The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett was published in the magazine Redbook in 1934. While Hammett never wrote a sequel in novel form, he went on to pen the stories for six Thin Man films, despite the literal "thin man" perishing in the only book. 

ALLISON:           

It’s no use beating around the bush. I really liked this book. Really, really. Outside of Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, this is the most entertaining reading experience I’ve had in some time. I was trying to think of why I liked this book so much, especially as there are things that I’ve come to expect in crime novels that Hammett’s Thin Man doesn’t address. For example, I wasn’t particularly challenged or inspired to figure out the mystery—I took a wild guess that the murderer was Dorothy in the opening pages and was contented not to think about it from there on out. Also, my heart wasn’t tugged for the victim, she wasn’t built as a sympathetic character. And I wasn’t worried for the health and fitness of our heroes, although this isn’t Hammett’s fault. I had mistakenly assumed there were subsequent Nick and Nora novels, assuring their safe passage through this one. There are not more books, I’ve learned—only a series of Nick and Nora movies, also penned by Hammett. Nevertheless, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of suspense or edge of my seat sitting.

What I’ve listed are qualities that usually enhance a crime novel, but there are also typical interferers in the genre, devices that turn my stomach, or irritate me. As a critical feminist, I often struggle with the mores of masculine mysteries. Especially (ESPECIALLY!!) when the victim is a pretty young woman. There’s too much romanticization of women and violence in our media. Much to my chagrin, I was not piqued, not even a little, by this crime novel written in the 1930’s. I said to a coworker at the bookshop, “It’s the best kind of misogyny. The women send it back in equal measure.” I exaggerate of course, (the women are interesting, and certainly tough—the victim is killed because of her association with crime, not other more passionate and clichéd reasons) but much like the Ferrante novels, I didn’t worry about feminism while I was reading. Which is rare. While everyone is calling the Neapolitan novels triumphs of feminist literature, I find myself silently commenting, “Or, they are just good.”  Fully comprehending the benefits of scrutinizing art and media for their commentary on our cultural norms, I’m not chuckling that Ferrante’s books about a female friendship are so transcendent that men (gasp! MEN!) stand at the bookstore counter thumbing through the pastel soap opera covers. Likewise, I’m not aghast that Nora thinks dirty old men are entertaining, enabling a casual yet potentially sinister chauvinism. Because The Thin Man is just good. It’s worth saying, though that I find a crime novel to be exceptional (and I find many, many crime novels thus) is quite a bit less frustrating than the rest of the world’s surprise that a book about women should be so fantastic.

            None of this is to say The Thin Man isn’t political. One of the more startling characters in the novel is alcohol. Everyone drinks, all the time. The lawyers, the brokers, the gangsters, and even the cops. No one drinks more than Nick Charles, who despite downing a drink for every new thought, is never drunk. The only drink Nick refuses is the one offered by Guild, the police detective on the case. He abstains not because he worries about the cop (the pair have shared a drink at other opportunities) rather because of his experience with the quality of cops’ drink. The book was published in 1934, the near the time Prohibition was repealed after thirteen dry years. Late in the novel Nick says to Nora, “This excitement has put us behind on our drinking,” Drinking, despite its criminality, is an obligation, like paperwork. The alcohol consumption in The Thin Man is not sustainable. That Nick remains so lucid throughout the novel, despite the drinking and being shot in the gut within the first few pages, is a stretch. We forget his injury, even as he engages in a few physical altercations. The stitches only pop in the final reveal, as he tosses a punch at the murderer, reminding us that Nick has been tussling baddies with a belly full of booze and a bullet wound! One would think he’d have bled to death, his blood thinned to zero. The quantity drunk is ridiculous, certainly lethal, but fictionally imbibing with such obsessive punctuation can serve as a tipsy flip of the bird at the establishment.

            So Nick Charles is a tolerant man. Beyond his capacity for drink and pain, he is a successful sleuth because he can endure people. In this way he reminds me of my husband, who is not a private investigator, but a bartender. Todd rarely drinks but he deals with drunks for a living, drunks who come to the bar every evening, stay there all night, paying our rent, while considering Todd their best friend. He might be. Or might just be working. You have to be pretty obnoxious, or dangerous, for Todd to kick you out, but he’s not hesitant to put you in your place or tell a joke at your expense. All the characters in The Thin Man are desperate to win Nick’s favor, even as he claims he takes no sides. He’s everyone’s best friend, even when they shoot him in the gut. This is not the typical PI trope. He may be drunk, but he’s not a depressive or a wreck. He’s magnetic, the trouble, the talk and inevitable slips of truth, gravitating to him like the most popular kid in the room.

           I liked this book a lot. I liked it’s cheerful, sometimes silly tone punched with moments of chilling violence. I loved Nick’s bland distrust of everyone besides his quick-witted and unflappable wife. The dialogue is stunning, unmatched and somehow untimely—stylized but still relevant to today-speak. The one littlest question that never found an answer is why Nick started investigating in the first place. Curiosity would have brought him only so far, unless I’m mistaken, he wasn’t hired by anyone in particular, rather begged with by everyone specifically. Nick’s final monologue summarizing the crime was a bit over the top, (the added parentheticals or details assumed and proven through future investigations was particularly laughable) considering the man hardly uttered more than three consecutive sentences. BUT, overall, this book was true good fun, and I give it a whomping 2 out of 10 (1 being the highest) and am really excited to sit down for a Thin Man movie marathon in the coming weekend.  

Wes:

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett is an interesting detective story that became a rage in the early 1930s as its sharp repartee was easily translatable to the screen. The interesting relations between the main characters, Nick Charles and his classy heiress-wife Nora, also surely became infectious to the reading public as several of Hammett’s books were widely read and subsequently translated to the screen. Probably the most popular was The Maltese Falcon, which surely went a long way to making Humphrey Bogart a star. I heard that six “Thin Man” films were made featuring Nick and Nora Charles and their dog, Asta, the latter somehow transmogrified from a larger, more intimidating dog in the book to a small scaredy-cat dog in the movies.      

The book begins with Charles and his new wife vacationing in New York where Charles, an ex-gumshoe, is accosted by a young woman he once knew as a child when he was working as a detective. She was now looking for her long-lost father, a former client of Charles’. He passes her to the father’s lawyer and tries to move on but despite his best efforts to avoid it, he is drawn more and more into the case of the missing father. The problems intensify when people start dying and the papers mistakenly mention him as being on the case, a fact which brings a thug to his bedside with a pistol pointed at his gut. The thug lets one off when the cops suddenly show up and Charles is only grazed (the thin man??) but now has some literal skin in the game. The cops roust the thug and think Charles knows more than he does. Charles has to cooperate and, to avoid a gun possession rap, he thereafter exercises some of his old methods and contacts trying to work with the cops in solving the case.

The story is a real easy and quick read as it is almost non-stop dialogue. Nick Charles continually has run-ins with a wide range of interesting characters as he tries to find out why Julia Wolf and Arthur Nunheim are killed and who the killer(s) are. He moves around the speakeasies and invites a range of characters to his hotel suites as he and his wife wait for the New Year celebration. We never actually see them as the New Year (1933) never arrives before the end. It must have been quite a description if it had, because they spend almost all their time drinking, drunk, or waking up after noon with hangovers. To make a different New Year’s Day would have to be a day when they didn’t drink – that would be a celebration, I guess. In any case he solves the murders a day or two prior to the New Year and then decide to leave for home – San Francisco – before the big day.   

            The emphasis on booze in this book seems a clear intent to get prohibition repealed. Nearly everyone is boozing it up and the stuff is supposed to be illegal! The cops even are offered drinks and are offering up bottles out of their bottom drawers down at the precinct. The book has some weird things that in some cases are false leads and others seem a bit off – such as the long five page piece on cannibalism that Nick gives to Dorothy’s brother when he makes an off-the-cuff query on whether Nick knows anything about cannibals. After the book was finished, I had to ask what was up with that? Maybe the author needed some bulk to get to 200 pages – I can’t figure what else that section might mean.    

            One of the best quotes in the book was one that seemed very meaningful this month (October 2015) as one of our former leaders has been under the gun for truthfulness. Charles put her dilemma very succinctly in his description of Mimi Jorgensen’s stories:

‘The chief thing,’ I (Nick) advised them (Lt. Guild and Nora), ‘is not to let her tire you out. When you catch her in a lie, she admits it and gives you another lie to take its place and, when you catch her in that one, admits it and gives you still another, and so on. Most people – even women – get discouraged after you caught them in the third or fourth straight lie and fall back on either the truth or silence, but not Mimi. She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.’

Overall the story line moved forward quickly but I found some of the clues that Nick uncovered did not follow too closely when reading the wrap-up at the end when he discussed all the clues that led him to discover who the killer was and where all the dead bodies were. I did not recall some of the logic he came up with but the author must have had them covered since he conceived the whole thing. I guess the thin man was really intended to be the dead man in the grave with the fat man’s clothes. I am also still looking for the meaning of “dromomania” and “earysipelas.” I have a large college dictionary and neither of these obscure terms is defined. This was a good read and I look forward to seeing the various movies when they show up on The Movie Channel. I rate this book as a 4 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best). 

The Reef by Edith Wharton

The Reef was published in 1912 and regarded by Wharton as her most autobiographical novel.

Wes:

Having finished The Reef a couple of weeks ago, it has been difficult for me to sit down and write my impressions of this novel after such a hiatus. From now on I will try to write the post up as soon as possible afterwards. I guess this is one of the symptoms of old age – the mind loses track of details needed to fill out one’s considerations about a story like this one. The Reef by Edith Wharton is a quite interesting story about love and hymeneal loyalties at the end of the Victorian era.     

George Darrow is a young American diplomatic staffer who has rekindled his first love after meeting Anna Leath at a diplomatic function in London. Though widowed with a child and step-son, she is relatively well off, living in France, and they both appear to have fallen back into a loving relationship that was interrupted some 12 years before in America when they were children. Now they plan to marry but Darrow is much disturbed when he obtains leave to meet her in France and gets a sudden letter from her stating there are “unexpected obstacles” and not to come visit for at least a fortnight. Not knowing what to do with his time, he meets an interestingly vivacious woman, Sophy Viner, at Dover, and they end up having an affair for some days in Paris as Darrow waits for word on when he can come to meet Anna. George has no long term designs on Sophy, he merely saw repression in her that generated “pity she inspired (that) made Darrow long to fill her few free hours to the brim.”

Forced after his leave to return to work, he finally gets to visit the Anna’s estate at Givré some months later. The plot thickens when he is shocked to find that Sophy has now been hired as governess for Anna’s daughter, Effie, and it really thickens when later the reader discovers that her brash and immature step-son, Owen, is secretly engaged to Sophy, a factor which is likely to cause much dissention with the mother-in-law, Madame de Chantelle, who will likely want better for her grandson. Anna promises her step-son she will defend his suit to her mother-in-law. Meanwhile, George wonders whether Sophy should be left with Effie while George and Anna move to Argentina and whether she is good enough for Owen. He also has to hide the fact that he and Sophy had a tryst after he had proposed to Anna. His feelings for Sophy at this point are summed up in this sentence, “The bare truth, indeed, was that he had hardly thought of her at all, either at that time or since, and that he was ashamed to base his judgment of her on his meager memory of their adventure.”  

As one can predict, Darrow tries to wean Sophy away from Owen and hide their relationship but is observed by the youth in his secretive discussions with Sophy. The entire affair is discovered and the relationships blow up under the Victorian ethos that an affair is a great and unforgivable shame to the woman and a minor misadventure or character flaw in the man. Anna vacillates between her new distrust of George and her love for him. Much of the second half of the book is absorbed with Anna’s dilemma on how she can build a marriage severely inhibited by her distrust. They break up and separate for a while and have conversations where neither he nor she can articulate what they really feel. A good synopsis of her feelings is the following when George wants her to tell him whether he should leave and both take a hiatus in their relationship:

She felt a mortal weakness, a craven impulse to cry out to him to stay, a longing to throw herself into his arms, and take refuge there from the unendurable anguish he had caused her. Then the vision called up another thought: ‘I shall never know what that girl has known…’ and the recoil of pride flung her back on the sharp edges of her anguish. ‘Good-bye,’ she said.

Sophy also found the situation unendurable and decided to leave and does. Ultimately, we find she has gone to India with her former employer from whom she originally fled to Paris and whose inn was where George and she first met when he was a lodger and she a servant. Anna and George get back together when George takes her to his room and she discovers that he really does love her and the 800 lb. gorilla in the room was her own distrust of him. She reasons that when they become intimate there “will be no room for any doubts between us.” This is essentially what happens. So I guess the Victorian ethos of the effects of illicit affairs really did win out in the end. George did not suffer a devastating and fatal blow by his actions but Sophy, on the other hand, was banished to the outer realm.

The extensive musings over Anna’s and George’s feelings were the highlights of the book for me. Just about every aspect of Anna’s deep feeling of betrayal and distrust were analyzed by the author as well as George’s rationale that his short affair was a fling largely caused by his doubt whether Anna’s really wanted to marry him. He really loved her and searched a way to show it to her to alleviate her despair. The book’s detailed analysis reminded me of Leonid Andreyev’s short stories The Seven that were Hanged where every conceivable fear and aspect of death by hanging are explicitly and excruciatingly discussed. They say this book is autobiographical so I’m sure something similar to Anna’s despair was felt by Edith Wharton at some point in her life.

One unresolved issue is why the book was called The Reef in the first place. That word never appears in the whole book. I looked it up and it is either an underwater ridge of sand or rocks at or near the surface or the part of a sail that the sailor can pull in or let out to change the wind effects on the ship. I can only surmise that the reef was the affair that wrecked or threatened to wreck the subsequent lives of the characters in the book. Overall, this was a good read and I rate this book as a 4 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best). 

Allison:

“What are you reading?” is a question that bounces between booksellers almost competitively. Woe to the dry spell, or a binge on books in the Self-Help section, because no one wants to sincerely answer their peers with When Panic Attacks or The Easy Way to Quit Smoking yet again (although were you in need of such books, I highly recommend both, even if they must be read thirty to thirty-five times for success). Worse, perhaps, are the parenting books I’ve been noodling through for the past few weeks. “What are you reading?” “Oh, you know, pseudo-scientific evidence that I am heinous monster, inflicting irreparable damage to my child’s delicate psyche—and you?”

What a relief it was to be able to answer this question instead with a sophisticated shrug, “Just a little Edith Wharton.”

“Oh Edith,” all my bookselling friends sigh. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

“Um. Yes?”

I bet she is wonderful. There were so many wonderful things about The Reef, but I doubt it’s the place to start. I started asking my colleagues what they liked about her books and they said her writing was like Jane Austen but snarkier, that her pointed commentary on manners of the day rivaled Henry James. James comparisons are textbook. The Reef in particular deals with strikingly similar topics as another of our book club books, Daisy Miller, written by James himself. James’ Daisy embodied an experimental rebellion in which young women of a certain status and class choose to entertain the company of men without chaperones, and with full disregard of reputation. Daisy is studied, through the eyes of our man Winterbourne, a would-be suitor—if he weren’t so casually and bewilderingly rebuffed by Daisy. Daisy is either naively, or intentionally asexual with Winterbourne. This is the crux of James’ story—does or doesn’t Daisy know the danger she is provoking by not following the traditional rules of courtship? One of the triumphs of Daisy Miller is that because we, the reader, are only situated with Winterbourne’s imperfect observations, we only know Daisy through his particular (male) gaze. The conflict lives inside Winterbourne and Daisy remains free and unencumbered by even James’ judgement. James doesn’t try to answer why Daisy behaves as she does, only how Winterbourne comes to think she behaves thus.

Likewise, the enigmatic woman, Sophy, of Wharton’s The Reef is left untethered to her own point-of-view.  Why Sophy is who she is, is only explained through the descriptions of Darrow and Anna who belong to a wealthy leisure class. Sophy is lower working class, a servant in Anna’s house, in fact, governess to her nine-year-old daughter. This distinction alone makes her an unsuitable bride for Anna’s step-son, Owen, according to the older generation—Owen’s grandmother. (This also presents an awkward logistical situation—when Sophy becomes Anna’s daughter-in-law it is assumed she will also remain under her employment as the governess. Allowed into the family, but only so much…) The problem with marrying a blue collar is that anyone who has had to work to survive has been left vulnerable to all manner of unsavory experiences. BUT! No one suspects that Anna’s fiancé, distinguished Mr. Darrow, might be the source of Sophy’s most scandalous history.

Let us be frank. Sophy’s social missteps are dated, the outrage inspired, almost silly, by contemporary customs. But, the pain and confusion caused by Darrow’s diversion—Ah! Here in lies the meat of the novel. The lengths he goes to conceal, his frustration with guilt and justification, and the mental banter Anna entertains, her frantic back and forth of what she can forgive versus forget—all of this is timeless, the universal innards of romantic heartache. And it is depicted with agonizing accuracy. Who among us hasn’t asked themselves, what will I endure to be loved? How much can I love that which hurts?

But back to Sophy, because Wharton is known for her social criticism above all else. What I found most interesting about this book is Darrow’s attempts to sum up the drive of Sophy, even as his own lived experiences are insufficient. But Darrow will try. Darrow thinks he understands how Sophy’s class complicates her prospects. In an attempt to both exonerate himself with Anna, and explain why Sophy should not be invited into this family, and justify why he would have gifted the pitiable wretch with a scandalous week of intimacy, Darrow describes Sophy’s life as somehow more life—more hardship, more passion, more stake, more filth, more intensity—just more. Anna could never understand, Darrow says, because she hasn’t lived. Darrow explains this to Anna, with a qualifier that maybe one day, with a little more experience, Anna might understand (what, is unclear), like Sophy does. “When?” I wonder. Certainly not after marriage to Darrow’s incredibly boring self.

Anna almost falls for it. Almost, except of course, Anna has lived.

For example, Anna has been married and widowed. Darrow has not. Anna (I think she is a couple years older than Darrow) was the second wife of an already widowed man who had a son by his previously alive wife (depicted in the novel so breathtakingly as a large gilded painting shut up in a library that no one but Anna visits during the marriage). Anna bore a child, she developed a significant, if not motherly relationship with her step-son, Owen. She navigated a marriage, she experienced the death of a spouse, whether beloved or not, the qualifications are scarcely important to my point. She continues to live in a house very much governed by the matriarchal mother of her dead husband.

This is life, this is life despite its padding by wealth and relative safety. Anna has lived.

It’s Anna’s life, in fact, that Darrow longs to lead. He wants desperately to be her husband. To sit at the fire and take walks in the rain, and all the other boring things he laments when Anna says, “no.” What Darrow is doing is romanticizing Sophy’s poverty, while trivializing Anna’s incarcerating wealth in a loveless, bleak marriage. It’s standard patriarchy, really. These women, he depicts as merely products of their environment rather than active participants, but it is Wharton, after all, who is telling the story. For all of Anna’s waffling, all of Sophy’s pining, in the end, it is the women who win. Despite Darrow’s markedly manipulative efforts, they take charge of their fates by cutting him out of the equation—and disrupting his gross misinterpretation of their lives.  

After writing this review, I think I like this book more than I initially thought. I’ve grown up writing with the understanding that even women writers cannot help but to write from under the influence of the male point-of-view, because that is the “standard,” the base from which we learn to craft. Edith Wharton’s greatest influence and contemporary is a not a woman, it’s Henry James, yet The Reef takes care of the interior of her women characters in a way that James (using only Daisy Miller as reference) was wise enough not to attempt.

I rate this a 3 on Dad’s scale of 1-10 (1 being highest), even though it was not much fun to read.  Wharton’s descriptions often jumped off the page and hit me in the gut as not only explicitly identifiable in my own life, but perhaps the single best way of conveying it. Ask me what it’s like to experience road rage while walking down the street with an umbrella in New York City during a rainstorm and I will recite some Edith Wharton. That’s pretty badass in my book.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, 1962, was the last novel published by acclaimed writer Shirley Jackson. It was adapted into a play and a Broadway musical. 

Allison:          

Recently someone began talking to me about a book as if I had read it, because of course I had read it. Everyone’s read it, and especially a bookseller should have read it.

I hadn’t read it.

I wasn’t embarrassed. This happens to me a lot. I talk to people about books for a living, and so many books come out every year, I must be nothing but picky! Yet, this interaction reminded me that there are marked holes in my cannon. Holes I’ve been meaning to fill. Shirley Jackson was a hole. The Grandmamma of the Horror genre. Infamous for a short story called "The Lottery," that even if I didn’t read in high school, I’ve read enough academic thought about it, seen enough Twilight Zone episodes mimicking it, to get the jist. Shirley Jackson isn’t just a horror writer. She inspired the likes of Stephen King, but (as far as I know) she never had to fight the Stephen King battle between commercialism and legitimacy (so it be known, when I say “just a horror writer,” I mean it sarcastically. Any day of the week, I will argue that 100 years from now Stephen King will be one of the most important figures in American literature, despite what crank-pot Harold Bloom has to say...but I digress). There are lots of anomalies about Shirley Jackson. She is a woman who reigns supreme of a genre (horror) otherwise populated by men. Outside of her novels, she’s a housewife, editorially unattractive (every article I read about her makes a statement about her weight, but who says the same about George R. R. Martin?) and early death aside, fairly unscandalous. Shirley Jackson is considered high literature, while still wearing the crown of horror, because her work is thick with social commentary—teachable moments, if you will. And they are easy to find.

TIME magazine called We Have Always Lived in the Castle one of the best 10 books of 1962. I picked it for bookclub because I didn’t think it had any ghosts in it. I was right, no ghosts. What it does have is perhaps the most unreliable narrator I’ve ever encountered, in Mary Katherine, called Merricat, Blackwood. Spoiler alert, I am about to ruin everything if you’ve any interest in reading the book. Merricat is a sociopath, the scariest type, the one that successfully kills on a whim—poisons her entire family, excepting her beloved sister Constance and the accidentally spared, yet crippled, Uncle Julian. This isn’t explicitly said until the final chapters of the book, but I easily sussed it by chapter three. Merricat, who is in charge of the delivery of information as our first-person narrator, is obviously deranged. Her interior monologues reveal a development stuck in pre-adolescence, despite the fact that we know she’s eighteen years old. Merricat is incapable of considering the perspective of those around her. All of her interactions are based on a risk/benefit to her and her alone, demonstrating a lack of progression from egocentricity to empathetic response—a stage of childhood development that begins at about seven years old. There’s also something feral about her and her interactions with nature, which are expertly mirrored through her attention to the behavior of her cat and constant companion, Jonas.

We don’t really know why Merricat killed her family—her mother, her father, her brother, and aunt (Uncle Julian’s wife). All details about the murder and how it was accomplished are provided by Julian, who, like Merricat, is stuck in time. Julian is obsessed with the incident and spends his days recounting and recollecting any and all details he can muster about the night the family sat down for a dinner served by Constance, and ate berries sprinkled with poisoned sugar. Constance doesn’t take sugar with her berries, which made her the prime suspect. Merricat was absent, having been sent to her room without supper. Julian, although he has lived with her for six years post-murders, believes Merricat to also be dead, having succumbed to neglect in an orphanage during Constance’s long trial (although curiously, he professes Constance’s innocence, yet never then speculates on who did it). Julian doesn’t see Merricat at all, and deals only with Constance. Constance, frozen as well, has not once left the house since her release. Obviously she knows of Merricat’s guilt, yet has never revealed the truth, and has dutifully cared for her murderous sister and ailing Uncle year after year.

Most of the story’s symbolism is found in the peripheral characters, those not living in the “castle”. The town is divided into two groups: the working class townspeople and the outlying rich. All consider Constance guilty, despite her acquittal. Most brutally portrayed, is the sheepish mass of the working class, who are villainously jealous of the Blackwood’s wealth and their snobbish isolation. They begrudge the large house and the shortcut through the property that Merricat and Constance’s mother had barred their access years ago. The rich are painted less vindictive, yet petty and frankly, stupid, considering any contact with the Blackwoods to be novelty and status-building. Fame is attractive, despite the manner under which it is acquired. These tropes were designed (among other things) to create sympathy for Constance especially, but also Merricat and Uncle Julian. All of this was fairly stated and obvious, bordering didactic, therefore not that interesting to me.

My biggest problem with the book was setting the perspective with Merricat. Making your main character a legitimate psychopath is risky business because the average non-psychopathic individual cannot relate to this train of thought. For me, it was a suspension of disbelief that I couldn’t sustain. It was ultimately impossible to believe Jackson could manifest a true interior of a murderous sociopath, having never been a psychopath herself. This is my problem, I know. Also why I won't read American Psycho. We could argue all day about the writing of fiction from the perspective of an opposing gender, or a different nationality, creed, or class. There are thousands of examples that are truly successful, and countless more failures. It is the job of the fiction writer to create a world that is believable, sustained through the book and many would probably find Merricat’s perspective, while fictional, valid and fascinating. Just not me. Crazy is one thing—but psychopath is too easy. Psychopathy is often used as a device in a murder story that doesn’t need to follow any logic, it doesn’t have to abide by any base motivation. It’s like science fiction, where reality is dictated by the parameters limited only by the author’s imagination—excepting one very important thing: psychopaths exist, here and now, in this reality, so a psychopathic perspective is very much limited to a place of truth. I prefer reality-based fiction. If someone is going to attempt to write outside their lived perspective, I want them to have taken all the measures to ensure they are building a true experience. I need to trust they know the place from which they are writing from. If, for example, I had read this same book from the point-of-view of Constance, I would have found it infinitely more interesting. And Constance is not a “sane” or even particularly sympathetic person, as evidenced by the complete disregard for Uncle Julian, allowed to perish alone in the house fire. Yet, Constance’s decisions to care for Merricat—to bear the brunt of her crime, is tremendously interesting because Constance’s motivations are tied to a traceable history, a believable cause and effect (in fact, academic writings on this book suppose many parallels between Constance and Jackson herself). Merricat’s motivations are (as perceived by me) unauthenticated bull-sh*t.

I was disappointed in this book, but only on a personal taste-level. Psychopathic narration is just never going to do it for me. I give it an 8 on Dad’s scale of 1-10, where 1 is the highest.

Wes:

It has been difficult for me to sit down and write about the latest book because to me it is an unsatisfactory novel that leaves too many questions open and seems incomplete or missing something. That may indeed be the author’s intent but it causes me problems following it and generating internal interest. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson is a dark novel about a young lady, Mary Katherine Blackwood, who is living with the aftermath of a dramatic poisoning of most of her family some six years prior that still affects the rest of her family which now consists of “Merricat”, her sister Constance, and her uncle, Julian, who remains seriously disabled from the poisoning incident.  

Reading through this book which is written from Merricat’s perspective, there appear to be several alternate explanations for all the strange occurrences that transpire with Merricat in the old Blackstone estate. Either Merricat is insane, or she is spoiled to an incredible degree, or perhaps she is a ghost, or, maybe she and Constance comprise a single person, possibly split personalities. There are probably other possible scenarios. It is hard to determine exactly what is going on and I even started back through it again after reading it the first time trying to determine by the narrative which is most likely. I did not finish because the book just was not very enjoyable to my tastes. I will outline some of the aspects of what I think is going on.     

            We learn about half-way through that Merricat was the culprit who put the rat poisoning into the fruit salad that contained the sugar-like arsenic that killed her mother, father, aunt, 10 year-old brother and crippled her uncle. Constance avoids sugar so she was spared and Merricat was banished to her room for some unknown reason during that deadly meal. Merricat’s desire to see everyone dead whom she meets discloses some kind of mental illness. She constantly dwells on death and morbidly discusses the poisonous mushrooms and their effects. She seems to live in a dream world seeing certain people as demons and constantly attempts to hex people with weird tokens such as burying someone’s possessions or nailing books to trees. She takes actions to remove people and might see her actions as justifiable for murdering her family. She takes action like breaking mirrors, causing fires, and employing hexes. She wants people dead and took action to make it so. I don’t know whether she would be ruled insane but her perspective about everyone around her seems certainly not normal.

            We also see about halfway through in one of the flashbacks that that her mother was incredibly indulgent refusing to punish her, ordering her brother to give his food to her and ordering the family to “bow all your heads to our adored Mary Katherine.” She certainly seems to be almost a semi-wild kid who has had little or no restraint. She runs wild in the woods sleeping under trees at night and burying hex items all over. The over-indulgence might have colored her view of the world and justified her action to kill those who in her view got in the way for some reason and deserved to die.

            The evidence that Merricat is a ghost is thin but on one occasion Uncle Julian in conversation with Charles, the cousin who suddenly arrives with the design to whisk Constance away, reports that Merricat had been “longtime dead…she did not survive the loss of her family…my niece died in an orphanage, of neglect, during her sister’s trial for murder.” The stupefied Charles replied that “She is sitting right here.” As the dialogue passed on to other things, this incident passes almost without comment. My observations of Merricat’s story are that they are very ghostlike but other people seem to see her so she seems pretty well a manifest being to them.

I got the feeling that Merricat and Constance could be split personalities and started looking for instances when they were actually talking not only to one another but both together with others. Those instances are there especially when Charles is there as well as when Helen Clarke and Lucille Wright came to visit. This shuts down that theory pretty well but the way they act and react when together seeming to like the same things makes this a possibility somehow.

My biggest issue with the book is all the questions that are unanswered. Why did the authorities suspect Constance as the killer? Why and how did the rat poison get in the fruit salad? Why did Constance cover for her -at that time -12 year old sister? How did Constance get set free? Why did the authorities let them go off and live alone with only an invalid and a 22 year old at the head of the household? What happened to Merricat at the orphanage? What ultimately happens to Merricat and her sister? Why would the authorities let them live in a partially burned down house? Why doesn’t Merricat go to school? I guess the author wanted to leave those questions open but that lessens my interest and makes me uncomfortable when the story never comes to closure. Based on this, I rate this book as a 6 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best). 

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins was originally published in 1868 in the magazine All the Year Around (edited by Charles Dickens). It is widely considered the first English language detective novel.


Wes:

            The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins turned out to be a really interesting Victorian tale of mystery and multi-faceted detective work. I enjoyed reading it after reading about Charles Dickens’ relationship with Collins and the fact that this book was also written in serial form over many months just as many of Dickens’ works were. It also has the reputation of being one of the first detective novels, that has become an important genre ever since. I won’t be writing much about the plot or the characters. Suffice it to say I just enjoyed it. To me it is a classic of the Victorian era which I seem to have centered a lot of my novel reading upon over the years. I will just note a few interesting thoughts I had about the book. 

I enjoyed the “narrative” arrangement that Collins used to advance the plot. We see only what the characters saw and how they interpreted the things under their observation. I noticed that some of the characters had a distinctively different style, comparing in particular, Mr. Betteredge, Mr. Bruff, Mr. Blake, and Miss Clack. Even though these characters each had a certain character style, they all had the characteristic Victorian style of detailed elaboration of conversations and happenstances that I can’t see people today ever writing down. A novelist convention from that era for sure!

            Mr. Betteredge’s narrative was particularly interesting. He had a flair for description and loyalty to the family and to all humanity that really reflected the usual serious English butler’s outlook. I liked his bandying about with Sergeant Cuff and his amateur detective intuitions as the Sergeant’s investigation proceeded. The constant referral to Robinson Crusoe throughout (he allegedly wore out six copies of the book) was a very innovative concept. It made me wonder whether Wilkie Collins spent a lot of nights in his leisure chair perusing that volume for his “spiritual guidance.”

            Collins reveals a definite disdain for Christians with his description of Miss Clack’s continual and laughable efforts to proselytize Rachel and Mrs. Verinder. The villain also turned out to be Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite who revealed his real character to be quite hypocritical in contrast to his public persona as the zealous and self-righteous missionary type. He turns out to have stolen the diamond for necessary money to prevent the revelation that he had betrayed a trusteeship by sacking the account completely and facing imminent discovery. His desperate need for money was the reason that he acquiesced to Rachel’s rejecting his marriage proposal when he found he could not loot her estate to save himself. Turns out he also has a mistress who threatened to reveal herself to Rachel if he proceeded with his marriage plan.  

            This book had a definite page-turning or suspense building motif to it. One kept expecting the key clue to emerge but the author would repeatedly stop just short by introducing some complicating factor that would put the proceeding information in doubt. It almost reads like one of the mini-series of today where each show ends with a suspense item looming to draw the viewer to the next show or the Victorian reader to the next installment. This is a very clever device that Collins used that made me marvel at how he could maintain the depth of this story for so long. For example, we were continually led to believe that Mr. Luker had the diamond but then during the opium experiment I was expecting Mr. Blake to reveal his hiding place somewhere in his room after all. That would then fulfil Sgt. Cuff’s prediction that the diamond was not stolen, just lost.

            I didn’t see the need for Ablewhite to die at the hands of the Indian men. They didn’t do that before when they accosted Mr. Luker and him earlier. But perhaps they could not take a chance on his stopping them from leaving the country. There were some details about the 3 Indian guys that I wonder about now, like what was the significance of the bottle of ink that the boy dropped early in the story. And what was the significance of that boy whom it was suggested was a medium? What were they using him for and what happened to him? What was the identity of the fellow who discovered the rooming site of Ablewhite in his sailor disguise?

I really enjoyed this book even though it took a little longer to read it as I struggle to memorize my 156 lines for a play next month. I will probably have more questions and comments for discussion this month because there was a lot of interesting stuff in this book. I will also want to read his other great novel, Woman in White, some time. After reading this book, I definitely had an attack of the megrims (a great word – pg. 113!) knowing it was over.  Overall, I rate this book as a 2 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best).

Allison:

            I have a confession to make about our bookclub. I don't always read the book. This month, with my son out of school and my job demanding extra hours of work at home, I had hardly any quiet to sit and read. Even the refuge of my daily F train commute was invaded with project planning for the bookstore. So, I didn't fully read The Moonstone. But, what I couldn't read, I supplemented by listening to it (don’t worry! I did actually experience the whole book). I filled the dead space of daily housekeeping, standing at the sink with dishes and swabbing bathroom surfaces, with an audio narration of the mystery. I have heard only a few audio books, but at the bookstore I have witnessed hundreds of authors read their work—let me tell you, authors reading their work is the worst. So indulgent, so insufferably boring, and somehow, just false (exceptions apply, of course). But, a professional voice over artist is quite different. The ego is eliminated and the story is manifested. The Moonstone was especially fun, with its various narrations. The reader spoke in a British accent that he nuanced between speakers—Miss Clack was perhaps the most delightfully ludicrous, as he narrated for hours in a shrill pomp, a caricature of feminine stuffiness.

            I do feel like I cheated though. The vocalizations painted in much of the scenery that if I were physically reading, I'd have to invent for myself. And I wondered frequently if how the actor's rendering of the story might compare to an interpretation I'd have come to on my own. He supplied very different voices, different inflections for each character, but did these variations exist in the text? This would have been an important consideration had I been solely reading because the dueling multi-person narrative is the central device Collins uses to tell his story. How many narrators? Let's see: Betteredge, Miss Clack, Bruff, Blake, Jennings, Sergeant Cuff, Mr. Candy (not to mention an long letter written by Rosanna Spark) and a spattering of officials summarizing the end. That's a lot! Over seven main voices to color and differentiate—seven unique motivations to flesh and illuminate, all while maintaining momentum and strategic reveal of information so that the readers are inundated with "detective fever" as Betteredge called it, eager to play along.

            I had only a mild case of "detective fever." I read a lot of mysteries and edit a crime fiction magazine with my husband and the mechanics of "the reveal" are never as interesting to me as the characters. Reading The Moonstone, I couldn't help but compare Collins' work against The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Dickens. Collins and Dickens were friends and spirited competitors alike. In fact, Dickens was the first to publish a serial version of The Moonstone in his magazine All the Year Around. Drood was Dickens' attempt to write the perfect mystery, hoped to trump all predecessors in its masterful plotting and he might have done so if he hadn't died. Do I think Drood's potential superior to The Moonstone? Yes. Does it matter? Eh…not so much. They were both satisfying to me in the same way. Like eating an expensive chocolate truffle followed by a Hershey bar. I might comment, oh the expensive truffle more delicious, but I'd still happily eat the Hershey bar. In fact, you would find it hard to tear anything chocolate away from me.

            As I was Googling around the internet trying to find the publication date, I discovered a terse two-line poem written about Wilkie by a poet, Swinburne, that appeared in a literary journal in 1889. It said:

           

            What brought good Wilkie's genius nigh perdition?

            Some demon whispered—'Wilkie! have a mission'. (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/collins/dickens1.html)

This brief, slightly snarky poem, sort of sums up what I thought about Wilkie's story. I found all of the characters tremendously entertaining, but their foibles followed a formula from which Collins' did not deviate. Every character had some obsession that they followed to the most extreme. With Betteredge, it was an almost religious devotion to the unorthodox oracle Robinson Crusoe. He imbibed in the book like it were a sacred text, which was hilarious, often laugh-out-loud absurd. Sergeant Cuff had his roses, and Miss Clack, her puritan religious pamphlets that she spent pages and pages of her narrative trying to stuff into unwilling characters' hands. Less ridiculous was Jennings' addiction to opium, which paralleled Wilkie Collins' own malady. The Moonstone was written, by Collins' own account during a opiate haze. From the introduction by Sandra Kemp of my Penguin Classic edition: "…Collins claimed that he had little recollection of writing the novel, that he had to dictate large portions of the story as he lay sick in bed (relieved only by opium), and that he didn't recall the finale at all" (x). Such an idea, that he could have produced this work and been so stupefied that he didn't even remember, is almost unbelievable, and as Kemp notes, probably an exaggeration. Nevertheless, opium plays a far more sympathetic role in The Moonstone than it did in Dickens' Drood. Jennings' curse of need makes almost a martyr of him, and his death, as relayed by Mr. Candy, is reaching the outer echelons of drama into parodist effect. But I don't think that was Collins' intent. I think he romanticized opium because he had to, because he was in the thick of it. Dickens' portrait of opium was far more grotesque and filthy and unsavory, and likely what it looked like to those on the outside.

            In my Drood post, I mentioned that Donna Tart said Dickens' was a generous writer who revealed the genius of how he built his narratives for fledgling writers to discover. Collins is different because he's not revealing a blueprint of an architectural masterpiece. Instead it's a formula—a specific set of rules that can be followed to achieve a desired result. Formulas can be brilliant, in that once perfected, they are infallible. In a right triangle, a²+b² is going to equal c².

            Likewise, I eat the chocolate and I am happy. 

I give this book a 4 on Dad's scale of 1-10 (1 being the best). But a 4 seems so low, for how much I enjoyed it… Maybe a 3. It's really funny, and only slightly racist and misogynist for its day.

Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard

Destiny of the Republic is a narrative history of the assassination of President James A. Garfield published in 2011 by Random House. Candice Millard is a former editor and writer for National Geographic and wrote a book called River of Doubt about Teddy Roosevelt on the Amazon, that Dad and I both enjoyed.



ALLISON:

A month ago, were you to ask me about Garfield, I would have unfortunately said, “Who? The cat?” I had a vague idea he was president, but not during which era, and I had even less inkling that he was assassinated.  Were you to tell me he was assassinated, I would think, “huh, why isn’t that more of a big deal?” Turns out it was a big deal, as traumatizing to the nation as the more notorious presidential murders, namely Lincoln and Kennedy.  I never learned a smidge about Garfield in high school, or college. I had no idea he was nominated for the office of presidency without running, in fact he even expressed sincere despair at the prospect. I had no idea he was inaugurated only four months before he was shot, surviving another three desperately infirmed, until succumbing to septicemia. Garfield is a most tragic figure. His story, heart wrenching. With little to no presidential aspirations, it was the presidency that inevitably killed him. The notoriety of such an important position drew the attention of a fame-seeking madman, who inexpertly shot Garfield, but it was the desperation to save the most important man in the country that inflicted his demise. A single doctor, practicing the very best and modern medicine he trusted at the time, turned a non-mortal wound into an agonizing and slow death sentence. Garfield survived numerous humble plagues of the Industrial Revolution: crippling poverty as a child, accidents of labor conditions, and the Civil War, which remains the most devastating war-time casualty seen by Americans. He survived, when many did not, only to be cut-down by his own significance. What I gleaned from reading Millard’s Destiny, is that Garfield, while surely not faultless, was potentially the greatest president I’d never even known.  

I implore you, read Millard’s book to get to know Garfield. He undeniably merits the attention and serves as an inspiration for what the most ambitious position could look like if worn by the humblest, and most deserving of men. There are plenty of other useful reminders. Most obvious is that the medical field is an inabsolute, in need of constant revision, ingenuity and skeptical inquiry. I felt a little bad for Dr. Bliss, the man who took over Garfield’s care after the shooting and usurped any attempts to second guess his opinion by other doctors, including Garfield’s own family doctors. Bliss also manipulated the public’s perception of Garfield’s affliction, by sending rosy updates that everything was steadily improving to the news outlets. Having just completed Pre-Healthcare requirements for Nursing School, and studying medical anthropology for my degree, I have done a fair amount of research into turn of the century medicine. In the late 1800s “germ theory” was just developing as an idea that disease is caused by unseen specks (microbes) that are spread and multiply within our bodies. Koch’s Postulates, a set of rules that link disease to specific bacteria, was not published until 1890, nine years after Garfield’s death. So, Dr. Bliss was working with what he, as an experienced ballistics physician who had plenty of practice working in military infirmaries during the Civil War, knew to be true. Regardless, after autopsy, Bliss was unanimously blamed for the death, so much so that even Garfield’s assassin, Guiteau felt confident claiming: “The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant. They out to be indicted for murdering James A. Garfield, and not me” (276). There were no “doctors” caring for him, as Bliss had so pompously or fearfully denied all outside input. In the end, Bliss suffered not only professionally, but ultimately with his life, as he himself never recovered from the grueling labor of trying to save the president, and died less than a decade later.

Hindsight tells us (and some science that was very new at the time) that Bliss got it so horrendously wrong with Garfield, and it is excruciating to read about the torturous death suffered in Bliss’ care. All without anesthetic stronger than whiskey, and never a complaint did our hero make. It’s enough to take your breath away.

Despite his best efforts, Bliss was not the only man devoted to saving Garfield. Alexander Graham Bell takes a supporting role in this narrative, as he frantically tries to develop and perfect the first metal detector he intends to use to find the afflicting bullet buried in Garfield. Bell’s obsessive work ethic and his own fascinating history generated much suspense in this book, and made me want to find an equally amazing history of his life (should one, unlikely exist). Many other heroes and villains pepper the story with intrigue, as well as the detailing of political posturing and scientific discovery that was burgeoning in this era. It is entertaining to compare what has changed versus what has remained the same; to imagine a world in which just surviving was so brutal and messy and violent. One’s child making it through infancy was short of miraculous. The White House was a literal cesspit (can you imagine!), deemed unlivable due to disrepair. Anyone at all, could sit and chat with the president of the United States, as long as they arrived at his office before noon. It was a time when a man born into the most dire of straits could pay for college with janitorial work. Boy howdy, have times changed.  

I work at a bookstore. I recommend books to people on a daily basis. I love my job, but recommending a book is tricky business. When you ask me what you should spend your dollars on, what you should spend hours and hours of your time immersed in, I don’t take this task lightly. I want to give you something that will be completely satisfying, something that suits your tastes and won’t disappoint. That part's kinda easy. I know all the books, what they are about, how they were reviewed, who likes them, etc. But, sometimes I’ll get a special customer. By special, I mean vulnerable. And by vulnerable, I mean one who is open to a little risk, who when asking for a recommendation does so a little desperately, that I, the bookseller, will know exactly the book that they need. Over fifteen years of bookselling, I’ve compiled a list of quietly outstanding books that I offer to this customer, the one that trusts me. There is something very personal about passing on a book I truly love to a stranger. I get goosebumps, sometimes my voice cracks while I am describing it, and I often run off hoping not to notice if they do indeed buy it, because having just handed a little piece of my love to them, if it were rejected, I could not help but feel hurt.

Destiny of the Republic is now on that list. As this is my pick, I have already recommended this book to Dad, so I’m risking disappointment if he didn’t love it like I did, but I am entering this conversation blind of his commentary and there is still you, dear reader, to sell to. I hope you’ve bought into my pitch. Here’s a link to my bookstore. I will personally ship it to your door.

mcnallyjackson.com

I rate this book a 2 on Dad's scale of 1-10 (1 is best, although I am unsure of his parameters)

WES:

Destiny of the Republic, under its subtitle is a “Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of the President” but I see it as more than that. To me it seems more a tale of naivety or self-delusion surrounded by brutal reality. The characters are living in a strange world that they little understand, a world that seems to have moved beyond their grasp. As a result, their actions end up foiled by events totally alien to that they expected. They then failed to take necessary precautions toward the fate that barreled down unmercifully upon them. As such, the book is almost a tragic tale of misguided fate and as the common Irish saying of their day went, “The best laid plans of mice and men oft gang aglee.” 

President James A. Garfield, our 20^th President of the United States, is the central character in the book with his fate the most tragic and painful of all. An innocent in that he never sought any office, instead had greatness thrust upon him; first as preacher, college president, general in the Civil War, congressman, then the highest office in the land. Rising in the Republican Convention of 1880 to put Senator John Sherman’s name (Sherman was from Mansfield, Ohio) into nomination, he rhetorically asked the crowd who they wanted for President, expecting the crowd to answer “Sherman”, instead a single voice yelled out, “We want Garfield!” He waved that off but when the ballots reached the 34^th iteration and delegates could not decide between Grant, Blaine, Sherman, and various favorite sons, Garfield suddenly became a compromise candidate. So he embarked on a candidacy he didn’t really want and worked minimally for it but yet won and became President. Though he naively recognized the love of the masses and learning nothing from Lincoln’s murder only 15 years earlier, he moved about with no security protections with no thought for potential dangers and insanities lurking about. Only three months into office he was gunned down in a railroad station in the middle of the day in front of two of his young sons.

Charles Guiteau, the assassin, wrote the book on self-delusion. Moving from hotel to hotel without paying his bills while stiffing everyone for many years, he felt God’s favor on his every ambition while he repeatedly failed in every endeavor. Looking for and somehow thinking he deserved a political appointment as consul to Paris, he came every day and sent many letters to the White House and the State Department presenting his so-called credentials for a patronage appointment. He was the type of guy who continually was shunted to the side politely without realizing that people were ignoring him and he was going nowhere. Garfield called Guiteau’s first letter, “..an illustration of unparalleled audacity and impudence.” Garfield’s secretary probably never passed another one on to him. Finally, Guiteau believed after Garfield crossed Roscoe Conkling that the president was a rogue to the Stalwart faction so he decided he would do the nation a favor and kill him. Observing Garfield’s well known Christianity, he thought it a minor thing to send him on to heaven where life would be better. Meanwhile, Chester Arthur, the new President, would be happy to appoint Guiteau to his consulship and everyone would come out on top. To the last moment, Guiteau never thought he would die but that someone would come save him and he could marry, publish his book, and live out his life a hero. Ugly reality finally butted in on him with only a small favor granted by his being allowed to give his own signal for the executioner to trip the gallows’ lever.    

D. Willard Bliss, the doctor in charge of Garfield’s treatment, was called to assist by Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, mainly because he was the doctor in charge when Lincoln was shot. Equally unsuccessful in saving the President this time, somehow this fellow successfully shunted all the other doctors off to the side, completely dominating every aspect of his treatment. Unfortunately, he botched it and probably caused his death by completely unsanitary and ceaseless probing of the wound looking for the bullet. If he had done nothing, Garfield probably would have survived as many Civil War soldiers lived for years with bullets in their bodies. He refused to employ Joseph Lister ‘s anti-septic methods while disregarding recent discoveries that unseen germs caused wound infection. He also kept insisting the bullet was on the left side, the same side as the entrance wound where it should have been obvious the bullet could be anywhere because Garfield’s paralysis meant his spinal cord must have been hit likely deflecting the bullet. His incompetence drastically affected the President’s fate while he continually remained optimistic, passing inaccurate and incomplete bulletins to the press and to the President’s wife and staff. He seemed completely clueless that Garfield was dying until the last crisis revealed that the President was suffering a hopeless condition where only 15 years later Garfield would have completely recovered.

Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, had met Garfield during the 1876 Centennial Exposition where he displayed his invention to the Congressman. Hearing of the assassination attempt and problems locating the bullet, he thought he could make a device using the electrical induction technique that might detect its exact location in the President’s body. He worked tirelessly to the detriment of his own family and came up with a workable prototype but when he finally convinced Bliss and the other key doctors to let him try it, his own doubts allowed him to succumb to their arbitrary limitations on using the device. He deluded himself that the doctors knew better than he on what his machine would do to the patient so he used his device on the left side of his back when the bullet turned out to be on the right side. It is incredible to me that he had to operate under such stupid restrictions but it was clear that the doctors did not know what they were doing and; hence, cruel reality burst in upon Bell’s attempt to apply science to the then dubious “art” of healing.   

Roscoe Conkling, a New York senator and boss of the Stalwarts, tried to control Garfield when he was first elected but the President refused to bow completely to his demands. The last straw came when the President appointed an enemy of Conkling’s to the biggest patronage post – collector of the Port of New York. Conkling decided to take a truly amazing course of action by resigning his seat in the Senate, confident that the state assembly would reappoint him.  He was totally self-deluded in his plan as the state assembly, secretly jealous and squirming under his self-centered power wielding, refused to reappoint him. Conkling was left without his power base and soon lost all his influence and suffered an early death. Not seeing the complete picture of where he really stood amongst his fellow power brokers, he did not miss when shooting himself in the foot.    

This book was a good read and covers a period of history little known today. Garfield was an extremely fascinating character whose Presidency might have been one of the greatest. Asking many today, they probably never heard of him as he was cut down so early without a substantial legacy. I thoroughly enjoyed visiting his farm in Mentor, Ohio, near Cleveland. His house and library are fascinating and it is a very pleasant place to visit. As noted in the book, all prayers for his recovery over the long 79 days he suffered were to no avail. It is disheartening that God did not move to heal him but let him suffer so through to the end. I guess that is the moral of the tale – God can give people the knowledge and skills to help people but if other men don’t allow the scientific progress known to man to work, then tragedy will ensue. Overall, I rate this book as a 4 on my scale of 1-10 (1 as best).