Boys of Blue Creek A Review
Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 6:56 pm
After 32 chapters and attaining the length of a LONG Harry Potter novel, one of the best-written stories on the Archive has come to an end. (At least until there's a "Blue Creek Beyond" that springs forth from Paolo's mind.)
The story is an "Alternate History," part of a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more actual historical events occur differently from the reality that we know. They take off from "what if" scenarios to lead the reader into a different, but highly plausible, reality. There have been some very popular works in the genre, including such books as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, and Kingsley Amis' The Alteration. This last one is Eunuch Archive worthy as it is set in a 20th century where the Reformation did not take place. It follows the life of an English choirboy scheduled for castration in the 1970s to preserve his treble voice for the cathedral choir.
Paolo's Boys of Blue Creek takes a very real piece of U.S. history -- the castration of institutionalized boys -- and carries it to extremes that are not too far beyond reality, though he does carry it a little later in history than it was actually common. The quotations from John Harvey Kellogg (the inventor of corn flakes), Dr. Peter Charles Remondino (first president of the San Diego Board of Health) and Dr. Everett Flood (who ran a children's institution in Massachusetts) are all real. Flood, especially was highly influential and his ideas advocating castration of institutionalized boys were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and of the American Psychological Association where they were taken up by others.
Much of what we know of the physiology of eunuchs castrated before puberty comes from the research of Dr. James B. Hamilton, who studied the hundreds who were castrated at the Topeka State Hospital in Kansas. In the early years of the 20th century, the average age of castration at the hospital was 12, with many castrated as young as 8. It rose in later years. Hamilton's study of eunuch life expectancy was based on 297 White boys who had been castrated at the institution. He chose only those who had no genetic problem known to reduce life expectancy and he left out all of the non-White boys from his study. He still had 297 who had died of various age and disease related causes by the time of his research in 1960. Hamilton also published articles on the health of those still living at that time, including one unethical one where he gave testosterone to a group of them who had bald uncastrated brothers to see if they would turn bald. They did and he then stopped the T.
Castration of institutionalized boys took place as late as the 1980s in some states!
Paolo has taken this very real history of the castration of institutionalized boys in the first half of the 20th century and expanded it but slightly to create The Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys, an institution a bit far removed from the Topeka State Hospital, but not that far removed from the Hospital Cottages for Children, for which Dr. Flood served as superintendent.
Blue Creek requires very little suspension of belief to find the place and its inhabitants to be perfectly believable. The situations are real. The boys sound like real boys -- even down the accents and period speech. The medical aspects are completely accurate for the time. This is history, just a couple of steps to the side of where we now live.
It's long; it's complex; it's a masterpiece of writing.
The story is an "Alternate History," part of a genre of fiction consisting of stories in which one or more actual historical events occur differently from the reality that we know. They take off from "what if" scenarios to lead the reader into a different, but highly plausible, reality. There have been some very popular works in the genre, including such books as Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, and Kingsley Amis' The Alteration. This last one is Eunuch Archive worthy as it is set in a 20th century where the Reformation did not take place. It follows the life of an English choirboy scheduled for castration in the 1970s to preserve his treble voice for the cathedral choir.
Paolo's Boys of Blue Creek takes a very real piece of U.S. history -- the castration of institutionalized boys -- and carries it to extremes that are not too far beyond reality, though he does carry it a little later in history than it was actually common. The quotations from John Harvey Kellogg (the inventor of corn flakes), Dr. Peter Charles Remondino (first president of the San Diego Board of Health) and Dr. Everett Flood (who ran a children's institution in Massachusetts) are all real. Flood, especially was highly influential and his ideas advocating castration of institutionalized boys were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and of the American Psychological Association where they were taken up by others.
Much of what we know of the physiology of eunuchs castrated before puberty comes from the research of Dr. James B. Hamilton, who studied the hundreds who were castrated at the Topeka State Hospital in Kansas. In the early years of the 20th century, the average age of castration at the hospital was 12, with many castrated as young as 8. It rose in later years. Hamilton's study of eunuch life expectancy was based on 297 White boys who had been castrated at the institution. He chose only those who had no genetic problem known to reduce life expectancy and he left out all of the non-White boys from his study. He still had 297 who had died of various age and disease related causes by the time of his research in 1960. Hamilton also published articles on the health of those still living at that time, including one unethical one where he gave testosterone to a group of them who had bald uncastrated brothers to see if they would turn bald. They did and he then stopped the T.
Castration of institutionalized boys took place as late as the 1980s in some states!
Paolo has taken this very real history of the castration of institutionalized boys in the first half of the 20th century and expanded it but slightly to create The Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys, an institution a bit far removed from the Topeka State Hospital, but not that far removed from the Hospital Cottages for Children, for which Dr. Flood served as superintendent.
Blue Creek requires very little suspension of belief to find the place and its inhabitants to be perfectly believable. The situations are real. The boys sound like real boys -- even down the accents and period speech. The medical aspects are completely accurate for the time. This is history, just a couple of steps to the side of where we now live.
It's long; it's complex; it's a masterpiece of writing.