PARTISAN REVIEW
coast kids were talking and dress–
ing and acting like him. While the
creatures of this brave new world
had drugs to teach him (on his
first acid trip he apparently ex–
perienced his own crucifixion, but
then so did others), he could offer
them not only a fantastic psychic
and sexual magnetism but also the
old lag's expertise in how to get
what you want without actually
paying for it.
He had of course missed the
theoretical point of their case, the
passive rejection of family, society,
political and military horror that
was meant to be implicit in their
enactments of love, brotherhood,
psychic transcendence, the 'simple
life. He simply wanted to make it
big in show-biz as a rock musician
and songwriter, and when that
failed, he was content for a while
to use his weirdo charisma to make
himself interesting to some rather
alarming Hollywood fringe-types,
camping at their houses, using
their cars and credit cards, letting
them take filthy movies of himself
and his girls around their pools.
Manson was really a fear-freak, as
Sanders suggests; his thing was
power, not love or even pleasure,
certainly not justice or revolution,
but his style was hard to distin–
guish from that of thousands of
others whose intentions were better
or at least more confused. Even
the police, who saw a lot of him
even in those days, took him for
just another hippie, or, at worst,
an oddly small and scrawny speci–
men of the bike-gangers he some–
times consorted with.
By the time of the Tate- La
Bianca murders and those less pub–
licized ones the Family also com–
mitted, Manson had of course gone
beyond his profitable exploitation
of foolish or decadent swingers.
Historical accident had released
155
him from his original self, but
Manson Redivivus was generating
its own new history, which must
have been getting to feel as mar–
ginal and frustrated and unfree as
the old one. Only at this point
does violence become an overt mo–
tif in the Manson story. None of
his earlier difficulties with the law
seem to have involved physical vi–
ciousness; he was more grifter than
hood, described by a police psy–
chiatrist in 1959 as "not [giving]
the impression of being a mean
individual" and by his parole of–
ficer a year later as "this weak,
tricky youth." Yet the Manson of
1967-69 grew increasingly obsessed
by at least the style of violence,
putting on terrific shows of temper
within his group and working out
the elaborate mystique of torture
and killing that led to all the mur–
ders.
From the Beatles' White Al–
bum he derived his obsession with
"Helter-Skelter," a vision of im–
pending social apocalypse through
a revolution of the blacks; he for–
mulated elaborate plans of escape
in dllJne buggies across the Mojave
to Death Valley, where he and his
people would hide out until the
blacks were ready to hand over
the world to him. The murders
seem to have been, in part, exer–
cises in loyal ty and nerve for his
followers - Manson himself ap–
parently wasn't present at the
Tate-La Bianca killings, much less
an active participant. And here
there's an intriguing parallel.
Though Sanders estimates that
Manson, who disdained contracep–
tion like any sexist male, copulated
some 3,000 times during the two
and a half years of the major
phase, only once did he get anyone
pregnant.
It
seems to have worried
him - happiness isn't a warm gun
if it isn't loaded.
