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Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer, Dornford Yates, Jeffery Farnol, and E. C. Bentley are those I call "The Light Brigade." This is not the summation of their talents and their effect on me which I intend to someday write under the heading you see above; this is merely a placeholder until I can find the time, energy, and communicativeness to say what ought to be said. Let it be said for now merely that Sayers is the best mystery writer who has ever made a pleasure of not giving a damn who the murderer is; Wodehouse the light writer's light writer par excellance; Heyer the only person who's ever tempted me into the Romance aisles in a bookstore; Yates the worst snob in English letters, who makes up for it by doing it so well and consistently; Farnol the most endearing R. L. Stevenson wannabe ever, without the dreary Scotch fetish; and Bentley the only twentieth-century writer whose quality-to-output ratio is unmatched, even by Harper Lee and J. D. Salinger. (Yes, fuck 'em. I don't read serious writing after 1950. Not a dogma, simply a matter of taste for the present.) I call 'em the Light Brigade not only for the convenient literary reference, but also because they're light reading compared to the heavy hitters who (for me) own the 1900-1950 stretch: Forster, Fitzgerald and Waugh. (What? No James, Proust, Woolf, Joyce, Faulkner, Hemingway, etc? That's why I said for me, dumbass.) Who in their turn are light reading compared to the fellows in the parentheses. About the only thing the Light Brigade has in common is that they revere Jane Austen -- and never once mention her in their books.? Which is as it should be; for while Shakespeare, Dickens, and the hosts of classical literature through Edgar Wallace all get a look in, Jane Austen stands apart as the greatest painter-in-miniatures in English letters. Lord Peter, Bertie Wooster, Berry Pleydell and the rest may read A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dombey & Son, and The Hound of the Baskervilles, but they live in the world of the Bennets and Mr. Darcy. And here I find that I'm writing the treatise despite myself, and must cut it short for fear of staying up into the wee hours. |
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