Michael Rothfeld, a reporter’s reporter, read an early draft and pronounced Max Greengrass’s obsessions true to the trade. Marge and Ed Blaine weighed every word and gave invaluable advice, as always. Richard Lieberman, who hired me to teach New York City Literature some years back, encouraged me to try my hand at this material. The librarians at Hartwick College and the State University of New York at Oneonta obtained arcane materials, including microfilm of the New York Herald, and tracked down my most outlandish requests. Thanks to all of them.
E. H. Dunlop’s entertaining book, The Gilded City, first introduced me to the actual Midnight Band of Mercy. Her correspondence was generous and gave me confidence that I might somehow solve the riddle of the group’s strange crusade. Jared Day, author of Urban Castles: Tenement Housing and Landlord Activism in New York City, 1890—1943, helped guide me through the intricacies of late nineteenth-century real estate. Our conversations sparked a new turn in the novel’s plot.
Other books that were essential include Luc Sante’s Low Life, Richard Rovere’s Howe & Hummel, Warren Sloat’s A Battle for the Soul of New York, Robert Snyder’s The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York, Elaine S. Abelson’s When Ladies Go A-Thieving, and Burrows and Wallace’s Gotham. A source of true “research rapture,” the New York Heralds wry and colorful language evoked the time as much as any detailed history.
reader’s guide
1. When Max comes across the first cat killings, what is his reaction? How does his response illuminate his character? Would you describe Max as cynical, idealistic, or a mixture of both? How does his relationship with the old reporter, Biddle, reveal the conflicts in Max’s nature?
2. What is Max’s relationship with his family? What is the significance of the name “Greengrass"? Max considers himself to be “an American". Do others with whom he comes in contact agree? What does being an American mean? In 1893 would there have been a different meaning?
3. Gretta, a photographer, Belle, a social worker, and Faye, an aspiring vaudeville entertainer, all work to support themselves. Each of them makes her own decisions about crucial issues in her life. Why did the author depict the three principal women in the novel in this way? Did this accord with your previous image of women’s lives at this time?
4. What is Max’s view of the role of a newspaper reporter? Are his relations with his editor different from those of journalists today? Would Max have described his work as a profession? In the end, Max seems to accede to the suppression of the full story. Why does the Herald'fail to publish everything Max has discovered? How does Max’s reaction illuminate his character?
5. How has Belle changed by the end of the novel? How has her friendship with Faye affected her? Why has Max turned from Gretta to Belle? What does Belle see in Max? What is your prediction for the marriage between Max and Belle?
6. The novel contains sketches of actual historical figures such as Police Inspector Byrnes, the lawyers Howe and Hummel, the Reverend Dr. Parkhurst, Anthony Comstock, and others. Why have these historical characters been interspersed with fictional ones?
7. What is the role of Mary in the novel? Did you find her conduct credible? How does the author describe the situation of African Americans of that era? Do you think that prejudice against them was worse in the South at that time?
8. The novel describes the consignment of children to baby farms, banks fraudulently closing without paying their depositors, false breach-of-promise lawsuits, scams based on strangers collecting insurance payments on the lives of slum children, and a real estate scandal involving Manhattan’s leading church as a willful slumlord. Each of these is historically accurate and each has since been addressed by legislation. How do these evils relate to the anti-immigration politics of the era?
9. How do the Midnight Band of Mercy’s activities prefigure events of the twentieth century? How do the “goo-goos” (do-gooders) and other elements of Society’s elite justify or rationalize their acts?
10. How does the city of New York function as a character in the book? What parallels do you see between municipal life then and now? Has much changed? Have all the changes been for the better? The city is described as a vibrant place of opportunity and risk, riven by deep divides between the various classes, and between “native Americans” and the swarming immigrant hordes. Yet it is also shown as a place with subterranean relationships between classes and across racial divides. Did you find the author’s vision credible? How relevant is his evocation of the past to our lives today?
The Midnight Band of Mercy Page 43