Sarah Monette's Blog, page 35
May 23, 2011
UBC: A Private Disgrace
Lincoln, Victoria. A Private Disgrace: Lizzie Borden by Daylight. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1967. [library]
After Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter , A Private Disgrace was both a wonderful read and a relief.
Victoria Lincoln, like Arnold Brown, was a native of Fall River. More than that, she lived a block away from Lizzie Borden as a child and thus remembers both her and the society that created her. You don't have to agree with Lincoln to find her insights into Fall River's tightly closed upper class community--and its effects on Lizzie Borden--illuminating.
There are odd points at which Brown and Lincoln agree; for instance, they both argue that the judges at Lizzie's trial were horrendously biased. But whereas Brown has this terribly complicated conspiracy theory about how Lizzie was being tried and acquitted to hide the real murderer, Lincoln's theory is much simpler and more plausible: Lizzie's money hired as her defense lawyer an ex-Massachusetts governor who, as it happened, had appointed to the bench the judge who ran the trial. Robinson wanted to win the case, and Judge Dewey was cooperating to the hilt. Lincoln also makes it clear that once the judges disallowed Lizzie's damningly self-contradicting inquest testimony (and the equally damning testimony of the pharmacist who refused to sell her prussic acid), the prosecution's case pretty much fell apart.
Lincoln's theory of Lizzie's guilt is far more persuasive than Brown's theory of her innocence. Lincoln puts the pieces together--including outlying pieces like Lizzie's recurrent kleptomania--into a picture that makes sad and dreadful sense. She may or may not be right (I have no idea if her understanding of temporal lobe epilepsy is still valid or if it's been disproven), but she has made a really excellent effort.
After Lizzie Borden: The Legend, the Truth, the Final Chapter , A Private Disgrace was both a wonderful read and a relief.
Victoria Lincoln, like Arnold Brown, was a native of Fall River. More than that, she lived a block away from Lizzie Borden as a child and thus remembers both her and the society that created her. You don't have to agree with Lincoln to find her insights into Fall River's tightly closed upper class community--and its effects on Lizzie Borden--illuminating.
There are odd points at which Brown and Lincoln agree; for instance, they both argue that the judges at Lizzie's trial were horrendously biased. But whereas Brown has this terribly complicated conspiracy theory about how Lizzie was being tried and acquitted to hide the real murderer, Lincoln's theory is much simpler and more plausible: Lizzie's money hired as her defense lawyer an ex-Massachusetts governor who, as it happened, had appointed to the bench the judge who ran the trial. Robinson wanted to win the case, and Judge Dewey was cooperating to the hilt. Lincoln also makes it clear that once the judges disallowed Lizzie's damningly self-contradicting inquest testimony (and the equally damning testimony of the pharmacist who refused to sell her prussic acid), the prosecution's case pretty much fell apart.
Lincoln's theory of Lizzie's guilt is far more persuasive than Brown's theory of her innocence. Lincoln puts the pieces together--including outlying pieces like Lizzie's recurrent kleptomania--into a picture that makes sad and dreadful sense. She may or may not be right (I have no idea if her understanding of temporal lobe epilepsy is still valid or if it's been disproven), but she has made a really excellent effort.
May 19, 2011
UBC: The Complete History of Jack the Ripper
Sugden, Philip. The Complete History of Jack the Ripper. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1994. [library]
This is the best book on Jack the Ripper I have read thus far. Sugden can lay out a clear, coherent narrative of what we know about each crime, he is adamant about relying on primary sources, and when he doesn't know something, he says so flat out. He treats everything we "know" about the identity of Jack the Ripper with rigorous skepticism (including, thank goodness, the claims of Sir Robert Anderson that seem to have hypnotized so many Ripper historians), and the only time I caught him yearning, like a dog on a leash, after a crazy-ass theory was at the very end of the book.
Sugden badly wants George Chapman (the murderer not the Elizabethan poet) to be a viable suspect for the Ripper, mostly because Inspector Abberline thought he was. And I'm sorry, Chapman's just not. Yes, the dates match up. Yes, he seems to have been consistently and casually abusive toward his wife and the succession of women he lived with and murdered. And yes, of course, he murdered three women by the prolonged administration of antimony. But--and Sugden even reluctantly admits this--there's a yawning chasm of difference between slow poison and frenzied knife work, between Chapman's sadistic hypocrisy (he was noted for the care with which he tended each of his victims as she was "mysteriously" dying, and I wonder if there was a little Münchausen by Proxy going on there, too) and the Ripper's M.O. The Ripper never really went to town until after his victims were dead.
But that's the last chapter in the book, and Sugden's inherent honesty won't let him off the leash. He wants it to be true, but he never claims it is.
There are, of course, criticisms I can make. Why are we listening to anything Walter Dew has to say? His memoirs are every bit as untrustworthy as any of the other police memoirs, if not more, since he is DEMONSTRABLY making shit up to inflate his own importance.
Why will you not admit that Mrs. Long's description of the man she saw the morning of Annie Chapman's murder is useless? She said he looked "foreign," which every book I've read on the murders admits is code for Jewish, which therefore means nothing more than that the man Mrs. Long saw looked like what she thought a Jew should look like. So there's no earthly reason to say, as Sugden persists in saying even in his summing up, that the murderer might look "continental."
And if you're going to make a case that the Stride and Eddowes murders (the "Double Event") show signs of clumsily orchestrated anti-Semitism (both victims murdered near Jewish clubs, Israel Schwartz's suspect shouting "Lipski!" at him, the Goulston Street graffito, which is a whole can of cthulhus all by itself), you have to explain why the other Ripper murders show no such signs, instead of just ignoring your own thesis for the rest of the book.
But the only one I can think of that actually affects whether or not this is a good gateway for people interested in Jack the Ripper is that, by the nature of the historiography of Jack the Ripper, Sugden spends a lot of time demonstrating that earlier historians are wrong. He has to, because so many of their claims have become things "everybody knows" about Jack the Ripper. But if you don't know the earlier theories, you may be baffled as to why the various subjects even come up. All historiography is a conversation, but the historiography of the Ripper is a party in an over-crowded room, where somebody starting shouting half an hour ago, and now everybody's talking too loudly. It can be hard to hear anything over the din.
This is the best book on Jack the Ripper I have read thus far. Sugden can lay out a clear, coherent narrative of what we know about each crime, he is adamant about relying on primary sources, and when he doesn't know something, he says so flat out. He treats everything we "know" about the identity of Jack the Ripper with rigorous skepticism (including, thank goodness, the claims of Sir Robert Anderson that seem to have hypnotized so many Ripper historians), and the only time I caught him yearning, like a dog on a leash, after a crazy-ass theory was at the very end of the book.
Sugden badly wants George Chapman (the murderer not the Elizabethan poet) to be a viable suspect for the Ripper, mostly because Inspector Abberline thought he was. And I'm sorry, Chapman's just not. Yes, the dates match up. Yes, he seems to have been consistently and casually abusive toward his wife and the succession of women he lived with and murdered. And yes, of course, he murdered three women by the prolonged administration of antimony. But--and Sugden even reluctantly admits this--there's a yawning chasm of difference between slow poison and frenzied knife work, between Chapman's sadistic hypocrisy (he was noted for the care with which he tended each of his victims as she was "mysteriously" dying, and I wonder if there was a little Münchausen by Proxy going on there, too) and the Ripper's M.O. The Ripper never really went to town until after his victims were dead.
But that's the last chapter in the book, and Sugden's inherent honesty won't let him off the leash. He wants it to be true, but he never claims it is.
There are, of course, criticisms I can make. Why are we listening to anything Walter Dew has to say? His memoirs are every bit as untrustworthy as any of the other police memoirs, if not more, since he is DEMONSTRABLY making shit up to inflate his own importance.
Why will you not admit that Mrs. Long's description of the man she saw the morning of Annie Chapman's murder is useless? She said he looked "foreign," which every book I've read on the murders admits is code for Jewish, which therefore means nothing more than that the man Mrs. Long saw looked like what she thought a Jew should look like. So there's no earthly reason to say, as Sugden persists in saying even in his summing up, that the murderer might look "continental."
And if you're going to make a case that the Stride and Eddowes murders (the "Double Event") show signs of clumsily orchestrated anti-Semitism (both victims murdered near Jewish clubs, Israel Schwartz's suspect shouting "Lipski!" at him, the Goulston Street graffito, which is a whole can of cthulhus all by itself), you have to explain why the other Ripper murders show no such signs, instead of just ignoring your own thesis for the rest of the book.
But the only one I can think of that actually affects whether or not this is a good gateway for people interested in Jack the Ripper is that, by the nature of the historiography of Jack the Ripper, Sugden spends a lot of time demonstrating that earlier historians are wrong. He has to, because so many of their claims have become things "everybody knows" about Jack the Ripper. But if you don't know the earlier theories, you may be baffled as to why the various subjects even come up. All historiography is a conversation, but the historiography of the Ripper is a party in an over-crowded room, where somebody starting shouting half an hour ago, and now everybody's talking too loudly. It can be hard to hear anything over the din.
May 18, 2011
That's very interesting.
A weird little miracle occurred. The Saab guys found two '97 9000 ignition switches that had been shelved wrong. I got one, and then apparently another guy came in today with the exact same problem, and he got the other.
So, you know, if you're a weirdo like me still driving a '97 Saab 9000, it looks like you can expect your ignition switch to fail on you any time now.
You're welcome.
So, you know, if you're a weirdo like me still driving a '97 Saab 9000, it looks like you can expect your ignition switch to fail on you any time now.
You're welcome.
UBC: Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell
Evans, Stewart P., and Keith Skinner. Jack the Ripper: Letters from Hell. Phoenix Mill: Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001. [library]
It feels weird to be describing a book about Jack the Ripper as beautiful, but, in fact, this is a beautiful book. Also fascinating. It's about the letters--some 200+ in all--sent to the police and newspapers and, of course, the Central News Agency--purporting to be from Jack the Ripper. Evans and Skinner have transcribed all of them and photographed many of them and written a quiet, careful assessment of what these letters do and do not tell us.
They do not tell us anything about the actual murderer. Evans and Skinner see no reason to think any of the letters (including "Dear Boss" and "From Hell") are from the murderer, and I have to admit I agree with them. But the letters tell us a lot about the police investigation, and even more about public response. They also tell us a lot about the more unpleasant parts of human nature: Evans and Skinner discuss the two letter-writers who were actually caught, both women, both with no better motive for writing letters purporting to be from Jack the Ripper than "for a lark." And the letters themselves range from barely literate, barely intelligible scrawls from people who were clearly about as badly off, sanity wise, as the murderer himself, to hoaxes like the "Dear Boss" letter which were written by someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing.
The photographs of the letters are beautifully done. Some of the letters are themselves lovely--there's one in particular, written in October 1889, which looks more like an example in a handwriting manual than anything else--and even the ugliest of the letters (either in terms of aesthetics or contents) are fascinating to look at.
Evans and Skinner did a marvelous job with this book. If I had a coffee table, I'd totally put this on it.
It feels weird to be describing a book about Jack the Ripper as beautiful, but, in fact, this is a beautiful book. Also fascinating. It's about the letters--some 200+ in all--sent to the police and newspapers and, of course, the Central News Agency--purporting to be from Jack the Ripper. Evans and Skinner have transcribed all of them and photographed many of them and written a quiet, careful assessment of what these letters do and do not tell us.
They do not tell us anything about the actual murderer. Evans and Skinner see no reason to think any of the letters (including "Dear Boss" and "From Hell") are from the murderer, and I have to admit I agree with them. But the letters tell us a lot about the police investigation, and even more about public response. They also tell us a lot about the more unpleasant parts of human nature: Evans and Skinner discuss the two letter-writers who were actually caught, both women, both with no better motive for writing letters purporting to be from Jack the Ripper than "for a lark." And the letters themselves range from barely literate, barely intelligible scrawls from people who were clearly about as badly off, sanity wise, as the murderer himself, to hoaxes like the "Dear Boss" letter which were written by someone who knew exactly what he or she was doing.
The photographs of the letters are beautifully done. Some of the letters are themselves lovely--there's one in particular, written in October 1889, which looks more like an example in a handwriting manual than anything else--and even the ugliest of the letters (either in terms of aesthetics or contents) are fascinating to look at.
Evans and Skinner did a marvelous job with this book. If I had a coffee table, I'd totally put this on it.
May 17, 2011
the 5 things of which a post are made
1. The tow truck guy, bless his tattooed heart, figured out what's causing the Saab's psychosis before I had to pay him to tow it to the service guys.
2. It's the ignition switch. Now we wait to find out whether the service guys can rebuild it or whether we have to get a new one . . . on which there is no ETA. I love my 1997 Saab, but there are drawbacks.
3. Speaking of drawbacks, my insurance company voted no on the Lyrica prescription. I need to find time to call my doctor's office and find out what we do about round 2.
4. On the other hand, the acupuncture is working. I took a walk with![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380451598i/2033940.gif)
mirrorthaw
yesterday after my appointment and had to double-take twice. Once because my ankle didn't hurt and once later because my thigh muscles weren't stringed-instrument-tense. It didn't last, but boy it was nice while it was there.
5. And finally, today I had the odd experience of consciously witnessing myself have a breakthrough. I've been struggling for most of a year, since before I broke my ankle, with cantering. (Yet another thing fantasy writers don't think about.) I fell off the first time I tried cantering off the lunge line--actually it was three hundred and sixty-three days ago, May 19, I just went and looked--and since then I've been struggling both to learn how to canter and to stop being afraid of it. (The huge hiatus because of the ankle did not help.) But today we were working off the lunge line, and I asked my teacher if we could try cantering. Not because I thought I ought to, but because I wanted to. She was delighted.
Milo and I cantered. I didn't fall off and I wasn't terrified I was going to (although I do need to quit trying to grip the stirrups with my toes). It was splendid.
2. It's the ignition switch. Now we wait to find out whether the service guys can rebuild it or whether we have to get a new one . . . on which there is no ETA. I love my 1997 Saab, but there are drawbacks.
3. Speaking of drawbacks, my insurance company voted no on the Lyrica prescription. I need to find time to call my doctor's office and find out what we do about round 2.
4. On the other hand, the acupuncture is working. I took a walk with
mirrorthaw
yesterday after my appointment and had to double-take twice. Once because my ankle didn't hurt and once later because my thigh muscles weren't stringed-instrument-tense. It didn't last, but boy it was nice while it was there.5. And finally, today I had the odd experience of consciously witnessing myself have a breakthrough. I've been struggling for most of a year, since before I broke my ankle, with cantering. (Yet another thing fantasy writers don't think about.) I fell off the first time I tried cantering off the lunge line--actually it was three hundred and sixty-three days ago, May 19, I just went and looked--and since then I've been struggling both to learn how to canter and to stop being afraid of it. (The huge hiatus because of the ankle did not help.) But today we were working off the lunge line, and I asked my teacher if we could try cantering. Not because I thought I ought to, but because I wanted to. She was delighted.
Milo and I cantered. I didn't fall off and I wasn't terrified I was going to (although I do need to quit trying to grip the stirrups with my toes). It was splendid.
UBC: 2 social histories of the Third Reich
Ayçoberry, Pierre. The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-1945. Transl. Janet Lloyd. New York: The New Press, 1999. [library]
Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 2008. [library]
These were an interesting unintentional pairing. The Ayçoberry was exactly what it says on the tin: a social history of the Third Reich. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't read in other social histories of the Third Reich, and it stood out mostly because the author's intellectual quirks.
The Fritzsche, on the other hand, was both a social history and a determined, patient, compassionate, but unforgiving attempt to understand why the citizens of Germany went along with the Nazis. He used a lot of primary sources--diaries and letters--and while many of the diarists were people I'd encountered before, some of them weren't, and the way Fritzsche used his material offered me new insights about how and why the Third Reich happened.
Fritzsche, Peter. Life and Death in the Third Reich. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard University Press, 2008. [library]
These were an interesting unintentional pairing. The Ayçoberry was exactly what it says on the tin: a social history of the Third Reich. It didn't tell me anything I hadn't read in other social histories of the Third Reich, and it stood out mostly because the author's intellectual quirks.
The Fritzsche, on the other hand, was both a social history and a determined, patient, compassionate, but unforgiving attempt to understand why the citizens of Germany went along with the Nazis. He used a lot of primary sources--diaries and letters--and while many of the diarists were people I'd encountered before, some of them weren't, and the way Fritzsche used his material offered me new insights about how and why the Third Reich happened.
May 16, 2011
May 14, 2011
Things that make you go argh.
1. The Gabapentin has stopped working.
2. My (baffled) doctor has prescribed Lyrica, which my insurance company does not want to let me have. Since the paperwork couldn't get cleared up before the weekend, it will be Monday before I have a chance even to TRY this new drug. ("I want a new drug, one that does what it should"--Glen Phillips's cover of that song is BEYOND BRILLIANT, btw. And there's always Weird Al and "I Want A New Duck".)
3. This is the second time in 2011 I've had this problem, since my insurance company decided at the beginning of the year that it didn't want to cover Protonix, which I have been taking successfully for 10+ years. It would rather I take Prilosec, which is not as effective (I'm on a doubled dose, and am suspicious I may have to go back and tell my gastroenterologist that's not working either).
4. And this is with GOOD health insurance.
5. Also, our fourteen-year-old Saab has just gone pear-shaped. I think Friday the Thirteenth was just waiting until Saturday.
2. My (baffled) doctor has prescribed Lyrica, which my insurance company does not want to let me have. Since the paperwork couldn't get cleared up before the weekend, it will be Monday before I have a chance even to TRY this new drug. ("I want a new drug, one that does what it should"--Glen Phillips's cover of that song is BEYOND BRILLIANT, btw. And there's always Weird Al and "I Want A New Duck".)
3. This is the second time in 2011 I've had this problem, since my insurance company decided at the beginning of the year that it didn't want to cover Protonix, which I have been taking successfully for 10+ years. It would rather I take Prilosec, which is not as effective (I'm on a doubled dose, and am suspicious I may have to go back and tell my gastroenterologist that's not working either).
4. And this is with GOOD health insurance.
5. Also, our fourteen-year-old Saab has just gone pear-shaped. I think Friday the Thirteenth was just waiting until Saturday.
May 12, 2011
UBC: The Cases That Haunt Us
Douglas, John, and Mark Olshaker. The Cases That Haunt Us. New York: Lisa Drew-Scribner, 2000. [library]
FBI profiling techniques applied to famous unsolved (or dubiously solved) crimes: Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, Bruno Hauptmann, the Zodiac, JonBenet Ramsey, the Black Dahlia, the Boston Strangler, and Laurie Bembenek. (It's odd, looking at that sentence, how some crimes are known, in shorthand, for their victim, some for the criminal, and some for the person accused. And the Lindbergh case is immediately recognizable from both sides.) Douglas and Olshaker are very rational, very commonsensical, and fundamentally their technique is to say, This is the crime. These are the requirements for a perpetrator. This is how we might (in 2000) go about catching such a perpetrator. This is how the accused does, or does not, meet these requirements. They figure Lizzie did it; that Hauptmann did it, but didn't act alone; and that accusing JonBenet's parents is nonsense.
This was a good read, very engaging, well laid out as a narrative, very convincing. My only complaint is
Otherwise, excellent book. Recommended if you're interested in criminology at all.
FBI profiling techniques applied to famous unsolved (or dubiously solved) crimes: Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, Bruno Hauptmann, the Zodiac, JonBenet Ramsey, the Black Dahlia, the Boston Strangler, and Laurie Bembenek. (It's odd, looking at that sentence, how some crimes are known, in shorthand, for their victim, some for the criminal, and some for the person accused. And the Lindbergh case is immediately recognizable from both sides.) Douglas and Olshaker are very rational, very commonsensical, and fundamentally their technique is to say, This is the crime. These are the requirements for a perpetrator. This is how we might (in 2000) go about catching such a perpetrator. This is how the accused does, or does not, meet these requirements. They figure Lizzie did it; that Hauptmann did it, but didn't act alone; and that accusing JonBenet's parents is nonsense.
This was a good read, very engaging, well laid out as a narrative, very convincing. My only complaint is
Otherwise, excellent book. Recommended if you're interested in criminology at all.
May 11, 2011
Heard Museum
On Monday morning, I took Phoenix's light rail to the Heard Museum. I did not have time to do it justice, but I am very glad I went. The two stand-out exhibits, for me, were Jesse Monongye: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies and Remembering Our Indian School Days: The Boarding School Experience.
If I get back to the Southwest again, I want to spend more time there.
If I get back to the Southwest again, I want to spend more time there.
