Golden Age Salon

Revue_Blanche presents:
Golden Age of Detective Fiction
There is a good though too verbose and only remotely relevant quotation as one of the possible epigraphs:

“You seem to hint that we should all keep the dark secret of his success, which is to travel second-class with a third-class ticket--or if my simile is not sufficiently clear--to pamper the taste of the worst category of the reading public--not those who revel in detective yarns, bless their pure souls--but those who buy the worst banalities because they have been shaken' up in a modem way with a dash of Freud or "stream of consciousness" or whatnot--and incidentally do not and never will understand that the pretty cynics of today are Marie Corelli's nieces and old Mrs Grundy's nephews.” (Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight)
One more epigraph:
“Crime is a malady. Open the door to the doctor.” (from an American detective story)

my new essay
*Why do I Love Reading Detective Stories?*
Detective fiction are not humane literature, if you like, rather it is a craft that doesn’t need a good pencraft--so what?--I enjoy reading it and love some books of the great detective stories writers. My favorite detective fiction authors are Rex Stout, John Dixon Carr, Ross Macdonald, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner, Agatha Christie and a few more British writers of cozies. As we know, early archetypes of these stories were the three Auguste Dupin tales by Edgar Allan Poe. Later, a sort of a whodunit is found as a sub-plot in the vast novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens. When I was a schoolgirl I liked reading Dostoevsky’s thick volumes because of the highly detective-like plot of some of them. No doubt, the first and greatest of English detective novels was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins.
I love detective stories not because each other kills in the stories but because normality always triumphs in their imaginary and implausible reality--intellectual, social, juridical and moral normality--and evil, that is abnormality, is destroyed. This is human romanticism of this genre. The investigator--a salaried investigator or a police officer, a detective, either professional or a gifted amateur, a private eye or a forensic specialists--is quite in his place as a defender of ill-fated persons (the insulted and humiliated). He is a new savior, a last hope for an atheist, agnostic or hedonist; his activity successfully helps readers to escape the depression of reality. In Golden Age of Detective Fiction between the wars and later, detective fiction corresponded to important needs of society, and it still does it now to a certain extent. Reading a whodunit or other detective fiction, personally I learn much of the law and human rights in general as well as of the laws of the states, where I’ve never been; also I can see highly curious and sometimes fascinated scenic pictures: it’s so nice to visit an English country house, or to see a realistic depiction of a police officer's routine. Self-sufficient, a detective novel doesn’t poke and pry; it solves its own problems and answers its own questions. A good detective novel is much like barley-break or hide-and-seek, yet the play is not between a man and a woman who are in love with each other, but between the investigator and the criminal, and more often the two are of the same sex, more often again they are males, so the play is often tinted with homosexuality, at least slightly, at least for a short while, at least in my fastidious view. I have much against a traditional love story as a part of a detective novel. As Mr Somerset Maugham said, “I’m ready to admit that love makes the world go round but not the world of detective novels: this world it makes go somewhere in a wrong direction…” In the modern day world, where weary nerves strained, and mind is exhausted with taxingly monotonous chores, it’s so good to be distracted from the boring daily round, to experience a joy of unraveling of mystery, a breath-taking suspense and sense of empathy along with personages of a book. A small, distinctly set and gracefully solved problem is opposed to the dreadful and oppressive chaos of the real world. Really, it’s so good to forget of the complicated, unsolved and fearsome problems of being and to rack brain over the "locked room mystery"--while reading you feel as though you’ve entered a shady park after a long wandering about a jungle--and your sleep is better after the rational guesswork and detective simplifications that are not less moral, virtuous and effective than Socrates’ teaching. As for the scenes of violence and avidity, they make a reader think of his own deeds and his own temper. In this regard, detective stories exert a therapeutic effect. Crime and punishment. Crime and punishment are inseparable. As an average citizen I am interested in punishment of a criminal; reading detective fiction or watching the true crime stories on TV and knowing of various crimes, I learn how to avoid a crime to become neither a criminal nor a victim. As Mr. Anthony Blanche said, “The main idea of almost all detective stories is ‘Crime and Punishment are one’. Read about it, but don’t participate in it.” I’d like to adduce two his quotations more:
“Brutality--as organized atrocities, which we meet in the world, or as its individual manifestations--is not a fruit of an irrational essence of man but the growing immatureness in our relationship with nature, of which lords we are believed to be.”
“The civilized mankind fears predators, especially the bipedal ones: they remind it of the former life in the forests.”
Such we, detective fiction lovers are--gods bless our pure souls.

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sex crime story
*Porphyria’s Lover*
The rain set early in to-night, the sullen wind was soon awake, it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worst to vex the lake: I listened with heart fit to break. When glided in Porphyria; straight she shut the cold out and the storm, and kneeled and made the cheerless grate blaze up, and all the cottage warm; which done, she rose, and from her form withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, and laid her soiled gloves by, untied her hat and let the damp hair fall, and, last, she sat down by my side and called me. When no voice replied, she put my arm about her waist, and made her smooth white shoulder bare, and all her yellow hair displaced, and, stooping, made my cheek lie there, and spread, o’er all, her yellow hair, murmuring how she loved me--she too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour, to set its struggling passion free from pride, and vainer ties dissever, and give herself to me forever. But passion sometimes would prevail, nor could to-night’s gay feast restrain a sudden thought of one so pale for love of her, and all in vain: so, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes happy and proud; at last I knew Porphyria worshipped me; surprise made my heart swell, and still it grew while I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good: I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain. As a shut bud that holds a bee, I warily opened her lids: again laughed the blue eyes without a stain. And I untightened next the tress about her neck; her cheek once more blushed bright beneath my burning kiss: I propped her head up as before, only, this time my shoulder bore her head, which droops upon it still: the smiling rosy little head, so glad it has its utmost will, that all it scorned at once is fled, and I, its love, am gained instead! Porphyria’s love: she guessed not how her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now, and all night long we have not stirred, and yet God has not said a word!
(Robert Browning)
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P.S.
The writing in blogs looks much like writing in the style ”following the pencil” that used to be popular amidst the ancient China writers. The following the pencil style implied literary miniatures, poems, abstruse or playful thoughts, snatches of random musings, abstract reasoning, brief or verbose aphorisms, and so forth. The ancient China writers as though reflected while writing, following their pencil--that’s what we in the blogosphere do now.
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stolen from prydwen
1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? I thought:
I’m fresh as rosebud at dawn.
2. Favorite planet?
Mercury.
3. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
Nobody.
4. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?
Loosing my Religion.
5. Do you “label” yourself?
Admirable Admiral (butterfly).
6. What does your watch look like?
Black face, black wristlet, like a black bracelet.
7. What were you doing at midnight last night?
I always sleep at midnight. I sleep at the time when you enjoy the nightlife of a big town.
8. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?
“I want you”.
9. What's a word or phrase that you say a lot?
…, in my view, …
10. Last furry thing you touched?
My new kitty. In a month of stay at my household, without going out to make love she proved to be impregnate--the little cub like she, well that’s odd. But I am very fond of cats, taking them as they are.
11. Favorite age you have been so far?
15-16 (!) Since I’ve begun surfing the Internet I feel 16-year old again.
12. Your worst enemy?
Old age.
13. What is your current desktop picture?
The night sky, the white moon and the words: La Lune Blanche.
The novel La Lune Blanche:
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=935938
“Published at last! Published at last! Thank God Almighty, I am published at last!”
14. What was the last thing you said to someone?
can’t recall.
15. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?
Money.
16. Are you in love with someone?
My life is an incessant narcissistic dream. The hero who I love is a narcissist too.
17. The last song you listened to?
The wind in the old poplars outside my window.
18. What time of day were you born?
On some sapphire morn I was born…
19. What's your favorite food?
The delicious salads that I cook.
20. Where did you live in 1984?
right in Orwell’s anti-utopia that has become a parody of itself by 1984, in the country I lived in.
21. Are you jealous of anyone?
a pathologically jealous woman.
22. Is anyone jealous of you?
I think so.
23. Where were you when 9/11 happened?
At home.
24. Do you consider yourself kind?
It depends.
25. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?
Wouldn't want one.
26. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?
French.
27. Would you move for the person you loved?
Yes.
28. What's your life motto?
Welcome and keep out.
29. What's your favorite town/city?
Parnu (Estonia).
30. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?
Once, last year.
31. Can you change the oil on a car?
No, I can’t.
32. Your first love:
A boy about 8 or 10, who I loved from afar, admiring him as he played with his playmates at the public garden where I was brought by hand, when I was 6.
33. Do you collect anything?
Books.
34. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?
A dress of a princess that I made by myself when I was 4.
35. Have you been burned by love?
Yes, when I was 24.

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