hi carrie,
i struggled to get thru _the alienist_. i guess it was a good
book but it just didn't do much for me. too much of a sense
of drama on his part and too much apathy on mine.
i haven't read mark graham's books. why did you not like the
series?
thanks, miker
carrie:
This is an interesting question, because I can see both sides
of it. Carr's
book does have a lot of elements of hard-boiled - violence,
corruption, a generally negative view of human nature, and a
somewhat lazy dissolute journalist narrator who fits well
into the HB ethos. On the other hand, HB is about style as
well as substance, and The Alienist is written in a sort of
faux-late-Victorian style with a lot of "if we had but only
known what dire fate awaited us. . ." Stylistically, it's
much closer to Conan Doyle mixed with more than a touch of
Gothic horror, than to Raymond Chandler.
Worth reading in any case. Some things about this book drove
me absoutely crazy (reminds me of Tolkien in the sense that
the high style often reads as
self-parody, while I get the feeling that the author is
taking it completely
seriously), and there's some downright silly melodrama, but
certainly a very
compelling read, interesting characters, and a completely
convincing and eye-opening picture of urban life in the late
19th century. I'd like to see
Carr try a Ripper book.
"Angel of Darkness" is Carr's second book; it's been out for
some time and, though I haven't read it, I understand it
involves some of the same characters but a different
narrator. His recent book "Killing Time" is, I think, a
science fiction book not related to the previous two.
Incidentally Carr is the son of Lucien Carr, the Beat writer,
who apparently
left his son with a lot of emotional baggage. I read an
interview, though I
don't remember where (might have been Salon, you can probably
find it with a
websearch), in which Caleb discusses his embrace of William
James' psychological/philosophical theories as a complete
rejection of the philosophy of the Beats. I imagine that he
would consider it a compliment to be considered a 19th
century throwback.
Somebody who really does write historical HB is Mark Graham;
his series
(includes "The Resurrectionist" and "The Black Maria") is set
in late 19th century philadelphia and draws on some true
crimes of the day, including some that Carr uses in "The
Alienist." I frankly didn't like the series much, though "The
Black Maria" won the "paperback original" Edgar last
year,
so at least somebody disagrees with me. His research at least
seems to be pretty good.
Carrie
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