tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post3602883575722109456..comments2024-03-27T03:19:11.216-04:00Comments on Assistant Village Idiot: DetectivesAssistant Village Idiothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-54315741944876233852013-09-16T21:52:00.818-04:002013-09-16T21:52:00.818-04:00Jim, your explanations ring true.Jim, your explanations ring true.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-14918847580939101982013-09-16T10:50:28.538-04:002013-09-16T10:50:28.538-04:00I think there are three reasons for this phenomeno...I think there are three reasons for this phenomenon you notice.<br /><br />1. In Pre-WWI Britain (with the attitude lingering into the 1920s), people really did think that way. Social class was obvious, behavior closely tracked with social class, and even if it wasn't true, everyone believed that it was. Even arch-Fabian George Bernard Shaw implicitly believed that Professor Higgins could identify people's class, occupation, and residence by their accents -- and that it would take a major project to disguise a lower-class girl's origins.<br /><br />2. Mystery story readers tend to be middle-class, and as such have a slightly Aspergery approach to the world. They're really good at understanding and manipulating things -- machines, concepts, numbers, etc. -- but not nearly as good at manipulating and understanding people. (That's the marker of the upper class: they DO understand how to use people, and for centuries carefully trained their children to do so.) Mysteries like Father Brown or Sherlock Holmes stories present the (mostly middle-class) reader with the fantasy that the world of humans is as understandable and controllable as the world of things.<br /><br />3. It's a storytelling shortcut. You can't explore the personality and motivations of all the characters in a 10,000-word mystery story. The characters have to be stereotypes and caricatures for the plot to move efficiently along. The better sort of mystery writer (Sayers, especially) doesn't rely on stereotyped characters -- at least, not as much.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19305198.post-402068945242377642013-09-14T11:58:31.472-04:002013-09-14T11:58:31.472-04:00Everybody likes to see the way the world works beh...Everybody likes to see the way the world works behind the scenes, and how an outsider can move in that world successfully. And this type is more fun than the type of stories where the detective unveils esoteric knowledge of poison at the last moment, or where the murderer's plan involves split second timing.jameshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01792036361407527304noreply@blogger.com