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A review by bbpettry
The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry by David L. Carlson
5.0
A fellow bookseller handed me this book, we were lucky enough to be sent a copy. I wrote a recommendation for the store, but I just had too much else to say.
Matt Rizzo was a real person, born on the West Side of Chicago in 1913. Kicked from the house of his parents at 16, he was arrested at 18 for armed robbery with a group of young men who were connected to organized crime in the area. Matt was blinded by the shopkeeper's buckshot.
After refusing to turn on his accomplices, he was sent to Statesville in Joliet, IL - the same prison as Nathan Leopold, one half of "Thrill Killers" Leopold and Loeb, infamous for the Nietzsche-inspired cold blooded murder of a 14 year old boy and the trial that would become the spectacle of the decade. The pair spent most of their time behind bars teaching fellow inmates, as well as getting shaken down by them. Eventually, when the money stopped coming in, Loeb was stabbed to death in the shower. Leopold was moved into "the bug," so called because the area was surrounded by guards with the prisoner in the center being watched like a bug under a glass dome, too depressed to teach. But this story starts long after the "crime of the century," after Clarence Darrow's famous 12 hour speech on behalf of the young affluent murderers, after the infamous duo had done a decade in prison.
Matt arrived at Statesville having only been a blind man for a short time, the gigantic echo chamber of a building filled with danger and noise must have been immediately overwhelming and constantly terrifying. The prison had never housed a blind man, so they placed him in the bug next to their most infamous inmate. Leopold was intrigued and learned braille in order to teach this newly blind young man how to read without sight. Rizzo worked his way through Dante's Inferno, each night discussing it with Leopold - both men consumed with grief and using the words of Dante to process oppressive prison life and mutual tragedy.
The narrator of the story, however, isn't Matt but his son Charlie Rizzo, who after having lived most of his life with his mother in California returns to live with his father in Chicago upon her death. The title "The Hunting Accident" refers to what Charlie believes blinded his father - something he understands as fact until he runs into some trouble himself in his teens.
Possibly the most affecting part of this book is why it was written, how it came to be. Matt Rizzo died in 1992 wishing only for his work to be published - a request his son took to heart, and ten years later he got a small portion of his father's work and their story in the Chicago Tribune, for a father's day piece. The thought was nice, but the article didn't quite encompass the intricate web of events and personalities that made the lives of Charlie and Matt Rizzo so fascinating.
Along with David Carlson's sensitive and thought-provoking narrative, Blair's illustrations move fluidly between reality and daydream, often conveying not only movement and actions but visual representation of emotion. He communicates Matt's blindness (p.99), Charlie's anxiety (p. 85), and Leopold's grief (p.242), so powerfully. The Hunting Accident is a moving account of a strange life; one that hooks into the mind, pulling it forward into the unbelievable truth with a stimulating mix of fact, embellishment, poetry, and confession.
Leopold and Loeb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb
The Chicago Tribune article from 2002:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-06-16/news/0206160175_1_braille-blind-chicago-apartment
Matt Rizzo was a real person, born on the West Side of Chicago in 1913. Kicked from the house of his parents at 16, he was arrested at 18 for armed robbery with a group of young men who were connected to organized crime in the area. Matt was blinded by the shopkeeper's buckshot.
After refusing to turn on his accomplices, he was sent to Statesville in Joliet, IL - the same prison as Nathan Leopold, one half of "Thrill Killers" Leopold and Loeb, infamous for the Nietzsche-inspired cold blooded murder of a 14 year old boy and the trial that would become the spectacle of the decade. The pair spent most of their time behind bars teaching fellow inmates, as well as getting shaken down by them. Eventually, when the money stopped coming in, Loeb was stabbed to death in the shower. Leopold was moved into "the bug," so called because the area was surrounded by guards with the prisoner in the center being watched like a bug under a glass dome, too depressed to teach. But this story starts long after the "crime of the century," after Clarence Darrow's famous 12 hour speech on behalf of the young affluent murderers, after the infamous duo had done a decade in prison.
Matt arrived at Statesville having only been a blind man for a short time, the gigantic echo chamber of a building filled with danger and noise must have been immediately overwhelming and constantly terrifying. The prison had never housed a blind man, so they placed him in the bug next to their most infamous inmate. Leopold was intrigued and learned braille in order to teach this newly blind young man how to read without sight. Rizzo worked his way through Dante's Inferno, each night discussing it with Leopold - both men consumed with grief and using the words of Dante to process oppressive prison life and mutual tragedy.
The narrator of the story, however, isn't Matt but his son Charlie Rizzo, who after having lived most of his life with his mother in California returns to live with his father in Chicago upon her death. The title "The Hunting Accident" refers to what Charlie believes blinded his father - something he understands as fact until he runs into some trouble himself in his teens.
Possibly the most affecting part of this book is why it was written, how it came to be. Matt Rizzo died in 1992 wishing only for his work to be published - a request his son took to heart, and ten years later he got a small portion of his father's work and their story in the Chicago Tribune, for a father's day piece. The thought was nice, but the article didn't quite encompass the intricate web of events and personalities that made the lives of Charlie and Matt Rizzo so fascinating.
Along with David Carlson's sensitive and thought-provoking narrative, Blair's illustrations move fluidly between reality and daydream, often conveying not only movement and actions but visual representation of emotion. He communicates Matt's blindness (p.99), Charlie's anxiety (p. 85), and Leopold's grief (p.242), so powerfully. The Hunting Accident is a moving account of a strange life; one that hooks into the mind, pulling it forward into the unbelievable truth with a stimulating mix of fact, embellishment, poetry, and confession.
Leopold and Loeb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_and_Loeb
The Chicago Tribune article from 2002:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-06-16/news/0206160175_1_braille-blind-chicago-apartment