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Jan. 4th, 2010 12:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI did not get a chance to post on the last book I read in 2009 while it was still 2009, because I was busy twirling my villainous moustache as I kidnapped ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
genarti (and, for lesser periods of time, areyoumymemmy and rymenhild. Okay, technically I guess Rym kidnapped me. ANYWAY.) Sadly, all of the aforementioned have now escaped my clutches, so I am left bereft and alone with no way to cheer myself up except by babbling about hilarious 1850's-era urban sensationalism!
I picked up New York By Gas-Light while I was wandering through the history shelves in the Brooklyn library, because it promised me "the festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum - the underground story - of life in New York!"
And yes, it delivered everything it promised. *_*
George G. Foster, the author, was apparently a well-known nineteenth-century sensationalist sketch reporter - sketch in more than one term, since, as the introduction gleefully points out, after spending a lot of time expostulating in his columns about the vice and corruption of the city, the guy was thrown in prison due to forging the signatures of famous actors on his dry-cleaning checks. And then committed bigamy. I was therefore predisposed to be entertained even before I actually got to the meat of the sketches, which can mostly be summed up as: Be careful! New York is full of PROSTITUTES! You can go to the theater if you want I guess. And maybe go have fun bowling! But be careful you don't get cheated out of your money, and also, PROSTITUTES.
Highlights of ridiculous include:
- the part where he describes an upper-class ice cream parlor, which you might THINK an innocent and cheerful place to pass an afternoon . . . but LOOK AT THAT COUPLE OVER THERE! "They are evidently man and wife," explains Forster, in shocked tones (italics his) "but not each other's!"
- the dance-halls, which, he warns us, are places of GREAT DANGER. Sailors go to the dance-halls! Then they are "well-plied with poisonous liquor"! Then a prostitute comes up and before long, "the old hag who happens to be his partner commences making the most outrageous demonstrations of love and tenderness, which end in a proposal of immediate marriage!" The sailor of couse agrees and then has to stay on land supporting his NEW PROSTITUTE WIFE forevermore. Foster appears to believe that the threat of SURPRISE MARRIAGE is one of the Top Ten Dangers facing sailors in New York City. The things I never knew!
- the "true story" about the guy who lost all his money to a racket involving the FAKE CHIEF OF POLICE. The racket apparently goes like this: Guy 1 befriends Bumpkin; Guy 2 introduces the CHIEF OF POLICE to Bumpkin, and convinces Bumpkin to give the CHIEF OF POLICE most of his money for safekeeping; Guy 1 then wheedles the rest of Bumpkin's money at the gambling tables by going, "oh, gosh, I'm out of cash, and I can't ask the CHIEF OF POLICE to give me some back for GAMBLING!"
- the chapter where he actually interviews some PROSTITUTES, in "nearly" their own words. Their own words include phrases like "From the victim of a cruel world I became at once one of its victimizers, its self-created scourges" and "I, with madness in my heart, and its determination and coolness in my brain, came on foot and alone to New York to seek and execute revenge upon mankind, and at the same time to indulge my perverted appetitue to the full. I know I am a demon - a she-devil - as are all women who have lost their virtue; and I mean to make the most of it." I don't know about you guys, but I think of myself as a selfr-created scourge of the world EVERY DAY.
- the chapter on NEWSIES! (!!!) Newsies are one of the few things that Foster approves of. They have pluck and a can-do attitude and represent the best spirit of the city! According to Foster, all the top Newsies hang out at an all-night diner called, I kid you not, Butter-Cake Dick's. Try saying that with a straight face. (genarti and I decided that this is clearly where BATMAN goes after a hard night of fighting crime.)
General caveats to the hilarity: as one might guess, Foster is pretty horribly racist, classist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, not to mention a perpetrator of terrible stereotypes about the Irish. I could not even manage to be offended by any of this, because it was all so incredibly ridiculous, but I would not blame other people if they were! (Lulziest horrible racial generalization: the part about how he talks about Jews are always dirty, cheating and horrible, and yet, dang, SO PRETTY. "The race always retains the peculiar physical conformation constituting that peculiar style of beauty for which his tribe has been celebrated from remotest antiquity," he explains. "The roundness and suppleness of limb, the elasticity of flesh, the glittering eye-sparkle - are as inevitable in Jew or Jewess, in whatever rank of existence, as the hook of the nose which betrays the Israelite as the human kite, formed to be feared, hated and despised, yet to prey on mankind." THANKS FORSTER! We think you're evil and pretty too. Sadly, the other horrible racial generalizations tend to be way more awful and less hilarious.)
In seriousness, though, it was also pretty fascinating just to read about the geography of the city in the 1850's - whatever dubious accuracy of what Foster portrays as going on inside it - which was, of course, wildly different from the city of today, but retains some similarities. And oh, those rich bastards who live above Bleecker Street!
I am also going to be forever grateful that I read this book because the introduction introduced me to the existence of this glorious book from the same era, entitled The Quaker City: The Monks of Monk's Hall. Apparently it is basically like The Monk, but set in my hometown of Philadelphia! THE PATH BEFORE ME HAS BEEN PREPARED, I MUST ACQUIRE AND READ IT IMMEDIATELY. (Apparently the villain's name is DEVIL-BUG. BRB LAUGHING FOREVER.)
genarti (and, for lesser periods of time, areyoumymemmy and rymenhild. Okay, technically I guess Rym kidnapped me. ANYWAY.) Sadly, all of the aforementioned have now escaped my clutches, so I am left bereft and alone with no way to cheer myself up except by babbling about hilarious 1850's-era urban sensationalism! I picked up New York By Gas-Light while I was wandering through the history shelves in the Brooklyn library, because it promised me "the festivities of prostitution, the orgies of pauperism, the haunts of theft and murder, the scenes of drunkenness and beastly debauch, and all the sad realities that go to make up the lower stratum - the underground story - of life in New York!"
And yes, it delivered everything it promised. *_*
George G. Foster, the author, was apparently a well-known nineteenth-century sensationalist sketch reporter - sketch in more than one term, since, as the introduction gleefully points out, after spending a lot of time expostulating in his columns about the vice and corruption of the city, the guy was thrown in prison due to forging the signatures of famous actors on his dry-cleaning checks. And then committed bigamy. I was therefore predisposed to be entertained even before I actually got to the meat of the sketches, which can mostly be summed up as: Be careful! New York is full of PROSTITUTES! You can go to the theater if you want I guess. And maybe go have fun bowling! But be careful you don't get cheated out of your money, and also, PROSTITUTES.
Highlights of ridiculous include:
- the part where he describes an upper-class ice cream parlor, which you might THINK an innocent and cheerful place to pass an afternoon . . . but LOOK AT THAT COUPLE OVER THERE! "They are evidently man and wife," explains Forster, in shocked tones (italics his) "but not each other's!"
- the dance-halls, which, he warns us, are places of GREAT DANGER. Sailors go to the dance-halls! Then they are "well-plied with poisonous liquor"! Then a prostitute comes up and before long, "the old hag who happens to be his partner commences making the most outrageous demonstrations of love and tenderness, which end in a proposal of immediate marriage!" The sailor of couse agrees and then has to stay on land supporting his NEW PROSTITUTE WIFE forevermore. Foster appears to believe that the threat of SURPRISE MARRIAGE is one of the Top Ten Dangers facing sailors in New York City. The things I never knew!
- the "true story" about the guy who lost all his money to a racket involving the FAKE CHIEF OF POLICE. The racket apparently goes like this: Guy 1 befriends Bumpkin; Guy 2 introduces the CHIEF OF POLICE to Bumpkin, and convinces Bumpkin to give the CHIEF OF POLICE most of his money for safekeeping; Guy 1 then wheedles the rest of Bumpkin's money at the gambling tables by going, "oh, gosh, I'm out of cash, and I can't ask the CHIEF OF POLICE to give me some back for GAMBLING!"
- the chapter where he actually interviews some PROSTITUTES, in "nearly" their own words. Their own words include phrases like "From the victim of a cruel world I became at once one of its victimizers, its self-created scourges" and "I, with madness in my heart, and its determination and coolness in my brain, came on foot and alone to New York to seek and execute revenge upon mankind, and at the same time to indulge my perverted appetitue to the full. I know I am a demon - a she-devil - as are all women who have lost their virtue; and I mean to make the most of it." I don't know about you guys, but I think of myself as a selfr-created scourge of the world EVERY DAY.
- the chapter on NEWSIES! (!!!) Newsies are one of the few things that Foster approves of. They have pluck and a can-do attitude and represent the best spirit of the city! According to Foster, all the top Newsies hang out at an all-night diner called, I kid you not, Butter-Cake Dick's. Try saying that with a straight face. (
genarti and I decided that this is clearly where BATMAN goes after a hard night of fighting crime.)General caveats to the hilarity: as one might guess, Foster is pretty horribly racist, classist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, not to mention a perpetrator of terrible stereotypes about the Irish. I could not even manage to be offended by any of this, because it was all so incredibly ridiculous, but I would not blame other people if they were! (Lulziest horrible racial generalization: the part about how he talks about Jews are always dirty, cheating and horrible, and yet, dang, SO PRETTY. "The race always retains the peculiar physical conformation constituting that peculiar style of beauty for which his tribe has been celebrated from remotest antiquity," he explains. "The roundness and suppleness of limb, the elasticity of flesh, the glittering eye-sparkle - are as inevitable in Jew or Jewess, in whatever rank of existence, as the hook of the nose which betrays the Israelite as the human kite, formed to be feared, hated and despised, yet to prey on mankind." THANKS FORSTER! We think you're evil and pretty too. Sadly, the other horrible racial generalizations tend to be way more awful and less hilarious.)
In seriousness, though, it was also pretty fascinating just to read about the geography of the city in the 1850's - whatever dubious accuracy of what Foster portrays as going on inside it - which was, of course, wildly different from the city of today, but retains some similarities. And oh, those rich bastards who live above Bleecker Street!
I am also going to be forever grateful that I read this book because the introduction introduced me to the existence of this glorious book from the same era, entitled The Quaker City: The Monks of Monk's Hall. Apparently it is basically like The Monk, but set in my hometown of Philadelphia! THE PATH BEFORE ME HAS BEEN PREPARED, I MUST ACQUIRE AND READ IT IMMEDIATELY. (Apparently the villain's name is DEVIL-BUG. BRB LAUGHING FOREVER.)
