Although I am not yet finished with The Dante Club, I am still able to make some last comments about the academic mystery genre. Here are some concluding thoughts:
- The academic setting is used because it is a common area and thus “scary” to have a mystery in, making it even more interesting.
- It can be a school, which is usually big, making the case harder to solve because there’s so many places to hide.
- There’s also a lot of people in these type of settings; this allows for there to be several witnesses and at the same time, several suspects, making it more difficult to narrow down the list.
- Novels in this genre often teach the reader new things, including history, that the average person wouldn’t necessarily know about in great detail.
- There are usually several references to literary figures and/or novels.
- It doesn’t necessarily have to be set in an academic setting but can be metaphorically “academic” in the sense that the reader learns a great deal, especially as a result of an academic approach to discovering the murderer/perpetrator. Thoroughly analyzing evidence and people helps further this academic point.
- There’s usually detectives involved.
- Romance is in some way involved in the novel.
Monday, May 19, 2008
The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl
From the inside cover, I’ve ascertained that this book is about literary geniuses who’ve come together to form the Dante Club, thus giving the book its academic perspective, especially since they will most likely have intelligent conversations and discuss literary books/terms. It’s set in Boston during 1865 in which a series of murders breaks out, which provides the mystery aspect of the novel as the members of this club attempt to solve the case.
Another Mystery Solved
Regarding the mystery aspect (of the academic mystery genre), I was always interested in the story due to the detective work being done. This maintained the “mystery aura.” Plus, there were several methods of detective work done in hopes of finding the murderer, like fingerprinting or using Bertillon’s system, examining the evidence, questioning, and posing as a different person. All of these things were done to find the serial killer who left clues only in the manner in which he killed and left the bodies. The fact that the killer purposely killed his victims in such a gruesome way also piqued my interest, especially since it seems it would be easy to catch such a person that does the same thing every time, in the open.
After a great deal of hard work and sleepless night, this crew of detectives (John the reporter, Sara, alienist Kreizler, and Kreizler’s help included) was able to solve the murder mysteries and discover that the killer was John Beecham (previously Japheth). After learning about his past and again analyzing the evidence and his background, they were finally able to put Beecham “into a corner” and kill him as he attempted yet another murder. (Of course there were other minor problems, like Kreizler and John Moore getting tied up by Beecham; Carr made it appear as if they too might die, but in the end they didn’t, thus making this a thrilling mystery).
Pertaining to the academic mystery genre, the mystery was academic in terms of the psychological process involved with both the patients and Kreizler’s attempt to analyze one’s childhood in order to understand how a person may act as an adult. It was also academic in the sense that it taught the reader many historical facts, which might seem boring, but in reality, the history made the story interesting and a great read. I really enjoyed this book.
After a great deal of hard work and sleepless night, this crew of detectives (John the reporter, Sara, alienist Kreizler, and Kreizler’s help included) was able to solve the murder mysteries and discover that the killer was John Beecham (previously Japheth). After learning about his past and again analyzing the evidence and his background, they were finally able to put Beecham “into a corner” and kill him as he attempted yet another murder. (Of course there were other minor problems, like Kreizler and John Moore getting tied up by Beecham; Carr made it appear as if they too might die, but in the end they didn’t, thus making this a thrilling mystery).
Pertaining to the academic mystery genre, the mystery was academic in terms of the psychological process involved with both the patients and Kreizler’s attempt to analyze one’s childhood in order to understand how a person may act as an adult. It was also academic in the sense that it taught the reader many historical facts, which might seem boring, but in reality, the history made the story interesting and a great read. I really enjoyed this book.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
The Academic Element of the Academic Mystery
Kreizler introduces the reader to another school of thought (academic) as he proposes his theory that people’s actions are motivated by events that took place during their childhood. To convince the reader of this argument, Carr creates characters like Stevie, Cyrus, and Mary Palmer, all who work for Kreizler now. They all had difficult childhoods which they acted out against later on, committing heinous crimes. They were vindicated as a result of Kreizler’s help and mental evaluation of them.
While on an outing with Mary, the narrator John attempts to discover why the beautiful seemingly sweet Mary would chain her father to the bed and set the house on fire. It was known she had a severe speech problem, hindering her from communicating, which frustrated her. After placing her in an asylum, Kreizler discovered that Mary wasn’t crazy but was sexually abused by her father and acted out as a result. Not being able to talk, or read and write since her parents didn’t teach her, thinking she wasn’t capable of such a thing, she set the house on fire killing him. Still John forced himself, as Kreizler encouraged (to the reader as well), to delve deeper and attempt to understand why she did this when it’s not uncommon to be abused and other victims don’t set fire to their abusers.
As a result, in a way Carr challenges thoughts and forces the reader to make distinctions sanity and insanity while examining the childhoods of the characters, especially that of the kids. Kreizler concludes the killer in this story is indeed sane and acted because he had “vengeance for the child he had been [and] protection for the tortured soul he had become.” He also found it imperative to get the female perspective on the case—Sara’s viewpoint. He wanted her to help “create…a woman (or series of women) who might have helped foster such rage” in the killer to make him act.
This is academic because it not only teaches the reader a new concept (well perhaps not that new since it may be obvious to some) while being enveloped in a mystery, but also because it allows the reader to better analyze things, especially people, and even his/her own life, perhaps learning something new about themselves.
While on an outing with Mary, the narrator John attempts to discover why the beautiful seemingly sweet Mary would chain her father to the bed and set the house on fire. It was known she had a severe speech problem, hindering her from communicating, which frustrated her. After placing her in an asylum, Kreizler discovered that Mary wasn’t crazy but was sexually abused by her father and acted out as a result. Not being able to talk, or read and write since her parents didn’t teach her, thinking she wasn’t capable of such a thing, she set the house on fire killing him. Still John forced himself, as Kreizler encouraged (to the reader as well), to delve deeper and attempt to understand why she did this when it’s not uncommon to be abused and other victims don’t set fire to their abusers.
As a result, in a way Carr challenges thoughts and forces the reader to make distinctions sanity and insanity while examining the childhoods of the characters, especially that of the kids. Kreizler concludes the killer in this story is indeed sane and acted because he had “vengeance for the child he had been [and] protection for the tortured soul he had become.” He also found it imperative to get the female perspective on the case—Sara’s viewpoint. He wanted her to help “create…a woman (or series of women) who might have helped foster such rage” in the killer to make him act.
This is academic because it not only teaches the reader a new concept (well perhaps not that new since it may be obvious to some) while being enveloped in a mystery, but also because it allows the reader to better analyze things, especially people, and even his/her own life, perhaps learning something new about themselves.
Hazy Truth
Another interesting aspect of this novel is how it presents “the truth.” On the one hand, Carr is like a muckraker exposing the issue of male prostitution. It’s very sad and makes me wonder if this really happened (Carr makes me think the story is based on true facts). At the same time, there is also the theme that newspapers don’t report the truth, which Carr presents as being wrong, since only certain papers will publish certain stories. This hinders the people from knowing the truth and further helps breed corruption within the government. For example The New York Times, the paper John works for, won’t cover the gruesome Santorelli murder; however, there might be one paper in the city/state of New York that might.
When Steffens finally publishes a story on it however, Roosevelt and Kreizler are angry because they don’t want the story exposed to the people—because it might cause an uprising in the immigrant community (since immigrant boys are being targeted) and because the murderer might figure out that the police are slowly piecing the clues together and linking the many murders (as they continue to occur; basically they’re right on his trail). By keeping information from the public, the government is still not being truthful to the people. This gives an academic element again because it suggests that during this time period, certain issues were not published for everybody to see and learn about. Instead the people were “kept in the dark.”
This academic element parallels another—Kreizler’s quest to find the truth about his patients and discover their mental state. He does this by analyzing patients and determining patients’ whether they’re insane or not based on years of research. He attempts to find motives for why this person (presumed to be a male, 6 foot 2 inches who is a customer of the boy prostitutes) would kill innocent boys. Kreizler believes that as a result of his childhood, the man is responding this way. He advances the point that people are ruled by what happened to them as a child.
When Steffens finally publishes a story on it however, Roosevelt and Kreizler are angry because they don’t want the story exposed to the people—because it might cause an uprising in the immigrant community (since immigrant boys are being targeted) and because the murderer might figure out that the police are slowly piecing the clues together and linking the many murders (as they continue to occur; basically they’re right on his trail). By keeping information from the public, the government is still not being truthful to the people. This gives an academic element again because it suggests that during this time period, certain issues were not published for everybody to see and learn about. Instead the people were “kept in the dark.”
This academic element parallels another—Kreizler’s quest to find the truth about his patients and discover their mental state. He does this by analyzing patients and determining patients’ whether they’re insane or not based on years of research. He attempts to find motives for why this person (presumed to be a male, 6 foot 2 inches who is a customer of the boy prostitutes) would kill innocent boys. Kreizler believes that as a result of his childhood, the man is responding this way. He advances the point that people are ruled by what happened to them as a child.
Still Academic Without An Academic Setting?
In Part I of The Alienist, called “The Perception,” I noticed that this novel piqued my interests more than the other two. I don’t know why but it just seems more interesting. Perhaps it’s because Carr integrates historical content into the story or because it involves murder a great deal more than the other two(—not to mention the topic of male prostitution which I can never remembering coming across before).
Having said this, there are still glaring similarities between this academic mystery novel and the others. To continue from my previous post, there is officially a pattern now of the main character breaking off an engagement, being involved in an academic mystery, and finding love in the end, I think. (There is a pattern since this occurs in a third book. Somewhere I read, or heard perhaps on an episode of “Law and Order” or “Snapped,” that if an incident occurs twice it is considered to be a coincidence. However, three times establishes a pattern.) This is most likely the case since secretary to the Police Commissioner (Roosevelt) Sara Howard is introduced. She is one of the first women to work for the NY Police Department, but secretly aspires to be a detective, which is considered and inappropriate job for woman during this time. The narrator John relays to the reader that after his engagement ended, he asked Sara, “an old friend” (just like Wimsey to Harriet and Reed to Kate) to marry him while he was a bit drunk. Although “her answer was to [him] in a cab to the Hudson River and throw [him] in,” the potential for a relationship has been established, especially since the two are working on the case together.
This brings me to another point that in contrast to the other two novels, there are a great deal of people working to solve the murder mystery of Georgio (A.K.A. Gloria, his female name) Santorelli and its connection to similar murders of young boys involved in male prostitution years before (people including the three friends, Sara, and the Issacson brothers, both detectives). Doing so could help get a heartless murderer off of the streets. The other novels focused on the main character and a couple others trying to solve the case and didn’t try to find a murderer/perpetrator of this magnitude. Furthermore, there has yet to be a suspect targeted in this case unlike the others. Usually there are potential leads, but so far this book has gone in depth in analyzing the mind (and motives) of a person who could commit such unspeakable murders and attempting to understand the victim’s past, giving the novel an academic perspective.
This academic aspect is certainly also revealed through the historical facts included in the novel, as well as mentioning novels like Riis’s How the Other Half Lives. By including history, the reader is able to learn, thus like they would be able to do in an academic setting (despite the fact that this book makes no reference to academic settings, which I previously assumed helped categorized an academic mystery novel; then again Kreizler has his own Institute in which he considers his mental patient kids to be students…). For example, I’ve learned more about an alienist’s job, corruption, graft, and male prostitution during the late 1800s, and various methods of detective work. It was also very interesting to learn how fingerprinting (dactyloscopy) was not accepted as evidence confirming that a person committed a crime or was at the crime scene. It’s a fact taken for granted today I guess since cases can be solved fairly quickly if fingerprints are involved, unlike during these times when people were murdered and their murderer was never punished.
Having said this, there are still glaring similarities between this academic mystery novel and the others. To continue from my previous post, there is officially a pattern now of the main character breaking off an engagement, being involved in an academic mystery, and finding love in the end, I think. (There is a pattern since this occurs in a third book. Somewhere I read, or heard perhaps on an episode of “Law and Order” or “Snapped,” that if an incident occurs twice it is considered to be a coincidence. However, three times establishes a pattern.) This is most likely the case since secretary to the Police Commissioner (Roosevelt) Sara Howard is introduced. She is one of the first women to work for the NY Police Department, but secretly aspires to be a detective, which is considered and inappropriate job for woman during this time. The narrator John relays to the reader that after his engagement ended, he asked Sara, “an old friend” (just like Wimsey to Harriet and Reed to Kate) to marry him while he was a bit drunk. Although “her answer was to [him] in a cab to the Hudson River and throw [him] in,” the potential for a relationship has been established, especially since the two are working on the case together.
This brings me to another point that in contrast to the other two novels, there are a great deal of people working to solve the murder mystery of Georgio (A.K.A. Gloria, his female name) Santorelli and its connection to similar murders of young boys involved in male prostitution years before (people including the three friends, Sara, and the Issacson brothers, both detectives). Doing so could help get a heartless murderer off of the streets. The other novels focused on the main character and a couple others trying to solve the case and didn’t try to find a murderer/perpetrator of this magnitude. Furthermore, there has yet to be a suspect targeted in this case unlike the others. Usually there are potential leads, but so far this book has gone in depth in analyzing the mind (and motives) of a person who could commit such unspeakable murders and attempting to understand the victim’s past, giving the novel an academic perspective.
This academic aspect is certainly also revealed through the historical facts included in the novel, as well as mentioning novels like Riis’s How the Other Half Lives. By including history, the reader is able to learn, thus like they would be able to do in an academic setting (despite the fact that this book makes no reference to academic settings, which I previously assumed helped categorized an academic mystery novel; then again Kreizler has his own Institute in which he considers his mental patient kids to be students…). For example, I’ve learned more about an alienist’s job, corruption, graft, and male prostitution during the late 1800s, and various methods of detective work. It was also very interesting to learn how fingerprinting (dactyloscopy) was not accepted as evidence confirming that a person committed a crime or was at the crime scene. It’s a fact taken for granted today I guess since cases can be solved fairly quickly if fingerprints are involved, unlike during these times when people were murdered and their murderer was never punished.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Differences Between Who Solves the Mystery?
To answer your question, I think that a mystery being solved by a detective is more suspenseful than that of one being solved by a psychiatrist. The reason I say this is that the detective is willing to embark on journeys and be put in dangerous situations in order to track down the culprit. On the other hand, the psychiatrist is more likely to analyze the situation thoroughly before doing anything. He/she tries to think about what the culprit would do and what motivates him/her to commit the crimes accused of; ultimately, the psychiatrist analyzes the human mind. For example, Detective Lord Peter Wimsey (Gaudy Night) comes to Shrewsbury College when Harriet calls, risking his life in the process, in order to speak to the suspects and look at the evidence in hopes of finding the culprit. Similarly, Detective Reed (In the Last Analysis) brings evidence to Kate, who then analyzes it (because of her knowledge of psychoanalysis, from her friend Emanuel) and interviews people. It’s ultimately her thinking in the end that leads them to solving the mystery.
If anybody has any other ideas about this, they would be greatly appreciated!
If anybody has any other ideas about this, they would be greatly appreciated!
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