The Architect and the Archvillain

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was a Kindle version - found one typo.

Larson has used the Simon Winchester trick of starting with the very end of the story and then suddenly starting over. Okay, maybe other people use that, I just associate it with Winchester. Larson chooses to tell two stories, one of the creation of the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago and the serial-killer-next-door (inevitably bringing to mind The Professor and the Madman). Both narratives, I suppose, could be called stories of obsession. The building of the White City is tacitly compared with the building of the serial killer's dreamhouse-of-death, also making the comparison between Burnham and Holmes.

Both stories are engrossing and I've rated this pretty highly considering how much I complained about it. Holmes's story reads more like fiction. I have, consequently, more notes on the notes themselves than for the narrative. How can we know what Holmes was thinking? And if he wrote a memoir or confession (which of course he did), how can we trust the word of a psychopath? How can we know the details of how one of his victims died and his reaction? I take issue with this. Oh, it's evocative and thrilling and all, but can it be called non-fiction?

In the notes, Larson gives his excuses, which I still find thin. He makes speculations based on other people's speculations or "improves" on other people's speculations. I would also complain about the ghoulishness of writing about this, but I can't because I read Caleb Carr ... and then scoff that characters like that don't exist in real life. Guess I can't do that anymore.

To round things out on this topic, I'm going to re-read the fictional materials: The White City by Alec Michod as well as Fair Weather by Richard Peck (just to get the taste out of my mouth).




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