There’s not really spoilers. We know from the synopsis the main character is murdered!
What is it for a man to have the world, if the world does not want to have him? Jonathan Lee’s 2021 book, The Great Mistake, is an achingly beautiful, lovely ode to the grandiose achievements of men and the intimate, quiet tragedies they experience. Exquisitely written, with the kind of philosophical musings that made me want to sit with the prose before proceeding, while also being funny often in a dry, macabre way, Lee’s novel snuck up on me as one of my favorite reads of the year. To put it another way, Lee’s style of writing, with the plot set in 1903 while stretching back through its character’s life into the early 1800s, feels like it could have been a product of the turn-of-the-century. Authentic is perhaps a trite word to describe art at this juncture, but Lee’s book is bubbling with authenticity all the same.
Lee’s book steps in where history has failed, as his quoting of The Blue Flower at the start tells us, “Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.” His story concerns Andrew Haswell Green, the “Father of Greater New York,” who played a role in such little known things like Central Park (I wonder if it was originally thought to be called Middle Park, as one character in the book pushes for, which is hilarious), the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History, and the MET, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To be sure, Lee’s book repudiates, in some ways, the idea of “The Great Man” theory of history — repudiation is one way to read the title — and yet, there is still something to be said for, as Green reflects, what happens to Greater New York if Green were to have perished on his way to Trinidad?
Green, like most boys who become men, even men of fame and fortune, sought his father’s validation. Instead, he was sent away to a boarding school in New York from Massachusetts because his father understood Green couldn’t wield an axe like a man. In a scene that broke me in two, later in Green’s life, his father does embrace him, shocking Green, but it’s only to whisper to him how Green’s an embarrassment to the family. Shame is that which restrains us. In Green’s case, such repeated “shames” — close encounters with, first a fellow boy in Sam, and then later, men, including another Samuel — taught Green to restrain himself, to repress himself. To gain the world, he closed off his. To expand the world, he minimized his. To give his fellow New Yorkers walking paths in Central Park, he closed off his own walking paths to any modicum of personal happiness. In that way, Lee’s book is a tragic, heartbreaking romance story — romantic both in the way Green had these intimate relationships with men, but couldn’t water their roots, and romantic in the way Green envisioned a different future for New York City, roots for which he could water.
At the age of 83, Green is murdered at the gate to his own home by a Black man, Cornelius Williams, who mistakes him for someone else. That sentence and the act within it is significant for a number of reasons. First, Green was intent upon naming the various “gates” within Central Park not after great men of society — again, Lee’s repudiation of such a rendering of history — but after the common people, i.e., women’s gate, artisan’s gate, engineer’s gate, boys’ gate, children’s gate, etc. So, it’s interesting that Green dies in front of his very own gate. But Lee also uses this gate device to name the chapters of the book and structure his telling of Green’s story, as well as the murder investigation. Secondly, obviously, the surface-level reading of the title is that “the great mistake” refers to Williams mistaking Green for someone else and killing himself. Indeed, that is a mistake, but it’s not the great mistake. It’s also interesting that Green, who tried to give the people of New York much in the way of public, free, accessible spaces, was mistaken for any other rich, white old, corruptible man for which Williams would be motivated to kill. Third, “at the age of 83” is significant because as Lee reflects, even for someone famous in his time like Green, the tragedy of it all abates a little when it’s someone in their 80s, and particularly when it’s a killing prompted by mistaken identity; there is nothing sizzling there to actually warrant the premature (also premature in that it’s 1903) “crime of the century” label. Fourth, to continue the metaphor from earlier, certainly Lee gated himself off from others, including in the literal sense of his gated home. My fifth one might be a reach since it wouldn’t be apply for another 70 years after Green’s death, but I thought Lee, with his use of gate throughout, was also alluding to scandal that could ruin Green’s reputation with “-gate” in the way we affix “-gate” to scandals, like Watergate (there is an entire Wikipedia article around all the “-gates”!).
Green’s murder encompasses a city detective who sprays cocaine into his nose and doesn’t seem to understand that’s why he’s having nose issues, a Black prostitute who owns multiple mansions (and is the catalyst for Williamson’s mistaken murder), and most importantly, the tragic uncovering that for all of Green’s mighty successes, he died bereft of love. While taking in the engineering marvel of the Brooklyn Bridge with Samuel, Green reflects, “And yet it occurred to him here, briefly, pointlessly, belatedly, with the airy abstraction of a weather forecast, that all this public work might not mean as much as having a friend holding your hand as you die.”
Green added, “Love. This was the way not to fall into forgetting.” But then, Lee comes in with his dry, comedic addendum, Love, and a good publicist. But yes, this is the “great mistake” of Green’s life. To have died without love. Instead, Green’s memorialized on a bench in Central Park with bird shit on it, Lee tells us. To answer the question at the start, then, that aforementioned sentence does it well.
Resonant, illuminating, charming, melancholy, and funny, Lee’s book is one I won’t soon forget. Indeed, I teared a little at the end, mournful for Green, and in my own idiosyncratic way, mournful for cities filled with people interested in building those cities.
Milam's Musings 