A kind visitor to 17th Street recently got in touch to share that KPFA radio has digitized, remastered, and edited an interview with Caleb Carr from October 15, 1997 that hasn’t been heard in over a quarter century. In this half hour interview, Caleb talks exclusively about the Alienist novels, including the approach he took in researching and writing both novels and providing insights into his inspiration and intentions. For fans of The Alienist or The Angel of Darkness, this fascinating interview contains insights not found anywhere else. You can listen to the interview below or download it from KPFA here.
In addition, the Press page has been updated to include two interviews I had not previously been aware of. One from the New York Times News Service in 1999 describes Caleb’s purchase of his Cherry Plain property, and the other from The Denver Post in 2001 focuses on his future-oriented novel, Killing Time.
I hope you enjoy these newly unearthed interviews. If you know of any others that aren’t already on the Press page, please feel free to contact me.
With the year nearing its end, the time has come for the last post in our celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Alienist’s publication. To honor the novel and its author, we have so far discussed its origins and first/special editions (Parts One and Two), explored early attempts to adapt it to the screen (Part Three), and summarized the publication history of its sequel, The Angel of Darkness (Part Four). In order to complete our homage today, we now turn our attention to the novel’s many translations and consider its enduring legacy.
Translations
Perhaps one of the best markers of a novel’s success is how widely translated it has been, and The Alienist is no exception. Although our celebration so far has primarily focused on the novel’s reception in the United States, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to its status as a bestseller. As described in Part Two, The Alienist was a worldwide phenomenon upon its release. Since that time, millions of copies have been sold, and it has been translated into over two dozen languages.
While it is beyond the scope of this blog series to provide details about each and every translation, a very small subset of covers for translated editions can be viewed below. These include editions in German, French, Italian, Spanish, Czech, and Russian.
Continuation of the series
Over the past 20 years, perhaps the most frequently asked question I’ve received as the owner of 17th Street relates to whether the series will ever be continued. Although the idea of a third novel was floated on and off in interviews with Caleb Carr following The Angel of Darkness’ publication (see Part Four), it wasn’t until 2016 that the long-awaited announcement was made: Mulholland Books would be publishing two new Alienist novels intended to ‘bookend’ the series. More exciting still, the books would shed light on the two most enigmatic characters in the series: Miss Sara Howard and Dr. Kreizler himself.
To honor Caleb Carr’s birthday today, I am pleased to release the third post in our series commemorating the 30th anniversary of The Alienist’s publication. Having discussed the novel’s origins in Part One and its critical reception in Part Two, in this installment we return to Caleb’s first love — the screen — and a major source of buzz in the lead up to The Alienist’s publication: the promise of a movie adaptation. “You won’t find many writers who love movies as much as I do,” Caleb explained in an interview from 1997. “Movies formed much of the imagery that I use in my books.”
Thanks to a generous visitor to the website, in today’s post we glimpse a rare leather-bound copy of one of the first scripts developed for the book and learn about the challenges it faced making the leap to the screen.
Taking the story from page to screen
As described in Part One, The Alienist was the talk of Hollywood even before its publication. Soon after the manuscript was turned in to Random House in 1993, interest in purchasing the film rights was high, with names like Mike Nichols and Kathleen Kennedy looking at the project; however, it was Scott Rudin who made the winning bid of $500,000. Unfortunately, the excitement that followed was short lived. Caleb revealed in a 2013 New York Times book club chat that he ultimately came to wish he hadn’t listened to his agents’ advice on proceeding with the sale:
“What originally happened was that Mike Nichols had wanted to buy the book; but he was outbid, for reasons of professional competitiveness, by producer Scott Rudin, and how I wish I hadn’t listened to my agents. Rudin promised me I could write the script, then immediately reneged on that pledge and told me that there was “no movie in the Alienist.” He spent many years and millions of dollars on writers and directors who turned in one lousy script after another, which I was fortunate enough to be able to stop, incurring Rudin’s well-known wrath. He has now repeatedly said that there will never be a film of the movie, and although that decision is the studio’s, not his, he spent so much money on development that no one can afford the turnaround.”
The saga of the scripts
The script problems Caleb referenced go back to the very beginning. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times from 1995, the first of the scripts to be rejected was written by Tony-award winning playwright David Henry Hwang, who turned in a draft that “diverged too radically from the novel, focusing on a minor female character.” A second script, this time written by Steven Katz (Shadow of the Vampire, The Knick, and uncredited for work on Interview with the Vampire), was “considered too slavish to the original source material.” Even so, it appears this was a version Rudin had hopes for.
To entice studio executives into paying attention to the project, it was revealed in July of 1995 that Rudin made the unusual decision to arrange for copies of the script to bound in a special leather volume. Illustrated with period photographs and artwork of late 19th century New York, these copies were truly beautiful, as you can see below.
Today we continue our celebration of the 30th anniversary of The Alienist’s publication in 1994. This is the second in a series of posts to be released throughout 2024 honoring the novel’s enduring impact, and we do so with an even greater sense of purpose given the immensely sad news of the loss of its much treasured author last month. It was Caleb Carr’s vision that brought us the world of Dr. Kreizler and his team, and in this series we hope to pay tribute to his legacy. In this post, we turn to the novel’s publication, discussing its critical reception and early editions, before going on to examine some later special editions that are worth any serious collector’s attention.
A bestseller is born
Following a huge amount of buzz in the lead up to its publication (see Part One), The Alienist made its debut in March of 1994. Although its publisher, Random House, released the hardback first edition most readers would come to recognize, the novel’s true first edition was the Franklin Library Signed First Edition.
An affiliate of the Franklin Mint, the Franklin Library was operational from 1973 to 2000 and had several series of fine leather-bound (and some imitation and quarter-bound) books produced under their name. These included, among others, their 100 Greatest Books of All Time series, Signed First Edition series, and Signed Limited Edition series. Of note, the works they selected for their Signed First Edition series were those they believed had the potential to become the classics of the future—so the fact that they chose a debut novelist for a place on the list was highly unusual (for, although Caleb had one novel, Casing the Promised Land, to his name, it was little known and The Alienist was treated by most in the industry as a debut).
Nonetheless, the anticipation surrounding the novel (see Part One) resulted in the work receiving the honor of being included in the series, and Caleb also wrote a foreword that was exclusive to this edition. Like all other Franklin Library Signed First Editions, this edition was fully leather-bound with 22 karat gold ornamentation. It also included a custom illustration and was printed on acid-free paper with gilt edging. Although the precise number of copies was not made public by Franklin Library, the sequel which was also published by Franklin Library (see Part Four) was limited to 1,500 copies worldwide. As you can see below, it is a truly beautiful edition.
