Sarah Monette's Blog, page 8

The Richard Slotkin Reading Club

So here's the deal. I have managed to find all three books of Richard Slotkin's trilogy about the mythology of the frontier in America, Regeneration through Violence, The Fatal Environment, and Gunfighter Nation. These are fat books, an easy 600 pages a piece, and they are academically dense in their language, the sort of books where if you assigned one for a class, you'd space the response assignments out over the whole semester because nobody can just sit down and read the damn thing cover to cover. Your brain would fall out.

Since I want to read these books, what I'm going to do is treat them kind of as if I were reading them for a class: read a chapter, write a commentary, read something else, then come back, read another chapter, write another commentary. The Richard Slotkin Reading Club, membership 1.

I will tag and label these posts (which I am writing essentially for myself) so that they can be avoided by the sensible. But you're certainly free to read them if you want to.

UBC: Wise, The Italian Boy

The Italian Boy: A Tale of Murder and Body Snatching in 1830s London by Sarah Wise

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



This book is amazing. It sets out to do several things, and it does all of them elegantly and in meticulous detail, which is not a common combination.

The central focus of the book is the trial of John Bishop, Thomas Williams (aka Thomas Head and a whole host of other names), and James May for "burking" a vagrant boy. "Burking," from William Burke, means to murder someone for the value of their corpse, specifically in order to sell them to an anatomy school for use in the teaching of dissection. They boy they murdered and hawked around the London medical schools may or may not have been Carlo Ferrari aka Charles Ferrier, an Italian street vagrant in his early teens. Carlo was one of an unknown number of Italian boys who--proving that Dickens' imagination wasn't as good as modern readers might like to think--were brought to England by padroni (for which read Fagin) and sent out into the streets to beg or play instruments or exhibit animals (Carlo was known to have two white mice he kept in a cage strapped to his chest and/or a tortoise) or pick pockets. All proceeds returned to the padroni; the boys were destitute vagrants. And they were only a subset of the vagrant child and adolescent population of London. Bishop and Williams both claimed the boy they were tried for murdering was a drover's boy they found in Smithfield.

So in recounting the course of the trial, Wise is also examining the resurrection trade in London in the 1820s and '30s, examining adolescent vagrancy, and examining the (almost entirely undocumented) lives of the destitute urban poor. Plus the workings of justice. And she's watching London watch itself, as it tries to figure out how to be a city in the brave new world of the Industrial Revolution. Her endnotes are full of the history of the buildings and streets of London, noting which are still there and which were demolished and when and where they were.

This is a fascinating book, beautifully written and lively and full of sympathy for the desperate lives the urban poor were struggling through. She analyses carefully, pulling back to assess the convicted murderers' stories, the various witnesses' stories, the muddle made of the case's forensics, the hypocrisy, visible also in the case of Burke and Hare, where nobody goes on trial or gets put in jail for buying corpses, even if they've bought a corpse they should clearly have been able to tell had never been buried. (In this way, the resurrection trade is much like prostitution.)

If you're interested in nineteenth century London in any capacity, I highly recommend this book.



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Der Winterkaiser

Der Winterkaiser, the German edition of The Goblin Emperor, is out from FISCHER Tor.

Why, no, I am not at all beside myself with glee. Why do you ask?

Photo reference, Young Men and Fire

The Mann Gulch fire, August 5, 1949, killed thirteen men, twelve Smokejumpers and the ranger stationed in Meriwether Gulch. (I find it interesting and sad that while, in 1949, Meriwether Gulch was the tourist attraction that the Forest Service was focused on preserving, today when you Google for it, it only comes up associated with Mann Gulch.)



One of the four men in this picture is William Hellman. In his book Young Men and Fire, Norman Maclean mentions that Hellman "only a month before [the Mann Gulch fire] had made a parachute landing on the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument" (Maclean 29). The person who put this on Pinterest captioned it "Ford Trimotor w/USFS Smokejumpers - including Skip Stratton and William Hellman. This four man crew did a jump on the White House lawn to highlight the new field of Smokejumping."

Skip Stratton, his obituary tells me, was the leader of the crew that retrieved the bodies from Mann Gulch. Merle Stratton, the Smokejumper who got so airsick he didn't make the jump into Mann Gulch, doesn't seem to have been related.



Bill Hellman and Joe Sylvia were the two Smokejumpers who were caught in the fire and survived, horribly burned, for less than 24 hours.


Portraits of all thirteen, from Flickr, here, where the image can be enlarged.

oldmantravels has a bunch more photographs about the Mann Gulch fire in this Flickr album.

And here, by the way, is the website of the National Smokejumper Association.

UBC: Rule, Lust Killer

Lust Killer by Ann Rule

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Long form suits Ann Rule a good deal better, as does having an agenda. There's a reason she's writing about Jerry Brudos, and that reason informs her story-telling.

Her reason, of course, is the same reason that makes The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy The Shocking Inside Story compelling: educating her readers, specifically her young female readers, on the existence of men like Brudos, on the fact that you can't protect yourself from them by being "good" (or "bad," for that matter), and that if one targets you, cooperation almost certainly means your death. Good girls who cooperate are exactly what a man like Brudos wants; it makes them easy prey.

The most horrifying thing about Jerry Brudos is that I'd never heard of him, that there are so many serial killers like him that his name doesn't hold a charge. (The dubious upside to this observation is that it would have infuriated him, Brudos, like others of his ilk, having had a poisonously swollen ego.) If you are interested in serial killers, this is a good case study, clearly written and compelling and, as she quoted from Ted Bundy's letters, she quotes from Brudos' petitions and appeals written in prison--that kind of primary evidence, when available, is certainly the quickest way to get a visceral understanding of how someone like this thinks.

I'm interested in true crime as a genre. This is a good example of how to tell a no-frills story cleanly and concisely. It would be a good choice for representing Ann Rule in a class on twentieth-century American true crime writing.



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N.b., this is the 201st nonfiction book I've reviewed under the unread book challenge tag.

UBC: Rule, In the Name of Love and Other True Cases

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In the Name of Love: Danville, CA, 1987 (the murder of Jerry Lee Harris and the completely batshit insane plot to kill his wife)
"Murder and the Proper Housewife": Bellevue, WA, 1974 (attempted murder-for-hire, orchestrated by a woman who felt her best friend would be better off with the best friend's husband's trust fund instead of the husband; n.b., the best friend had no idea)
"The Most Dangerous Game": Index, WA, 1971 (sociopath befriends, stalks, and nearly murders two teenage girls)
"How It Feels to Die": Seattle, 1979 (abusive stalker ex-husband comes within a fraction of an inch (or a smattering of cc's of blood) of murdering his ex-wife's three roommates)

Meh.

Mostly, short form is not Ann Rule's A-game. The short pieces (articles instead of books) are flat and kind of aimless. The book-length piece, In the Name of Love, suffered a weird disconnect for me. Rule talks outright about how much she liked Susan Harris and how much she felt she would have liked Jerry Lee Harris, and while I certainly felt sympathy for both of them, I didn't like either of them, and I actually kind of feel I would have disliked Jerry Lee Harris intensely. This is not to say that I think he "deserved" to be murdered or anything of the sort--nor do I think that I need to like the protagonists of a true crime story--but there comes a point as a reader where the more an author tries to make me like a character, the more I set my heels and pin my ears back and refuse to budge. And it makes the experience of reading weird and a little uncomfortable.

Also uncomfortable was her use of "nerd" as a derogatory term to describe the murderer, when (a) even in 1998, "nerd" was a derogatory term only if you were a "jock," Revenge of the Nerds style, and (b) Steve Bonilla is a horrible human being and a complete loser, but he isn't a nerd. He isn't fucking smart enough. (Present tense because, hey, Bonilla is still on death row.)

Basically, Rule and I come from very different social backgrounds, and sometimes the evidence of this in her unexamined assumptions about her readers becomes really jarring.



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UBC: Jackson, No Stone Unturned

No Stone Unturned: The True Story of NecroSearch International, the World's Premier Forensic Investigators by Steve Jackson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book suffers a little from not being sure whether it's the history of NecroSearch International or the history of the major cases NecroSearch had (by publication in 2002) helped solve. From a true crime perspective, it's interesting to read the course of the investigations and how the detectives searching for Michele Wallace, Diane Keidel, Cher Elder, and Christine Elkins came to the point of asking NecroSearch for help, but from a history-of-NecroSearch perspective, I'm actually way more interested in the experiments with pigs and the forensics of all their cases, not just these big dramatic success stories.

Other than that, this is competently written and engaging and certainly well worth reading.



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UBC: Cook, The Great Wisconsin Manhunt of 1961

The Great Wisconsin Manhunt of 1961 by Marshall Cook

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a very good piece of local history. The narrative voice has a pleasantly informal, storytelling air, Cook organizes his facts well, and he fits the extraordinary events of August 1961 into the ordinary flow and cycle of life and history in Sauk County.



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UBC: Guice, ed., By His Own Hand?

By His Own Hand?: The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis by John D.W. Guice

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


(N.b., I'm writing this review on the one hundred seventh anniversary of Meriwether Lewis's death.)




This slim volume (as I believe the correct phrase is) consists of the arguments for (John D. W. Guice) and against (James J. Holmberg) the homicide theory in the death of Meriwether Lewis, supported and surrounded by non-partisan essays and with a selection of the relevant documents (which I personally would find more helpful if they had stuck to transcriptions and not bothered with photographing Lewis' diary and Clark's letters (beautiful handwriting though both of them had).

And the thing we need to talk about is what constitutes evidence of which.

1. Character assessments of Meriwether Lewis and whether he was or was not feeling suicidal when he came to Grinder's Reach are NOT RELEVANT to the question of whether someone murdered him. The fact that William Clark, Lewis's friend and exploration partner, and Thomas Jefferson, Lewis's patron and employer, both felt he was capable of killing himself and were certainly not surprised to learn that he had, while it lends credence to the idea that he might have committed suicide, has nothing to do with whether his death, on the evidence, can be judged self-inflicted or not. Just because he might have killed himself is not proof that someone else didn't beat him to it.

(1.a. Suicidal depression has nothing to do with "character" or "strength of will"; admitting that Lewis was prone to what we today would call clinical depression or major depressive disorder (or, possibly, was bipolar) is not a denigration of him as a person and casts no shadow on his accomplishments. So just leave that strawman out already, okay?)

2. What we have in the way of evidence is a collection of unreliable testimony from eyewitnesses, none of whom saw the shots fired (Lewis was shot twice, once in the head and once in the torso, with his own .69 caliber flintlock pistols; bonus point: a .69 caliber pistol ball is half an inch in diameter), and most of whom weren't there when Lewis received his fatal injuries. The exception is Priscilla Grinder, whose story seems to have changed depending on who she was talking to. Hearsay accounts from Captain Gilbert Russell (especially when he doesn't explain where he's getting his information from) are not evidence. It certainly seems like the 1848 Monument Committee, when they exhumed Lewis's body to rebury him beneath his monument in Hohenwald, Tennessee (milepost 385.9 on the Natchez Trace Parkway), saw something that made them suspicious, since they officially endorsed the murder theory, but they didn't explain themselves, and the National Park Service has steadfastly refused to allow a second exhumation. So that's not actually evidence either.

3. Yes, the Natchez Trace was dangerous. Yes, after dark on a night of the new moon in Tennessee is going to be pitch fucking black and Mrs. Grinder probably couldn't see much of anything happening in the yard beyond the door she refused to open. IF the version of her story in which Lewis wandered pathetically around the yard begging for water is the closest version to the truth. Which seems doubtful. The story she told nearest in time to the actual events, the story relayed by Neelly (who himself seems to have been a somewhat unreliable witness), is much simpler and, by Occam's Razor and what I know of the effects of (1) time on human memory; (2) leading questions from an interlocutor; and (3) the desire of an interview subject to tell a story that will please the interviewer, I suspect that that first version is true--or, at least, as close as we can get:

the woman reports that about three o'clock she heard two pistols fire off in the Governors Room. the servants being awakined by her, came in but too late to save him. he had shot himself in the head with one pistol & a little below the Breast with the other. when his servant came in he says, I have done the business my good servant give me some water. he gave him water, he survived but a short time, I came up some time after, & had him as decently Buried as I could in that place.
(150)

Could Priscilla Grinder be lying? Yes, of course, although she'd have to bring the servants in on the deal, and Lewis's personal servant John Pernier had no reason to go along with it, especially once he was away from Grinder's Stand. (Pernier did commit suicide--or, at least, Jefferson passed on the story that he committed suicide--in 1810, which might, or might not, be evidence of a guilty conscience.) Could James Neelly be lying? Yes, of course, although he'd have to bring the servants and the Grinders in on it, and that starts getting iffier and iffier as you go.

The case for homicide seems to rest mostly on inconsistencies in the eyewitness testimony and is significantly lacking in both suspects and motive (aside from highway robbery, but none of the evidence really seems to fit that. The case for suicide rests mostly on character testimonials and evidence from people who saw Lewis in the time leading up to his death. It's one of those irritating situations where I agree with Holmberg but find his argument completely unconvincing because he seems to have no ability to understand what constitutes evidence. Guice does a better job, but I'm not persuaded by him, either.

Most likely scenario: Meriwether Lewis, possibly on the downward swing of a bipolar cycle, possibly simply in a suicidal depression (either way, please remember, this is a mental illness; it has nothing to do with either Lewis's character or his situation as viewed rationally), used his .69 caliber flintlocks to kill himself. (I did like the testimony of the gun expert Guice found, who said, "Personally I am doubtful that anyone could shoot himself twice with such a weapon as the learning curve from this type of self-abuse would be quite nearly vertical" (94).) Homicide is less likely, but I could absolutely be convinced with the presentation/discovery of better evidence.



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UBC: Maclean, The Thirtymile Fire

The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal by John N. Maclean

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Like Maclean's other books that I have read (The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57 and Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire) and, of course, his father's brilliant Young Men and Fire, the story of the Thirtymile Fire is the story of people doing the best they can in a tremendously dangerous situation, and what happens when, quite suddenly, "best" isn't good enough. Maclean is very good (and gets better from Fire on the Mountain through The Thirtymile Fire to The Esperanza Fire) at reconstructing the chain of decisions that resulted in catastrophe; both the South Canyon Fire and the Thirtymile Fire are histories of one tiny bad decision layered on top of another tiny bad decision until somehow you end up with dead firefighters. Only four people died in the Thirtymile Fire, but Maclean makes it clear that that was luck as much as anything else--luck and the random flukes of topography in the Chewuch River canyon.

It's sad and sobering how much of both the South Canyon and Thirtymile disasters were caused by bureaucracy, by resources (helicopters, tanker planes, etc.) that were available sitting unused until it was too late for them to do any good simply because nobody with the authority to do so ordered them out. A lot of decisions in modern wildfire-fighting get made by people who aren't on the scene, and that's necessary, but Maclean shows very clearly that it can also be dangerous right on up to lethal.



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