Killing Mister Watson by Peter Matthiessen
"Killing Mister Watson" by Peter Matthiessen is a historical novel centered around the life and mysterious death of Edgar J. Watson, a controversial figure who lived in the Florida Everglades from the late 19th century until his murder in 1910. The narrative incorporates various perspectives from multiple narrators, creating a complex portrayal of Watson, who claimed to have killed fifty-seven men but was only implicated in the death of the infamous outlaw Belle Starr. As the story unfolds, it reveals Watson as a seemingly respected farmer and family man in his new community, contrasting sharply with the darker rumors of his past, including allegations of exploiting and possibly murdering his field hands. The novel examines themes of violence, power dynamics, and the murky line between legend and reality. Watson's ultimate assassination by a group of local men raises questions about justice and collective morality in a deeply divided social landscape. As the first book in a trilogy, "Killing Mister Watson" sets the stage for further exploration of Watson's legacy and the ongoing search for truth through the subsequent novels, "Lost Man's River" and "Bone by Bone." Each installment delves deeper into the enigma of Watson's character and the impact he had on those around him. The complex interplay of historical fact and fictional narrative invites readers to reflect on the nature of storytelling and the elusive quest for understanding.
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Killing Mister Watson by Peter Matthiessen
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1990
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The central characters of Peter Matthiessen’s Killing Mister Watson are based on Edgar J. Watson, who lived between 1855 and 1910 and farmed in the Florida Everglades, and the “Queen of the Outlaws,” Belle Starr. Watson liked to brag about his having killed fifty-seven men; however, he was only accused of one such crime: the 1889 death of Belle Starr in Fort Smith, Arkansas, who was found dead after a disagreement with Watson over some land.
In the novel, Watson and others recount their versions of events that involve Watson, forming a collage of opinion and versions of what Watson may or may not have done. However, even though Watson was never brought to trial for Starr’s murder, he left Arkansas for the remote regions of the Everglades, where he raised pigs and otherwise supported himself off the land. Despite the cloud of doubt in Arkansas, Watson seemed to fit in as a welcome member of the Everglades, and he settled in to begin farming in Chatham Bend. Watson remains to the end of the novel a paradox: a man who boasted of a violent past, yet in his new “incarnation” as a Florida farmer, a devoted family man and a man generally regarded by his neighbors as a pillar of his community. Thus it is startling when, some thirty years after arriving in Florida, more than twenty of his neighbors—upstanding men of the nearby town of Chokoloske—meet him at that town’s boat landing on October 24, 1910, gunning him down in a barrage of bullets.
Matthiessen has woven the novel from a combination of the historical record and the myths and rumors that have come to surround Watson’s life and death. The narrative structure that Matthiessen employs underscores the disparities: events are narrated in different voices, and no two narrators agree as to who exactly Edgar J. Watson was or whether he got what he deserved. Yet the mystery is why so many men would join together to murder him in such a public fashion. It seems that Watson was a better businessman than many people had known: He apparently has been systematically murdering his field hands rather than paying them the wages that they earned. The main character is revealed through the accounts of twelve narrators to be a vicious, brutal owner who victimized those who could not defend themselves and for whom no real legal recourse existed at the time, given that they were poor and black and that Watson was powerful and white.
In this regard, as one narrator in the novel, Chokoloskee postmaster Mamie Smallwood, points out, Watson’s behavior in regard to his hired hands is simply a “local” South Florida version of what was happening at the hands of Americans in many formerly Spanish colonies.
Killing Mister Watson is the first novel in what would eventually become a trilogy addressing the mysteries surrounding Watson’s life, apparent sociopathic behavior, and subsequent public murder. In the second novel, Lost Man’s River (1997), the focus shifts to Watson’s son, Lucius, and his attempts to learn the truth about what kind of man his father really was and to unravel the mysteries surrounding the elder Watson’s murder. In the final novel in the series, Bone by Bone (1999), Edgar Watson “returns” to recount his own version of events. By this time, at least thirteen other versions of Watson have been presented by the other narrators of the previous two books, so the “truth” of Watson, the motivations behind his brutal murders of his farmworkers—if indeed he did so—remain an enigma.
Sources for Further Study
Booklist. LXXXVI, April 15, 1990, p.1585.
Chicago Tribune. June 24, 1990, XIV, p.1.
Harper’s Bazaar. CXXIII, July, 1990, p. 18.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. July 8, 1990, p.1.
The New Republic. CCIII, November 5, 1990, p.43.
The New York Times Book Review. XCV, June 24, 1990, p.7.
The New Yorker. LXVI, September 17, 1990, p.108.
Newsweek. CXV, June 11, 1990, p.63.
Publishers Weekly. CCXXXVII, April 27, 1990, p.52.
Time. CXXXVI, July 16, 1990, p.82.
The Times Literary Supplement. August 31, 1990, p.916.
The Washington Post Book World. XX, June 24, 1990 p.5.