Chicago, Chicago

Hey All,

Whoa.  It's been too long.  No excuses.  I just haven't been into blogging.  I'm still reading, but couldn't get myself into writing.  In the interest of full disclosure, I have finished The Devil in the White City, and am now nearly finished The Englishman's Boy.  I'll write this post about the book I've already read, then move on to the one I'm reading in my next post.

I don't know if it's the book (The Devil in the White City), or the stupid Canadian weather.  I was pretty engrossed in the book while reading it, but I was grossed out by the weather (in early December).  This is the first book that I haven't blogged about while reading it.  I won't go into the reasons, but it's not because I don't like it.

There's certainly no shortage of things to write about with The Devil in the White City.  It's the most well-written piece of history I have ever read, and that's a lot of history.  As I mentioned in my last post, I majored in History while at university.  In my last undergraduate year, I wrote a thesis on a particular author's body of work, analyzing it from a critical historical viewpoint.  That author is Thomas Raddall, a Nova Scotian who wrote stories about that province in the first half of the twentieth century.  His books were not works of history in the academic sense, as his audience was more populist.  He didn't footnote, or cite references in his books, but he was very popular, and his body of work influenced the modern view of Nova Scotia and it's history, for better or worse.  Erik Larson, the author of The Devil in the White City, while not as popular as Raddall was in his time, is a much better historian.  In this case, I judge it from the academic viewpoint, and not necessarily from the sellable viewpoint.  What I mean by "sellable" is a work's value to the reading, and therefore buying, public.  I guess I could call it a work's marketability.  

My Masters degree is in Public History, which is exactly what Erik Larson has created in this book.  It is also what Thomas Raddall wrote when he wrote most of his works, but, I would argue, with a different scale and value to them.  Any book (or movie, or television show, for that matter) that purports to depict a part of history, with at least an attempt to be accurate to history, is a work of public history ("Public history" is a difficult term, in and of itself.  While in graduate school, we debated it, and many historians still can't come to a consensus).

What I like about The Devil in the White City is that Larson is both very accurate (I have no reason to doubt the veracity of his historical claims) and a really good writer.  I was drawn into the multiple plots that took place over the course of the book (one, about the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, another about a serial killer, and still another about a man in Chicago at the same time who was delusional).  Knowing how difficult it is to weave a story out of the bits and pieces of history, I marvel, too, at Larson's research and ability to spin those bits and pieces into such a cohesive tale.

That's not to say the book is faultless.  As a writer, he used the same writing tricks over and over (too complicated to explain.  Errrr, maybe I'm just too lazy.  Either way, you don't get an example this time), and, rather than flowing paragraphs, he broke up sections where he wants to change topics with paragraph dividers.  Weak.  Plus, the book went on a little too long for my liking, which happens a lot when you get into history. For one, with history, academically speaking, to be accurate, one needs to be thorough.  Thoroughness can lead to length, for sure, which, for many of us nowadays, can be tedious.  I count myself among the group of people who has a short attention span.  

I like history, but I'm not a history buff; I recognized a long time ago that what I like about history is the second part of the work, "story".  I have always loved being told, listening to, reading, and watching stories.  I am happy to go along on a ride, if that ride adds to the thrill of the story.  Often, however, there's lots of prattling on in history books (and other kinds, too) that doesn't add to the overall effectiveness of the story.  Larson did a good job of trimming much of the fat, in The Devil in the White City, but he didn't get all of it.  At over 400 pages, it's just too long for my taste.

Enough with that book.  Great recommendation, Keltie.  I'm glad I read it, and sorry I didn't blog about it more.  It gave me an opportunity to talk about my specialty, though, which was a nice change.  On to The Englishman's Boy, but not until my next post.

I have just two quick side notes about my blogging: first, I still, happily, have my bookmark.  Secondly, I'm way behind schedule now.  WAY.  And once I'm done The Englishman's Boy, I'm taking on Anna Karenina, which won't help.  But I should have a lot more time on my hands in the new year, at least the first few months, so hopefully I can catch up a little bit.

-Bryan