Other Books

How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis

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With May 26th having marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Jacob Riis, the Danish social reformer and journalist of the late nineteenth century, it seemed appropriate to feature Riis’ most prominent work, How the Other Half Lives, as 17th Street’s first “book blog” for June. In the New York Times web chat Caleb Carr gave early last year, he cited How the Other Half Lives as one of his most important influences for The Alienist, stating that “very little can beat” it as a contemporary source of information about life in nineteenth century New York. Indeed, readers of The Alienist should already be at least vaguely familiar with Riis thanks to the cameo he received in the novel itself–even if our protagonist, Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, wasn’t terribly fond the crusading Dane.

The Alienist, Chapter 5:

Riis came huffing up behind Steffens, his hulking Danish frame not so lithe as that of the much younger Steffens. “Doctor,” he said, to which Kreizler only nodded. He had a positive dislike for Riis; the Dane’s pioneering work in revealing the evils of tenement life–most notably through his collection of essays and pictures called How the Other Half Lives–did not change the fact that he was a strident moralist and something of a bigot, so far as Kreizler was concerned. And I have to admit, I often saw Laszlo’s point.

What’s it about?

How the Other Half Lives, “Introduction”:

Long ago it was said that “one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” That was true then. It did not know because it did not care.

These famous lines, referencing François Rabelais’ Pantagruel, open Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives, a short but powerful piece written as an agent for change. In the Introduction to the 1997 Penguin edition, Luc Sante (the author of Low Life, another of Caleb Carr’s cited inspirations) wrote that, “How the Other Half Lives is one of those unusual books that changed history in a material way, directly affecting the lives of millions of people.” This pioneering work, first published in 1890, combined photography, narrative essays, and hard statistics to take the reader on a journey into the slums of New York City in the late 1880s. Although others had previously shed light on the conditions of the poor in New York City, by focusing on immediate, practical problems, and presenting solutions, Riis was able to make an impact in a way his predecessors had not. Notably, even Theodore Roosevelt would find Riis’ work a source of inspiration, and he went on to count Riis as his “main prop and comfort” during his tenure as Police Commissioner several years later; when TR first read How the Other Half Lives, he left his card for Riis at the latter’s Evening Sun offices with the words, “I have read your book and I have come to help.” written on the back.

How the Other Half Lives opens with a brief history of the tenement, ranging from its earliest days in the first half of the nineteenth century when once fashionable single-family dwellings on the East River front had their rooms partitioned to meet growing demands from the city’s steadily increasing workforce, to the multi-story tenements we associate today with New York City of the late nineteenth century; tenements that were built in such numbers that, according to Riis, “on the East Side, in what is still the most densely populated district in all the world, China not excluded, it was packed at the rate of 290,000 to the square mile, a state of affairs wholly unexampled.” Following this short history lesson, Riis takes his reader on a guided tour through the original downtown back alleys of New York City, focusing much of his attention on the notorious Mulberry Bend, before spending the bulk of his text describing the practices and lifestyles of the major ethnic groups that occupied the tenement districts of the late 1880s: the Irish, the Italians, the blacks, the Chinese, the Polish and Russian Jews, and the “Bohemians” (Czechs and Slovaks).

In the final third of the book, Riis introduces his readers to the children of the street, taking us from their infancy as abandoned or cast out “street waifs”, through their middle years as “street arabs”, before presenting a warning about the adult career they are destined to pursue if they receive no intervention during their youth: becoming the “toughs” of New York’s street gangs. Riis then devotes a chapter to the evils of the saloon, another to the dreadful working conditions of females that would make “almost any door … seem to offer welcome escape from such slavery as this” (a subtle insinuation regarding the “opportunity and danger that prostitution presents to poor girls”, as Luc Sante more bluntly put it in his Introduction), the relative merits and problems charitable solutions pose to the problem of poverty, and finally to the possibilities presented by both simple solutions to the problems of the tenements (e.g., having landlords or competent janitors living in the properties at all times to enforce rules of conduct) and more complex solutions (e.g., the construction of “model” tenements that have proper light and ventilation in place of razed tenements).

My thoughts

Throughout my reading, I didn’t find it difficult to understand why How the Other Half Lives became such a powerful impetus for change in the 1890s, nor did I find it difficult to see why Caleb Carr considered it a valuable reference work while writing the Alienist books. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion I found myself agreeing with Dr. Kreizler about Riis during my reading. As easy as much of the book is to read, I found chapters like “Chinatown”, where Riis’ pious missionary zeal and condescending racial prejudices were apparent on almost every page, particularly hard-going, and I needed to give myself frequent breaks. Take the following excerpt as an example.

How the Other Half Lives, “Chinatown”:

At the risk of distressing some well-meaning, but, I fear, too trustful people, I state it in advance as my opinion, based on the steady observation of years, that all attempts to make an effective Christian of John Chinaman will remain abortive in this generation; of the next I have, if anything, less hope. Ages of senseless idolatry, a mere grub-worship, have left him without the essential qualities for appreciating the gentle teachings of a faith whose motive and unselfish spirit are alike beyond his grasp.

Although one might argue that in holding such opinions Riis was simply a man of his time, as Luc Sante pointed out in his Introduction to the text, “it is noteworthy that one anonymous reviewer, writing in The Critic of December 27, 1890, judiciously expressed the book’s shortcomings:”

His book is literally a photograph and as such has its value and lesson, but also its serious limitations. There is a lack of broad and penetrative vision, a singularly warped sense of justice at times, and a roughness amounting almost to brutality. The “Heathen Chinese” and the Russian Jew fleeing from persecution in his own land, find no mercy in Mr. Riis’ creed.

“This blunt summary shows that Riis’ myopia in regard to cultures more foreign than his own origins was not strictly a function of the times in which he lived.” Moreover, as John explains a little further on in The Alienist, there were noteworthy aspects of slum life, such as homosexual and child prostitution, that were completely missing from Riis’ text; aspects John claims Riis “could not accept” despite “all the horrors he had witnessed”. However, do not suppose by these criticisms that I didn’t find the book an interesting or worthwhile read. I found the sections of the text in which Riis takes his reader on guided tours of the slums, employing a conversational tone that relays sights, smells, and sounds in such a way that the reader is almost there beside him, invaluable; Riis’ prose is not florid or sensationalist in nature, and as such he provides a vivid and realistic snapshot of life in the tenements that is fascinating to read, as the following excerpt from a chapter about life in the Jewtown sweater district demonstrates.

How the Other Half Lives, “The Sweaters of Jewtown”:

It is Sunday evening west of the Bowery … Men stagger along the sidewalk groaning under heavy burdens of unsewn garments, or enormous black bags stuffed full of finished coats and trousers. Let us follow one to his home and see how Sunday passes in a Ludlow Street tenement.

Up two flights of dark stairs, three, four, with new smells of cabbage, of onions, of frying fish, on every landing, whirring sewing machines behind closed doors betraying what goes on within, to the door that opens to admit the bundle and the man. A sweater, this, in a small way. Five men and a woman, two young girls, not fifteen, and a boy who says unasked that he is fifteen, and lies in saying it, are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, “knee-pants” in the Ludlow Street dialect. The floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. In the alcove, on a couch of many dozens of “pants” ready for the finisher, a bare-legged baby with pinched face is asleep. A fence of piled-up clothing keeps him from rolling off on the floor. The faces, hands, and arms to the elbows of everyone in the room are black with the colour of the cloth on which they are working. The boy and the woman alone look up at our entrance. The girls shoot sidelong glances, but at a warning look from the man with the bundle they treat their machines more energetically than ever. The men do not appear to be aware even of the presence of a stranger.

Other sections relay distressing accounts of children Riis witnessed dying of starvation, babies abandoned on fire-escapes (reminiscent of the scene in The Alienist where John and Sara nearly step on a baby in a dark tenement hallway), and tales of suicides from immigrants too “tired” to go on. Riis introduces us to workers who developed diseases such as lead poisoning that prevented them from providing for their families, and told bittersweet stories such as that of a young boy who was excited to spend a night in Police Headquarters because he was given a bed to sleep in (he was used to sleeping on “a heap of dirty straw on the floor”) and one egg and three slices of bread for breakfast (“his daily diet [consisted of] a crust in the morning, nothing else”). On top of these snapshots of human life, the overcrowding, pay rate, and death rate statistics Riis provided throughout the text were nothing short of staggering.

Considering the racial prejudices that pervade How the Other Half Lives, it is somewhat ironic that perhaps the most important aspect of Riis’ work was his willingness to tackle another common nineteenth century prejudice held by many in the middle and upper classes; that those who lived in the shocking conditions of the tenements deserved or, worse still, chose their fate. Instead, Riis made it clear how, through no fault of their own, many hard-working immigrants found their way into the tenements and lacked means of escape, as well as stressing the importance of the role of the environment in the creation and perpetuation of problems (e.g., crime) that arose out of the tenements. Granted, as a result of Riis’ unwillingness to enquire with any depth into the origins of the social conditions in the tenements, some of his pronouncements were over-simplistic and lack insight (e.g., he occasionally makes unfounded sweeping statements such as “only the poor abandon their children”). However, it was through his willingness to at least accept a role for the environment that How the Other Half Lives proved to be an effective impetus for change in the years following its publication.

Ultimately, How the Other Half Lives is an essential read for anyone interested in learning more about the “other half” (actually closer to three-quarters) of New York’s population at the turn of the century. The limitations of the work notwithstanding, this is an enlightening, if saddening, piece of nonfiction that deserves a place on any Alienist reader’s bookshelf.

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

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I had originally intended to spend the first few months of “book blogs” on 17th Street overviewing the works Caleb Carr has cited as inspirations for his novels. However, this month I would like to deviate from Carr’s inspirations to feature Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, a nonfiction work by Richard Zacks that details Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure as police commissioner of New York from 1895 to early 1897. Island of Vice is the closest to a “companion book” for The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness I have read to date, offering a no-holds-barred, humorous, and fastidiously researched behind-the-scenes look at old New York, Theodore Roosevelt, and the New York City police department during the period in which the Alienist books were set.

What’s it about?

In February of 1892, Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, president of the Society for the Prevention of Crime, shocked the 800 parishioners of Madison Square Presbyterian Church by delivering a sermon that accused the Tammany-dominated New York City police force, district attorney, and even the mayor of “licensing crime”. Claiming that disorderly houses, illegal casinos, and vendors of illegal liquor had their “immunity secured to [them] by a scale of police taxation”, he went on to tell his law-abiding parishioners that “your average police captain is not going to disturb a criminal if the criminal has means”. Tammany Hall officials responded to these accusations with outrage, and Parkhurst was called before a grand jury on charges of libel. He was found guilty, with the grand jury concluding that he had “no evidence” for his accusations; however, the reforming minister would not be deterred. In March of 1892, he hired a young private detective to “take him on the ultimate sin tour of New York City”. The sights he witnessed on their multi-night tour of saloons, dives, and disorderly houses resulted in Parkhurst providing the district attorney with 284 addresses of illegal gaming houses, disorderly houses, and after-hours saloons, and charges being laid against four brothel madams. This time, Parkhurst won. This series of events marked the beginning of a fight that would go on to last for the whole of the 1890s between New York reformers and the corrupt sectors of society; a fight that an up-and-coming Theodore Roosevelt would find himself headlining.

Island of Vice documents the period between 1892 and 1898 when New York’s reform movement tried in vain to “clean up” the corrupt American capital of finance, manufacturing, entertainment, and sin. This was a period when it would be difficult for any of New York’s two million residents to find themselves far from one of the city’s 8,000 saloons, hundreds of hotels, dives, and illegal casinos, or the hundreds of brothels that proffered an estimated 40,000 prostitutes to the men of the city. It was a hard-drinking city, with an estimated 460,000 eight gallon quarter-kegs of beer served each week, amounting to approximately “twenty pints per week for every man and woman over the age of sixteen in the city” — and that didn’t count the wine, whiskey, or other forms of liquor available at the time. When reform-minded Republican, William L. Strong, was elected mayor in 1895, he swore in a new four-man Police Board of Commissioners, of which young, energetic, and headstrong Theodore Roosevelt would go on to become President. The first order of business for the new reform police commissioners was to remove the corrupt old guard of the New York police force, starting at the top with Chief of Police Thomas Byrnes, and then to get to work enforcing laws the police force had been turning a blind eye to for years.

The City of New York, however, had other ideas.

My thoughts

Published in 2012, Island of Vice is Richard Zacks’ fifth book, and was met with well-deserved critical acclaim upon its publication. A native New Yorker, Zacks paints a vivid picture of the people and places that made up New York at the turn of the 20th century. Taking his readers on a colourful tour of old New York’s saloons, dives, and disorderly houses, Zacks describes what life as a New York cop was like in the 1890s, and introduces readers to both the well-to-do and seedier elements of society. Fastidiously researched, Zacks lets these characters speak for themselves through direct quotes from trial transcripts, letters, memoirs, interviews, and newspaper reports.

Throughout the book, we meet a number of historical figures familiar to any Alienist reader including (of course) Theodore Roosevelt himself, Thomas Byrnes, Anthony Comstock, Lincoln Steffens, and Jacob Riis, along with one or two other figures who may have served as inspiration to Caleb Carr when creating the original characters that appear in the Alienist books. Minnie G. Kelly, for example, was the first female police secretary who had been controversially hired by TR upon becoming police commissioner. Described as “young, small and comely, with raven black hair”, the bespectacled Kelly was hired by TR at $1,700 a year to replace two male secretaries who had cost the department a combined $2,900 a year. Although her hiring saved the department $1,200 a year, her presence in male-dominated Police Headquarters at 300 Mulberry Street was not well received. TR, on the other hand, reported himself happy with her performance during his time as commissioner, although he did concede that “she made her share of mistakes”, as described in the following humorous excerpt from the book, pg. 74:

He recalled dictating a letter about an overly aggressive officer. “I was obliged to restrain the virtuous ardor of Sergeant Murphy, who, in his efforts to bring about a state of quiet on the street, would frequently commit some assaults himself.” That’s what he said aloud; when Miss Kelly handed him the sheet, he read on the page: “I was obliged to restrain the virtuous ardor of Sergeant Murphy, who, in his efforts to bring about a state of quiet on the street, would frequently commit somersaults himself.” TR later wrote his sister that he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to reprimand her as he couldn’t banish the mental image of the rotund sergeant rolling down the street.

"Big Bill" Devery

We also meet a number of other figures in Island of Vice who were not featured in The Alienist or The Angel of Darkness, but whose importance to the world of 1890s New York was unquestionable. One such figure who features prominently in Island of Vice is William “Big Bill” Devery, a Police Captain with strong ties to Tammany Hall who was taken to trial over allegations of corruption several times during the course of his career. “Big Bill” is presented as a nemesis of TR during his tenure on the Police Board, with the latter — working alongside his fellow police commissioners and Reverend Parkhurst — attempting to stop “Big Bill” from returning to the force in May of 1896 after he was acquitted of his charges of extorting a bribe during his most recent corruption trial. Unfortunately for TR and the rest of the Police Board, history did not go their way. “Big Bill” not only returned to the force, but only fourteen months after TR left the Police Board and New York itself, “Big Bill” was promoted to Chief of Police by the new Tammany-dominated Police Board; a fact that should give you a hint as to how long-lasting the 1890s attempts at reform lasted in the city.

As for the central character — TR himself — Zacks clearly attempted to paint a balanced portrait of the future President, hiding neither his faults nor his virtues. At the outset of Island of Vice, we meet a young Roosevelt who had spent the preceding six years holding a relatively obscure post on the Civil Service Commission in Washington D.C. He returned to New York with a desire to make a difference, and the energy to do so. He went on innumerable “midnight rambles” through the streets of the city with Jacob Riis and various other friends or colleages at his side to witness the city’s corruption and dissolution first-hand, earning him the newspaper nickname “Haroun el-Roosevelt” after the Thousand and One Nights’ caliph who explored Baghdad in disguise after dark. TR would describe these rambles as “great fun”, and they proved to be a highlight of both his tenure as police commissioner and of Zacks’ Island of Vice itself, with some of the amusing incidents that took place when he ventured out on the streets sounding more like vaudeville comedy acts than serious police work (pg. 268):

Roosevelt and his party alighted from the carriage just as the [saloon side door] cracked open and an arm suddenly emerged holding an oversized schooner of amber liquid. The policeman took the tankard, lifted it to his lips, and began drinking. Roosevelt, in a kind of racing tiptoe, sped across the street, reached the policeman, and tapped him roughly on the shoulder, sternly saying, “Officer, give me that beer.” The startled bluecoat, in mid-gulp, spritzed a geyser of foam and looked at the squat bespectacled man accosting him. Just then, a hand emerged from inside the bar, yanked the glass, and slammed the door shut. The patrolman took one look at Roosevelt, teeth and spectacles glinting in the moonlight, as one paper put it, and the man sprinted off without saying a word. [Police Commissioner] Andrews by now had reached the scene and the two commissioners raced after the bluecoat. “Stop running, you fool!” shouted Roosevelt. About fifty yards away, near the corner, they caught him. Roosevelt demanded his name. “Ginger ale,” he replied, gasping for air. “Ginger ale.”

Theodore Roosevelt in his Police Headquarters Office

TR threw himself enthusiastically into all aspects of his new post at Police Headquarters, and made some important strides forward during his two year tenure including overseeing fairer political elections. However, even though the President of the Police Board’s reforming zeal was initially well-received, when he set his sights on the city’s hard-drinking culture and began enforcing old excise laws that forbade liquor from being sold or consumed in saloons and other public watering holes between midnight on Saturday until early Monday morning, thereby banning alcohol on the one day per week working class men had off — in the middle of a long, hot summer, to boot — the tide of public opinion took a sharp turn. (It didn’t help that with a loophole allowing hotel restaurants to sell drinks to guests with meals, and exclusive private clubs not being mentioned in the law, affluent New Yorkers were effectively exempt.) Later, when cracks in the bipartisan Police Board began to show as a result of disagreements over hirings and promotions, things went from bad to worse for the crusading reformer. Within Island of Vice, we see a TR “with a reputation for absolute integrity” who publicly pursued his reform agenda in terms of black and white — good and evil — even while privately acknowledging to family members that some of the laws he was insisting be enforced were too harsh (pg. 122):

“I have now run up against an ugly snag, the Sunday Excise Law. It is altogether too strict but I have no honorable alternative save to enforce it and I am enforcing it to the furious rage of the saloon keepers and of many good people too; for which I am sorry.”

Even though Island of Vice’s focus was on TR’s tenure as police commissioner, Zacks devotes as much of the text to describing New York’s saloons, dives, disorderly houses, and court rooms, and I came away from the book feeling that the City of New York was, in fact, the most colourful character of all. Zacks clearly admires his city’s spirit of rebellion and survival despite the odds, as he demonstrates in his concluding statement in the epilogue of the book (pg. 365): “As in ancient Rome, the vitality of New York City sometimes seems to come more from the crooks than the do-gooders.” Although Island of Vice’s no-holds-barred approach results in an uneven read at times, with perhaps too much detail provided for a few seemingly irrelevant or repetitive episodes, it is ultimately a worthy addition to the library of any Caleb Carr reader interested in getting a behind-the-scenes glimpse of life in the city during the years in which The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness were set.

The Sign of Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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With the release this month (finally!) of BBC One’s new season of Sherlock, I thought it would be appropriate to focus January’s book blog on the influence Sherlock Holmes had on the Alienist books. With numerous mentions of Holmes in interviews, plus being commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate to write The Italian Secretary in 2005, the importance of the world’s first consulting detective to Caleb Carr’s literary output is clear. But which stories were most important for the Alienist books? With such a large number of short stories and novels to choose from in the Holmes canon, it wasn’t easy to decide which story to focus this particular blog on, but in the end I decided to select The Sign of Four, the second Holmes novel, due to its very clear connections to The Alienist’s sequel, The Angel of Darkness.

What’s it about?

Sherlock Holmes is bored, and that means only one thing: cocaine, a seven percent solution. After offending Watson by deducing the history of his brother’s unhappy past from an inherited pocket watch, Holmes’ multi-week run of idleness is finally broken by the arrival at 221B Baker Street of the pretty yet plainly dressed Miss Mary Morstan, the adult daughter of an officer from an Indian regiment who disappeared ten years earlier.

Pleased that Miss Morstan’s appearance means he won’t have to take a second dose of cocaine that day, Holmes listens intently as he and Watson’s new client recounts her story involving the disappearance of her father, her receipt of anonymous gifts of large and lustrous pearls at yearly intervals following his disappearance, and a letter she received earlier that day informing her that she has been a “wronged woman” and containing instructions on how to meet her anonymous benefactor. The only evidence Miss Morstan can offer Holmes is the anonymous letter and a map with the “sign of four” marked in the left-hand corner that was found among her father’s papers following his disappearance.

As we follow Holmes and Watson in their efforts to solve Miss Morstan’s mystery, we are taken on a typically Holmesian adventure that includes late night carriage rides through the atmospheric foggy streets of London, a stolen treasure, murder by poison dart, a man with a wooden leg, a chase on the Thames via steam launch, and even a blossoming love story for Watson!

My thoughts

The Sign of Four was the second Sherlock Holmes novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1890. Although I am a long-time Holmes fan and have read the entire canon more than once, this was my first re-read of The Sign of Four for several years and I thoroughly enjoyed my return to the world of 1880s/90s London. As with all of Doyle’s Holmes stories, The Sign of Four is a quick and easy read that lacks the florid embellishments that sometimes detract from Victorian prose. The subject matter of the story, however, is delightfully Victorian in its eccentricity. We are made aware early in the piece that a mysterious character with a wooden leg is involved in the story, and if that isn’t quirky enough, the wooden legged man also has an unusually small accomplice. As any Alienist reader will realise, it is through this accomplice that we find our first and most important connection to The Angel of Darkness.

“…How about this mysterious ally? How came he into the room?”

“Yes, the ally!” repeated Holmes, pensively. “There are features of interest about this ally. He lifts the case from the regions of the commonplace. I fancy that this ally breaks fresh ground in the annals of crime in this country — though parallel cases suggest themselves from India, and, if my memory serves me, from Senegambia.”

And:

He held down the lamp to the floor, and as he did so I saw for the second time that night a startled, surprised look come over his face. For myself, as I followed his gaze, my skin was cold under my clothes. The floor was covered thickly with the prints of a naked foot — clear, well defined, properly formed, but scarce half the size of those of an ordinary man.

Caleb Carr’s inclusion of the Filipino pygmy, El Niño, who also uses poisoned darts as one of his methods of disabling and killing his opponents in The Angel of Darkness, has been thought curious by some readers and reviewers, but he is the novel’s clearest nod to The Sign of Four’s pygmy islander, Tonga. Fun, right? However, the tips-of-the-hat don’t end there!

The Sign of Four also finds the great detective employing the services of Toby, “a queer mongrel, with a most amazing power of scent,” to assist him on the case. When Watson visits the dog’s owner, Mr. Sherman, who keeps a menagerie of creatures in his rundown lodgings, Stevie’s visit to his eccentric friend, Hickie the Hun, from whom he hires a scenting ferret in The Angel of Darkness can’t help being called to mind.

“Step in, sir. Keep clear of the badger, for he bites. Ah, naughty, naughty! would you take a nip at the gentleman?” This to a stoat, which thrust its wicked head and red eyes between the bars of its cage. “Don’t mind that, sir; it’s only a slowworm. It hain’t got no fangs, so I gives it the run o’ the room, for it keeps the beetles down.” … He moved slowly forward with his candle among the queer animal family which he had gathered round him. In the uncertain, shadowy light I could see dimply that there were glancing, glimmering eyes peeping down at us from every cranny and corner.

If that isn’t enough, the climax of The Sign of Four takes place via a steam launch chase on the Thames. Now, perhaps this one is a stretch, but the Alienist team’s employment of Torpedo boats from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to their final confrontation with Libby Hatch in The Angel of Darkness is certainly an interesting coincidence. And finally, one also can’t help wondering if even the title “The Angel of Darkness” was in any way a nod to Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes play, “Angels of Darkness“, which went unpublished until 2000. Hmmm…

So, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading any of the original Holmes canon, don’t limit yourself to the various TV adaptations. I highly recommend that you give the originals a try, and Alienist fans should find it extra fun to use their powers of observation and deduction to spot any other connections to the books!

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

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A new element of 17th Street that I’m going to be introducing over the coming months are “book blogs” containing short reviews or features about books that readers of Caleb Carr’s work might find interesting or enjoyable. However, rather than starting with my own recommendations or recommendations from site visitors, I thought it might be appropriate to spend the first few months overviewing some of the works Caleb Carr has said were major influences for his work, ranging from Wilkie Collins to Jacob Riis for The Alienist, Jules Verne to H. G. Wells for Killing Time, and Arthur Conan Doyle to H. Rider Haggard for The Legend of Broken.

As we’re currently in the middle of the holiday season, I thought that it might be appropriate to start with a Christmas-themed novel that Caleb Carr cited in the NYT web chat earlier this year as “a huge inspiration” for The Alienist, Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man. As always, the following is only one woman’s opinion of the book; if you’ve read the book, I’d love to know what you thought in the comments.

What’s it about?

It’s Christmas in Prohibition era New York City, and former detective Nick Charles, his smart and sassy wife Nora, and their feisty Schnauzer “Asta” have returned to the city in order to escape their San Francisco in-laws for the holiday season. The novel opens with Nick being found by the daughter of an old acquaintance in a speakeasy while he is waiting for Nora to finish her Christmas shopping. It quickly becomes apparent that the acquaintance — a “crazy” inventor — hasn’t been seen in the city for months, his ex-wife and grown-up children are trying to locate him, and his lawyer is suspicious that Nick has been hired by the ex-wife to search for him. But things really heat up when the inventor’s secretary and former lover is found dead in her rooms, her body riddled with bullets.

Under pressure from the inventor’s daughter, the inventor’s lawyer, and the police, Nick finally agrees to join the investigation into the mystery that threatens to disrupt he and Nora’s drinking holiday. For the remainder of the novel, we follow private investigator Nick, who always has a cocktail on hand, into the world of speakeasies, gangsters, petty criminals, and pistols that is 1930s New York City.

My thoughts

The Thin Man is classic hardboiled detective fiction written in 1932 by Dashiell Hammett, a former operative for Pinkerton’s Detective Agency, giving the novel an air of authenticity. Although I found the writing a bit thin in places (oh look, a pun!), that’s to be expected for a short work of this genre, and I’m used to it from other writers of the time period. I will admit that I found it a little irritating to realise at the conclusion of the novel that the reader hadn’t been privy to all the clues throughout the course of the story, but it was ultimately well-plotted enough that I’m willing to forgive it on that particular shortcoming. However, probably my favourite element of the novel — and the thing that kept me reading — was the continual bantering and witty repartee between Nick and Nora, something that reminded me strongly of the amusing exchanges between John and Sara in the Alienist books (it’s one of my favourite elements of those books, too). For example,

She gave me a newspaper and a cup of coffee and said: “Read that.”
I patiently read a paragraph or two, then put the paper down and took a sip of coffee. “Fun’s fun,” I said, “but right now I’d swap you all the interviews with Mayor-elect O’Brien ever printed — and throw in the Indian picture — for a slug of whis-“
“Not that, stupid.” She put a finger on the paper. “That.”

And,

Nick: “Don’t you think a drink would help you to sleep?”
Nora: “No thanks.”
Nick: “Maybe it would if I took one.”

Do those exchanges remind you of anybody? Of course, not being knowledgable about classic film, I was unaware until I looked it up (ah Wikipedia, what would we do without you?) that this kind of bantering between a leading man and his leading lady is a core element of screwball comedy, which we know from interviews Caleb Carr is a fan of, so perhaps The Alienist contains more tips-of-the-hat to that genre and/or works like The Thin Man than I had previously been aware (and perhaps I should make a point of actually watching some). In any case, it certainly made for an enjoyable read regarding the book at hand. And, on a more personal level, the novel had one extra element of enjoyment for me: I grew up with a Mini Schnauzer so I rather appreciated Asta’s regular appearances in every other chapter — and, that’s right, they are not a cross between a Scottie and an Irish Terrier!

Ultimately, I found The Thin Man to be atmospheric, fun, and worth reading if you enjoy classic detective fiction and/or witty barbs traded between a couple of clever characters over cocktails; and it’s certainly an appropriate read for the holiday season. If you haven’t already read it or seen the 1934 film of the same name, why not pick it up during your last minute Christmas shopping or download it on your eReader for a quick and easy read over the holidays?

Whatever you do decide to read this festive season, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas that is a little less eventful than Nick and Nora’s turned out to be.