Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

 

 

사진은 아이폰으로 장소: ala moana magic island 

 

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Thunderstruck

By

Erik Larson

Copyright year 2006

 

 

두남자 (Guglielmo Marconi and Hawley Harvey Crippen)

의 흑백사진이 이 책의 Part I Ghost and Gunfire 에 실려있고  사진속 한 남자는 젊고  코와 턱선 눈매가 뚜렷하여 잘 생겼고

 한남자는 평범에서 떨어지는 외모의

–        앞이마가 많이 벗겨지고 코의 윤곽은 부은듯 불분명하고 입매를 가리는 더부룩한 검은 수염 –

아마도 벗겨진 이마를 대신하고 싶어 더욱 더부룩하게 기른 털?- 모습을 하고 있다.  

과연 이 두남자는 어떤 관계일까?  궁금하여 책을 진행시키고

 

사실 두 남자는 동시대에 살았었지만 (World War 1 일어나기 전 유럽) 서로 마주친 적도 없고

먼 친척도 아닌 아무 상관없는 관계였지만

한 사람의 오랜 노력과 연구의 결실을 다른 한 사람의 죄악이 세상에 드러내주고 널리 빛내준 인연이라는 것을 알게되죠.

 

아마도 잘 생기고 성실하고 능력을 마음껏 펼쳤던 젊은 혈기의 Marconi 의 이야기로만 이 책을 메꾸었다면 어쩌면

너무나 dry 하고 과학 교과서같은 느낌의 책이 되었을 지도 모르겠기에 극명하게 대비되는

두 사람의 이야기를 펼쳐낸 작가의 방법이 효력이 있다고 봅니다.

 

 

저자는 엽기적인 살인을 저지른 Dr. Crippen 을 연민하는 듯  

허나 이 독자는 그를 전혀 연민할수 없었고 Dr. Crippen 옆에서 아무것도 몰랐다는 그의 여자,

 Ethel 의 innocence 도 의심스럽기만하였으며

 

**** 사건이 일어난 장소와 인물들이 살던 시대적 배경을 광범위하게 잘 알고 있는 작가의 research skill 이 가장

놀라왔습니다.

 

1.그 시대를 살던 사람들은 과연 다가오는 World  War 를 어느정도 예견하고 있었을까?

 

Page 131

“ There was wide agreement that some kind of war in Europe was inevitable,

although no one could say when or between which nations; but there also was agreement that advances in science

and in the power of weapons and ships would make the war mercifully short.

The carnage would be too great, too vast, too sudden for the warring parties to endure.”

 

2. 정신적인 배경, 그들은 어떤 믿음을 갖고 있었나?

page 53

“ This turn toward the veil was largely Darwin’s fault.

By reducing the rise of man to a process

that had more to do with accident than with God, his theories had caused a shock to the faith of late

Victorian England. The yawning void of this new “ Darwinian Darkness,” as one writer put it, caused

Some to embrace science as their new religion but turned many others into the arms of Spiritualism and

Set them seeking concrete proof of an afterlife in the shifting planchettes of Quija boards. In the mid-1890s

Britain had 150 Spiritualist societies; by 1980 there would be nearly 400. Queen Victoria herself was rumored

to have consulted often with a medium who claimed to be in touch with her dear dead husband, Albert, the prince consort.

 

3. 중년의 유부남인 Dr. Crippen 이 어린 애인 Ethel 과 함께 모습을 드러내었을 때 불륜 (affair) 에 대한 사회의 반응을

작가는 E.M.Foster 의 소설을 예로 들어 시대적 상황을 보여주다.

Page 206

“Her sense of being spied upon and gossiped about became acute.

She could not help but run into the ladies of the guild when she entered and left the building

And walked the hall to Crippen’s office.

Nothing was said directly, but much was communicated by glances and rigid cordiality, deadly for

its iciness.

“ Often when I went along the street with Dr. Crippen,” she wrote, “ I remarked people staring at me

in a curious way.” It made her uncomfortable. She wished the ladies could just accept the fact

of her relationship with Crippen and be done with it.

But she had made the mistake of allowing the affair

to become public: This was the England of Edward VII, but it was also the England that served as

the setting for Howards End, to be published later that year, in which E.M.Foster plunged one of

his heroines, Helen Schlegel, into an illicit pregnancy.

He wrote, “The pack was turning on Helen,

to deny her human rights.”

 

그외 여러 재밌는 이야기들:

1.  Marconi 가 만들고 세운 wireless 기계, 안테나, station 에 관한 이야기들이 흥미롭습니다.

…높이를 얻기 위해 기둥을 세우는 대신 연을 날려 안테나 기능을 시도해봤던 trial and error 과정

에 관한

낮에는 수신과 송신이 잘 안되었는데 그 당시는 이유을 알지 못해 힘들어 했던 점 등등…

2. Marconi 에 대한 다른 과학자들의 질투와 방해, 인신공격, 경쟁등에 관한 이야기들.

 

Word list :

 

Syntony : page 257, Professor Fleming himself has vouched for the reliability and efficacy of the

Marconi syntony.

 

Rats: page 251, Few years earlier the ｅxpression “rats” had acquired a new and non-zoological

meaning. During one action of the Boer War, British troops had used light signals sent by heliograph

to ask the opposing Boer forces what they thought of the British artillery shells then raining down

on their position. The Boers answered, “Rats,” and the word promptly entered common usage in

Britain as a term that connoted “ hubris” of “arrogance.”

 

Gewgaws: page 161, She spent most heavily on clothing and jewelry for herself.

For the house, she bought knickknacks and gewgaws and odd pieces of furniture.

 

Henbane :page 33, At Bethlehem Hospital Crippen added a new drug to his basket,

Hydrobromide of hyoscine, derived from ah herb of the nightshade family,

Hyoscyamus niger, known more commonly as henbane….henbane was used

commonly in ophthalmic treatments because of its power to dilate the pupils

of the eye both in humans and animals, including cats, a property that would

prove particularly important to Crippen’s future. Any miscalculation would have

been dangerous. Just a quarter-grain-that is, 0.0162 grams or 0.0005712

ounces-was likely to prove fatal.

 

Television: page 122,…In a much read article in the June 1900 issue of

The Century Magazine, Tesla ( Nikola Tesla, American) alluded to things

he had learned from experiments at his laboratory in Colorado Springs,

Colorado, which he claimed could generate millions of volts of electricity,

the equal of lightning. He wrote that in the course of his experiments he had

found proof –“absolute certitude,” as he put it- that “communication without

wires to any point of the globe is practicable.” The article prompted

J.F.Morgan to invite Tesla to his home, where Tesla revealed his idea

for a “world system” of wireless that would transmit far more than just

Morse code. “ We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly

irrespective of distance,” Tesla wrote in the Century article.

“Not only this, but through television and telephone we shall see and hear

one another as perfectly as though we were face to face.”

That word: television, In 1990.