DETECTIVE NOVELS
i Sir-The, comments evoked by your inquiries on the detective novel show that criticism in this country is still unsophisticated enough to be intelligent as well as honest. Ostensible reasons are, however, seldom the real ones; and in the apologia for detective fiction the rationalising process is amusingly evident, masking the libido very effectively, and disguising dubious motives with a tinsel aura of "intellectuality." The statement that university professors and clergymen-notoriously pacifist people-are the most avid readers of thrillers is significant. Jung, for instance, regards the popular appeal of crime fiction as pathological. Suttie, less severe, classes detective novels with the histrionic art, and considers interest in them symptomatic of arrested development. It’s a matter of taste, of course. Detective fans, habituated to the cool serenities and high places of the whodunits, will view Messrs. Jung and Suttie with a jaundiced eye. Debunking self-deception is a hopeless task.
RUSTIC
(Waipukurau).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19471114.2.14.1
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 5
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152DETECTIVE NOVELS New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 438, 14 November 1947, Page 5
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