![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wimsey/Sayers
Feb. 14th, 2011 07:26 amI have heard good things from the fannish hivemind about Dorothy Sayers' "Lord Peter Wimsey" detective stories for some time. So when I recently discovered the 1970s "Lord Peter" compilation of all the short stories on a book-exchange shelf at a campus library, I picked it up.
I've read almost all of them now. Not terrifically impressed. But that is possibly because it's only the short stories? If you have read the novels, please correct my misimpressions...
1. they feel derivative. When I read older stories that feel derivative, I usually chalk it up to my having read more recent works that are derivative of the older ones. But with these, I know some of their predecessors, both in the "gentleman+valet" genre, and in the mystery genre. The mysteries, in particular, feel a bit predictable; the characters just feel underwritten, and given everything I've heard about them from fannish hivemind, that _has_ to be an artifact of having only read the short stories.
2. they feel like "CSI" - in the ways that caused me to stop watching it. Specifically:
2a. they render murders and their aftermath in grisly detail (text is a lot easier to deal with than CSI's fx shots, but my brain fairly easily perseverates on disturbing images, whether they originated as images outside of my brain, or my brain constructed them as images itself.) The grisliness feels a bit unnecessary, but apparently it is a positive factor for some other folks.
2b. Women seem to appear primarily dead, in peril, or as negative factors in the lives of male characters. There is a contingent of background women who are relatives or otherwise hangers-on of male characters, but they don't do much.
I'd be a lot more okay if, as artifacts of their time, the stories just didn't have a lot of women in them at all. The fairly relentless victimization (often with elements of titillating sexualization or exploitation, how very ahead of her time!) is really creeping me out.
Do the novels do better with any of this stuff? Better characterization? Less exploitative?
I've read almost all of them now. Not terrifically impressed. But that is possibly because it's only the short stories? If you have read the novels, please correct my misimpressions...
1. they feel derivative. When I read older stories that feel derivative, I usually chalk it up to my having read more recent works that are derivative of the older ones. But with these, I know some of their predecessors, both in the "gentleman+valet" genre, and in the mystery genre. The mysteries, in particular, feel a bit predictable; the characters just feel underwritten, and given everything I've heard about them from fannish hivemind, that _has_ to be an artifact of having only read the short stories.
2. they feel like "CSI" - in the ways that caused me to stop watching it. Specifically:
2a. they render murders and their aftermath in grisly detail (text is a lot easier to deal with than CSI's fx shots, but my brain fairly easily perseverates on disturbing images, whether they originated as images outside of my brain, or my brain constructed them as images itself.) The grisliness feels a bit unnecessary, but apparently it is a positive factor for some other folks.
2b. Women seem to appear primarily dead, in peril, or as negative factors in the lives of male characters. There is a contingent of background women who are relatives or otherwise hangers-on of male characters, but they don't do much.
I'd be a lot more okay if, as artifacts of their time, the stories just didn't have a lot of women in them at all. The fairly relentless victimization (often with elements of titillating sexualization or exploitation, how very ahead of her time!) is really creeping me out.
Do the novels do better with any of this stuff? Better characterization? Less exploitative?
