Site News

New Alienist TV Series Page

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Although no new information has been released regarding the television adaptation of The Alienist that was first announced in April and May of this year, I have decided to add a new page to The Alienist Books section of 17th Street containing the information that has been released thus far about the adaptation. In addition, The Alienist movie page has been updated to reflect the news about the new television drama series, and The Alienist TV Series blog tag has been added to the side menu. When any new information about the series does come to light, it will be reported here on the main blog as well as on The Alienist TV Series page.

Mobile Version of 17th Street Now Available

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A mobile version of the 17th Street layout is now available for iPhones and Android devices. Hopefully this will make the site easier to navigate for those of you who access 17th Street on a phone. The mobile layout contains a slider with latest news and blog posts, along with an easy to use menu for accessing the remaining website content. At present, the desktop version of the 17th Street layout is still used for iPads and other tablets.

If you encounter any problems using the new mobile layout, please feel free to contact me.

Happy 20th Anniversary to The Alienist!

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Today, March 15, marks the 20th anniversary of The Alienist’s publication. Over the past 20 years, this much loved and groundbreaking novel has been published in 35 different formats and editions, and is now considered a “modern classic”. What an amazing achievement!

A few months ago I asked 17th Street visitors to provide ideas for the best way to commemorate the 20th anniversary, and I received some wonderful suggestions. However, as most of the proposed ideas required a physical presence in New York, and I’m located nine and a half thousand miles away on the other side of the world, unfortunately I had to rule the majority of the suggestions out. So, after lots of thinking, I concluded that perhaps the best way to celebrate the anniversary would be through a new content feature that emphasised time, and thus the idea to recreate The Alienist’s original text based timeline for the site was born.

The new timeline is now up and is fully interactive. It contains maps of key locations for particular dates and chapters, as well as markers for key international, national, and local events, thereby placing the novel’s sequence of events within a wider historical context. A few short film clips from 1896 have also been interspersed in appropriate sections of the timeline. The interactive timeline has a permanent place in The Alienist subsection of 17th Street, but a copy has also been included for interested visitors below. I hope you enjoy the new feature. If you notice any major historical events that I have forgotten to add, please feel free to contact me and I will amend the timeline.

In addition to my own commemoration of the occasion, The Bowery Boys have also put together a fantastic article detailing some of the key historical locations used within the book to mark the 20th anniversary. Do check it out!

Finally, on a personal note, I would like to thank Caleb Carr for his wonderful novel(s). I can’t speak for others, but The Alienist, and its sequel, have been that very rare kind of book that really has “changed my life” in more ways than is apparent through this website, and for that I have no adequate way of saying thank you.

[timeline src=”http://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AnGirj3rPR9IdGpNdUdBV0NsN2JBVGxXbW8zZGs0c2c&output=html” width=”100%” height=”650″ font=”AbrilFatface-Average” maptype=”sterrain” lang=”en” ]

Mary Palmer Character Profile

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She was “the only woman he ever loved” and she now has a character profile on 17th Street. Following from Japheth Dury’s character profile being added to the supporting characters page of the full character list earlier this month, Mary Palmer’s character profile has now been completed and can also be found on the supporting characters page. In addition, the spoiler warning feature has been added to the profiles that appear on the main characters page of the full character list.

Palmer, Mary

Appears in The Alienist

Mary Palmer, an attractive young woman afflicted with classic motor aphasia (characterised by the extreme difficulty speaking even though comprehension abilities are preserved) and agraphia (an inability to express thoughts in writing), is employed as Dr. Laszlo Kreizler’s housekeeper for the duration of The Alienist. We learn early in the novel that Dr. Kreizler had first discovered Mary at the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island where she had been involuntarily committed following the murder of her father in which she had chained him to his bed and set the house alight. Although Mary had been considered idiotic from early childhood due to her communication deficits, she appeared to have been cared for adequately by her family and had been taught to perform menial household duties as she was growing up. The murder of her father, a respectable schoolteacher, when she was only seventeen years old had therefore been considered an act of insanity, and she had been committed to the asylum as a result.

During his early consultations with Mary, Dr. Kreizler was struck by the lack of the symptoms she displayed for the only psychological disorder he felt constituted true insanity (dementia praecox, now known as schizophrenia), and he quickly determined her true diagnosis of motor aphasia and agraphia. After spending a number of weeks gaining Mary’s trust and developing a means of rudimentary communication with her, he went on to discover the shocking truth that her father had been sexually assaulting her for years prior to his murder. When the subsequent legal review of her case resulted in Mary walking free from the asylum, she managed to communicate to Dr. Kreizler that she would make a good employee for his household staff, and as her communication deficits would make it difficult for her to find employment elsewhere, the doctor agreed to take her on.

Click here to read more. Warning: Contains major spoilers for The Alienist

Unlike Dr. Kreizler’s other household staff who play an active part in the investigation, Mary’s role in The Alienist is relatively small as her employer makes it clear from the outset that he doesn’t want her to be involved in the case. Instead, John Moore suspects there is a love triangle between Dr. Kreizler, Sara Howard, and Mary, with Sara assumed to have captured the doctor’s heart and Mary feeling unrequited love for her employer. It is not until Dr. Kreizler’s life is threatened while searching for information about the team’s primary suspect in Massachusetts that he reveals to John that he is not in love with Sara; rather, he has been experiencing reciprocal feelings for Mary for quite some time, but the “complicated” nature of their relationship (first as patient and doctor, then as employee and employer) has made it difficult for him to acknowledge his feelings. Tragically, Dr. Kreizler and Mary’s relationship is never able to progress beyond employee and employer as Mary is killed when a group opposed to the investigation try to obtain information about the doctor’s whereabouts while he is out of the city and invade his home.