Compulsion (Levin novel)
Compulsion is a 1956 crime novel by the American writer Meyer Levin. Set in 1924 Chicago, it is inspired by the real-life Leopold and Loeb trial, and was a bestseller.[1] Two college students kidnap and kill a boy in order to prove they can get away with the perfect crime.
First US edition | |
| Author | Meyer Levin |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Crime |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster (US) Frederick Muller Ltd (UK) |
Publication date | 1956 |
| Media type | |
The following year it was adapted by Levin into a stage play of the same title, which premiered at the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway and ran for 140 performances between October 24, 1957 and February 24, 1958. The lead roles were played by Dean Stockwell and Roddy McDowall.[1]
Plot Summary edit
Close friends Judd Steiner and Artie Strauss each believe they fit Nietzsche’s philosophy of a “superman” (Übermensch) and thus are above the law. From wealthy, socially prominent families, both are brilliant graduate law students, under age 20, who indulge in petty crimes for the thrill of it. To please Artie, to whom Judd is submissive, Judd goes along with Artie’s increasingly criminal commands, such as stealing cash and a typewriter from a campus fraternity house. Both believe themselves able to outsmart the “inferior” persons surrounding them.
To demonstrate their "superior intellect," and convinced that laws do not apply to them, Artie and Judd decide to commit the “perfect crime” for the thrill of knowing the solution that the “incompetent” police will be unable to solve. Cruising in their car for a victim, they lure Paulie Kessler, a neighbor on his way home from school, and kill him. When police question Paulie’s neighbors, a cocky Artie “helpfully” engages with the investigators, spitefully giving them false leads. Asked about suspicious characters around the neighborhood, among others, Artie suggests a teacher at Paulie’s school—which he and Judd attended four years previously—who always told the kids they were spoiled brats who had too much money.
Sid Brooks, a classmate of Judd and Artie’s is earning his way through college working at a newspaper. When assigned a beat about a drowned boy that was found in the park, Sid discovers the eyeglasses found near Paulie’s body, assumed to be his, are too large to be Paulie’s and are key evidence. The glasses have a distinctive hinge, with only three pairs purchased in the Chicago area, Judd having purchased one pair. Judd, whose glasses dropped out of his pocket at the scene of the crime, is unable to produce his. Questioned, Judd claims he dropped them a few days earlier when bird watching with his group of ornithology students. It now becomes urgent to dump the typewriter stolen from the fraternity house that they used to type the ransom note sent to the Kessler’s.
Needing to give each other alibis, Judd and Artie claim to have been out the evening of the murder with girls they picked up named May and Edna whose full names they never learned. The alibi falls apart when the Steiner chauffeur unintentionally reveals he was working on repairs to Judd’s car the entire evening that Judd and Artie claimed to be cruising in it with the girls (they had rented a car that couldn’t be traced to them for the crime, but their alibi involved riding around in Judd’s car). Eventually, the “superior” Artie cracks under interrogation and implicates Judd, who then confirms the details of Artie’s confession but insists that Artie committed the actual murder. The glasses and recovered typewriter are eventually two key pieces of evidence linking Artie and Judd to the crime.
Famed attorney Jonathan Wilk takes their case, saving them from hanging by making an impassioned closing argument against capital punishment. Steiner and Strauss are given life sentences instead.
Film adaptation edit
In 1959, the novel was made into the film Compulsion by Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox. Directed by Richard Fleischer it starred Orson Welles, Diane Varsi and Bradford Dillman with Stockwell reviving his role from the stage play.[1]
Reception: Nathan Leopold's Comments edit
In his autobiography, Life Plus Ninety-Nine Years (the sentence handed down to Leopold and Loeb after their infamous trial), Nathan Leopold, depicted in the novel Compulsion as Judd Steiner, made the following comments about the Meyer Levin work:
"Compulsion is a horrible, a fascinating, and a beautiful book--beautiful in the sense that the iridescent surface of a swamp is beautiful. It is perhaps 40 per cent fact, 60 per cent fiction. The factual part--the details of the crime, the police hunt for the criminals, the highlights of the trial--are amazingly accurate. They show clearly the results of an enormous amount of painstaking research into the court records and the newspapers of the time...
"But when Mr. Levin leaves the cold, printed record he leaves much else behind. The rest of the book, as Mr. Levin himself warns the reader, is pure fiction--pure moonshine, that is."[2]
"The insidious, devasting thing about the book, as I see it, is Mr. Levin's consummate artistry. He has taken a large amount of fact, and to it has added an even larger amount of fiction--of pure balderdash. And he has done it in such superbly artistic fashion that the seams don't show. No general reader can possibly know what is true and what contrived. I confess that I, on several occasions, had to stop and think hard to be sure whether certain details were true or imaginary. That's what hurts! That's what I felt diminished my own hopes of release. [Leopold believed that publication of Compulsion delayed his eventual parole.[3] Meyer Levin later testified to the parole board that he believed Leopold deserved parole after serving 33 years in prison.[4]] Mr. Levin accuses Judd Steiner of felonies I never dreamed of committing. He puts into Judd's mouth and very brain words and thoughts that never were in mine. Some make me blush; some make me want to weep. My God, what I did is horrible enough and the load of guilt I bear on my conscience is already heavy enough without this additional source of turmoil."[5]
"The impact of Compulsion on my mental state was terrific. It made me physically sick--I mean it literally. More than once I had to lay the book down and wait for the nausea to subside. Emotionally, it caused me terrific shame and induced what I guess the doctors would call a mild melancholia. I felt as I suppose a man would feel if he were exposed stark-naked under a strong spotlight before a large audience. I kept to myself as much as possible. Every stranger I eyed with the unspoken question in my mind: Wonder if he's read it."[5]
References edit
- ^ a b c Niemi 2006, p. 387.
- ^ Leopold, Nathan, Jr. (1958). Life Plus Ninety-Nine Years (Popular Library ed.). Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 402. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-5947.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Leopold 1958, p. 408.
- ^ Leopold 1958, p. 412.
- ^ a b Leopold 1958, p. 403.
Bibliography edit
- Niemi, Robert (2006). History in the Media: Film and Television. ABC-CLIO.