Creepy Crawling: Charles Manson and the Many Lives of America’s Most Infamous Family

Melnick, a professor of American studies at University of Massachusetts Boston, delivers a series of scholarly essays exploring the impact of Charles Manson on American pop culture. “It is creepy crawling that gives this book its frame,” Melnick writes, referring to the technique used by Manson and his followers to secretly enter someone’s house and rearrange the furniture, which, Melnick argues, serves as a metaphor for how the Manson family seeped into the collective unconscious. Part one of his book focuses on communal living in the 1960s; Melnick argues that Manson and his followers “emerged as a nightmare vision of what had gone wrong with American households in the late 1960s,” inspiring films about parental failure such as Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979). Subsequent sections explore the impact of the Manson family on popularizing the true crime genre. Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who coauthored Helter Skelter, and provocateur Ed Sanders, who covered the trial for the Los Angeles Free Press, both recognized how captivating a character Manson was. Finally, Melnick discusses the influence of Manson on the work of creators such as filmmaker John Waters, who evokes the Manson “family” in Multiple Maniacs (1970) and Female Trouble (1971), and artist Raymond Pettibon, who frequently depicts Manson in his illustrations. Though the writing can be off-puttingly academic in tone, Melnick’s book is a disturbing account of the many ways Charles Manson pervades American culture. B&w photos. (July)