Carl Trueman in RTMS points to De Quincey's satirical essay "On Murder Considered One of the Fine Arts" (1827) as the inflection point in which society took a Romantic turn toward sympathizing with the murderer. De Quincey was a major influence on Poe and Dostoevsky.
Sometimes I wonder if we see humour in gruesome murder due to a failure of imagination. Either we have dehumanized the victim, or we cannot truly envision how horrific it is to so crush and mutilate a living person.
Take Klavan's example of the murdered blackmailer: Blackmailers were viewed as the scum of the earth in the Victorian era. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes decline to investigate the murder of a blackmailer, expressing the opinion that the blackmailer deserved it. Lacenaire was probably viewed as a public benefactor for removing a hated parasite. The victim was viewed as less than human.
I have read the murder scene in Crime and Punishment, and found it horrific. Perhaps it is because I have worked to heal the wounds of the human body, and have felt how it flinches and quivers even while unconscious under the necessary surgical knife, but I can never view with complacency the deliberate, careless mutilation of the human body. It required a suspension of disbelief and faith in Dostoevsky's skill for me to keep reading C&P after that murder scene. Skilled storyteller though he is, he barely convinced me to have sympathy for the murderer. I think a lot of people who are fascinated by gruesome spectacle are either drawn because they cannot look away, like a snake fascinates its prey, or they cannot imagine how it feels if it isn't happening to them.
Thanks for reviewing one of my favorite authors, Andrew Klavan. He's brilliant.
I've mentioned this book before, but Neil Postman's Technopoly is an excellent explanation of how the inherent bias of tools and technology lead to unintended consequences. He's no longer with us, but he would be appalled by how much we are manipulated by technology today.
It's right up your alley. He wrote it in the mid-90s, before FB and Google took over the internet, but he was very prescient. What I like is, instead of just complaining about technopoly, he offers concrete ways one can resist it.
Oh, fascinating. Makes me want to read "Crime and Punishment," which I've never read. Also, if you've never seen the "Pieta" in person, which Klavan did a great job of describing, it is quite stunning—like all of Michelangelo's work. It just arrests you with the humanity of the scene, the incredible beauty and tragedy of that moment. I can't really put it into words and trying to is only making me frustrated. It's worth beholding in person and gives you some sense of what Nietzsche meant when he said, "God is dead . . . and we have killed him."
Carl Trueman in RTMS points to De Quincey's satirical essay "On Murder Considered One of the Fine Arts" (1827) as the inflection point in which society took a Romantic turn toward sympathizing with the murderer. De Quincey was a major influence on Poe and Dostoevsky.
Interesting. Thanks for flagging that. I’ll check it out.
Sometimes I wonder if we see humour in gruesome murder due to a failure of imagination. Either we have dehumanized the victim, or we cannot truly envision how horrific it is to so crush and mutilate a living person.
Take Klavan's example of the murdered blackmailer: Blackmailers were viewed as the scum of the earth in the Victorian era. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes decline to investigate the murder of a blackmailer, expressing the opinion that the blackmailer deserved it. Lacenaire was probably viewed as a public benefactor for removing a hated parasite. The victim was viewed as less than human.
I have read the murder scene in Crime and Punishment, and found it horrific. Perhaps it is because I have worked to heal the wounds of the human body, and have felt how it flinches and quivers even while unconscious under the necessary surgical knife, but I can never view with complacency the deliberate, careless mutilation of the human body. It required a suspension of disbelief and faith in Dostoevsky's skill for me to keep reading C&P after that murder scene. Skilled storyteller though he is, he barely convinced me to have sympathy for the murderer. I think a lot of people who are fascinated by gruesome spectacle are either drawn because they cannot look away, like a snake fascinates its prey, or they cannot imagine how it feels if it isn't happening to them.
Thanks for reviewing one of my favorite authors, Andrew Klavan. He's brilliant.
I've mentioned this book before, but Neil Postman's Technopoly is an excellent explanation of how the inherent bias of tools and technology lead to unintended consequences. He's no longer with us, but he would be appalled by how much we are manipulated by technology today.
I’ve never read it but need to.
It's right up your alley. He wrote it in the mid-90s, before FB and Google took over the internet, but he was very prescient. What I like is, instead of just complaining about technopoly, he offers concrete ways one can resist it.
Oh, fascinating. Makes me want to read "Crime and Punishment," which I've never read. Also, if you've never seen the "Pieta" in person, which Klavan did a great job of describing, it is quite stunning—like all of Michelangelo's work. It just arrests you with the humanity of the scene, the incredible beauty and tragedy of that moment. I can't really put it into words and trying to is only making me frustrated. It's worth beholding in person and gives you some sense of what Nietzsche meant when he said, "God is dead . . . and we have killed him."
Ha. I thought this was about the Mike Myers movie!