Today's literary nitpick

[conuly]

As we all know, the names Patience and Fortitude refer to the lions in front of the main branch of the NYPL. (Which is not really called the main branch, but whatever.) And if you didn't know that, you now understand a little something about the Scholomance books which wasn't really all that funny, but that's not the point of this nitpick.

The names are attributed to LaGuardia sometime during the Depression, and if you can get a year more precise than the 1930s then I'd be glad to see it, but the point of this nitpick is that if your book is set in the 1920s, firmly before the stock market crash, then the lions should not have those names.

But hey! At least our protagonist has yet to loiter in a random midtown alley!

Edit: Oh, ffs. Nobody is being read their Miranda rights in the 1920s. And this, unlike the thing with the lions, really is common knowledge. Can we do a bare minimum of research when writing historical fiction? Neither of those details had to be there, and if they did have to be there then that's okay too - the book could just as easily have been set in the 1970s as the 1920s!

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Comments

[gatheringrivers]

alternate universe maybe?

[conuly]

This book isn't that good. I'll chalk it up, charitably, to bad editing - though really, the author has to take some responsibility here, and if you're going to set a book in the past it ought to read like it was set in the past, in some specific time that you chose for a reason - and I won't read it again.

[thewayne]

I never knew the full Miranda story until reading it now. He was pretty much a bad 'un from the get-go. Stabbed to death at the age of 35 in a bar dispute, the killer fled to Mexico and never caught.

I did know that it was an Arizona/Maricopa County event that resulted in the court case.

[conuly]

Yeah, and it even turns out that people will absolutely confess to crimes, including crimes they didn't commit, no matter if they're told not to.

[thewayne]

It's a pretty sad thing, you only need to look at the Central Park Five to see how it can be exploited.

[greenwoodside]

Hah, didn't realise Naomi Novik had got those names from RL. Twisted. Very Wipers Times sort of humour there from the unfortunate Scholomance students.

[conuly]

Also, kinda a pretentious thing for them to do. Like, yes, we all know the library lions, but... is that really what a bunch of kids are going to reference? (Apparently so?)

[greenwoodside]

Happy to employ some narrative handwavium pixie dust here:

The kids spend years locked up cramming spells and making alliances to survive in a school dripping with monsters. Most of them are bound to be a bit strange: little adults in some ways and immature in others. Some of the New York enclavers may have started the names and it caught on.

[conuly]

Yeah, I think it's stated that the name came from New York enclavers, but it's still a pretentious fucking set of names.

But I guess since there weren't five mawmouths they were a bit limited in their naming options. What else were they gonna call them, the IRT and the BMT?

[hilarita]

Also not something that non-US people will know - I didn't know that at all.

[conuly]

I wouldn't really expect most people outside NYC to know - and even within NYC, it's a city of (upwards of) 8 million people, I strongly suspect most New Yorkers have not really spent much time asking themselves what those lions are called.