[NFBV-Potomac-Announce] November Gook Club Meeting

Sat Oct 27 18:14:48 UTC 2018

Hello Colleagues and book lovers,

The November 2018 Potomac Chapter Book Club will meet at 7:00 PM on Monday November 5 at the home of John and Sandy Halverson.

The address is 810 22nd Street South, Arlington, Virginia 22202.

The book is the Devil in the White City.  Attached and below are many questions derived from the Lit Lovers website.

We are meeting on November 5, a Monday, because later in the week is our Virginia State NFB convention.

Finally I will send out a menu from a local delivery restaurant for dinner selections next weekend.

John

These questions are from Lit Lovers.

1. Did you like the book? Why or why not?
2. How does Larson's description of the time period help set the mood for the story? Did any of the descriptions surprise you?
3. What narrative techniques does Larson use to create suspense in the book? How does he end sections and chapters of the book in a manner that makes'
the reader anxious to find out what happens next?
4. You know who the serial killer is from the beginning of the book. Does this cause anticipation for the rest of the story or does it ruin it for you?

5. In the note "Evils Imminent," Erik Larson writes "Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men
choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow." What does the book reveal about "conflict between
good and evil"? What is the essential difference between men like Daniel Burnham and Henry H. Holmes? Are they alike in any way?
6. Do you think a fair of this size could happen in today's America? What advantages or disadvantages can you foresee with such a project?
7. At the end of The Devil in the White City, Larson writes "The thing that entranced me about Chicago in the Gilded Age was the city's willingness to
take on the impossible in the name of civic honor, a concept so removed from the modern psyche that two wise readers of early drafts of this book wondered
why Chicago was so avid to win the world's fair in the first place" [p. 393]. What motives, in addition to "civic honor," drove Chicago to build the Fair?
In what ways might the desire to "out-Eiffel Eiffel" and to show New York that Chicago was more than a meat-packing backwater be seen as problematic?
8. Do you think anyone considered the negative impact having the fair in Chicago could have?
9. Who was more powerful - Burnham or Holmes?
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list of 14 items
10. Why do you think Erik Larson chose to tell Burnham and Holmes' stories together? How did the juxtaposition affect the narrative? Do you think they
worked well together or would you have preferred to read about just Holmes or just Burnham?
11. What did you learn about architecture? What do you think the fair contributed to the architectural landscape in the United States?
12. How was Holmes able to get away with so many murders without becoming suspect? Were you surprised by how easy it was for him to commit crimes without
being caught?
13. Could this many murders and/or disappearances have gone undetected in a different city? What about today?
14. What ultimately led to Holmes' capture and the discovery of his crime? Was it inevitable? If Detective Geyer had been a little less persistent, do
you think Holmes would have gotten away with murder?
15. How did Holmes' hotel contrast with the buildings of the World's Fair? Can architecture reflect goodness or evil, or are buildings neutral until used?

16. How did the White City contrast with Chicago, the Black City?
17. What do you think of Holmes' claim that he was the devil? Can people be inherently evil? How would you explain his strange allure and cold-hearted
behavior?
18. Burnham, Olmsted, Ferris, and Holmes were all visionaries in their own ways. What drove each of these men? Were they were ever truly satisfied? How
did the fair affect the rest of their lives?
19. The White City is repeatedly referred to as a dream. The young poet Edgar Lee Masters called the Court of Honor "an inexhaustible dream of beauty"
and columnist Teresa Dean found it "cruel . . . to let us dream and drift through heaven for six months, and then to take it out of our lives" [p. 335].
What accounts for the dreamlike quality of the White City? What are the positive and negative aspects of this dream?
20. In what ways does the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 change America? What lasting inventions and ideas did it introduce into American culture? What important
figures were critically influenced by the Fair?
21. At the end of the book, Larson suggests that "Exactly what motivated Holmes may never be known" [p. 395]. What possible motives are exposed in The
Devil in the White City? Why is it important to try to understand the motives of a person like Holmes?
22. After the Fair ended, Ray Stannard Baker noted "What a human downfall after the magnificence and prodigality of the World's Fair which has so recently
closed its doors! Heights of splendor, pride, exaltation in one month: depths of wretchedness, suffering, hunger, cold, in the next" [p. 334]. What is
the relationship between the opulence and grandeur of the Fair and the poverty and degradation that surrounded it? In what ways does the Fair bring into
focus the extreme contrasts of the Gilded Age?
23. What does The Devil in the White City add to our knowledge about Frederick Law Olmsted and Daniel Burnham? What are the most admirable traits of these
two men? What are their most important aesthetic principles?
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list of 5 items
24. In his speech before his wheel took on its first passengers, George Ferris "happily assured the audience that the man condemned for having 'wheels
in his head' had gotten them out of his head and into the heart of the Midway Plaisance" [p. 279]. In what way is the entire Fair an example of the power
of human ingenuity and imagination?
25. How was Holmes able to exert such power over his victims? What weaknesses did he prey upon? Why wasn't he caught earlier? In what ways does his story
"illustrate the end of the century" [p. 370] as the Chicago Times-Herald wrote?
26. What satisfaction can be derived from a nonfiction book like The Devil in the White City that cannot be found in novels? In what ways is the book like
a novel?
27. What is the total picture of late nineteenth-century America that emerges from The Devil in the White City? How is that time both like and unlike contemporary
America? What are the most significant differences? In what ways does that time mirror the present?
28. Will you read any other books by Eric Larson?
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