Jones biography is a revealing look
Before he orchestrated the murder of more than 900 men, women and children in the jungles of Guyana, Jim Jones was laudable, even admirable. In that paradox lies the power of Jeff Guinn’s unflinching, revealing and powerful new biography of the cult leader, “The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple.”
It is no accident Guinn chose to open the book with the 1978 massacre. Nor is it the dramatic construct of a true-crime staple. He quickly describes reports that a U.S. Congressman and others have been shot dead at an Guyanese airstrip. He follows with the awful discovery by soldiers entering Jonestown: “Bodies everywhere, seemingly too many to count, innumerable heaps of the dead.”
Guinn’s six-page prologue is an anchor of horror tying readers to the remarkable account of Jones’ life that unfolds in the next 400-plus pages. A reminder of where his story — unchecked ambition, power, idealism and narcissism — will end.
It forces you to think about what turned Jones into a monster. As you absorb his achievements as a dedicated civil rights leader, tireless advocate for the poor and brilliant orator, you fall down a psychological rabbit hole. Is this the moment? Is this the thing that did it?
This might be the central conceit of every book ever written about serial killers, sociopaths and madmen. But Guinn is such a gifted storyteller that he never presumes to have the answer.
What Guinn does instead is provide brilliant reportage, creating a fascinating chronology of Jones’ life. From his birth in Indiana to his rise as a religious and political powerhouse to his paranoid, drugfueled death.
Guinn portrays Jones as a pied-piper of socio-economic promise to disillusioned and fragile souls lost in the 1970’s bubble of self-absorption. Jones was “father.” His followers were “the people.”
It didn’t hurt, of course, that Jones thought of himself as God on Earth. “The real Christ or God, Jones preached, existed as a mind or spirit that could choose a host body, becoming an Earth God capable of bestowing immediate blessings on the living.”
Sound like chicanery? Jones could sell it. And he also lived it. His church became a model of socialism, where individual members gave up their individuality – cars, property, bank accounts – for the church. They also gave themselves sexually and ideologically (body and soul, literally) to Jones, who ultimately took their trust and used it to sate his own lust.
This is how pop culture remembers Jones.
Guinn, however, wants readers to see Jones as a complex, multi-dimensional person. And he isn’t willing to write off followers as simpletons. Using interviews with survivors, including Jones’ son, and thousands of pages of FBI records, Guinn tells the story of Jim Jones and his temple from the inside out.
The best, most surprising parts of Guinn’s book deal with Jones’ early days as an Indianapolis pastor and as a civil rights activist in a state with deep ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
Jones made civil rights a cornerstone of his preaching and reached out to black congregations in the 1950s in a way few whites had done. He marched, he protested and used his influence to leverage white business owners to serve black patrons.
“Nobody marched in protest – that wasn’t the Indiana way. White leaders continued agreeing to meet whenever black ministers asked, and afterward nothing changed – except when Jim Jones was involved. If he wasn’t moving racist mountains, he at least flattened some bumps.”
Equally fascinating is the dichotomy in Jones’ approach to preaching. He was both a tireless advocate for his church and a carnival huckster who worked the tent revival circuit with faith healing and miracles by sleight-of-hand tricks.
Years later these parallel tracks would converge as Jones formed the Peoples Temple and used mind-bending schemes to convince followers he was imbued with divine sight.
Guinn follows Jones through an ill-fated move to Brazil and then to California, where he established his temple in the rural community of Ukiah before opening branches in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Jones’ political power grew along with his church. California Gov. Jerry Brown, Willie Brown, the lieutenant governor, the San Francisco mayor and county supervisors all acknowledged Jones and many appeared for temple services.
But Jones through the mid-1970s was becoming unhinged. His addiction to pain pills manifested in extreme paranoia that ended in apocalyptic sermons, visions of death.
There were media and political investigations. Lawsuits from jaded followers. Public inquiries and allegations that followers were being held against their will.
Jones was arrested for pandering. He took to practicing suicide drills during temple meetings. He began stockpiling weapons and funneling money into his personal accounts. As the pressure mounted, Jones moved his followers to Jonestown, where he told them they would hack out a private sanctuary from the jungle. They succeeded temporarily.
On Nov. 18, 1978, members of Jones’ inner circle gunned down U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan, a group of reporters and temple defectors as they boarded planes after a visit to the Temple. Jones meanwhile ordered his followers to feed cyanide-spiked Flavor Aid to their families, including 300 children, while those who refused were shot.
Guinn is the author of several books, including: “The Last Gunfight” about the O.K. Corral, “Go Down Together,” a biography of Bonnie and Clyde, and the bestselling “Manson: The Life and Times of Charlie Manson.”
“The Road to Jonestown” shares common themes with “Manson,” particularly the exploration of the dark side of the counter-culture movement. But Jones is a much more nuanced subject than Manson, whose life was a linear descent into crime.
Guinn gets that. Moreover, he understands the sway a man like Jones can exert over his followers.
Lawyers, bankers, blue collar workers, housewives all joined the Peoples Temple hoping to change the world. And for a while, they did. Until Jones changed them.