Here are the rules: Grab your current read. Open to a random (or not so random) page.
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
This week my teaser comes from "The Alienist" by Caleb Carr.
The title posed some problem for me- I didn't quite understand it - but I found a very nice explanation here:
An "alienist" is "one who treats mental diseases; a mental pathologist; a 'mad doctor,'" according to The Oxford English Dictionary. The OED also defines "alienation" as in this sense as "mental alienation; withdrawal, loss, or derangement of mental faculties; insanity." The insane were thought estranged (alienated) from their normal faculties. The root of "alienist" is the Latin "alienare," to make strange.
Now the teaser:
"Decent people have no use for your work, sir, for your abominable opinions of the American family, or for your obscene probing into the minds of American children. Such matters are the province of parents and their spiritual advisors. If I were you, I should limit my work to the lunatic asylums, where it belongs. At any rate, no one associated with this administration has any use for such filth."
I like that. Boo-yah! Take that you varmint!
ReplyDeleteLol, talk about making somebody looking small. Especially if this somebody is a psychiatrist.
ReplyDeleteI'd say the person doing the insulting has serious problems! Almost certainly needs to talk to an alienist - look at those adjectives: obscene, abominable, filth.
ReplyDeleteWhat year is this book set in? Because the only time I've read the term 'Alienist' is in Sebastian Faulks' Human Traces which is set from towards the end of the 19th and into the very early 20th century.
The book is set at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries exactly - wow Tracy that was impressive! The man doing the insulting is in strong denial which usually means his conscience is not entirely spotless and clean. I haven't finished the book yet so I am not sure whether he is the main culprit though.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed The Alienist. Great teaser.
ReplyDeleteThanks carol. I am enjoying it myself.
ReplyDeleteHm... is this a case of one finger points forward... three pointing back? :)
ReplyDeleteIt is a case of utter hypocrisy so yeah, you are correct with your fingers. :)
ReplyDeletePretty funny!
ReplyDelete.Here is mine