{"id":436,"date":"2006-07-29T16:07:17","date_gmt":"2006-07-29T20:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=436"},"modified":"2024-03-24T21:45:19","modified_gmt":"2024-03-25T01:45:19","slug":"sayers_hhc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/07\/sayers_hhc\/","title":{"rendered":"Sayers, Dorothy L.: (08) Have His Carcase<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dorothy Sayers’ Have His Carcase<\/cite><\/strong> is part of a collection of books that I informally call “books that were inexplicably never booklogged.” I re-read it quite a while ago and somehow, it never appeared here. I’m logging it now because I was sadly disappointed by the radio adaptation of Strong Poison<\/cite>—Ian Carmichael is a great Wimsey, but Ann Bell is not even a passable Harriet Vane. [*] So I gave the text of Strong Poison<\/cite> a quick glance, and since Have His Carcase<\/cite> is the next book to feature Harriet, it naturally came to mind.<\/p>\n

[*] However, this fan page<\/a> tells me that two other actresses were cast as Harriet Vane in Have His Carcase<\/cite> and Busman’s Honeymoon<\/cite> (Gaudy Night<\/cite> not being adapted, the only one of the novels, which is a pity), so I will probably give those a try eventually.<\/p>\n

I found Have His Carcase<\/cite> very tedious the first time I read it, but I liked it much better this time around, which is solely attributable to Sarah Monette: in a series of LiveJournal posts<\/a> (warning: book-destroying spoilers), she points out that Have His Carcase<\/cite> is a mystery novel about<\/em> mystery novels, a meta-commentary on the way that detective stories are constructed. (Note the last two chapter titles: “Evidence of What Should Have Happened” and “Evidence of What Did Happen.”) With that, all the long attempts to figure out what happen turned from tedious and futile to thematically interesting; and the puzzling facts, and the way they are put together into stories, take on extra resonance. I admit, though, that I still skipped the code-breaking section.<\/p>\n

The first time I read it, I also was frustrated at the lack of progress in Peter and Harriet’s relationship. This time, again guided by Sarah Monette’s commentary, I realized why there’s so little progress: Have His Carcase<\/cite> is deliberately tossing up examples of ways in which men and women fail to relate, are prevented from meeting each other as equals, all the generalized things that keep Peter and Harriet apart. It’s for Gaudy Night<\/cite>, I think, to deal with the specific, personal things—but they have to overcome both sets of obstacles before they can get anywhere.<\/p>\n

Have His Carcase<\/cite> will never be my favorite Sayers novel, but I admire its craft and I’m glad to have discovered its virtues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dorothy Sayers’ Have His Carcase is part of a collection of books that I informally call “books that were inexplicably never booklogged.” I re-read it quite a while ago and somehow, it never appeared here. I’m logging it now because I was sadly disappointed by the radio adaptation of Strong Poison—Ian Carmichael is a great … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sayers, Dorothy L.: (08) Have His Carcase<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,34],"tags":[372],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-wimseyvane","tag-sayers-dorothy-l"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2888,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/2888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}