I picked up E.L. Doctorow’s RAGTIME because I love the musical adaptation but it puzzles me why it treats teenage rape victim Evelyn Nesbit as a scheming, self-promoting minx — was it something the adapters came up with or was it Doctorow?
As it turns out, Doctorow’s a lot worse. As detailed at the link, sexual predator Stanford White got the teenage chorus girl roofied (or just gave her too much to drink), then raped her; when Nesbit’s later husband Harry Thaw gunned White down for that, it touched off what was then the crime of the century. Evelyn testified to the rape on the stand, leading (initially) to a hung jury. Doctorow, however, portrays the girl as a film noir schemer who “wrecked one man’s life and took the life of another” for money and fame. I didn’t finish the book, though it wasn’t just the treatment of Nesbit but Doctorow’s odd, omniscient writing style that turned me off.
That led me to check out AMERICAN EVE: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the It Girl and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu, though the initial chapter — trying and failing to make the events some kind of sign of their times — fell so short of that I almost put the book down. I’m glad I didn’t because Uruburu does an excellent job showing Nesbit as a young girl who started from nothing, became a successful art and photography model, moved into theater and became the primary support of her neglectful mother. Uruburu’s book explains some of what puzzled me in the movie The Girl On the Red Velvet Swing (discussed at the first link above) and its portrayal of Thaw: he did indeed have a possessive, smothering mother and was obsessed with White before he met Evelyn, having convinced himself the man was blackballing Thaw at the upscale clubs he wanted to join. Uruburu also demolishes Doctorow’s argument — popular at the time — that Nesbit spun the rape story to save Harry in return for massive payments from his wealthy family (on the contrary, she had to beg Harry for support money during the trial). A slow start but a rewarding read.
Andre Norton’s MERLIN’S MIRROR is a lot less rewarding. The book feels like Norton read Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave, then tried reworking it as SF. We have Merlin growing up with a mysterious parentage, perpetually alone, Vortigern almost sacrificing him, a mysterious sense of destiny guiding him to arrange the birth of Arthur …
Here, though, Merlin’s father is the product of alien DNA implanted in Mom; the aliens long ago guided humanity before rival aliens, the Dark Ones, showed up and drove them away, letting the world sink back into barbarism. Merlin’s mission is to give England a king great enough to unite the realm and bring peace. His weapons: the remnants of advanced alien tech. His method: arrange for Ygraine’s rape, much like his own mother must have been (as usual for this sort of plot the rape aspect goes unacknowledged) then train Arthur. His opposition: Nimue, spawn of the Dark Ones, his player on the other side.
As Judith Tarr says, there’s potential here, particularly Merlin’s loneliness and Nimue’s claim that Merlin’s fighting for the wrong side. Instead, Norton tries telling an Arthurian SF story and it plods. Merlin, unlike Stewart’s, is listless, going through the motions of his assigned destiny without any enthusiasm or joy. The book skips over chunks of the legend (which is fine) but doesn’t give us anything better. And while Stewart’s Merlin had good reasons for wanting a united Britain, why do spacemen care about one little island? If they want humanity at peace, fixing Britain is a very small contribution to that cause.
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