Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City"

At its best, Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City is an immensely pleasurable recount of the World's Fair in Chicago at the end of the 19th century. Janet Maslin, in a review of the book for the New York Times, commented, "A dynamic, enveloping book... Relentlessly fuses history and entertainment to give this nonfiction book the dramatic effect of a novel... It doesn't hurt that this truth is stranger than fiction." I have to agree with this high commendation. Rarely have I come across a more engrossing nonfiction book.

The Devil in the White City pulls together two stories centered around the fulcrum point of the World's Fair in Chicago, 1893. Larson presents two men as counterparts: the ambitious, talented architect and designer of the fair, Daniel Burnham; and the dangerous psychopath Dr. H. H. Holmes. When Chicago beats out New York and other American cities as the chosen city for the fair, Burnham and his partner John Root are elected as the team of architects to serve as directors of works. Holmes, living in Chicago at the time, quickly built a hotel to house young, female visitors to the fair. His self-designed hotel came complete with an oven large enough to fit a person and a sound-proof room. He hides these incriminating details by hiring poor day laborers and firing them constantly to rehire more poor laborers unfamiliar with the project. The book does a good job of bouncing back and forth between the stories. I don’t recall every feeling fed up with one storyline before Larson would shift the focus. I have to admit, however, that I thought the stories would collide or intermingle at the climax. There was a brief point of commingling when Holmes took one of his many wives (he was quite the bigamist) and her sister to the fair, but in general the stories remained separate.

Larson did attempt to tie them together thematically, and therein lies his true strength as an historian. I spoke to my hairdresser about the book (yes, mock away), and he said that despite several attempts (motivated because he was an architect in Chicago before moving to Providence and becoming a hairdresser), he could never make it past all the dull history in the beginning. Apparently some of his friends told him, just get past the first bit, it gets better. I have to admit I found the opposite to be true. Larson has a fantastic grip on the Gilded Age in Chicago – I love the menus for the fancy dinners the architects and sponsors held, the rather indelible image of the Chicagoans gathered around the telegraph office waiting for news from Congress on who would host the World’s Fair, or the clash of personalities in the early design stages of the fair. Larson certainly did his homework and it’s very clear in this early section. My one objection is that I wish he had provided more excerpts from the journals or newspaper stories where he got his information. In this, The Devil in the White City certainly suffers the stigma of being “popular history” – there are few requirements for quotations or citations, and this becomes more apparent farther into the book, especially in the Holmes sections. I found myself thinking more than once, “how can you possibly know he felt that?” Or, even worse, “how do you know he did this or went to this fair?” It would have been fascinating to read some of these descriptions from Holmes’s own words. Later, Larson tells us that Homes wrote a biography/defense of his life, and I presume this is where Larson gets a lot of his information, but provides very little for his reader.

I read one review of the book that mocked it by saying it was a book Larson wanted to write about the history of the world’s fair, with some psychopath murderer plot line thrown in for interest’s sake, and I find this to be a somewhat damning comment. Though I think the mixing of the two stories works out moderately well, the end of the book certainly demonstrates the problems. I was disappointed to find that the stories wouldn’t merge – Holmes and Burnham never met, for example. And the fair was over long before Holmes was caught, so his crimes didn’t taint Chicago or the World’s Fair in the way I had been expecting. I feel that the book would have benefited from some rather extensive editing – it ran too long; I had trouble convincing myself to finish it. Holmes’s plot line extends far past Burnham’s last narrative appearance, including the introduction of an entirely brand new character (the dectective who caught Holmes - as a side note, I was disturbed/fascinated at the extremely poor quality of the police in the midst of the Holmes murders...) that I think should have appeared sooner – new characters in the final chapters feels too much like a real life deus ex machina. The novel also opens with a flashback scene with Burnham on the Olympic when he receives news of the sinking of the Titanic along with his friend from the World Fair days, Millet. I found this prologue to be entirely unnecessary and something of a distraction, especially as it was only loosely returned to in the conclusion (perhaps as a way of bringing up Burnham again long after his story finished?)

Despite these objections, the book was for the most part a very interesting read. I have heard rumors that there will be a movie adaptation soon, though I’m skeptical as to how well the screenwriter/adapter will keep to historical fact as presented in the novel. I get the feeling that Larson manipulated facts/details to suit his narrative, so one can only imagine how far the movie will depart from even his minor adjustments.