befus's Full Review: Robert Kuhn McGregor and Ethan Lewis - Conundrums ...
In 1923, the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Dorothy Sayers was published. While it wouldn't be quite accurate to say that Whose Body and its aristocratic sleuth took the world of mystery fiction by storm, they gained enough of an early readership to encourage Sayers to keep writing. By 1937, when Busman's Honeymoon appeared, the last Sayers novel to star Lord Peter, her readership had grown enormously. Much of it was thanks to the intriguing and always developing character of Lord Peter, who began his fictional life as an eccentric but in some ways typical pulp mystery sleuth and ended his fictional life as a full-bodied literary character who in many ways transcended the genre.
But then Dorothy Sayers never did things the easy or expected way. In Conundrums for the Long Week-End: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey, authors Robert Kuhn McGregor and Ethan Lewis provide an insightful look into the biography of one of the most intriguing English authors in the 20th century. The book mixes that biographical portrait with cultural observations on the "long week-end" experienced by England between the two World Wars (a term the authors borrow from Robert Graves). And both the biography and cultural critique are viewed through the lens of the development of Sayers' most lovable and enduring character, Lord Peter Wimsey.
A Three-Strand Approach
That's because the authors argue that Wimsey himself is a product of, and embodies, the spirit of that age between the Great War and World War II. They look at each of the 11 Wimsey novels (they also deal with the Wimsey short stories in various collections, including a few short stories published after the final novel) to trace his development as a literary character, how that development and the stories in which it transpired reflected the character of a changing England, and how some of these things were connected to events going on in Sayers' personal life. It's the three-strand approach: literary, cultural and biography analysis, all thoughtfully entwined, that puts this book head and shoulders above a typical book of literary criticism. It also makes it a book that even casual Sayers fans might enjoy if they were interested enough in the post-WWI period in Great Britain or in the general development of the detective novel during this period.
In many ways, however, this book is for diehard Sayers admirers. It helps a lot if you've read all the Wimsey novels, though the organization of the book, following the development of his character chronologically from earliest novel to the final "Wimsey Papers" (a series of fictional letters Sayers produced during WWII) does permit you to jump around in the narrative. I confess that it's been several years since I've read the earliest Wimsey novels, so I tended to skim-read a bit in the chapters concerning those books and reserve my more ardent attention for the chapters on the later Wimsey-Vane novels, which I recently re-read. I didn't end up skimming as much as I expected though, both because the interwoven cultural and historical analysis was so fascinating, and because the authors did a fine job of providing a good recap of the plots of each mystery novel as they discussed it. So even if you haven't read every Wimsey novel recently, you'll likely be able to find your way around these pages and glean much from them.
Some of the more fascinating cultural insights come into the fictional world that Sayers' Lord Peter inhabits, and how that fictional world reflected what was going on in the real world of England in the 1920s and 30s. The speed of modernization, advances in transportation, communication and technology, the changing role of women, and the fading wealth and power of the aristocracy are all presented here. Since Lord Peter himself is an aristocrat, the insights about that last item are particularly interesting -- and are part of the reason the authors put forward for showing how difficult it would have been for Sayers to continue to write Lord Peter novels in the aftermath of World War II.
That brings me to what I considered the best part of the book, which I highly recommend to Sayers fans even if you don't read anything else in this volume: the final chapter in which the authors explore the possible reasons behind Sayers' decision to stop writing the Wimsey books at the height of their popularity. It's clearly been a question that has long fascinated readers: why Sayers turned from the writing of popular detective novels to other creative and scholarly pursuits in this period.
The chapter draws on a depth of Sayers scholarship as the authors present, in admirably clear and concise fashion, many of the reasons that have been put forth by Sayers' critics and devotees. These include creative, personal and spiritual motives, many of which are plausible (and probably more than one of which was involved in Sayers' decision). They assess each one for its validity, agreeing with much of what has been said, but in the end provide their own reason, the one that underlines (with great punch) their main thesis: that Wimsey embodied the era between the wars to such a degree that the end of that era signalled a natural end to his fictional life, at least in the mind of his creator if not his many fans.
In the authors' words: "Peter Wimsey had sprung to life early in the 1920s, in part the product of the optimism accompanying the birth of the the modern age. The prospect had seemed rosy then...That future, rather than proving limitless, had lasted for something like eighteen years...By 1937 it was obvious that the time that had passed since Armistice Day had been simply a respite, a pause for breath...The 'long week-end' was drawing to a close. Peter Wimsey, intimately a product and a figure of that long week-end, was finished as well..."
To underlie their point even further, McGregor and Lewis delve into the manuscript fragments of Thrones, Dominations, the unfinished Wimsey novel found in Sayers' house after her death. (It has since been completed by Jill Paton Walsh and published.) Sayers, they argue, had backed herself into a bit of a corner by tying the story of this novel, which she began plotting in the summer of 1936, to the real, historical death of King George V. As one might have expected, since Busman's Honeymoon had left Lord Peter and Lady Wimsey (nee Harriet Vane) near the end of their honeymoon, Sayers wanted to use the new novel as an opportunity to further explore their unfolding relationship and the topic of marriage. What seemed to derail her, or so McGregor and Lewis argue convincingly, was the abdication of the new Edward VIII to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. It would have been almost impossible for Sayers not to have included that event in her new book; even if she had ignored it, the event was too fresh in people's minds not to color their perceptions of her reflections on marriage. So Sayers put the book aside, only to discover there was never a "right time" again to take it back up.
Sayers devotees will find much to treasure in this book of insights into her life, time and work. I found it fascinating and highly readable: the chapters reminded me of classroom lectures prepared by good teachers who were well-versed in and highly enthusiastic about their subject. In addition to the excellent literary and cultural analysis of each Wimsey novel there are biographical insights that illuminate Sayers' life and work. There's also a marvelous appendix that provides a "coordinated timeline" showing events year by year (from 1918-1936) in England's life, Sayers' life, and Wimsey's "life" (based on novels and canonical back story). That appendix, and all of Conundrums for the Long Week-End, will now need to be reckoned with by almost anyone wishing to research or write about Dorothy Sayers' work as a detective novelist.
~befus, 2009
Conundrums for the Long Week-End: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey by Robert Kuhn McGregor with Ethan Lewis Kent State University Press, 2000 ISBN 0873386655
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