Book Review: The Crime of the Century, Higdon; We Who Are About To..., Russ; Hexarchate Stories, Lee
Title: The Crime of the Century: The Leopold and Loeb Case (aka Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century)
Author: Hal Higdon
Published: Putnam, 1975
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 321,085
Text Number: 1128
Read Because: reviewed by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
truepenny, borrowed from Open Library
Review: This has a slow start and a sometimes-tedious level of detail, but more importantly it fails to establish why, in the sea of crime of 1920s Chicago, this case caught public attention before perpetrators or motive were established, and also who Loeb and Leopold were—their similar backgrounds and names, combined with their close relationships and co-conspiracy, made them a single unit within their social circle and in the press, and they're similarly hard to distinguish until the second half of the book.
But this confusion is almost a benefit, and it may even be inevitable. The case is notable for numerous reasons (including the defense's criticism of capital punishment as punitive, rather than transformative, justice), but it's interesting for its lack of motive, and for the extensive psychiatric testimony that tried to answer why two gifted young men would murder without motive. Those psychological profiles (by professionals and the press) are overreaching and biased by bankrolls or even by patient/psychologist rapport, they elide or confuse the perpetrators. The question emerges: can a person be synopsized and known in this way? can their mind be picked out from the morass of affect and infamy? And to some degree, the answer still is yes: throughout the case, and in Leopold's autobiography written decades later, a codependency emerges. The book quotes Dr. Hulbert's testimony:
So if the book is sometimes graceless, it's also thorough, thoughtful, and balanced. It has a well-rounded view of the central figures, and the nuanced conclusions it makes about the question of motive (and identity, personality, and relationship) are fascinating.
Title: We Who Are About To...
Author: Joanna Russ
Published: Open Road, 2018 (1976)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 155
Total Page Count: 321,240
Text Number: 1129
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A small group finds themselves stranded on an alien planet after an emergency landing, and the protagonist sees no outcome but death. This barren, lonely premise subverts the golden age SF trope of impossibly populated/accommodating alien planets—a premise which is now outdated, so the subversion has become less notable. But it's still comparably unalleviated: the protagonist's relationship with death and her long struggle to die hang over the work from its first line; it lengthens a short novel and alters the narrative voice in creative ways. The rest of this is less remarkable, with a near-future which, ironically, now feels outdated in golden age SF ways, and with social devolution to sexualized violence which isn't a caricature but does have a familiar, depressing predictability.
Title: Hexarchate Stories
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Published: Solaris, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 321,575
Text Number: 1130
Read Because: reading the series, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is the first collection I've read that contains flash fiction, and it just doesn't work for me: despite interesting premises or worldbuilding tidbits, they can't but be insubstantial they're so brief that attempts at meaningful endings often wind up hackneyed. The saving grace is of course the longer pieces, all of which I like—particularly "Gloves" (not necessarily for being better, but for appealing to my id), "Battle of Candle Arc" (which doesn't, in retrospect, add a lot to the book series; but as something that was published first, it's intriguing and satisfying), and most notably Glass Cannon, a novella that follows up the book series. Like the flash fiction, the novella's ending makes a clumsy attempt to do much and be too profound, but it's fascinating how the character dynamics and particularly the speculative elements of the worldbuilding are distilled and intensified in short form—it's a compelling follow-up.
Author: Hal Higdon
Published: Putnam, 1975
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 380
Total Page Count: 321,085
Text Number: 1128
Read Because: reviewed by
truepenny, borrowed from Open LibraryReview: This has a slow start and a sometimes-tedious level of detail, but more importantly it fails to establish why, in the sea of crime of 1920s Chicago, this case caught public attention before perpetrators or motive were established, and also who Loeb and Leopold were—their similar backgrounds and names, combined with their close relationships and co-conspiracy, made them a single unit within their social circle and in the press, and they're similarly hard to distinguish until the second half of the book.
But this confusion is almost a benefit, and it may even be inevitable. The case is notable for numerous reasons (including the defense's criticism of capital punishment as punitive, rather than transformative, justice), but it's interesting for its lack of motive, and for the extensive psychiatric testimony that tried to answer why two gifted young men would murder without motive. Those psychological profiles (by professionals and the press) are overreaching and biased by bankrolls or even by patient/psychologist rapport, they elide or confuse the perpetrators. The question emerges: can a person be synopsized and known in this way? can their mind be picked out from the morass of affect and infamy? And to some degree, the answer still is yes: throughout the case, and in Leopold's autobiography written decades later, a codependency emerges. The book quotes Dr. Hulbert's testimony:
"Each boy felt inadequate to carry out the life he most desired unless he had someone else in his life to complement him, to complete him. Unless these two boys had the same constitution, which they had, unless those boys had their own individual experiences in life, the present crime could never have been committed. The psychiatric cause for this is not to be found in either boy alone, but in the interplay or interweaving of their two personalities, their two desires caused by their two constitutions and experiences. This friendship between the two boys was not altogether a pleasant one for either of them. The ideas that each proposed to the other were repulsive. Their friendship was not based so much on desire as on need, they being what they were. Loeb did not crave the companionship of Leopold, nor did he respect him thoroughly. But he did feel the need of someone else in his life. Leopold did not like the faults, the criminalism of Loeb, but he did need someone in his life to carry out this king-slave compulsion. Their judgement in both cases was not mature enough to show them the importance of trying to live their own lives."
So if the book is sometimes graceless, it's also thorough, thoughtful, and balanced. It has a well-rounded view of the central figures, and the nuanced conclusions it makes about the question of motive (and identity, personality, and relationship) are fascinating.
Title: We Who Are About To...
Author: Joanna Russ
Published: Open Road, 2018 (1976)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 155
Total Page Count: 321,240
Text Number: 1129
Read Because: reading the author, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A small group finds themselves stranded on an alien planet after an emergency landing, and the protagonist sees no outcome but death. This barren, lonely premise subverts the golden age SF trope of impossibly populated/accommodating alien planets—a premise which is now outdated, so the subversion has become less notable. But it's still comparably unalleviated: the protagonist's relationship with death and her long struggle to die hang over the work from its first line; it lengthens a short novel and alters the narrative voice in creative ways. The rest of this is less remarkable, with a near-future which, ironically, now feels outdated in golden age SF ways, and with social devolution to sexualized violence which isn't a caricature but does have a familiar, depressing predictability.
Title: Hexarchate Stories
Author: Yoon Ha Lee
Published: Solaris, 2019
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 321,575
Text Number: 1130
Read Because: reading the series, borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is the first collection I've read that contains flash fiction, and it just doesn't work for me: despite interesting premises or worldbuilding tidbits, they can't but be insubstantial they're so brief that attempts at meaningful endings often wind up hackneyed. The saving grace is of course the longer pieces, all of which I like—particularly "Gloves" (not necessarily for being better, but for appealing to my id), "Battle of Candle Arc" (which doesn't, in retrospect, add a lot to the book series; but as something that was published first, it's intriguing and satisfying), and most notably Glass Cannon, a novella that follows up the book series. Like the flash fiction, the novella's ending makes a clumsy attempt to do much and be too profound, but it's fascinating how the character dynamics and particularly the speculative elements of the worldbuilding are distilled and intensified in short form—it's a compelling follow-up.