The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
Columbine by David Cullen
Mr. Lamb’s book, The Hour I First Believed, is a work of fiction whose main characters are a young couple, one a teacher and one a school nurse, who both happened to have worked at Columbine High School on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 – the day when 12 students were killed by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, seniors, who then took their own lives.Lamb describes well the horror of that day, but his focus is the effect of the tragedy, first on the narrator's wife, and then by extension on the narrator's own life. Worlds were changed forever that day, and Wally Lamb does a credible job of taking us inside the event and it aftermath.
David Cullen’s book, Columbine, is, in many ways, revisionist history. Reporters, law officials and the general public have, for a long time, had a certain “take” on the events at Columbine – and Cullen’s thesis is that this “take” has been incorrect. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not social outcasts on the fringe of their high school world. Klebold had been accepted at college, had recently gone to his prom with a date, and was part of a definite circle of friends. Harris was a bit more on the periphery, but was also part of that circle of friends. He had a steady job and just recently been given a promotion.
Cullen’s bottom line is that Harris was a pyschopath and Klebold suicidal and malleable. It was a deadly combination.
What struck me in both of these books was that evil – as a force? an emotion? – was also a character. And the complicated nature of that force (whatever you call it) that drove these two boys to planning and carrying out a massacre with spirit and enthusiam is chilling.
I urge you to read both. It is quite an education. Meg
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