Just finished Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City. I picked up a copy from a fantastic used book store in Chicago during my grand visit Chez Boldty back in September (I still daydream about the self-built tivo, the excellent views from the roof of their apartments, the purple cat, and Mrs. Boldty’s homemade jams).
….I feel no such warm feelings for the book. It was good, sure, but I just can’t stand descriptions of people’s thoughts and feelings when there is no first person record to support it. The book recounts the momentous preparations for the Chicago World’s fair concurrently with the nefarious doings of a mass murderer who did away with hapless employees and residents of his specially fitted Chicago house. There are wonderful details about the fair itself, the featured inventions and products, and the notable visitors.
The portrayal of the fair is comprehensive, and it represents a broad and impressive amount of research.
…And so does the story of the murderer, but it’s also more plagued by cheap descriptions of imagined facial expressions and imagined feelings. Here’s the scene of one of the murders:
He kept one hand on the cloth and with the other dribbled more of the liquid between his fingers into its folds, delighting in the sensation of frost where the chloroform coated his fingers. One of her wrists sagged to the table, followed shortly by the other. Here eyelids stuttered, then closed. Holmes did not think her so clever as to feign coma, but he held tight just the same. After a few moments he reached for her wrist and felt her pulse fade to nothing, like the rumble of a receding train.
Really? he liked the feel of chlorform? Did he say that in his memoirs? Did he ponder her ability to feign a coma? I doubt it. And if he did, I’d much rather have read the quote than listen to this florid business of rumbling trains.
I’ve complained about this sort of thing before- I find it patronizing- but obviously I’m alone in this, because the cover has the shiny embossed emblem of the National Book Award.
Yes, our awesomeness is the stuff of dreams and legend.
Re: the book — I couldn’t finish.
In the movie Dude, Where’s My Car, there’s a scene where Ashton Kutcher is ordering takeout from the Drive-Thru. The drive through box (shaped like a giant clown) keeps saying: “And Then? … And Then?” That’s this book: and then they built a ferris wheel, and then this girl was killed, and then they had problems with the ferris wheel, and then another girl was killed, and then they fixed the ferris wheel, and then …
The book goes back and forth each chapter between two dull linear narratives: building the White City for the World’s fair and a serial killer killing people (for no real reason). The White City part is so boring (there is a chapter about plaster drying) that I just started skipping those chapters. The serial killer chapters aren’t much better. I assume the storylines merge at some point [Is there a literary term for this?], but I never got there.
Where is the used bookstore of which you speak?
Ok, I’m glad you said so.
I thought maybe I was being too harsh. But compared to, say, Krakatoa, the different story lines and interesting facts don’t really converge in any kind of satisfying way.
And the bookstore!!! I have to think about it a little bit. I remember that it’s walking distance from Jen’s store, and I think I have receipt with the address.
The store is After-Words, and it’s here:
http://maps.google.com/
Upstairs are new books, downstairs is used books. As I remember, the staff was very knowledgeable, but one of the guys hit on me. Nevertheless, I bought two books there.
wow. i’m so pleased that you wrote this post, cause i felt the same way about it- the sad thing is that the story itself is so strong, and the writing and framing of the story so weak. why? why? why not just write a good history of the fair and some godawful csi screenplay about the murderer separately?