by Jim Vandergriff
Knox College
Galesburg, IL

I’m not sure what I had in mind when I requested this book. I’ve known about the Roswell incident for so many years that I can’t even remember when I first heard about it -- long, long before it became popular knowledge. Of course, as a kid (and as an old guy) I was a scifi freak, so I probably first read about it in some defunct scifi magazine. Suffice it to say that I’ve always been interested. I know all the stories and all the explanations and all the counter-arguments and counter counter-arguments. So, I guess I was taken by the fact that this book is published by the Smithsonian. Perhaps I expected it to finally answer the question for me. Perhaps, and most likely, I was intrigued by the subtitle: the genesis of a modern myth. That’s a folklorish sounding subtitle.

Whatever I was thinking, I sent for a review copy. It arrived promptly and I set about reading it. When I got to page 22, something began to bother me: one of the names was ringing a bell somewhere back in my virtually unrecoverable memory -- at least it seemed unrecoverable until a couple of days ago. The name is "Gerald Anderson." Gerald’s role in this book is to serve both as himself and as a symbol of all the UFO crazies out there who make up wild flying saucer/abduction stories.

The authors seem to have the credentials to belie Anderson -- one of the authors was actually one of the government investigators of the incident. But, Gerald was gnawing at me. What these authors were saying about him didn’t sound right to me.

A couple of nights ago, I found among my volumes of such trash a page from the Springfield (MO) News-Leader from 12/9/90. The top half of the first page (1F) is a pencil sketch of a flying saucer crashing into a hillside. The sketch is titled "1947 July 5th New Mexico" and is signed by Judith Noble Fowler. The rest of the page and most of page 4F is devoted to two articles by Mike O’Brien. One of them, titled "Fact or Fantasy?" is illustrated with a photo of Gerald Anderson.

About a week after this article appeared, Mike came to my apartment to interview me for an article about Ozark folklore -- Gordon McCann and I had just begun trying to organize an Ozarks Folklore Society. After the interview was completed, I asked Mike about his UFO article and about Anderson, who was at the time a security guard for SMSU -- someone past whom I walked nearly every day that I taught at SMSU. I asked Mike for his take on Anderson and he told me that Anderson seemed to him sincere, that he seemed to believe what he was saying.

Saler, Ziegler, and Moore, on the other hand, characterize Anderson as a schemer and liar, someone who is wilfully spreading untruths. I would like to believe them, but I don’t.

Fortunately, their book doesn’t depend on my belief. It makes, I think, a good case in chapter 2 ("Analysis of the Roswell Myth") for considering Roswell in particular and UFO stories in general folk narratives. Chapter 1 does a pretty good job of showing the historical development of the myth, but I find it less convincing than chapter 2. Chapter 3 evades me. Chapter 4 ("Roswell and Religion") I find quite interesting, though I think we could make the same case for, say, Rock stars and Macdonald’s characters. Still, it’s worth reading. Chapter 5 is a nice summary of all the major competing interpretations of the incident.

All in all, though, I think this is a book aimed at people like me who live on the fringe of the UFO scene, people who would like to find a convincing argument on one side or the other. Beyond that, I don’t think the book has a lot of value. The UFO museum in Roswell will continue in existence. A few tourists will continue to trickle into Roswell every summer. The TV series will plod on toward its uncertain destiny. I’ll continue to want a convincing explanation. There really isn’t much new in this book except perhaps the effort to package it in folkloristics and anthropology. Most people won’t really care what it has to say. To those few of you who will care I say, "Live long and prosper."