The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik LarsonMy review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
Here's how I imagine it went.
Larson: I wanna write a book about the architects who designed the World's Fair in Chicago. Also, pork.
Publisher: Nobody wants to read about architects. They're boring.
Larson: But the World's Fair--
Publisher: Boring.
Larson: The mayor gets murdered.
Publisher: When?
Larson: At the end.
Publisher: (yawns) Too late.
Larson: If I could find some juicy murders to spice it up...?
Publisher: We'd take a look.
This isn't so much a book about Mudgett/Holmes and his unpleasant habit of murdering women and selling their bodies, not to mention murdering children just for the fun of it, but rather a book about the World Fair and its architects and how it was all built and how wonderful it was that Chicago managed to go "neenah neenah" at France for having the audacity to, yanno, hold a fair and get some visitors.
At times, the childishness is breathtaking.
Behind that, and the endless trumpeting of how wonderful it is to pursue power and wealth while people are dying of starvation in the garbage-piled streets (after all, you need all that wealth to get your own children the hell out of there), there's a fairly interesting story about the World Fair, and its architects, and how they all almost got it ready on time despite wasting months choosing a site for it. About Olmsted and his vision for the future of Landscape Architecture. About the electric launches and the first-ever Ferris Wheel. About the woman who won the competition to design the "Woman's Building", who was paid a tenth of what the men got, didn't get to appear in the group picture and was eventually driven into a nervous breakdown by a society dame who wanted to fill the Building with junk...and then disappears from the story. We get to find out all about the mayor's funeral, but not if Sophia Hayden ever recovered.
This book isn't kind to women. It sets the tone by referring to cattle in the stockyards being "murdered". Yep, the callous killings of women and children are equated with the slaughtering of animals. Throughout the book, Larson emphasises how Mudgett/Holmes had an almost vampirical effect on women, yet fails to explain why he had to go out of state to find a suitable victim. I'm sorry, wasn't he surrounded by them? Similarly, Buffalo Bill has all the women at the Fair staring lustfully at him. Sometimes this book has a bigger ego-trip than Mudgett/Holmes's.
Overall, Mudgett/Holmes and his Murder Hotel feel like an afterthought in a book about architects.
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3 comments:
I didn't know you had a blog. I thought all your time was spent foraging....
I've tried to go on a blog hiatus, and announced this on my blog. But you don't know that. So I can continue my addict...habit here.
hehehe
And welcome :)!
I don't see your view of the author's lack of kindness towards women. The parallel of the slaughter yards and Holmes' slaughter hotel shows, perhaps, Holmes view of women as similar to the pigs. They are livestock to be butchered and sold, and in Holmes' eyes, not people. This parallel is the author's attempt at shedding light on Holmes' mentality. I don't see Larson "equating" the murders of pigs with the murders of women and children. The word "murder" is setting a tone at that point in the book. Maybe Larson is saying, "Look at the nastiness that went on in these slaughter yards, but wait! You won't believe what else happened on the fringes of the White City." C'mon, aren't you being a little quick in your comment, "Yep,...equating women with cattle..."? The times were not kind to women. It's not Larson.
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