Mountain man era of the fur trade, about 1806 - 1840's, is full of colorful people from many places around the world. Good books on the people and the time are very informative, interesting and often funny. This isn't one of of them.
May 17, 2016
This book is not the story of Hugh Glass, nor is it the story of the story of Hugh Glass. Rather, it's the story of the telling of the story of Hugh Glass. Understanding that specific distinction, very well, is the key to understanding how this book was put together. The author doesn't make this point very clear in the introduction, though he hints at it. It was only once I was almost done with the book that I understood the point of all the wayward discussion and lack of focus on Glass himself. Aha, he's saying that the facts are so sliver-thin that the discussion he's having is the only one worth one's time. Anything else is fiction. I get it, but it took focus to get it. It doesn't fill you with awe for what happened to Glass though - just an appreciation for the legend and the implications of his story. For that, one must look elsewhere, but careful what you read. A lot of it might not be the truth, just what you imagine it to be. The facts, it might turn out, are wondrous enough as they are, despite how scant they are.
January 22, 2017
I wanted to read about Hugh Glass. I wanted to learn about the life and times of people in that era. However, by page 40, there was scant mention of High Glass but a plethora of information about time period literature and some other vaguely related stuff. I don't mind the author creating a setting, but there was simply not enough of the book's main man in the book. I have not skipped a non-fiction book's introduction in a while. I couldn't make it through this one. That should have been my first clue.
Others may find it scintillating reading. But without drawing excess explanations back to Glass, it was just excess. Maybe this makes the book more genuine in pointing out the difficulty of pinpointing the authentic details of an extraordinarily ordinary (hunter, tracker, frontiersman) and extraordinary (lived with Indians, survived bear attack and dragged self miles to survive) man.
Others may find it scintillating reading. But without drawing excess explanations back to Glass, it was just excess. Maybe this makes the book more genuine in pointing out the difficulty of pinpointing the authentic details of an extraordinarily ordinary (hunter, tracker, frontiersman) and extraordinary (lived with Indians, survived bear attack and dragged self miles to survive) man.
January 26, 2016
The search for Hugh Glass that begins this book is a short one. As Coleman notes, it is more of a missing person posting than a biography. What can we know about a man who left behind one letter, and a short one at that? We can know that his story was conflated by both regional and national writers to fit into a larger narrative of their own contrivance, just as was true of Jim Colter or Jedediah Smith, among others. The book is not without interest as it ambles through history, but the attempt to connect Glass to the "rise of the American nation" is every bit as sketchy as are the regional writers on which it draws.
July 10, 2012
A misnomer of a book. Made it to page 88. No maps or pictures. Lots of interesting observations but at times I felt like I was in class after lunch. It's the book that almost compels you to take notes. Part history, part literary criticism, part social anthropology it's all over the place. It's about everything but Hugh Glass. We get into the culture of Indian hating, Herman Melville's The Confidence Man, environmental Americanism and on it goes.
February 14, 2016
A very academic book about a man with a relatively small footprint on history, but a helluva' story. Not the most exciting book, but paints an interesting look at the man who would become legend.
October 3, 2023
If you're looking for the story behind "The Revenant", this ain't it.
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