UBC: Pelonero, Kitty Genovese

[truepenny]

Kitty Genovese: A True Account of a Public Murder and Its Private Consequences by Catherine Pelonero

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



It is a cruel irony that it is so much easier to explain why a book is bad than why a book is good. Because this book is excellent and I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to explain why.

Partly, it's that Pelonero has a clear, vivid writing style; partly it's her effort to practice compassion towards everyone involved, even that baffling, prowling monster, Winston Moseley; partly it's that she has done the research and dug as deeply as she can dig, and she shows the careful process of assessing her sources, trying to figure out for each discrepancy who was wrong and why (and she admits that with some discrepancies it can't be done). Partly it's the vehemence with which she defends the truth against the revisionist histories that have started cropping up. I agree with her that I understand why people want to believe that what really happened wasn't as bad as the reporters made it out to be, but it is intensely frustrating, just as it is in any case where revisionist denier-ism crops up, to watch the rapacious ease with which the lie overtakes and in some cases drowns out the truth, how easy it is for people not to assess their sources, but to assume that because it's in print (or, even worse, because it's on the internet) it must be true. Plus the greedy pleasure we are all prone to when offered the idea that "they" have been lying to us but "we" know better.

Just because someone is telling you what you want to believe, does not make what they say the truth.

The death of Kitty Genovese is a true nightmare and a nightmare of truth. We need to remember her because we need to remember what her death tells us, in plain, indelible, capital letters, about human nature. Thirty-eight witnesses saw and did nothing, not because they were monsters, but because they were human beings.



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Comments

[avidreadergirl.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to see your review on this, I loved this book and I wish people would read it for all the reasons you mentioned. Every-time I see something on this case now, and it's come up a lot since Moseley died recently, and I hear that the "38 witnesses" are an urban myth, my blood pressure goes up.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I gather that she has support for the inaction of all the witnesses? I admit I'm surprised--the sources I've seen for alternatives have seemed like credible historical research, albeit mostly carried out by historians of psychological science rather than criminal or urban historians. I'm no historian myself, so that limits my ability to assess. On the other hand, modern research in the areas kicked off by the Genovese case have shown limits to bystander apathy.

[avidreadergirl.livejournal.com]

I gather that she has support for the inaction of all the witnesses?

Yup, she goes through all the witness statements that the police originally took, and it's a litany of --Name Redacted heard the screaming thought someone else would call the police and didn't want to get involved, etc. It is of course more complicated than that in some cases (real life) but there were a lot of people passing the buck. I urge you to read the book, it's an eye opener.

[214314.livejournal.com]

Hi Sarah, I've just realized your website is gone! Will there be a new one? Also, can we still access your reading of the first part of Corambis somewhere?
Thank you!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

My site is having some malware problems. We're working on it.