The very FIRST review of Red Dead Redemption by Matt Margini
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For the next few paragraphs I’m going to tell you why I loved this book, and it may surprise you, but this book isn’t actually just about Red Dead Redemption. But that’s a good thing, I promise. See, this book by Matt Margini does one of the things that, for me, all great books should do. When I reviewed Postal, by Nathan Rabin and Brock Wilbur, I noted another thing that great books do. They force us to ask, and really think about, interesting questions. In that book, the question was: can I love a product made by unlovable people? There’s no definitive answer. It’s a question of ethics and morals that each person has to answer for themselves. What Margini’s book does is the other thing great books should do, which is related to asking great questions: great books should be catalysts for understanding. Margini’s book is perhaps one of the very best examples of a book that takes a seemingly benign topic and uses it as a catalyst to explore something much greater. This book examines the very American idea of frontierism through the lens of Western books and movies, and, of course, a video game.
Early in the book, Margini details the game developer’s notoriously grueling development process. Rockstar has a history of overworking their staff. It’s interesting that Margini decides to frontload the book with Rockstar’s labor issues. Personally, I would have thought it better to praise the game itself for at least a chapter, to get the reader excited about the subject, before deflating the story. But as I read on, I realized Margini made a very smart and important decision. He uses this tension between a questionable development studio and its critically praised product as one of the first stepping stones to exploring the larger concept of the capital “W” West. As he says:
“In a lot of ways, the company’s grueling development process haunts the game: the inescapable feeling that such scope, such complexity, and such detail was achieved at so great a human cost. As usual, the ironic gap between Rockstar’s anti-authoritarian sensibility and decidedly authoritarian company policies resulted in a game that poses many questions […] that are worth posing to Rockstar itself.”
Every book must give the reader a reason to trust its author. Here is where I learned that Margini can be trusted.
From here the book flows into a series of generalized sections. With simple titles like Territory, Frontier, Death, and Cowboy, Margini grants himself the freedom to explore big ideas, further establishing the subject game as little more than a catalyst. In each section Margini describes the associated element in Red Dead Redemption and then hops among various reference materials from classic Western movies to books written by experts on the Western as a genre. He reveals Red Dead Redemption to be so much more than a facsimile of existing Western archetypes. Red Dead Redemption, via Margini, is in fact a valid contribution to the genre, every bit as valid as the more famous representations like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Searchers, and A Fistfull of Dollars.
The danger of casting such a wide net is the potential for the book to lack focus. But Margini has an incredible ability to synthesize an abundance of content into a simple, sometimes pithy statement the way great essayists can. The expansive Western landscape becomes manageable when Margini writes “It instills awe and terror not because it’s shrouded but because it’s empty. What you see is what you get.” The intangible cultural impact of the Western genre becomes tangible when Margini writes “The Greatest Generation, the Silent Generation, the Boomers—all were raised on Westerns, which deeply affected the way they viewed the nation in which they lived and the wars in which they would inevitably participate.”
Margini’s Red Dead Redemption is a lot like the works of Mary Roach. Though Margini’s book isn’t humorous nor is it personal–humor and personal-implication are staples of Mary Roach’s non-fiction–but Margini does approach a very wide topic via a series of smaller, nuanced access points. For Roach the wide topic might be death with the access points being stories about human cadavers or stories exposing purported psychics. Or she might tackle space by asking how humans poop in a space suit. Margini approaches the capital “W” West, a massive thing that some see as the very embodiment of America, by way of a video game. I love it.
Before reading Red Dead Redemption by Matt Margini, I hated the Western genre. I saw it only for its overt racism and sexism. I saw it as an outdated ideal only respected by people with outdated ideals. But after reading this book I feel like I actually understand the genre and why it’s important. I even respect it.
If you are reading this review before May 28th, I urge you to check out the Kickstarter campaign of which Matt Margini’s Red Dead Redemption is a part. I’ve been a long time reader of Boss Fight Books (in fact, I’ve reviewed all of them at my video game youtube channel). Though I received an early electronic copy of Red Dead Redemption from the publisher for the purposes of this review, I have backed the Kickstarter campaign myself because I have no doubt that the additional forthcoming books in this campaign will be fantastic. Check out the Boss Fight Books Kickstarter campaign and see if it peaks your interest.
Mentioned:
- Check out the Boss Fight Books Season 5 Kickstarter campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gabedurham/boss-fight-books-season-5-into-the-darkness
- Boss Fight Books review playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMKbK8vtuoicyVRhGfap2QIj5R5mWJioY
- Check out Matt Margini on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattmargini
Credits:
Western Streets by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4617-western-streets
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Bossa Antigua by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3454-bossa-antigua
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
