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From: CJC@psuvm.BITNET
Newsgroups: net.books,net.women
Subject: Re: Re: Feminist Literary Amusement
Message-ID: <2210CJC@psuvm>
Date: Fri, 6-Sep-85 17:34:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: psuvm.2210CJC
Posted: Fri Sep  6 17:34:21 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 02:32:48 EDT
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Xref: watmath net.books:2277 net.women:7353


     
> > _Murder in the Collective_, by Barbara Wilson
> > Published 1984
> >
> >     For anyone who is seeking an intelligently-written,
> > humorous, interesting story, try this book.  It has elements of
> > a murder mystery and yet manages to be up to date and not
> > terribly melodramatic (it's a first book).  Murder in the
> > Collective is about the members of Best Printing, a left-leaning
> ...
>
> This is an example of what I meant about violence as our form of
> entertainment.  I don't believe in censorship, but as long as
> people are entertained by violence, and as long as people allow themselves
> to be suckeered into enterainment based on violent suspense, crime will
> continue to occur at high rates.  Why does there have to be a murder
> in the plot for someone to read about feminism, politics and friendships?
     
   I think you've picked the wrong target: the great majority of
"murder mysteries" that I've read contain very little violence. They
are a subset of mystery stories in general, which are an intellectual
puzzle-solving entertainment - the murder just raises the level of
interest (rather like playing cards for high stakes, not pennies).
The murder occurs "off-stage" or even before the book begins, the
detective is called in, and the rest of the book is a gradual display
and arrangement of clues. Reading a mystery is rather like a game of
trying to anticipate the author, to guess the guilty party before the
author reveals the answer.
     
   I'll grant that some stories which are sometimes sold as "murder
mysteries" do contain a great lot of violence, but these are really
some other genre - like detective stories - and no real Christie-loving
mystery fan would accept them as the real thing. Certainly the essential
elements of a mystery center on the puzzle solving, not the crime.
     
   I apologize for saying the obvious to the majority of readers who know
all about mystery stories, but I think the person to whom I'm replying
is not at all familiar with the genre.
     
                                         --Carolyn J. Clark
     
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