o-uncle-newt

[o-uncle-newt]

Finished dinnerladies and while I knew that JF had mentioned being a fan of Victoria Wood before, making it to the finale made it VERY clear how much of one lol

(I think overall Cabin Pressure did that ending better than dinnerladies, for what it's worth.)

While the actual comedy of JF vs Wood is clearly very different in terms of the kinds of jokes (to his credit, he doesn't assume that mentioning sex or pelvic floors is an automatic laugh), he definitely does sometimes borrow from her REALLY well done absurdist yet human style of dialogue and conversation in ways that are always fun. And even more significantly, she is clearly so focused on story and dialogue construction and he takes a leaf out of her book in that regard (and I think generally exceeds her in that way, particularly in Cabin Pressure).

I think the emotional beats in dinnerladies could be a bit hit or miss tonally for me (which annoys me because I WANTED to like them more than I did), but when it hit it REALLY hit, and JF clearly gets that too- he just nails the balance.

Overall, Wood is super talented (and so are the people on her shows), even if I don't completely love her overall style, and it's fun to trace the ways that JF clearly learned from her- and it was even before it got super blatant at the second half of S2.

[o-uncle-newt]

Random Wimsey/Vane thought

I'm honestly kind of surprised that more isn't made in the Wimsey/Vane books of the fact that Harriet, once married to Peter, gets his title. By which I of course don't mean Lady Wimsey, and certainly not Lady Harriet Wimsey- she's Lady Peter Wimsey.

I know that back then Mrs Husband'sfirstname Marriedname was a much more common construct, but there you have the option of Mrs Marriedname, or even Mrs Firstname Marriedname, which can mitigate things a lot. Harriet doesn't have that option. She's either Harriet Vane or Lady Peter Wimsey, entirely her work identity or entirely her married identity- and with her married identity completely subsumed by her husband's name.

That could have been interesting as a plot point in one of the getting-together books, given all the discussions about identity and power dynamics in marriage, but the fact that it's brought up a couple of times in passing in Busman's Honeymoon (Miss Twitterton's knowledge of Harriet's new title is a sign of her gentility, Harriet introduces herself by it to Mrs Ruddle, etc) but no implications of the title ever are- despite the fact that they have lots of discussions about what being married means to them- is kind of strange to me. At the very least, seeing as Busman's Honeymoon was written as a play first and written mostly before Gaudy Night, put the discussion in Gaudy Night! It just feels like a thread that is dropped, or in some ways never even picked up, for no real reason.

We DO see Harriet writing "Harriet Wimsey" on the chimney pot, so we know that she obviously doesn't THINK of herself as Lady Peter- why should she?- but the title is both pretty uncommon and a pretty big imposition on a woman (and one that, say, Parker doesn't have to live under as the husband of Lady Mary) and I honestly am a bit surprised that it doesn't come up at all.

Maybe it does somewhere, like in the Paton Walsh books?

[o-uncle-newt]

....oh wow, I just realized that Timothy West (the actor who played Gordon) died on Gerti Day... such a weird coincidence and a great opportunity to celebrate a fantastic actor who made an incredible impact in just three episodes.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

welcome to Gerti Day 2024!

Do you remember the Episode Fitton? Carolyn talks about how Gordon calls every twelfth of November in order to buy Gerti back - I am taking that chance every year to post all things Gerti & celebrate the sweetest old decrepit airplane with a heart of gold. And if you guys want in, PLEASE! Draw me a lil airplane! Fold a papercraft airplane and post a pic! Write a drabble! TAG ME IN IT!

(If you think, nah, thanks, not my cup of tea: no problem! Everything here on this blog will be tagged as “gerti day 2024″ so you can blacklist!)

[o-uncle-newt]

Considering either starting to Sherlock Holmespost on here or starting a sideblog...

I'd say a mix of canon, the Game, and mostly-Granada adaptation stuff- but I feel like I already have two main topics for this one and that's probably enough. Will think about this.

I will say that the fact that I don't already have a Holmes blog is crazy to me- I've been such a fan as long as I can remember, I did a tenth grade music class presentation on Sarasate because he was the one who played the concert that Holmes and Watson go to in The Red-Headed League. (It made it especially fun when Granada not only showed them going to that concert in the adaptation but literally cast someone as Sarasate!)

[o-uncle-newt]

Another Cabin Pressure-as-mood-stabilizer post

Had a really difficult day yesterday where I felt like a failure and imposter, then needed to wake up this morning and do the whole thing all over again, my confidence shot

So I’m listening to Zurich and actually not only is it just generally hilarious and heartwarming it has so much to say about this particular feeling, it’s incredible

And also, just saying, the skill with which JF literally spells out the exact Chekhov’s Gun he’s laying out and then immediately distracts us from it with the worst ice cream guy chimes ever is masterful, I admire him so much

[o-uncle-newt]

Mood in the NYC subway system is grim this morning, but if you see someone cackling like a maniac with laughter know that it’s me listening to Cabin Pressure

Today’s very hard for me for a whole bunch of reasons (some, ah, political in nature but plenty not) but the power that Mr Finnemore has to just flip a switch and make me feel not just okay but joyful for half an hour is an actual blessing. Today’s one of the many days when I’ve felt like I’m not sure I could survive, pretty literally, without him. (I pulled out the big guns too- St Petersburg. Was perfect.)

Next I think I’ll move to Double Acts and go for Penguin Diplomacy, another sure fire mood booster.

Highly recommend this approach in general to all in need of a serotonin pick me up!

[o-uncle-newt]

I think that the thing is that Sayers a) always has SOME kind of a point if you don't take it too far and b) she's such a good and convincing writer that while you're reading, she can basically convince you of anything just by saying it. I noticed this when reading Unpopular Opinions, her book of essays, which are great but which rely a lot on "I am saying this and making it sound true so it is true, you have to trust my Vibes." And guess what, for a bunch of it I absolutely trusted her Vibes, even after I thought about it for a while with the book closed! She's just a fascinating combination of an incredibly clever and often actually wise person who combined that element of herself with weirdly nostalgically conservative politics. Always SUPER fun. (At some point I need to do my Sayers and the Jews essay but I want to do some reading first.)

The thing with Bunter is that I don't think there's much discrepancy there- the relationship between Wimsey and Bunter where Wimsey treats him somewhat like an equal wouldn't be the same if Bunter didn't already go out of his way to treat him as a superior. Wimsey can make the overtures of semi-equality because he knows that they aren't in equal positions- not in the sense of it being false or rubbing it in, but him also being more sensitive to their class differences because he's aware of them. (Incidentally, I was just reading Clouds of Witness and Wimsey stops Bunter before he can accidentally "forget himself" and insult the Duke's intelligence... as though that would be a step TOO far.) Sayers often returns to this well of "when everyone knows their place in society then everyone is happier," with the corollary being that the place of the aristocracy is to be friendly and condescending (in the non-negative connotation) to the common people and servants in a way that shows that they value them and are looking out for them. In Busman's Honeymoon, she basically has Harriet say this outright and appreciatively about Peter slotting into the role of local squire; and Murder Must Advertise, a book that seriously annoys me as I mentioned earlier, has this scene:

“Well,” said Mr. Smayle, “Tallboy always says that Dumbleton is a public school.” “I daresay it is—in the sense that it has a Board of Governors,” said Ingleby, “but it's nothing to be snobbish about.” “What is, if you come to that?” said Bredon. “Look here, Smayle, if only you people could get it out of your heads that these things matter a damn, you'd be a darn sight happier. You probably got a fifty times better education than I ever did.” Mr. Smayle shook his head. “Oh, no,” he said, “I'm not deceiving myself about that, and I'd give anything to have had the same opportunities as you. There's a difference, and I know there's a difference, and I don't mind admitting it. But what I mean is, some people make you feel it and others don't. I don't feel it when I'm talking to either of you, or to Mr. Armstrong or Mr. Hankin, though you've been to Oxford and Cambridge and all that. Perhaps it's just because you've been to Oxford and Cambridge.” He struggled with the problem, embarrassing the other two men by his wistful eyes. “Look here,” said Miss Meteyard, “I know what you mean. But it's just that these two here never think twice about it. They don't have to. And you don't have to, either. But the minute anybody begins to worry about whether he's as good as the next man, then he starts a sort of uneasy snobbish feeling and makes himself offensive.” “I see,” said Mr. Smayle. “Well, of course, Mr. Hankin doesn't have to try and prove that he's better than me, because he is and we both know it.” “Better isn't the right word, Smayle.” “Well, better educated. You know what I mean.” “Don't worry about it,” said Ingleby. “If I were half as good at my job as you are at yours, I should feel superior to everybody in this tom-fool office.” Mr. Smayle shook his head, but appeared comforted. “I do wish they wouldn't start that kind of thing,” said Ingleby when he had gone, “I don't know what to say to them.” “I thought you were a Socialist, Ingleby,” said Bredon, “it oughtn't to embarrass you.” “So I am a Socialist,” said Ingleby, “but I can't stand this stuff about Old Dumbletonians. If everybody had the same State education, these things wouldn't happen.” “If everybody had the same face,” said Bredon, “there'd be no pretty women.”

To me, this is kind of the summation of Sayers's whole attitude toward class and education as relayed in the books- if you stay where you're meant to be, you're taught the way of dealing with your class and privilege/lack thereof in life, how you're supposed to relate to others, etc. If you socially climb then you end up in uncharted territory where you're a) not meant to be and b) made to feel out of place, which you then end up pushing onto other people, making them feel uncomfortable.

You can kind of see where she and others who look at it so nostalgically like that are coming from- as depicted/essentialized here, part of Wimsey's privilege also meant responsibility for those beneath him, and part of a more "common" person's commonness meant, or should have meant, a sense of security. While MMA goes a lot into anti-consumerism in a way that's hard to deny, in Unpopular Opinions her essays get a lot more into it as a problem in that it destroyed the normal order of work- where instead of having a hundred shoemakers all (apparently) happily making 10 pairs of shoes a day, you have five shoe factory managers and forty-five miserable and overworked employees making two thousand pairs of shoes a day and fifty people without their "proper job." It's a totally different angle on the issue that rings a bit more false when the ideas of both class essentialism and, as you note, bio-essentialism are removed from the picture.

...And of course that's what makes Parker so interesting! On one level, Sayers clearly doesn't believe in an "aristocracy can only marry aristocracy" kind of a thing because Peter marries Harriet- and in fact there's a through line in the books about Gerald and Helen's marriage being a cousin-inbred disaster with Harriet pointing out in Busman's Honeymoon that the injection of common blood into Parker and Mary's marriage made their kids basically normal. So that's not inconsistent. But it's also so interesting that Parker is himself this innately religious, conservative kind of a guy- in many ways more so than Wimsey, who describes him as a "perfect Victorian"- and he himself, in two separate books, is insistent on highlighting the class lines that exist between him and Mary as a barrier between them, with Wimsey essentially having to give him permission to a) have interest and b) later act on it. Though, of course, in the end he actually DOES act because Wimsey suggests that his indecision is making Mary unhappy... so it really is about love and not permission, I suppose!

What's fascinating to me is that at the end of Strong Poison, when Peter is trying to convince Gerald that Parker's suitable for Mary, he makes the point that Parker will climb the ranks and will likely eventually end up with a title/knighted. Obviously, to a degree that's him trying to speak Gerald and Helen's language, where they REALLY care about that kind of thing. But it does I think speak to something else which is that Wimsey and Parker seem to have become friends because Wimsey saw something in Parker and let him in. And I think that your point about Parker kind of earning his way out of the lower/middle class by being not just smart but dedicated and, in his way, intellectual is very solid. It's made clear that he had a decent grammar school education, works to transcend it while also not being pretentious about it, tries to improve his French, reads religious commentaries, is conservative socially... it's like Sayers is drawing a sketch of someone who isn't trying to climb but is trying to be the best of the kind of person who he innately is, while also having the talent to back it up. And THAT is what makes him worthy of Lady Mary. Because, of course, upon marriage she descends to his level in terms of lifestyle and such (even with all that money behind her for their kids later). He's not trying to climb so he's allowed to.

I just re-read Gaudy Night, and it's interesting how it feels very relevant and very dated at the same time. There's so much discussion about a woman's "place" and whether a woman can (or should) still have an intellectual life/job outside her husband if she's married, and it seems like many of the academic women in the story feel on some level that they have to choose one or the other. On the one hand, this debate, again, feels very dated in an era where most women do have jobs regardless of whether they're married or not. On the other hand, women still are frequently expected to put their families before their jobs, while men are usually not; and women are still frequently expected to sacrifice their own careers and interests for the sake of their families, while men are usually not.

The "question" of whether women belong in academia no longer seems to be a question in mainstream culture, but women in academia still don't get the same amount of respect or opportunities as men. And while British and American society no longer demands that unmarried women remain celibate, I think there is still a great deal of discomfort at the idea of women who choose to remain single, and with the idea of voluntary celibacy in general.

It's also interesting that the Senior Members of the college (all women) seem to more or less jump to the conclusion that the college "poltergeist" is expressing some kind of psycho-sexual frustration born of celibacy and academic isolation, when in fact it's someone seeking revenge. It seems like even though these women have been in academia/running the college for decades, they still harbor some insecurity over the legitimacy of their profession and lifestyle.

And then, of course, there are the casual mentions of eugenics and the one woman who thinks execution is wrong and that murderers should be used for scientific experiments instead (because that's more humane somehow??). There's also the instance where one of the porters (who is otherwise very likeable) says that Britain needs "a Hitler" who will put women in their proper place. Interesting times...

Idk, Gaudy Night fascinates me because there's SO MUCH going on in it that even on my second read, I think there's a lot that I'm probably missing. The various philosophical debates in it make me really curious about what Dorothy Sayers' own views were.

[o-uncle-newt]

I forgot about Newland, that's a great point! For Cattermole, I think you have a point that probably a lot of the tone that Sayers uses is more about her disdain for activism than class per se, but her father being a "lecturer in a small provincial university" (as many minimizing modifiers as possible, highlighting the difference between him and any of the Oxford dons) as well as the point of them making "a lot of sacrifices" for Cattermole to be able to be there still does kind of give me a vibe of her annoyance with social climbing. You're right though that that doesn't explain the relationship with Farringdon...

And yeah, of course it was about not everyone being suited for academia or a life of the mind or whatever. But I still think that the whole thing, combined with the "proper job" nonsense, is one of those morals of the story that sounds so much more convincing while Sayers is writing it than when you think it through afterward, and all the implications. She has a clear disdain for social climbing throughout the books (probably one of the clearest examples is in Murder Must Advertise, a book that, as entertaining as it is, annoys the hell out of me) and when that's juxtaposed with morals about everyone having their "proper job," at a certain point that just becomes class stratification and nostalgic conservatism.

I've long thought that Sayers was trash about class, and it's fascinating to me because it's one of the few social issues that, regardless of how she actually treated it in her works, she genuinely seems to see right through rather than deal with consciously. It's not like she ignores it but I don't think that she ever really makes an effort to see past 1920-whatever norms, whereas she does (with varying levels of success) when it comes to, say, race. There's this interesting thing, for example, where she clearly absolutely loved Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, which has a really great upstairs-downstairs element in terms of sensitive writing of servants, and she clearly aims for something like that but is clearly not where Collins was. I sometimes wonder if part of it is Sayers having grown up the child of a clergyman- not wealthy so without any of those trimmings, but historically considered at or just below the gentry in Britain. So she'd have some of the hang ups and life experience that come with needing to make her own living but with a great confidence in her own social position. She may have struggled for a living in her early writing years, but she always knew that her class was the served, not those in service.

I just re-read Gaudy Night, and it's interesting how it feels very relevant and very dated at the same time. There's so much discussion about a woman's "place" and whether a woman can (or should) still have an intellectual life/job outside her husband if she's married, and it seems like many of the academic women in the story feel on some level that they have to choose one or the other. On the one hand, this debate, again, feels very dated in an era where most women do have jobs regardless of whether they're married or not. On the other hand, women still are frequently expected to put their families before their jobs, while men are usually not; and women are still frequently expected to sacrifice their own careers and interests for the sake of their families, while men are usually not.

The "question" of whether women belong in academia no longer seems to be a question in mainstream culture, but women in academia still don't get the same amount of respect or opportunities as men. And while British and American society no longer demands that unmarried women remain celibate, I think there is still a great deal of discomfort at the idea of women who choose to remain single, and with the idea of voluntary celibacy in general.

It's also interesting that the Senior Members of the college (all women) seem to more or less jump to the conclusion that the college "poltergeist" is expressing some kind of psycho-sexual frustration born of celibacy and academic isolation, when in fact it's someone seeking revenge. It seems like even though these women have been in academia/running the college for decades, they still harbor some insecurity over the legitimacy of their profession and lifestyle.

And then, of course, there are the casual mentions of eugenics and the one woman who thinks execution is wrong and that murderers should be used for scientific experiments instead (because that's more humane somehow??). There's also the instance where one of the porters (who is otherwise very likeable) says that Britain needs "a Hitler" who will put women in their proper place. Interesting times...

Idk, Gaudy Night fascinates me because there's SO MUCH going on in it that even on my second read, I think there's a lot that I'm probably missing. The various philosophical debates in it make me really curious about what Dorothy Sayers' own views were.

[o-uncle-newt]

You'll never get to the bottom of Gaudy Night, that's what makes it such a fantastic book!

Re the women's insecurity, I'd point out the class element, which Sayers only superficially bothers with- Annie's critique at the end isn't super off base when you consider that the privilege that these women have to be in the academy comes from their having been in a position in the first place to get the education required to end up there. That's basically not reckoned with at all- there are some nods to it with the question of why scouts are locked in and nobody else is (not to mention which scouts deserve their own room/privacy, not something that the academics have to even think about), but otherwise? Nah. In fact, Annie herself is depicted as a lower class woman who dragged an educated man down, with that being part of the reason why she lacks integrity.

That, plus all of her stuff that I ranted about last week re people's "proper jobs" and how they coincidentally end up qualified for them by virtue of being set up for them by class and education (besides for the "scrubbing floors being someone else's proper job not Harriet's" thing, Miss Cattermole doesn't just come across as someone who isn't academic but as someone who, it's implied, has been pushed into places where she doesn't naturally belong and with a family that is trying to raise her above their station), just adds an even more interesting dimension to the reading experience. You're never really done with Gaudy Night IMO!

I just re-read Gaudy Night, and it's interesting how it feels very relevant and very dated at the same time. There's so much discussion about a woman's "place" and whether a woman can (or should) still have an intellectual life/job outside her husband if she's married, and it seems like many of the academic women in the story feel on some level that they have to choose one or the other. On the one hand, this debate, again, feels very dated in an era where most women do have jobs regardless of whether they're married or not. On the other hand, women still are frequently expected to put their families before their jobs, while men are usually not; and women are still frequently expected to sacrifice their own careers and interests for the sake of their families, while men are usually not.

The "question" of whether women belong in academia no longer seems to be a question in mainstream culture, but women in academia still don't get the same amount of respect or opportunities as men. And while British and American society no longer demands that unmarried women remain celibate, I think there is still a great deal of discomfort at the idea of women who choose to remain single, and with the idea of voluntary celibacy in general.

It's also interesting that the Senior Members of the college (all women) seem to more or less jump to the conclusion that the college "poltergeist" is expressing some kind of psycho-sexual frustration born of celibacy and academic isolation, when in fact it's someone seeking revenge. It seems like even though these women have been in academia/running the college for decades, they still harbor some insecurity over the legitimacy of their profession and lifestyle.

And then, of course, there are the casual mentions of eugenics and the one woman who thinks execution is wrong and that murderers should be used for scientific experiments instead (because that's more humane somehow??). There's also the instance where one of the porters (who is otherwise very likeable) says that Britain needs "a Hitler" who will put women in their proper place. Interesting times...

Idk, Gaudy Night fascinates me because there's SO MUCH going on in it that even on my second read, I think there's a lot that I'm probably missing. The various philosophical debates in it make me really curious about what Dorothy Sayers' own views were.

[o-uncle-newt]

Was just rereading Clouds of Witness and while overall I like the later Wimsey books better, I won't lie- I miss having Parker as a major POV character. He's such a sweetheart.

[o-uncle-newt]

Yes, that's basically what I was saying- obviously Sayers wasn't a socialist (I've seen people try to cast her as white liberal feminist in ways that make no sense to me, though). She was a religious conservative person with extremely creative and often forward-thinking and compelling outlooks that were generally approached through the lens of that conservatism, leading to complicated results.

The thing I'm enjoying most about the Lord Peter Wimsey books- I'm on #3, "Unnatural Death" right now- is that Sayers genuinely seems to love people

and it keeps her out of a LOT of the pitfalls that, say, Christie regularly falls into, even though she's stodgy and not particularly progressive by anyone's standards

[o-uncle-newt]

Yes, for sure! I had a couple of paragraphs that were going to make the exact same point about Unnatural Death, actually- the complicating factor is, of course, that she also has Miss Climpson, an unarguably "good guy" character, make a couple of racist statements in her own letter. And in Whose Body some antisemitism is put in the mouth of the Dowager Duchess, who might be a bit more of an acquired taste but we're definitely supposed to like from Sayers's end. (I was going to also write a paragraph about a line of authorial narration in The Piscatorial Farce of the Stolen Stomach that's Weird but realized I'd been going too far lol).

But yes, her love of humanity is so strong that- in my favorite example- while she had an EXTREMELY clearly articulated moral/message in Gaudy Night, the characters are human and vivid enough that you can read multiple other interpretations on a lot of those plot and character choices, and be sympathetic even towards those that, in the book's strict construction, weren't designed to evoke it in the same way as others.

When I mentioned Gaudy Night in my prior reblog, it wasn't about racism/antisemitism but about class. And her attitude toward class, honestly, is basically the only thing about her that I'd call "stodgy"- if she weren't so energetic and innovative about applying it in weird ways that make it almost seem progressive! I find her focus on everyone having their "right job" to not make a lot of sense, and to privilege those who had the ACCESS to the pathways to get them toward particular kinds of "proper jobs." Would it be more morally right for Harriet Vane to scrub floors than write mystery novels? Maybe. Is writing mystery novels her "proper job"? Maybe. But whose proper job is scrubbing floors? Sayers doesn't really get that far. She gets a bit more into it in Are Women Human? and kind of reinforces that element of "it was better when someone was a shoemaker and just enjoyed making their shoes" that people tend to idealize. (And then, of course, in Gaudy Night the idea of class as it relates to proper roles in life is ABSOLUTELY present throughout.)

I'd also note that this also ties into her weird thing about both class and aristocracy that comes up a bunch, most notably to me off the top of my head in Murder Must Advertise and Busman's Honeymoon, in which it's implied that the common people feel more comfortable with the aristocracy because each knows where the other stands and acts accordingly (with appropriate gentility and/or acknowledgment)- and MMA adds that it's those middle class attempted social climbers who disrupt the natural order of things.

I've seen people talk about Murder Must Advertise as a criticism of capitalism and pretense, and it is- just not in the ways that I think 2024 people would like to think. Sayers seems to want to take a step backward. The attitude is stodgy, but the actual approach is so interesting that it almost feels wrong to call it that.

The thing I'm enjoying most about the Lord Peter Wimsey books- I'm on #3, "Unnatural Death" right now- is that Sayers genuinely seems to love people

and it keeps her out of a LOT of the pitfalls that, say, Christie regularly falls into, even though she's stodgy and not particularly progressive by anyone's standards

[o-uncle-newt]

I think both of you are right, and she was a religious conservative with some really interesting and sometimes quite progressive views which always come from an innately socially conservative viewpoint in a way that can actually be pretty fascinating.

Sayers will never be progressive by 2024 standards, and I think it's debatable if she was by 1924 standards, but she was often interesting if nothing else! Would I say her views on women are "progressive," I don't know, but they're certainly very clear eyed about sexism (if you haven't read Are Women Human definitely do!). At the same time, IMO in some ways that same essay perpetuates other ideas of hers that seem to me to be inherently conservative, such as the idea (also propagated at length in Gaudy Night) that particular people are meant for particular jobs/tasks, which she develops further to be more about the decline of society through industrialization in ways that I've seen/heard people say are "anti-capitalist" but I think are actually pretty regressively conservative in terms of class and society. (I think she's trash on class, for the record, all of it from this same socially conservative viewpoint.) Basically, she was a really thoughtful person with lots of really interesting views on things that I don't think can ever be called "stodgy" because they can just be so creative and relevant, while also not necessarily "progressive" because of her internal assumptions that underlie the views and how she articulates them.

Re antisemitism- one of these days I will write my Essay about Sayers and antisemitism lol (in the meantime I need to do more reading). In brief, I kind of think of her as a Christian philosemite, in some ways a throwback to the early modern period in terms of an assumption of the superiority of Christianity yet assigning special and often benevolent significance to Jews that intrinsically included antisemitic elements because they were inextricable from their overall viewpoints. This is definitely weird, but it's way more interesting than Christie's "standard middle/upper middle class condescension" antisemitism even if it's more modern! I don't think Sayers can be summed up as either regressive or progressive- she's got her own thing going on.

To go back to the OP's original point- I think that her love of people is KEY to this. Take the antisemitism angle- I'm not sure she got Jews at all, but her being so brilliant at humanizing her characters prevented even some of her mess-ups from being as bad as they could have been and imbued them with complexity. Christie maybe has fewer actual words in her books that are antisemitic, but that's because Jews barely exist in her universe except as vaguely sinister, or at best social climbing, sideline figures. In the world of Sayers they DO exist as part of the world's fabric- for better or worse, given how she chooses to portray them or have characters talk about them. Even the ones that, like Christie's Jews, seem more like stereotypes are usually imbued with enough personality/humanity that I, at least, feel more comfortable with them.

The thing I'm enjoying most about the Lord Peter Wimsey books- I'm on #3, "Unnatural Death" right now- is that Sayers genuinely seems to love people

and it keeps her out of a LOT of the pitfalls that, say, Christie regularly falls into, even though she's stodgy and not particularly progressive by anyone's standards

[o-uncle-newt]

The Cabin Pressure 10th Anniversary is coming up and I want to commemorate it during CP Advent but can't think how...

I did my advent listen-through reviews last year, I am a terrible artist, and I'm not big into writing Cabin Pressure fic. Any ideas?

[o-uncle-newt]

OK, doing this as a reblog rather than comment as I have THOUGHTS on this and they may as well be immortalized-

I started with the first book because I'd heard that the Peter/Harriet storyline was great but I believe in reading the whole thing of a thing for context. So I took Whose Body and Clouds of Witness out of the library, and HATED* Whose Body enough that I almost returned Clouds of Witness to the library unread. But I never ever do that, and I was genuinely intrigued enough by Clouds of Witness when I read it- in some ways the most classic manor house murder mystery Sayers ever did, but also far more interesting character-wise given WImsey's connections to all the people involved and Sayers's general great character work- that I decided to keep going. My recent trip to London included walking tours of both Oxford and Bloomsbury to see the places where Sayers/Harriet Vane lived and worked, so you can tell that keeping on going paid off lol.

But anyway, if you disliked Whose Body as a mystery then you'll like pretty much all of her other books better- she got much better at deciding when she was writing a whodunnit and when she was writing a howcatchem. Whose Body is the worst of both- you know immediately who must have done it, why, and like 80% of how, and so the book feels a bit like it was written solely to have the opportunity for that weird weird way of writing (about) Jews. If you thought that the pacing was off, in later books the MYSTERY pacing isn't always perfect, but she gets much better at character-driven, novelistic pacing so it doesn't always matter. In general, she develops a lot as a mystery writer but far more as a novelist.

Clouds of Witness is, again, much more classic manor house mystery, and it is a whodunnit, though the ending is... a bit controversial. But even if you hate it, the rest of the book is more than solid, and a good intro to the greater Wimsey family. The next novel is Unnatural Death, and while it's definitely better than Whose Body it has a lot of the same deep weirdnesses- it's a better mystery in that it's decided to be a howcatchem rather than a whodunnit and commits to that, and in some ways it's a better novel (though the pacing is off- it's way too slow at the beginning and way too jam-packed at the end) and it introduces at least one excellent character (Miss Climpson), but it is also EXTREMELY racist in the ways that Whose Body was antisemitic- as in, intending in some ways deliberately not to be but emphatically being so anyway.

The novel after THAT, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, is fabulous, probably her best integration of mystery plot and novel plot, fascinating themes and character work, just really really solid and one of my favorite things Sayers ever wrote. It also has themes that I think are very important to read, and characters who I think are important to be introduced to, before getting to Strong Poison. I highly, highly recommend it, and it's for that reason that I will STRONGLY disagree with everyone who recommends skipping straight to Strong Poison because Bellona Club is Important.

So long story short, my recommendation is- go to Clouds of Witness (oh, and if nothing else, it introduces a plotline that gets resolved in Strong Poison). If you love it and want to see Peter develop chronologically, as a person, and are willing to read something that is deeply interesting while also being deeply flawed, go in chronological order to Unnatural Death (and while you're at it read the first short story collection- it's VERY uneven but there's some interesting Peter development there too). If you are meh on Clouds of Witness, try Bellona Club. I honestly think that Strong Poison is best when you've experienced and liked Peter as a person before reading it, because he makes some... interesting choices in it and it's helpful to know what he's like/his baseline. Clouds of Witness is one of the best early books for giving info about how Peter relates to family and ancestry and people who have been in his life a long time, and Bellona Club, while not Peter-focused, is one of the best at kind of giving us his general approach to the world on a baseline level. Both of those, I think, are important before seeing his world get tipped on its axis in Strong Poison.

Question for anyone who's read the Peter Whimsey books by Dorothy Sayers: where's the best place to start with the series? I read Book 1 ages ago and was not impressed, but I have heard that the first book isn't actually the best introduction, so I'm thinking of giving the series another shot. Any suggestions?

[o-uncle-newt]

I just got a bit more time in my schedule and I'm hoping to get started on a Sayers-and-Jews reading list, if anyone has any suggestions! I just really feel like I've never seen anyone talk about how WEIRD the apparent received wisdom is of "Sayers was in a relationship with a completely secular Jew who tried to convince her to have premarital sex she was religiously uncomfortable with, which NATURALLY made her start writing about Jews, but a totally different kind of basically fetishized ultra-conservative type than Cournos was." There are clearly missing links there- not an obvious or intuitive connection at all- and I have my own ideas of what they are and am so curious if it's already been written about.

[o-uncle-newt]

OMG, it's both Peter and Harriet's wedding anniversary and Jerry's birthday*, both halves of my Tumblr have something to celebrate!

*Sayers fans- no, not that Jerry...

Transcript under cut:

Newt: Well, since you have summoned me to celebrate Jeremy Wilkinson's life, with a paeon of praise.

Jeremy Wilkinson, boy for all seasons

From conkers in autumn to swimming in spring

Hobbies, achievements, so many and various

O muse of poetry, now let us sing

Jeremy Wilkinson, friend of humanity

Put up the blackouts for old Mrs Moor

Tireless cadger of Saucepans for Spitfires

Can't be long now til he wins us the war

Jeremy Wilkinson, promising pianist

Firm with the left hand, loud with the right

Just let him loose on the William Tell Overture

That's when you'll know that you've been in a fight!

Jeremy Wilkinson's shrapnel collection

Viewed by his rivals with envious eyes

How very cunning to pick a collection

Where daily new specimens fall from the skies

Jeremy Wilkinson, grizzled old veteran

Eighth of October, an auspicious date

This is the day that, at least unofficially

He stops being seven, and starts being eight

Jeremy Wilkinson, famously courteous

To please his old uncle, will now close his eyes

Sadly, his mother is stuck on a narrowboat

Somewhere near Stratford

Or is she?

(door opens)

Vanessa: Surprise!

Jerry: Mummy!

[End credits]

John: (voiceover) 1943, Spetwith.

Newt: And so, Jack returned in triumph to the village, and his mother wept tears of joy, and the villagers sang paeons of praise. The end.

(Jerry clapping)

Jerry: What's paeons.

Newt: Paeon is a long poem about how wonderful you are.

Jerry: Oh! Can I have one?

Newt: Not now. Maybe for your birthday.

Jerry: Ohh, alright. Goodnight.

Newt: Goodnight. Sleep tight!

Jerry: (chanting) Don't let the bedbugs bite.