Go Down Together - book

Go Down Together the True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, by Jeff Guinn (Simon and Schuster, 2009). Like the Columbine book I recently reviewed, this book about the short and unhappy lives of Bonnie and Clyde, and their roughly two year crime spree, will almost certainly become the definitive account of that unhappy and murderous time. Guinn has done a fine and thorough job of researching the lives of Bonnie and Clyde and presents a remarkably detailed account of their movements during their heyday. The book is most interesting and important in several different ways.

First, people can dispense with any ideas they may have that Bonnie and Clyde lived a life of romance and glamour, eating and dressing well and living lives of relative luxury. Aside from very brief moments when they had money to buy decent clothes and occasionally have a sit-down dinner in a restaurant, they spent most of their time sleeping in the cars they had stolen and eating canned beans and Vienna sausages, or, at best, ordering takeout sandwiches from roadside cafes. Often forced to flee at short notice, they had to leave all their possessions behind and could not replace them until they could steal more money. At one point they were actually reduced to temporarily wearing sheets.

Second, they are not well described as bank robbers. They only occasionally tried to hold up banks and sometimes failed. Even when successful they never netted what would be considered a truly big haul. In fact, they preyed mostly on gas stations and grocery stores, getting barely enough money to keep going to the next one. John Dillinger, when asked, dismissed them rather contemptuously as “a couple of kids stealing grocery money.” Baby-face Nelson refused to have anything to do with them.

They were, basically, just “a couple of kids…,” but very complicated ones whose story is, on the one hand, somewhat easy to understand, but on the other hand, not at all easy to understand. The many murders they were involved in gives what I believe is a somewhat distorted view of what they were like. You must understand that with two exceptions Clyde was never involved in premeditated murder. And the two exceptions can easily be seen as entirely justified homicide, if not self-defense. While Clyde was in prison he was brutally and repeatedly beaten and raped by a sadistic inmate. He finally killed the man by hitting him with a lead pipe. It was this early experience that made him vow to never go back to prison. On a later occasion he assisted a friend to murder a similarly sadistic person for revenge. All the other murders he was involved in (supposedly or not) occurred when trying to resist arrest and were sometimes not even done by him but, rather, by other gang members. In fact, on more than one occasion Clyde preferred to take police or sheriffs into custody, treating them well, and quickly releasing them. He also, even at great risk, kept in touch with his family, visiting them periodically in secret, bringing them gifts, and maintaining close family ties that were of great importance to him. He adored his mother who stuck by him to the end. He was loyal to his friends and often helped them in important ways, such as breaking them out of jail, among other things.

This book is a classic, textbook case, for those who believe that criminals are made rather than born. After reading it there is no doubt in my mind that Clyde was forced by poverty and circumstances into a criminal career, especially after his initial brush with law enforcement. Dirt poor, living in squalor in West Dallas, where he could see into Dallas and the much better life possible there, he began by stealing cars. Caught and sent to one of the worst Texas prisons, where he was terribly abused and thought he might die from the unending and grueling work (he was really quite small), he cut off two of his toes to escape the worst of the work. Upon his release he was constantly picked up and questioned by the police, harassed almost daily, and literally driven to his brief life of crime.

Then, of course, there was Bonnie, a small, pretty, delicate child born into poverty who aspired to a better life. She married early to a man who soon deserted her. She fantasized about becoming a star and seeing her name in lights. She wanted desperately to be famous and have a better life. When she met Clyde it was apparently love at first sight. She fastened herself to him and stuck with him no matter what the hardships and dangers. She had many opportunities to leave him and the life of crime, along with the unremitting fear of capture and prison, but she never did. Even when towards the end her leg was seriously damaged in a car wreck and she was in constant pain she stuck it out. Before it was over she could only hop on one leg and Clyde would have to carry her, but he, too, stuck with her to the end. It was Bonnie who said they would “go down together,” as they did, finally betrayed by one of their gang members. She was 23, Clyde was 24, just “a couple of kids.”

This is really a fine book, readable, exciting, informative, and well worth your time (if that is, you have any interest in such things).