> Marc, interesting comments on Brit professors on
Chandler.
> Were they equally inclusive of British crime
writers?
No, they were not.... Hmm. I had not thought of that. Perhaps
they partially
(or secretly) agreed with playwright and critic W. H. Auden,
a self-admitted addict of detective stories, who wrote in his
essay on detective fiction,
"The Guilty Vicarage," that detective stories "have nothing
to do with works of art." Auden excused Chandler from this
condemnation by asserting that Chandler does not write
detective stories at all, but rather "serious stories of a
criminal milieu" that should be read and judged, not as
escape literature, but as works of art." It seems a bit too
convenient to reject detective literature as art, as Auden
does, while at the same time removing the most respected
mystery writers from the genre entirely.
~Marc
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