The Technique of the Mystery Story | Page 7

design is, with what economy and foresight
every part is fashioned. It is not only an ingenious structure, it is a
handsome bit of furniture, and will materially improve the looks of the
empty chambers, or disorderly or ungainly chambers that you carry
under your crown. Or if it happen that these apartments are noble in
decoration and proportions, then this captivating little object will find a
suitable place in some spare nook or other, and will rest or entertain
eyes too long focused on the severely sublime and beautiful."

2. The Mystery Story Considered as Art

Yes, the detective story at its best is primarily and integrally a work
of art. It is like those Chinese carved balls, referred to by Tennyson as,
"Laborious orient ivory, sphere in sphere," and as the mystery story
originated in the Orient, there may be some correlation.
The detective story has been called "ingenious but somewhat
mechanical." Here the stigma lies in the "but." The detective story is
ingenious and mechanical. On these two commandments hang all the
laws of mystery fiction writing. Also ingenious and mechanical are the
Fixed Forms of verse. Who denies the beauty and art of sonnets and
rondeaux, and even sestinas, because they are ingenious and
mechanical?
As the mosaic worker in Florence picks out his colored bits with
utmost skill, care and patience, so the worker in Fixed Forms selects his
words and fits them into his inexorable pattern until he achieves his
perfect and exquisite result.
Heraldic devices are not "artistic" in the accepted sense of the word,
but they are an art in themselves; ingenious and mechanical, but still art.
The Heraldic lions in front of the New York Public Library may not be
true to nature's lions, may not be true to a poetic imagination of a lion,
but they are true to the laws of the conventional lion of heraldry, and
are therefore art.
Oriental embroidery is art as much as an impressionist picture,
though of a different type, and characterized by ingenuity and
mechanism.
If, as Lowell says, "genius finds its expression in the establishment of
a perfect mutual understanding between the worker and his material,"
then we can exclude no serious endeavors from the possibility of being
art.
And the qualities of ingenuity and mechanism are peculiarly fitted to
bring about the establishment of just such an understanding.

3. The Claims of Antagonists and Protagonists
One reason for a sweeping denouncement of the detective story is the
innate propensity of the human mind for bluffing at intellect. Many
people would be glad to admit a taste for mystery fiction, but tradition
tells them that such things are but child's play, while a love of ethics or
metaphysics betokens a great mind. Ashamed then, of their honest
liking for puzzle solving, they deny it, and pretend a deep interest in
subjects which really mean little or nothing to them.
"How can you read such stuff?" they ask in shocked tones of the
puzzle lover, who, with alert brain and bright eyes, is galloping through
"The Mystery of the Deserted Wing," and then they turn with a virtuous
yawn, back to the uncut pages of the erudite tome through which they
are plodding their weary way.
To the truly great intellect who understands and knows whereof he
thinks, the above does not apply. But so long as men are unwilling to
be caught in a liking for "child's play," and so long as women yearn
after that smattering of abstruse literature which represents to them "a
breadth of culture," so long will the detective story be ostentatiously
denounced on the corners of the streets, and eagerly devoured behind
closed doors.
Of course there are plenty of people of real intelligence who have no
taste for Mystery Stories. This proves nothing, for there are also plenty
of people of real intelligence who like them. Again we might as well
ask, "Does a blue eyed man like cherries?"
But, as many people are fond of the authority of the good and great,
let us be definite.
In a personal letter, President Woodrow Wilson writes:
"The fact is, I'm an indiscriminate reader of detective stories and
would be at a loss to pick out my favorites. On the whole I have got the
most authentic thrill out of Anna Katharine Green's books and
Gaboriau's."

Dr. William J. Rolfe, the famous Shakesperian editor, was
exceedingly fond of Mystery Stories and puzzles of all sorts. He
especially reveled