LIMINAL SPACES
How does he do it?
To read Erik Larson is to let the past wash over you like a wave. History, from the micro to the macro, thrums with life: You can smell Chicago’s gaslights as the 19th century barrels to a close; you can taste the salt in the air as the Great Storm of 1900 intensifies and fixes its gaze on Texas; you can hear Winston Churchill gnawing away at his omnipresent cigar, a dark column of smoke rising toward the German bombers that roar in the skies above.
In Larson’s narrative nonfiction, black and white gives way to Technicolor. In fact, the writing is so vivid that in all of his books, the author includes a note in his foreword similar to this one from his latest work, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz:
Although at times it may appear to be otherwise, this is a work of nonfiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from some form of historical document, be it a diary, letter, memoir, or other artifact; any reference to a gesture, gaze, or smile, or any other facial reaction, comes from an account by one who witnessed it. If some of what follows challenges what you have come to believe about Churchill and this era, may I just say that history is a lively abode, full of surprises.
To read Erik Larson is to rethink how the past is captured on the page. Writers of history tend to be either impeccable storytellers with questionable facts, or questionable storytellers with impeccable facts. Larson does not sacrifice accuracy for readability, nor readability for accuracy; his books are lauded by both the casual reader who picks one up in an airport and the suspicious academic who has spent her life studying the subject at hand. A single paragraph can be buttressed by
