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There's something about
early New York society that just fascinates me. The lawlessness, brutality
and utter hopelessness are in such odd contrast to the city today
with its sparkling buildings, $2000 suits and lack of roving Irish
gangs. This is the New York in which my grandparents grew up. Granted,
Grandpa Jack was a mere babe, and neither a gangster nor a carnie,
but I'm sure he fit in somewhere in this book about Jewish, Irish
and, um, carnie immigrants. Like most of the early New York historical
fiction novels before it, the author's fictional characters are interwoven
with real characters of the time. Some of the most interesting pieces
of this book are the interactions of the local politicians and state
politicians. The state politicians seemed to play a much larger role
in the goings-on of the city back then. Can you even name your state
senator? The politicians hire the gangsters to intimidate constituents,
do away with ballot boxes and basically strong-arm whoever they need
to sway--all without getting their hands directly dirty. Everyone
was a pawn in the political machine, and it seemed that everyone suffered
but the ones who were running the machine. Baker shows, through one
of his main characters and the sweatshops in which she worked, the
rise of unions in the city, and the fight for the rights of women
and children. Of course, Dreamland, an amusement park out in Coney
Island, represents the magical mystery of the "new world" and everything
these immigrants imagined the United State would be. In stark contrast
were the tenement buildings that they lived in, and often died in.
This dreamland is, of course, merely a fantasy, and not the true world
that they were expecting. Anyway, it's an allegory. So, the book,
while relatively entertaining, spreads itself a little too thin between
several characters, all in an attempt to bring them together at the
end of the story in a Robert Altman kind of crescendo. Maybe Baker
should have split the book up into several different shorter books,
and had one about the old amusement parks, and one about the politics
of early New York, and one about the unions (although I believe that
HBO movie, Iron Jawed Angels may have covered most of the territory
he covers in this book), and even one about the gangs of New York.
(Oh, I guess that's been covered too.) Anyhow, the book was certainly
worth the read, but be prepared to be glad when it finally wraps up.
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