Variety
A
Defense of the Thriller
THE LITERATURE
of crime has re-
cently begun to attract a more
serious kind of critical attention.
Hitherto it has existed, as it were
in the servants' quarters, tolerated
but not allowed to dine with the
gentry. But as serious novels have
become worse and crime novels
better there are signs that even the
more learned critics are becoming
uneasy. To cite two recent discus–
sions, Mary McCarthy in PR and
Edmund Wilson in
The New
Yorker
have both sternly ordered
the
roman policier
to go back
where it came from. To the writer
it seems that both of these critics
have missed the point. Mr. Wilson
has not read any of the better
books in the field and consequent–
ly tries to prove by Agatha Christie
that the detective story has not
advanced. Now it is true that there
is a mass of pedestrian whodunits
which are strictly formula. These
novels have nothing to do with
literature. They are read by ad–
dicts who have everything in com–
mon with crossword puzzle fans. To
expect this kind of puzzle book to
advance is like expecting the game
of chess to advance. Some of the
whodunits add real characteriza–
tion in terms of comedy of man–
ners (such as Ngaio Marsh at her
best) but these novels differ from
the new type of crime story which
threatens to break out of the genre
and achieve a more serious kind of
statement.
Miss McCarthy is concerned with
the latter tendency but she is
against it. One suspects she is
against it because she is a con–
noisseur of the orthodox whodunit
and, like all specialists, wishes to
keep the genre pure. She certainly
does not prove her charge that
Graham Greene's serious qualities
are ersatz. Carefully avoiding his
two best books,
Brighton Rock
and
The Labyrinthine Ways,
the core
of her argument seems to be that
Greene uses melodrama which he
does not make "plausible." This is
an unfortunate word. Kafka's plots
are not plausible but they have
profound meaning. A more valid
charge against the novels which
Greene specifically labels "enter–
tainments" is that he does not fuse
the story as a whole with the inci–
dental implications which he draws
from it. In isolated scenes mean–
ing and form are merged but the
denouement of the intrigue tends
to be mechanical and one feels a
letdown of serious intent. Instead
of
regarding this as ersatz, how–
ever, this kind of book can just as
well be considered transitional. One
can conclude that the thriller is
beginning to change.
Now there is one quality which
all the subspecies of the crime sto–
ry possess in common and that is
dramatic form. The psychological
