Customer Reviews

Dreamland

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

After I had read "The American Century" and found that Kevin Baker was responsible for the bulk of the research on that fine book, I wanted to read his new work of historical fiction, "Dreamland." I'm glad I did. Not since I read Caleb Carr's "The Alienist" a few years ago, have I enjoyed a novel as much as this one. Baker is able to bring the reader nearly to tears as he details the travails of young women trying to make it from day to day in New York, either as workers in one of the sweatshops on the lower east side or, unfortunately as one of the prostitutes every night putting her life in jeapordy in the Tenderloin or on the other mean streets of that heartless, corrupt, and sad, very sad city. The section detailing the days spent in jail by the striking women is especially chilling. The inclusion of Freud and Jung is compelling not so much for the interpretation of their work, but rather for the hint of progress that would be made in the years to come in the field of psychoanalysis. Other critics have harped on their inclusion in this work, but I found their conversations stimulating. How they end up in Dreamland at the end of the book with the other colorful and larger than life characters in this inspired work-Kid Twist, Gyp The Blood, the Mad Carlotta, Esther, Trick the Dwarf, Tim Sullivan-is deliciously presented. I thought that the inclusion of Frances Perkins as the sole upper class liberal fighting vainly with limited success to stem the tide of worker abuse allowed the author to speak through her character and graphically describe the carnage enveloping the poor young ladies of that era. No wonder FDR made her his only Secretary of Labor. I thought it ironic that a scant thirty years after the time of this novel, this same age group of women, imprisoned in 1912 for having the gall to ask for a 54 hour work-week, formed the nucleus of the manufacturing force that produced all the armament that saved our world from tyranny and made it safe for democracy during World War II. It is never fair to give away the ending of a book, and I won't. But, trust me, you'll love it!

With key characters named Trick the Dwarf, Kid Twist, Gyp the Blood and the Mad Carlotta, it is tough not to become enthralled by this book. The author does an outstanding job of placing you in New York at the turn of the last century and the sights, sounds, and smells of lower Manhattan, Coney Island, and the Bowery make this book come to life. Several key chapters are so compelling, I read them over and over to ensure I got every last nuance. The introduction of historical fact as part of the story is an interesting device that worked well and led me to do further reading on early theme parks, gangland life in New York, and the origins of the labor movement. This is one of the better works of fiction I have read lately and I am not the least bit disturbed that a film adaptation is already in the works.

I haven't read much in the past ten years that stayed in my consciousness long after I read the last page. I found this an extremely compelling and well written fiction. My fondest hope is that it will be "discovered" in paper and reap the attention it deserves.

I really wanted to like this book. I'm a glutton for information on old New York and have read a lot about the time period in question: early 20th century New York.

Don't get me wrong. There were some terrific plots evolving throughout this book. I loved the character of Esther, the labor organizer who turns her back on her father, a man who richly deserves her disdain. I enjoyed the love affair between Esther and Kid Twist and the fascinating scenes of Coney Island. I never understood before reading this book that the fascination with the jostling rides was the pleasure it gave men and women who were looking for any excuse to engage in inappropirate behavior. There is much to learn from this book which is exquisitly researched.

But for every enjoyment, there is a corresponding disappointment. The plot involving Freud and Jung was tedious and inconsequential, at least in my eyes. It could easily have been eliminated with no problem. I know the author would argue vociferously with that because he intended the book to be ambitious and filled with ideas and not just some setpiece full of fluff. Fair enough. But for me, his ambition did not pay off.

Sometimes, shorter is better and this book would have benefited with fewer characters. One more note: The author really copped out in the end on the romance between Kid Twist and Esther. Maybe nothing felt right when he was writing the ending but, to delve into every possible historical and emotional detail between these two characters and then to say, "Well, anything could have happened. I'm not sure what did" is one of the biggest copouts I've ever come across in a novel. The reader is very letdown. Given the dark material of this book, it's not like we were expecting a happy ending, just a definitive ending. We were invested .

Having read SOMETIMES YOU SEE IT COMING, one of the best baseball books I've read, I was interested to know if the Kevin Baker who wrote DREAMLAND and PARADISE ALLEY was the same person. It's the same guy, but Baker has the chops to do both, as he is the chief historical researcher for the NEW YORK TIMES.

As I began to read, I was immediately reminded of several other books. AMERICAN TRAGEDY, THE ALIENIST, THE GANGS OF NEW YORK, and even CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The setting is New York City with Coney Island featured most of the time. There are gangsters and factory girls and Tammany Hall politicians and they all speak their own unique language, some Yiddish and Bowery slang. Thankfully I checked out the back of the book. Sure enough, there was a glossary. You'll be paging back and forth for the entire read.

There really isn't any main character, but Esse Abramowitz; her brother "Gyp the Blood;" Esse's lover Josef Kolykia, alias "Kid Twist;" and Tammany Hall politician Big Tim Sullivan do most of the heavy lifting. Trick the Dwarf tells the story. There is a dramatis personae provided at the beginning to help you keep track.

The plot begins when Kid Twist saves Trick the Dwarf's life at a Rat Bating by nailing Gyp the Blood with a shovel. For the rest of the book, Gyp the Blood is out to get Kid Twist. A subplot involves Esse Abramowitz's increasingly involvement in the Labor movement. She also works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co., and if you're up on your history, you know what happened there.

I was a bit disappointed in the ending. Trick the Dwarf suggests what MIGHT have happened to the major actors, rather than telling us. There's also a subplot involving Sigmund Freud that seems to be included just to add some historical credence. As Baker tells us in his acknowledgments, Freud really did visit America in 1909, but his conflict with Carl Jung doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do with anything.

Despite my misgivings, I heartily recommend this book for the Coney Island atmosphere and the Yiddish jargon alone.

I usually get bored with long books, and often feel that the author could have told the story in half as many pages. However, this book had me from the beginning and I had no trouble staying interested until the end, even though it weighs in at about 700 pages. Kevin Baker's secret is that he is so familiar with the historicl setting that he is able to write in such detail that you literally feel tranported to turn-of-the-century New York. The reader gets to know the characters and care about them, even the more eccentric ones. The story about the harshness of life is at times sad, funny, endearing, and even frightening. All 700 pages are worth the read.

In the well-researched "Dreamland," as its name suggests, Kevin Baker gives us a surrealistic portrayal of the seedy side of New York City at the beginning of the 20th Century. Through various (often strange) characters, we are introduced to Jewish immigrants, gang life, corrupt politicians, the introduction of unions and the feminist movement, and the disturbing things that used to pass for entertainment at Coney Island. Baker also effectively depicts the deplorable living and working conditions of immigrants in New York during this era, and the appalling circumstances of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Less effective is a fictitious visit from Freud and Jung to New York, where the former worries that his being Jewish will prevent his teachings in psychology to be taken seriously.

In scene after scene, Baker focuses on the outright evil that exists in some people. The author doesn't mince words or spare the reader instances of cruelty. In one minor scene, for instance, a particularly vicious main character forces a peddler to feed poison to his beloved horse, upon which his livelihood completely depends. The business owners are, for the most part, despicable, making their workers slave 14 hours a day, six days a week, in the most vile conditions imaginable at meager wages.

While some reviewers didn't like the uncertain end, I had no problem with it. Baker reminds us that better days are ahead, and that individual human dignity must never be lost. Perhaps Baker tries to do too much in this book, but "Dreamland" makes a powerful statement, and I recommend it to anyone interested in this part of our history.

After 37 reviews have been posted, there isn't much left to say, but having devoting several days to getting through this brick of a novel, I wanted to add my voice to the chorus.

The book is good -- but it isn't great, and deep down you know it isn't even very good. Read Henry Roth's CALL IT SLEEP and Doctorow's RAGTIME and you'll see what Baker's work is a charming but very clearly lesser imitation of. It's like the difference between Elvis and an Elvis impersonator -- same hair, same suit, but one's a great original and one's just a guy hoping to evoke memories of a great original by putting on a familiar wig and suit.

The book could have been 100 pages shorter without harming anything -- how many times, for heaven's sake, do we have to read a character's thoughts about the "perfect breasts" of the angel painted above the front gate to Dreamland? Fine, they're big, they're gorgeous, we get the point. How many times do we have to read "STEEPLECHASE -- FUNNY PLACE"? How many times do we have to see the dwarf poke some hapless park-goer with his electric cattle prod? More than once, yes, but 5 or 6 times?

The Freud and Jung scenes should all have been left on the cutting room floor. Especially the last one -- the novel would have been better ending on the last Trick the Dwarf scene rather than with the anticlimactic and obvious porcupine joke.

Gyp the Blood starts out as a serious antagonist -- but then Baker seriously undercuts him by having him foiled in every scene after the first. Making him a hapless oaf doesn't improve the book.

The perspective isn't as rigorously consistent as it ought to be in a book that labels every chapter with a viewpoint character's name.

And the "you decide what happened" ending is a disappointment -- you've been waiting for the Triangle fire all through the book, especially after the opening scene has Trick saying "Most of all the story is about fire," you've been teased with the mock tenement fire in Coney Island and the "crying wolf" in the sweatshop Esse works in before Triangle, so the tacking on of the Triangle scene as almost an afterthought at the end feels contemptuous of the reader, almost turning the book into one big shaggy dog story.

Not a bad book, I'm not sorry to have read it, but jeez, don't compare it to the great New York immigrant novels. There's just no comparison.

Baker's Dickensian epic history of turn-of-the-century New York captures the essense of our identity crisis...we are poor, rich, kind, ruthless, assimilated, ethnic...and we're all jostling for our place in the sun. The author ingeniusly links two major fires in the city's history: the fire that destroyed the Dreamland amusement park (a sign of our lost innocence), and the fire that killed hundreds of young immigrant seamstresses in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a fire which (ironically) hardened the working poor's steely resolve to sieze their constitutionally guaranteed right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. These are big ideas, communicated through the eyes and experiences of a huge cast of both real and ficticious characters, all well-rendered, and human in their foibles, heroic in their strengths. To read it is to see the fabled melting pot for what it really is, an immense collision of old and new, haves and have-nots, pure and corrupt, innocent and jaded, orthodox and iconoclast. A fascinating, touching, and well constructed diarama of America at her most volatile.

It is not often that a reader can be entertained and informed at the same time. Dreamland performs both tasks magnificently. Set in the early 20th century, Dreamland presents the underside of New York City. Baker's plot flows nicely, and the setting is extensively researched. The reader will visit places where men bet on brutal battles between rats and a dog, and laborers struggle to survive in horrific working conditions. Baker develops his characters brilliantly, providing a context for their current plight. While I will not disclose the ending, I do compliment Baker on leaving many questions unresolved. Life doesn't always work out like a nice, neat John Grisham novel. I highly recommend this book- I think you'll love it.