And I'm so curious, I want to know—where has she been? Where did she go?

[sovay]

Courtesy of spatch: "So, anyone still interested in the story of what happened to the German pulps when the Nazis took power?" If nothing else, this thread has convinced me that I want to read Walther Kabel's Harald Harst stories (and not fight with Jess Nevins about literary quality—"the Harst stories were more literate than US pulp stories," tell that to Raymond Chandler. To begin with). It also made me wonder if Wittgenstein, who famously loved the American detective pulps, had ever had a similar affinity for pulp fiction in his home country. This article on Wittgenstein and Norbert Davis did not answer my question, but is worth reading as both an appreciation of the pulp writer and an exploration of the affinities between hard-boiled fiction and philosophy. I think some of it overreaches, but I have also said in so many words that one of the things I like about noir is its skeptical, questioning, ethical dimension, so I can't kick too much about someone else making the same connections. It does annoy me a little that I can't ask Wittgenstein why he preferred Christie to Sayers. I can understand why he wouldn't like Sayers, but then Christie is not the direction I would have expected him to go.

Comments

[gwynnega]

The Harst stories sound amazing: "ambulatory murderous severed hands, Brains in Jars, a villain named Doctor Satan, mummies bent on revenge against those who removed them from their tombs, a Japanese mad scientist bent on wiping out the European colonial powers..."

[sovay]

"ambulatory murderous severed hands, Brains in Jars, a villain named Doctor Satan, mummies bent on revenge against those who removed them from their tombs, a Japanese mad scientist bent on wiping out the European colonial powers..."

I really want to read them!

[sporky_rat]

Me too! I did find copies of my great great uncle's pulp production but they were British and not nearly as wild.

[sovay]

my great great uncle's pulp production

I still think that's cool! What was the title?

[sporky_rat]

A running ton of the Sexton Blake series (Harry Hornsby Clifford Gibbons, known as Chester Gilbert) as found here.

I managed to find some scanned in - he was a pretty good writer.

[alexxkay]

Have you seen The Cardinal and the Corpse? Very odd, artsy film involving Sexton Blake, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair, old British gangsters, the occult, etc... Available on youtube, if you're interested.

[sovay]

Very odd, artsy film involving Sexton Blake, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair, old British gangsters, the occult, etc...

I am a bit disappointed it appears to be a documentary, since I feel that being fictional characters in someone else's crossover would serve Moorcock and Moore right.

[alexxkay]

"appears to be" is definitely not the same as "is". Much of the film is shaped like a documentary, and many real facts are contained in it, but it is overall a fiction. Alan Moore is an actor in it, merely pre-figuring the crazed magus that he would, a few years later, actually become :-)

[sovay]

A running ton of the Sexton Blake series (Harry Hornsby Clifford Gibbons, known as Chester Gilbert) as found here.

That really is great!

[sami]

Preferring Christie to Sayers seems incredibly Germanic of him.

I say because quite a lot of the appeal of Sayers is in the undercurrent of subtle light-hearted humour.

Or maybe it's just very male? It suddenly occurs to me that every single Sayers fan I know is a woman, and they are in broad agreement that Lord Peter is swoony.

Personally I just love Murder Must Advertise for the cricket scene. The phrase "opening up wrathful shoulders" is so brilliantly evocative.

But I don't think cricket ever got anywhere in Austria.

[alexxkay]

I'm a male Sayers fan. I am pansexual, however, and agree that Peter is swoony. I started liking him on the first page, where he was seeking out a rare book that I was already a fan of (The Four Sons of Aymon). I fell in love with him when I realized a) his PTSD and b) the way Bunter treats it, which show a great deal of earned devotion.

[ethelmay]

Did he read them first in English or German? I have read at least one Sayers in German (Murder Must Advertise, which I think has had two different translations), and it missed out a lot of the humor as too difficult to translate. My guess is that Christie would be easier.

[sovay]

Did he read them first in English or German?

I don't know! It's not addressed by the article, although it's clear that by the time of the letters cited in the '40's, he's reading his crime fiction in English. I can see a negative (or a positive) first encounter in translation making a difference, though. Good question!

[dramaticirony]

I'm caught off guard by the emerging consensus on this thread that Sayers fans are (mostly) women. Perhaps I'm atypical in starting the novels with Have His Carcase/Gaudy Night, where Harriet Vane is so swoony...

[sovay]

Perhaps I'm atypical in starting the novels with Have His Carcase/Gaudy Night, where Harriet Vane is so swoony...

I don't relate to narratives primarily through the swooniness of their protagonists, so I'm just totally out in the cold here.

Unrelated

[rydra_wong]

But I saw this and thought you might enjoy it:

https://twitter.com/nextdoorgoblin/status/1160223951626416129

Re: Unrelated

[sovay]

But I saw this and thought you might enjoy it

I am charmed. Thank you.

Re: Unrelated

[ethelmay]

Those are some little hams, all right.

[selkie]

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, of course. A person, having invented (more or less) and hewn to a formula, is the first person to subvert that formula and does it so perfectly that no one else gets to do it because it’s been done!

Also, only chicks dig Sayers. It used to be a reliable indicator of dateability, but the times, they are different.

[sovay]

A person, having invented (more or less) and hewn to a formula, is the first person to subvert that formula and does it so perfectly that no one else gets to do it because it’s been done!

I mean, that is why I like The Mousetrap.

Also, only chicks dig Sayers. It used to be a reliable indicator of dateability, but the times, they are different.

My father likes Sayers. I found this out when he had Opinions about the actors who have portrayed Wimsey (Petherbridge, yes; Carmichael, no; he agreed with me about fancast Leslie Howard). I capitalize because he was intense.

[selkie]

I have never dated the residual energies of an architects' bookshop in Berlin, only the one human guy, but people/spirits of place can contain multitudes, that's fair.

[moon_custafer]

It does annoy me a little that I can't ask Wittgenstein why he preferred Christie to Sayers.

The pure plotting?

For as long as I’ve been reading about Christie, I’ve seen her prose style dissed as “schoolgirlish,” which I don’t think is quite fair—I think it’s prose that doesn’t draw attention to itself, because it’s in service to the story.

[sovay]

The pure plotting?

According to the article, he liked her characterization! Which is not nonexistent, but is really not the thing I think of her as known for, or the thing I read her for, myself.

[heron61]

Walther Kabel's Harald Harst stories sound fascinating. Reading this also got me thinking that it was only 26 years from Kabel publishing his last Harst story and the start of the vast Perry Rhodan series, which I devoured (in the US translations) as a child and teen. Obviously, Perry Rhodan is space opera, but it's the sort of gonzo pulp space opera that makes me think that at least some of its many authors likely read Kabel. Of course, this also got me thinking about how much of my own taste for vast space opera, and some of the world building choice I've made for various RPGs I've written were inspired by reading Perry Rhodan at a very young age, and thus perhaps by a not too distant connect to Kabel. So it goes...

[sovay]

Walther Kabel's Harald Harst stories sound fascinating.

I'm really, really hoping there are English translations.

Obviously, Perry Rhodan is space opera, but it's the sort of gonzo pulp space opera that makes me think that at least some of its many authors likely read Kabel.

I've never read Perry Rhodan. Would you still recommend him? (I am generally in favor of gonzo pulp.)

[heron61]

I haven't looked at any of the book since I was a not all that old teen - I remember a multi-racial array of characters and no obvious racism (although all the central protagonists were white except for their psychic semi-humanoid animal sidekick), but I also remember it having about the expected level of sexism from a male-written (all of the various authors who wrote it back in the early days were men - I've no clue if that changed later). The novels are exceedingly short (about 90-110 pages), I'd say give it a try. I've been afraid to go back and reread it because I worry the suck-fairy will have landed on it hard, but it might not.

One advantage of the US editions (edited by Forry Ackerman) is that they included numerous old short stories in the back, and also issues 23-31 serialized The Exile of the Skies (1934, by Richard Vaughan), which I also remember fondly. Later issues serialized the 1933 multi-author serial novel Cosmos (a link to the full text of the novel can be found at the bottom of that article).

[heron61]

So, I just reread the 3rd of the US Ace editions of Perry Rhodan (like all of them, it's less than 100 pages) - and my memory was roughly correct. One of the major protagonists is Japanese and is just as heroic, smart, and loyal as any of the white characters. OTOH, in an 90 page book, there are a grand total of 2 female characters - a CEO's assistant who has 2 or 3 lines and no characterization, and the protagonist's love interest, an alien woman who starts the book hating the protagonist and eventually ends up grudgingly respecting him. In the few scenes she has, she manages to faint twice (although, the older male alien is also pretty pathetic). So, fairly good wrt race, and predictably quite terrible wrt sexism.