principle of him may be operative
in a cop or a member of the D.A.'s
staff, but we see him better, as we
see him most often, when we see
him clean, working independently
of the regular police and some–
times, temporarily, against them.
Never forget, however, that the
hero detective comes not to abol–
ish the law but to fulfill it.
Between the hero detective and
the cops there is an identity of
aim, but there is a difference of
means and of motive. The identi–
cal aim is to find the murderer,
and to repristinate the cosmic or–
der as of before the Fall! No small
task this; and no wonder there can
be some differences in the choice
and evolution of means. Some aim
to "produce god from the ma–
chine"; and this is your laboratory
detective, omniscient no less than
any other, but with a manual and
technological bent. Some will rea–
son god from the singing bone; and
these are your scholastic giants:
Nero Wolfe and Father Brown,
straight from the tradition of
Thomas Aquinas. But the main
difference in means, as between
the hero detective will
be
a thief
an incarnational difference. The
cops will set a thief to catch a
thief (that is, a murderer) ; but
the hero detective will
be
a thief
to catch one. He or his assistant
will. And whenever a policeman
has yielded to this principle, we
may know and remember that he
has yielded to the principle of in–
carnation.
841
Above all there is the difference
in motive.
It is not out of vengeance that
the hero detective seeks the mur–
derer, nor because he is licensed
or employed to do so; but he does
so
vocationally,
or by way of elec–
tion and dedication. The hero de–
tective has a call. Often,
if
not
always, he is so saintly shy about
his call that, like Nero Wolfe, he
will protest that he does it only
for cash. But we, you and I, know
that he protests too much. We
know that he does what he does
because the sign of it was laid up–
on him from birth. We know that
for this he was conceived, and for
this born, and that his fate and his
ethos are thus and not otherwise.
He would not have it otherwise;
GBM
The best in Modern Art and
Literature by Promising Un–
knowns and Established Moderns
RECORDINGS:
Auden, reading selections from "Another
Time
1
'
2.00
Same, from "Selected Poems"
3.00
George Barker, from "Pacific Sonnets"
3.00
Robert Coffin, from "Collected Poems"
3.00
E. E. Cummings, from "50 Poems" 2.00
T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets," 6 records
12.00
Same, "Gerontion," "The Hollow Men"
3.00
Same, "Fragment of an Agon"
3.00
Same, "Journey of the Magi," "Song for
Simeon"
3.00
James Joyce, "Anna Livia Plurabelle,"
unbreakable
7.50
Henry Miller, from "Tropic of Capricorn"
3.75
Marianne Moore, from "What Are Years?"
2.00
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