Has anyone else noted the remarkable coincidence of this urban legend and the popularity of the CBS series ‘Beauty and the Beast’ from 1987-1990?
B&B featured an underground ‘Tunnelworld’ inhabited by the foresaken and outcast from the world above (admittedly a bitmore Romantic than killers-for-hire) and which was comprised of a labyrinth of interconnected tunnels beneath Manhattan Island.
The appearance in 1993 of the book mentioned in the column seems to be about right - allowing for three years for the author to perform the basic ‘research’.
Just my .02 on this subject. Mole people living beneath Manhattan? Hell - I always thought that enough of the people living IN Manhattan were of a separate species, let alone those living BENEATH it!
Could be. For what it’s worth, Marvel Comics had a society living in the tunnels under New York (the Morlocks, named after the H.G. Wells creatures) since '83.
I just wonder if Cecil is more angry with Jennifer Toth or himself for getting hoodwinked.
Does anyone else feel that Cecil should have eaten a lot more crow in the column? I kept waiting for a mea culpa á la Dear Abby (boy, I sure can toss around the foreign-language phrases, can’t I?), but it never came.
Maybe Cecil’s thinking of entering politics … after all, this column shows that he’s mastered the non-apology apology.
Has anyone seen the wonderful documentary ‘Dark Days’? It doesn’t cover the silly aspects of Toth, such as webbed toes, but does verify the communal social structure, including a weird type of caste system. A depressing, but highly interesting movie.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, Gaylthacan, glad to have you with us.
When you start a thread commenting on one of Cecil’s columns, it’s helpful to others if you provide a link to the column in question. Yes, it’s on the front page now, but it will disappear into the Archives in a week or so. Providing the link helps other readers get to the column quickly, so they’ll know what you’re talking about and so we’re all on the same page (as it were.) No biggie, you’ll know for next time.
I have edited your post to include the link up front. Spiff was kind enough to provide it a few posts down, but I figure folks need to be able to get to it fairly quickly.
Well, I was among those who commented that Cecil should have done more investigation for the first column, but I don’t see why he has to grovel. He made a mistake, it was brought to his attention, and instead of ignoring the matter, he went to work.
That’s pretty good, and I can’t blame him too much for trusting someone.
[QUOTE=
When you start a thread commenting on one of Cecil’s columns, it’s helpful to others if you provide a link to the column in question.[/QUOTE]
Many thanks! As a virgin to these boards, I understand that this would make life easier for my fellow members. I am humbled. I will include links when I comment on future columns.
While I haven’t read the book, could it be that Toth has simply ‘forgotten’ how to get to these places (or made up directions in the first place) in an attempt to keep news crews and curious tourists from checking them out for themselves?
Aha! So he is a living , breathing human! But Toth’s credibility is damaged; if she tells others she spoke with the Perfect Master, would anyone believe her?
“One draws the obvious conclusion: Parts of Toth’s
book are true, parts of it aren’t, and you take your
chances deciding which are which.”
Is it only me? When an author writes a non-fiction book
and seems indifferent to the truth, it’s uhhh, doo-doo.
Just trying not to say anything bad, here, but you know,
it’s ca-ca, and there is no way around it. No credit for
getting one or two facts right. Zero, zip! Where is the
trash can?
Cecil, was that really you? Where was that sarcastic,
irritable mood we love so much?
Toth certainly could have obfuscated about entranceways and general directions. Better yet from a journalistic point of view, she could have informed the readers that she was witholding details out of consideration for her subjects. But she seems to have taken it further–it appears she wrote about levels, tunnels, tracks, and waiting rooms that simply do not exist.
Just saw “Dark Days” (which was mentioned in Cecil’s original column) via Netflix. Another thumb up. I didn’t find it depressing. Yes, there are some very sad moments, but there’s also humor and hope. What you won’t find is a lot of self pity.
Although there was a subterranean community of sorts and some people did have electricity, there were, IIRC, no sign of an elaborate social structure (i.e., a “mayor”), no families, and no hot water. Most of the people featured in the documentary went “upstairs” regularly to forage, and most of them were struggling to keep rats out of their huts, not catching and eating them.
And despite some attempts to portray their way of the life in a good light…
the happiest part of the film was when they got the chance to move into Section 8 apartments.
It seems as if she may have read Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere one too many times, about a man who accidentally becomes a part of London’s dream-like tribal underground, and tried to invent a similar fiction in her own New York. Maybe she simply didn’t have the skill to write good fiction and settled for a drier non-fiction prose.
