Episode 245: “Murder Must Advertise” by Dorothy Sayers, Ch. 17-End

Today on The Literary Life podcast, hosts Angelina Stanford and Thomas Banks wrap up their series on Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers. To begin the conversation, Thomas shares his reaction on finishing this book. Angelina then dives into her discoveries of Alice in Wonderland references throughout all of Sayers’ detective books. They talk about how the cricket game relates to the whole story arc, review the descent and parody imagery ideas from last episode, and look at Lord Peter’s arrest and its significance in the form of the romance. More topics they cover in these final chapters include the ascent imagery, Tallboy’s confession, the act of justice in the detective novel, and how the ending of this book is actually quite fitting. We hope you have enjoyed this series and will be picking up more Sayers novels soon!

Join us again next week for a replay of our previous episode on “Are Women Human”, an essay by Dorothy L. Sayers. You can find a PDF of the essay here or purchase a paperback copy including other essays via our Amazon affiliate link.

In October the House of Humane Letters will be bringing you a new mini-class with Querida Thompson, “How to Read a Symphony: Revealing the Ingenuity of Haydn’s Symphony 42 in D. Major.“

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Commonplace Quotes:

It wasn’t so much doing what you wanted that was important, I ruminated, as wanting to do what you did.

Kingsley Amis, That Uncertain Feeling

Let us look first of all at the simple example of someone reading a detective story, and see what critical principles are involved in it. Reading a detective story indicates a living for comic and romantic forms, and for the contemplation of a fiction for its own sake. We begin by shutting out or deliberately excluding our ordinary experience, for we accept, as part of the convention of the form, things that we know are not often found in actual experience, such as an ingenious murderer and an imaginative policeman. We do not want to think about the truth or likelihood of what we are reading, as long as it does not utterly outrage us; we simply want to see what is going to happen in the story.

Northrop Frye, from A Natural Perspective

from The Princess: Tears, Idle Tears

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

         Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

         Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

         Dear as remember'd kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

Book List:

(Amazon Affiliate Links are included in this post.)

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers

Psmith in the City by P. G. Wodehouse

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

1984 by George Orwell

The Secular Scripture by Northrop Frye

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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You can find Angelina and Thomas at HouseofHumaneLetters.com, on Instagram @angelinastanford, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ANGStanford/

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