Michael Finkel

I love reading about art crime: thefts, forgeries, etc. This one got good reviews, so I pounced on it - in spite of the author. I rather liked Finkel's previous Stranger in the Woods - on a lukewarm, 3-star level - but mostly because the subject of the book was more interesting and sympathetic. Finkel has a checkered background, fired from the New York Times for fabricating elements of a story, and his relationship with the "stranger" Christopher Knight was a bit weird. The art thief, show more Stephane Breitwieser, is no such sympathetic character. He is pretty loathsome, in fact. A standout narcissist, he roams Europe's regional museums, stealthily stealing whatever takes his fancy. He doesn't break in, he doesn't pistol-whip guards or hurt anyone, and he doesn't even sell off the art he steals (worth many millions, ultimately). He just hoards it, because he believes he is the only person in the world who properly appreciates it. So if it takes his fancy, he just takes it, in collusion with his compliant girlfriend. After he gets caught, and goes to prison for a few months (shortened sentences because his crimes were non-violent), he comes out... and resumes stealing. His mother destroys many of the works he stole to cover up what he'd done; she goes to prison for a few months too.

I read about half the book, and quit. One: it's written in the present tense, which I *almost* always find gimmicky and tricksy. It's supposed to make you feel like "you're there" as Breitwieser unscrews display cases as guards amble past in the corridor; instead it feels like Finkel is using a tired trick to *try* to make you feel that way. Two: Breitwieser is such a creep, with a sick compulsion and zero remorse or even acknowledgement that what he does could be seen as a problem. Three: Finkel all but fawns on him: how clever, how deft, how amazing that he could pull it off. Four: a review in the major trade journal in the art world, ArtNews, points out several errors of fact (including a dramatic and distorted claim that Picasso was accused of stealing the Mona Lisa), and given Finkel's history of fabrication, that doesn't sit well. I started to just feel slimy as I read. So I stopped. I might be more inclined to read a more critical book about Breitwieser's larceny called La Collection Egoiste ("The Selfish Collection") by Vincent Noce, but my rusty French may not be up to it. show less

I despised this book. I was hooked from the beginning, and knew he'd done the deeds, but I hated that Michael Finkel had made me care about the story of this sonofabitch. Being able to, at least somewhat, get into the mind of a killer the way Finkel did is a fascinating thing. Who doesn't want to understand what pushes people over the edge like that? To not only strangle his wife, who he claimed to have adored, but their three children as well. The crime was horrible and Longo's personality show more is even more so. Yet, he presents such a sympathetic character. Again, I hated this book, but I think I'm glad I read it. I think. show less

Synopsis
In 1986, twenty year-old Christopher Thomas Knight walked into the woods in Maine, abandoning his car, his job, his family, and his life. For the next twenty-seven years, until he was caught, Knight lived in the harsh woods of Maine, surviving by stealing food and other necessaries from the inhabitants of the cabins and camps around North Pond, Maine. During that entire twenty-seven years, the only contact he had with another human occurred during one chance encounter with hikers, show more limited to the word “hi” and a wave. After he was caught, Knight ultimately plead guilty to a handful of the estimated one thousand burglaries he committed over that quarter century and was forced to live again in society. The Stranger in the Woods is the story of Knight’s survival—both in the woods and once forced out—as well as the story of how Finkel came to meet Knight and come to terms with how he chose to live.

White Privilege
This is most decidedly not what I was supposed to take from this book, but I spent large portions of this book with the phrase “White Privilege” going off like an alarm in the back of my head. The Stranger in the Woods is the story of how a man committed something around one thousand burglaries, including multiple burglaries of a camp for children with disabilities, in order to live alone without human contact. No matter his reason, no matter how sympathetic a character he appears, Christopher Knight is a man who burglarized and terrorized a community for twenty-seven years. Sure, some residents found it mostly harmless to lose the occasional book, pack of chicken, and roll of toilet paper. But others, understandably, felt violated. It wasn’t the value of what was taken, but the idea that someone had been in your house, going through your things. (As someone whose home was burglarized five years ago, I can attest—this is definitely a thing.) Despite all of this, Finkel paints him sympathetically—explains his reasons for why he committed “break-ins” (not “burglaries”), emphasizes how he suffered during his self-imposed exile. I cannot imagine anyone writing or agreeing to publish a book with so sympathetic an eye towards a black man who committed a thousand burglaries. And so there we have it. While The Stranger in the Woods is fascinating and well-written, it’s also unsettling in a way Finkel almost certainly never intended it to be. (Of course, I should probably acknowledge here that Finkel is himself an able-bodied, cis-white male.)

Structure
If The Stranger in the Woods were simply a straight-forward factual rendition of how Knight came to move into, survive, and then be caught in the Maine woods, the book would (frankly) be boring and incredibly short. Outside of explaining how he managed to survive through impossible winters, there’s not a lot to say about the twenty years Knight spent in the forest.

Finkel fleshes out what could otherwise be a boring tenth grade biography essay with his own story of Knight agreed to meet him alone of all the journalists clamoring for interviews as well as his own journeys hiking into Knight’s camp. This choice adds more a human-interest angle. The reader is expected to (and I did) identify more with Finkel, so by inserting himself into the story, there’s an easier and quicker connection. We also learn more about Knight in his interacting with/against Finkel than we would with Finkel merely reciting facts. Our meeting Knight this way is far more effective and a credit to Finkel for showing the reader, rather than just telling.

The other major element of the book is Finkel’s lengthy asides into the history of hermits, the value and meaning of solitude, Asperger’s disorder/Autism spectrum disorders (a tentative diagnosis given to Knight after his capture), suffering, cognition, time, and death. Finkel boils down theories and philosophies to present relatively neat packages against which Knight is presented. As you can likely imagine, he fits neatly almost nowhere, which is, likely, the larger point. These sections are where the real value of the book was for me. I enjoyed the theories, the quotes, and their application to the person of Knight.

Exploitation / Permission
Even if I found him a less sympathetic character than I was intended to, Knight is still a human being entitled to own his own story. Finkel quite literally inserted himself into Knight’s story and has made money selling books about Knight’s story. I had concerns throughout the book that The Stranger in the Woods was exploitative of Knight. Towards almost the very end of his narrative, Finkel relates a series of conversations he had with Knight that had him worried Knight was about to end his life rather than continue to live in the society in which he did not fit. As part of this exchange, he notes that Knight conveyed to him that “after [Knight’s] gone…I can tell his story anyway I want.” Knight calls Finkel his “Boswell” (his biographer). So it would seem Knight gave Finkel permission…except Knight isn’t gone. So did he or did he not have permission to publish this information?

On the one hand, Knight gave him as close to explicit permission as you can get. On the other, it was conditional and has brought more scrutiny to Knight than would have if there were no book published—I had certainly never heard of the North Pond hermit and likely wouldn’t have if The Stranger in the Woods hadn’t been published and then reviewed in Time magazine (which is where I heard of it and decided to add it to my TBR list). One of the things that is very clear in Finkel’s book is that Knight loathed attention. That being caught and subject to the mini-media frenzy was the last thing he wanted. Had he been able to live as he wanted, he would have eventually died in the woods and remained unfound, unsung, unmourned. By publishing this book before Knights death, did Finkel violate one of Knight’s conditions for permission? It’s unlikely we’ll know since Knight himself is perhaps the last person on earth who would ever issue a public statement or talk to a reporter about he feels about this potential violation. Ultimately, it isn’t clear if The Stranger in the Woods is a celebration of Knight or the most glaring of the violations of Knight’s privacy after he was caught.

Recommendation
For all of the hesitancy I have after reading this book—particularly around privilege and permission—I still can’t help feeling like I want to recommend it. It was well-written. The pace and philosophical asides (which, admittedly, only skim the surface of the deeper themes) were well-done. It is a compelling, relatively quick read. If you aren’t troubled by the privilege and permission issues that lurk under the surface, it is a book that many would find highly enjoyable and intriguing. (So I guess sorry/not-sorry for introducing those issues to you that may now hamper your reading of the book). Knight’s way of life is challenging to contemplate and there is always value in reading about someone whose life is so different from yours that you cannot fathom living as they did. (I joke that I could do without people, but at the end of the day, I could never actually live as a hermit. At least, not without my dog to talk to.) So I leave it to you—if you can look past the two major issues above, it’s a book I recommend. If reading books where people use but never acknowledge privilege, it’s not going to be for you.

Notes
Published: March 7, 2017 by Knopf (@aaknopf)
Author: Michael Finkel
Date read: December 17, 2017
Rating: 3 ¾ stars

More reviews: http://lisaanreads.com show less

I can’t say I understand Chris Knight, The Stranger in the Woods of Michael Finkel’s book. Yet, I’m somehow impressed by him despite his guarded self-centeredness and the way his thievery caused unease or distress to residents of the North Pond community near Rome, Maine. Knight spent 27 years camped in the woods alone, winters included, a silent solitary unseen despite that he lived within minutes’ walk of buildings he burgled regularly to get whatever he needed to subsist or that show more would provide entertainment (books, a TV and radio, batteries for the electronics, copies of Playboy—he seems not to have minded other people so long as they were disembodied).

Finkel does a good job learning about this man and exploring the history and psychology of social isolation (intended or otherwise), and he seems more patient with Knight than I could have managed. He gives us reasons to think that Knight is a remarkable man, not just a man to remark on. It would be too much to say Knight was thankful for this attention but I think it possible he appreciated some of it to a small degree. Knight, if forced to comment, surely would say I’m wrong. He never, ever wanted to be found and arrested (this is true) and Finkel never could have known him and cared but for that.

What to make of it all?
When arrested, Knight is asked, “Have you ever been sick?”
“No,” he replies. “You need to have contact with other humans to get sick.”

Or, one might add, to give love. show less