I Want to Go to the Fair.*

Okay, my nose is stuffy, and I'm disinclined to do too many drafts, so forgive me if this is a bit scattered. Also, some of this perhaps could go in the comments to Katie's post...

The Holmes stuff: His victims seemed to belong to the Victorian era of trust and decency whereas Holmes seems to be a product of the Modern era. Katie asks if serial killers are a newish phenomenon or if we just didn't know about them. While I'm no expert, I would think that they're a product of urbanization on some level, or rather the city allows them the space to act. The horror of this tale is definitely that the modern city allows for isolation, alienation, and duplicity in ways previously unknown. While Holmes's victims did seem a bit too trusting and needy, it was partially that they were ill-equipped to be on their own it seems. Not to seem like a proponent of infantilizing women, but part of the growing pains of women finding an independent place in society may have had to be that they learned to deal with the wolves of the world.

"With its gorgeous classical buildings packed with art, its clean water and electric lights, and its overstaffed police department, the exposition was Chicago's conscience, the city it wanted to become" (210). I find the title The Devil in the White City so apt because it truly embodies the two halves of the book, we have the darkness and evil of Holmes jarringly juxtaposed with the dream of the fair that was a testament to the good of man, the industrious heights that can be accomplished.

The Burnham/Fair stuff: I loved loved reading about the World's Fair--I've learned a bit about other ones: the Great Exhibition of 1851 in England that gave us the Crystal Palace and the one in Paris in 1889 that produced the Eiffel tower (and Chicago's benchmark), but to have one so close to home made me feel proud of the city even a century later. I was ridiculously excited and oddly choked up reading about the talleys of attendance on Chicago Day in the Fair--"751,026, more people than had attended any single day of any peaceable even in history" (319). Maybe I'm naive--but if that's the case I wanna stay that way--but it seems so inspiring that art and everything that it encompasses architecture, landscaping, etc. can be lived and be beautiful and be good.

(Court of Honor and Grand Basin of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.)

Sigh, but just as the Fair was burned to the ground (okay, Larson, a bit heavy-handed on the 'foreshadowing'), the book is over--when do we start the next one?

*Apparently, these do still happen, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to catch one anytime soon--unless...Shanghai 2010? Roadtrip, anyone?

The End!

So, I could be getting into some trouble here by not posting anything on Devil and the White City until now when I have finished the whole book and will post on it in entirety. I'm not sure when we are allowed to post on the entire thing since we have all took much longer than "the plan" of reading this book. Anyways, I was amazed at how much I liked this book, it being non-fiction and all. To echo all of you, it did kind of read more like fiction, a lot of times I forgot that this was stuff that actually happened. Growing up near Chicago, it was so neat to hear the descriptions of the city from a hundred years ago and hear how it's changed. It was neat to hear of the buildings that are still around. I don't think I have ever been to Jackson Park or the wooded island, and now I want to take a trip out there to look around. It's very sad to me that the buildings burned down and most are no longer around since I would have loved to see it and been there. I liked in the afterword how the author said how this city was like a dream city and inspired people to see that cities could be clean and powered by electricity. It was neat seeing how minimum wages and 8-hour working days came about, and how the Ferris wheel was invented. It made me kind of in awe at the architects and engineers for imagining these wonderful buildings.

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I was really interested in the parts about Holmes and wished they were longer or had more information. I wonder how many people he really killed, I definitely don't think it was 200, but I also definitely think it was more than 9. I think I probably would have fit his victim profile, I'm sure I could be flattered into not even noticing he was some serial killer. I think because it happened so long ago, I wasn't really disturbed by it. Maybe also because he mostly gased the victims to death and didn't actually slash them or kill them in a very violent way. I guess if I had to be murdered, that is the way to go. Seems pretty painless. I thought there would be a more direct tie at the end between Burnham and Holmes, but it was more the juxtoposition of the dream city and the horrible crimes that were being done in/near it. I was also sad Holmes' Castle of Horrors burned down because I won't be able to go see that either. That place definitely sounded a bit creepy. And it's weird that he was one of the first serial killers in America, around the time of Jack the Ripper. It makes me wonder, were there not really serial killers before that and people started becoming more perverted in recent years, or did we just not recognize the patterns of serial killers before then?

I was surprised at the amount of freedom that women had at that time, I tend to think of the late 1800's as being pretty oppressive towards women, but they were able to work and live by themselves and travel to big cities without family, which was impressive (all things considered.) I like how Larson wrapped up everyone's story and told us what happened to everyone in the end. It is weird how after Holmes died all those people connected to him had horrible deaths. In all, I enjoyed this book. I guess there's a Devil in the White City tour of Chicago, and now I want to go and take it to see what is still around. It definitely made me feel a lot of pride for Chicago, in regards to its pulling off the fair and all the achievements that happened as a result of that.

Officially Bad and Booted

Sorry, I'm bad. I didn't read the book. I started to and then Chris found out about the murder part and told me I probably shouldn't read it...I have a tendancy to overreact to things like that and become extremely upset when pregnant - it's the hormones. Anyhow, by the time he finally finished it and decided I could just read the parts about the fair, the book was severley overdue on interlibrary loan and being waited on by other patrons, so reading it was no longer an option. I could go try and find another copy but it would take a while and we're being booted from our apartment at the end of this weekend so I'm very overwhelmed...hope you all will forgive me.

Devil in the White City: Part One

Wow! Not sure where to begin. I have a lot of disjointed not very fully formed thoughts on this book so far, so this is going to be a bit free form and disorganized.

Let me start by saying that I appreciate Sarah's willingness to venture into non-fiction. As a rule, I tell myself I don't much enjoy non-fiction, yet any time I have read it (not often) it seems I have enjoyed the book, so perhaps it is mere prejudice with little basis in fact. Anyway, I also really like that it is a subject I don't know much about, so despite being non-fiction I still don't know the ending. Let me demonstrate my ignorance. I have no idea if this fair ends up being a big success, or complete failure. Is the Sears tower the thing that is built to compete with the Eiffel tower? I don't know. That would be my guess, but I could be way off. Its all quite exciting to learn a bit of history but have it be presented in this manner.

I love reading about different time periods as well. I guess what I mean is, its fun learning about events in history, but I also like learning about the culture and atmosphere of our history. Look at how ugly Chicago was, how much crime existed in the big city. Interesting look into a time when unions held a lot more power. One of my favorit mini-stories in the book about the lieutenant being sent to Zanzibar to bring a family of 12 to 14 of the (dang it I can't remember the word it was something like fierce) little pygmies to the fair. Which, I wouldn't be surprised if that had an unhappy ending thus giving up Zanzibarbarians in the Muppets (or Rhubarbarians in Veggie Tales). Or the guy who bought the rights to exhibit an Algerian village and its inhabitants. Just a little different than our present day view towards other peoples.

Then there is the complete other side, the dark, ugly side. This is the part of the book I'm really not sure how I feel about. On the one hand, I can't help but be morbidly curious about how this will all turn out, and what exactly is going on. I'm frankly glad that so far we haven't had more than cursory mentions of disappearances without too much detail, but I worry about having to read more than that. Perhaps before being married and having two daughters I could have read this a bit easier, but now it is just a reminder of the fallenness in this world, and the potential dangers that forever lurk in places least expected. Perhaps as scary, is the looking into self that reading something like this forces. Could that have been me? Save for the grace of God, isn't that same psychopath somewhere in me that could have been released by the right circumstances. I want to say no, but something tells me that is nothing more than wishful thinking. I am very disturbed by the whole story, and not sure if that means it is a good thing or a bad thing that I am reading this.

A little note!

For those of you who have seen Muppet Treasure Island...it turns out that Zanzibarbarians really exist! At least something akin to them according to the book! Too funny!

Why does Holmes' hotel remind me of the one in Angel?

Sorry that this is a whole week late. Just finished part one. Whew.

I really do like this book, it's just super hard for me to stay in it. I'm not used to reading any nonfiction and even though this is written more novel-like, there is still a serious lack of dialogue to break up very long paragraphs. That seems awfully juvenile of me, but visually it's easier to take in. Too much children's books, i suppose.

I find it funny or strange that Sarah pointed out the same thing I marked in my book. The exact same quote about the skeleton. I just wanted to say, 'well, how the hell do you know that?' to Mr. Larson. I mean, sure, he's writing it all down, but where does he get that idea? No reason for it to be any different than Holmes' word. Not that he's to be trusted.

Wow, is he spooky or what? I mean, just creeeeeepy. Makes me terribly nervous when I read his chapter/sections. But at the same time, I'm intrigued. I want to slap all those women for trusting him. A guy too smooth for his own good? Never, ever trust them. EVER! Sorry, those women are just idiots on some level. Maybe people were less wary back then. And the thing with animals and babies not being put off by him. My theory is that he never meant harm to the animals or babies, so they couldn't sense his weirdness.

Burnham is definitely interesting. I find myself drifting a bit in his chapters, but I think Larson does a great, great job of making everything so urgent. Like the whole bit with the eastern architects and olmstead and all the waiting. I just wanted to scream, 'make a decision already you silly people!'

There are some great quotes in this so far, though.

"enough so that each year Burnham bought a barrel of fine Madeira and aged it by shipping it twice around the world on slow freighters." (40) Now that's wealth!

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." (41) Gives me good chills every time I read it.

"Chicago is like the man who marries a woman with a ready-made family of twelve," he said. "The trouble is just begun" (49) Made me laugh.

My heart was sad about Root. I liked their friendship. I can't imagine how much that must have hurt Burnham. Definitely a good cliffhanger to end part one on.

I realize this is unlike my other reviews as I can't seem to comment on the actual writing. Maybe it's my lack of nonfiction knowledge. Whatever it is, the writing isn't bugging me. Other than the fact that it's pretty dense.

On to the next bit.

The Devil in the White City: Part One

I'm rather enjoying this book. I was initially skeptical about the juxtaposition of the two halves of the book (Burnham vs. Holmes), that it would feel forced or like two separate stories, but I find it working for me. At first, I thought I would be more interested in the Holmes story because for some reason, I find true crime with serial killers rather fascinating, but I think I'm more interested in the planning and to-be execution of the fair.

One thing that I am a bit hesitant about, but don't know if this is common of history writers/books is the speculation. I realize to make it seem novelistic there has to be some reasonable assumptions made, but I question Larson's leaps into the psychological motivations of the characters, particularly Holmes'. For instance (on 39), Larson notes of Holmes's encounter with the skeleton, "The incident probably did occur, but with a different choreography. More likely the two older boys discovered that their five-year-old victim did not mind the excursion; that far from struggling and shrieking, he merely gazed at the skeleton with cool appreciation. When his eyes settled back upon his captors, it was they who fled." This seems to be pure speculation from what I can tell. Larson's suggestion that Holmes likely kept "the skulls of small animals that he disabled and then dissected, alive" is at least based on some observed psychology.

And then because of Larson's assumptions, I feel like making my own. Seriously, the lone sentence that reads, "Mudgett's only close friend was an older child named Tom, who was killed in a fall while the boys were playing in an abandoned house" makes me want to scream "He pushed him! He pushed him!"

One (semi-) narrator intrusion into the text that I did not mind however comes near the end of part one, as the architects are being wined and dined: "It was the first in a sequence of impossibly rich and voluminous banquets whose menus raised the question of whether any of the city's leading men could possibly have a functional artery" (97). I had to read it twice because I didn't expect the tongue-in-cheek humor.

By the by, I ran across this at my library. I haven't had time to watch this yet, but hope to at some point. It's a documentary about the '93 World's Fair called EXPO: Magic of the White City.

Pre-The Devil in the White City

I'm unsure how much background reading you guys want to do, but I figured I may as well toss up a link to some information about H. H. Holmes. I find it interesting, but I may have spoiled some of the intrigue in The Devil in the White City for myself.

Next Book

Okay, even though I've pretty much talked with everyone. I'm making it official. Our next book is The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. Here's my proposed schedule; let me know if it's not going to work for any reason.

8/8 - Prologue and Part I
8/15 - Part II
8/22 - Part III
8/29 - Part IV and Epilogue