crime's solution is the quest for a
grail.
· An injustice was therefore done
when a current practitioner, Ray–
mond Chandler, unaware of the
religious implications of his
art,
once in a magazine article dared
to characterize the detective hero
as merely your perfect gentleman,
sans peur et sans reproche.
And to
this defective claim the answer and
corrective were long ago given by
the distinguished G.
K.
Chester–
ton who showed, in
The Man Who
Was Thursday,
that the prince of
detectives was God.
And here we, with Chesterton,
have touched on the secret of the
detective story's peculiar popularity
and of its liturgical charm, even
when the music is bad and the mes–
sage thick. For the only truly pop–
ular literature is one that expresses
the metaphysical needs of man–
kind. These, though less acute than
man's material needs, are far more
chronic and profound. And of all
the muses none is more lovely than
our lady metaphysics. Only, now
that she has become a policewom–
an, 'tis pity she's a bore.
Henry M. Rosenthal
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SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1947: Delmore Schwortz-Auden end Stevens;
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American Intelligentsia.
o·
JANUARY 1948: Jeon-Poul Sortre-Whet is Literature?; Arthur Koest–
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D
FEBRUARY 1948: Mary McCarthy-The Cicerone; Saul Bellow-A Letter
from Spain; Robert Worshow-The Gangster as Tragic: Hero.
D
MARCH 1948: .Delmore Schwortz-The World is a Wedding; Jeon-Poul
Sartre-For Whom Does One Write?; Clement Greenberg-The Decline
of Cubism.
D
":PRIL 1948:. Andre
.~olroux
and Jame.s Burnham-T.he Double Crisis (
11
d1alogue); L1onel Trilling-Sex and Sc:1ence: The K1nsey Report; Irving
Howe-Sherwood Anderson: The Unavailable Self.
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