DLS: Media whimsies
Jun. 3rd, 2003 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyOkay, sorry about the Subject line.
Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2, Have His Carcase 3, Have His Carcase 4, Have His Carcase 5, Have His Carcase 6, Have His Carcase 7, Murder Must Advertise.
The discussion of Have His Carcase spun off two ideas for series-spanning posts (there's a better word for that, but I'm not going to think of it at this hour of the morning): one on the media, and one on music. I've decided to use those two posts as a kind of buffer between Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors; I love The Nine Tailors, but I always have to psych myself up for it.
So this post will contain indiscriminate spoilers for (potentially) all the Wimsey stories, and a crucial plot point for The Nine Tailors.
The most obvious points of intersection between mystery and media in the canon are Salcombe Hardy and Hector Puncheon (also Waffles Newton, but we never see him on his own, so consider that what I say about Sally goes for him, too). Both Hardy and Puncheon are recurring characters; Hardy may be the only character who appears in all phases of Peter's career: early (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club--does he appear in others of the early books? my brain's not at its best), middle (Strong Poison and Have His Carcase), and late (Busman's Honeymoon). Hector Puncheon's career is less glorious, but he is instrumental to the plot of Murder Must Advertise [Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naomichana for catching my mistake!] and has a most alarming encounter with a herd of cattle in Busman's Honeymoon.
Sally Hardy sums up the janus-faced nature of the media in Sayers' work. He and Peter are friends, more or less, but Sally is always a reporter first; he helps Peter in HHC and hounds him in BH. He's useful, but not trustworthy, and we see that over and over again in DLS's treatment of the media throughout the canon.
Unnatural Death is the best example, I think. Peter's ad in the papers is what ultimately enables him and Charles Parker to catch Mary Whittaker, but it also causes the death of Bertha Gotobed and (less directly) Vera Findlater. Their attempt later in the book to use the newspaper to their own advantage is completely undermined by Sir Charles Pilkington's idiocy and the duplicity of a newspaper editor. MMA shows a similar pattern; Hector Puncheon and his editor are exceedingly helpful to the investigation, and Peter is able to use the newspapers to establish the separate identities of Death Bredon and himself, but the instrument of corruption is the Nutrax half-double in the Morning Star.
The stories are always very aware of newspapers and newspaper men. Harriet spends most of Have His Carcase with one eye on her publicity. The trial scenes in Clouds of Witness are largely told via alleged newspaper stories. One recurring motif of Gaudy Night is the determination of the college not to allow their upsets to get into the papers; also, of course, the Poison Pen uses newspapers to compose her messages, and I believe that's how she's able to use the quote from Virgil, because the newspaper account transcribed it. (Please correct me if I'm wrong--my encyclopaedic recall is a bit on the fritz this morning, and I'm lacking the gumption to go look. Stupid menstrual cramps.) A tizzwoz in a subplot in The Five Red Herrings is sparked by a constable saying more to a reporter than he ought. Even The Nine Tailors, which is almost entirely unconcerned with the world outside Fenchurch St. Paul, is crucially affected by newspapers, for that's how Deacon learns that he's presumed dead and can return to England.
Newspapers are organs of both information and disinformation. Newspaper reporters are always ready to bite the hand that feeds them. They provide a constant corrective to the tendency of detective fiction to turn inward; the trope of Golden Age detective fiction is the country house mystery, in which a group of suspects are assembled and isolated in a completely closed system. Immediate examples which spring to mind are Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Ngaio Marsh's Death and the Dancing Footman, Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery--and, of course, the book Harriet's working on in Gaudy Night, 'Twixt Wind and Water, about which she herself complains that it's unrealistic. Sayers forces her stories always to turn outwards again, and she does this by means of the media.
Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2, Have His Carcase 3, Have His Carcase 4, Have His Carcase 5, Have His Carcase 6, Have His Carcase 7, Murder Must Advertise.
The discussion of Have His Carcase spun off two ideas for series-spanning posts (there's a better word for that, but I'm not going to think of it at this hour of the morning): one on the media, and one on music. I've decided to use those two posts as a kind of buffer between Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors; I love The Nine Tailors, but I always have to psych myself up for it.
So this post will contain indiscriminate spoilers for (potentially) all the Wimsey stories, and a crucial plot point for The Nine Tailors.
The most obvious points of intersection between mystery and media in the canon are Salcombe Hardy and Hector Puncheon (also Waffles Newton, but we never see him on his own, so consider that what I say about Sally goes for him, too). Both Hardy and Puncheon are recurring characters; Hardy may be the only character who appears in all phases of Peter's career: early (The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club--does he appear in others of the early books? my brain's not at its best), middle (Strong Poison and Have His Carcase), and late (Busman's Honeymoon). Hector Puncheon's career is less glorious, but he is instrumental to the plot of Murder Must Advertise [Thanks to
naomichana for catching my mistake!] and has a most alarming encounter with a herd of cattle in Busman's Honeymoon.Sally Hardy sums up the janus-faced nature of the media in Sayers' work. He and Peter are friends, more or less, but Sally is always a reporter first; he helps Peter in HHC and hounds him in BH. He's useful, but not trustworthy, and we see that over and over again in DLS's treatment of the media throughout the canon.
Unnatural Death is the best example, I think. Peter's ad in the papers is what ultimately enables him and Charles Parker to catch Mary Whittaker, but it also causes the death of Bertha Gotobed and (less directly) Vera Findlater. Their attempt later in the book to use the newspaper to their own advantage is completely undermined by Sir Charles Pilkington's idiocy and the duplicity of a newspaper editor. MMA shows a similar pattern; Hector Puncheon and his editor are exceedingly helpful to the investigation, and Peter is able to use the newspapers to establish the separate identities of Death Bredon and himself, but the instrument of corruption is the Nutrax half-double in the Morning Star.
The stories are always very aware of newspapers and newspaper men. Harriet spends most of Have His Carcase with one eye on her publicity. The trial scenes in Clouds of Witness are largely told via alleged newspaper stories. One recurring motif of Gaudy Night is the determination of the college not to allow their upsets to get into the papers; also, of course, the Poison Pen uses newspapers to compose her messages, and I believe that's how she's able to use the quote from Virgil, because the newspaper account transcribed it. (Please correct me if I'm wrong--my encyclopaedic recall is a bit on the fritz this morning, and I'm lacking the gumption to go look. Stupid menstrual cramps.) A tizzwoz in a subplot in The Five Red Herrings is sparked by a constable saying more to a reporter than he ought. Even The Nine Tailors, which is almost entirely unconcerned with the world outside Fenchurch St. Paul, is crucially affected by newspapers, for that's how Deacon learns that he's presumed dead and can return to England.
Newspapers are organs of both information and disinformation. Newspaper reporters are always ready to bite the hand that feeds them. They provide a constant corrective to the tendency of detective fiction to turn inward; the trope of Golden Age detective fiction is the country house mystery, in which a group of suspects are assembled and isolated in a completely closed system. Immediate examples which spring to mind are Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, Ngaio Marsh's Death and the Dancing Footman, Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery--and, of course, the book Harriet's working on in Gaudy Night, 'Twixt Wind and Water, about which she herself complains that it's unrealistic. Sayers forces her stories always to turn outwards again, and she does this by means of the media.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-03 07:28 am (UTC)I'm not! Hee!
Sayers probably worried about her own private life being made public by the media, and that carried over. (Must read the biography of her I was given 5 years ago...)
no subject
Date: 2003-06-03 09:15 am (UTC)You mean Murder Must Advertise, don't you?
Otherwise... hmmm, yes. It's interesting that Sayers' later novels move away from using/allying with the press and toward avoiding or discrediting it: in The Nine Tailors the stories are either wrong or miss the real "story"; in Gaudy Night there's the College's fear of publicity (and the real fact-checking comes from academics, although Peter's able to prove his case to them with the newspaper picture of X); in Busman's Honeymoon the whole plot is set in motion by the Wimseys' efforts to diddle the Press -- efforts in which they essentially succeed, murder notwithstanding.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-03 09:35 am (UTC)In Busman's Honeymoon, it seems to me that Peter and Harriet's (and Bunter's!) efforts to outwit the press come a terrible cropper over the body (so to speak). They manage to fend most of the pressmen off--although Sally Hardy nips in first, and really does put Peter through the mangle--but at the cost of some remarkably elaborate and difficult arrangements. And the public appearances, the inquest and the funeral, seem to include insane amounts of publicity, including Harriet throwing Peter to the wolves in order to get Mrs. Ruddle out of the way.
I wonder if one could trace a connection between Peter's increasing interiority and the increasing difficulties the press causes him. In the early books, there's nothing of himself he wants to protect--Denver and both Fentimans grumble about his publicity-seeking, and in Strong Poison, he points out to Harriet that he can get into the papers without needing to propose marriage to her. The press becomes more adversarial and more unethical, more demanding of details of Peter's private life, as the series continues. Once your life is not an open book, the press becomes a much more mixed blessing.