Eighth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

It's one thing if mankind is hunted to extinction by ChatGPT, but I really do object to being executed by Bing.

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3169743#cmt3169743 )

Welcome back! Fandom chat, misc creativity, internet weirdness, books, films, anything! Tell meme about it so we can get to the next post title!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

Comments

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

A Deeply Suspicious neurologist has entered the picture! He seems to have been responsible for something nefarious, possibly kidnapping a man so he can get with the man's wife (the wife is the neurologist's patient). But who can hold a little kidnapping against a man who speaks thus?:


"You regard all these things as physical?"

"Undoubtedly. I am not ignorant of the rise of another school of thought, but its exponents are mostly charlatans or self-deceivers."

What a widely applicable quote!

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

I also like the Duchess (Lord Peter's mother). She reminds me of my grandma.

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

Oh yeah, and the pages stopped falling out after page 4.

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

(though that was really page 11, given introduction.

/Unasked-for pedantry )

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

Book references Mr Sludge, The Medium! Never thought I'd see the day I understood a poetry reference in a book (for a poem we didn't cover at school, anyway). Am not a particularly poetic nonny. But it's Browning, the Stephen King of Victorian poets, so I know more than usual.

(The poem:

http://www.telelib.com/authors/B/BrowningRobert/verse/dramatispersonae/mrsludge.html

)

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

I can't quite ascertain the tone of this book. Just when I think it's going for utterly ridiculous, I get to a deadly serious paragraph. First, there's one where Lord Peter suddenly has a crisis of conscience about the meta of it all; his playing detective has real stakes for others; what if he actually finds the murderer? Sending another man to jail is rather playing god, what?

His detective friend consoles him, tells him to stop worrying about being sporting; they're there to catch a murderer. This paragraph has much better prose than the rest; I enjoyed it but the tonal shift also made me rather confused.

Then, later, following his deduction, Lord Peter is so disturbed by his conclusion, he has an attack of ptsd and believes himself to be back in the middle of WWI. His butler, now revealed to be a sergeant, helps him back to bed, and he is bundled off to the country to recover his nerves. I can't tell if she's just parodying Sherlock and Watson or what. I think Poirot was also a veteran?

I feel fondness for characters who are prone to going a little mad when stressed and overtired, so this made me like him better, but again the shift in tone made me go "?????". I feel like I can't quite get a handle on anything.

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

Finished!

I went back to read the intro. Said intro, while positive about the book overall, describes it as dated, with casual antisemitism. Unless I've forgotten something, I think that's a bit misleading; various *characters* are antisemitic but I wouldn't say the narration itself is; the prominent Jewish character is painted in a very positive light and the narration is sympathetic. In places I got the impression the author was overcompensating for the antisemitism of the time; there are a LOT of paragraphs where the character is described as the best person ever. When the book started, I had a brief moment of "uh oh, is this going to be one of those oldish books where the author's antisemitism is like a physical force...?", but I was relieved to find this did NOT happen. I could see it getting cancelled by socjus people today, but only because they can't read. Ymmv, of course, and I might have missed something, since I wasn't concentrating that hard as I read, but based on this book I think it'd be unfair to characterise Sayers as antisemitic.

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

(though, actually, I can't see it getting cancelled by socjus people, because the only time they ever pretend to care about antisemitism is when they can use it as a smear against someone they already wish ill. There's no social clout in accusing Sayers, so they would never get around to accusing her. But in the AU in which Mark Oshiro read this book, he would be sure to see an antisemitic villain and mistake it for the author.)

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

(had a brief look for commentary on that aspect, but ended up on an essay that was just "I can't fit the characters in these books neatly into my literature stereotypes, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT TO THINK?!!!!!", and it was so stupid I decided that I was done with the topic for the day.)

Re: Books - Lord Peter Wimsey - Whose Body

[(Anonymous)]

I know, right!? It's stupid how hard it is to find stuff on Sayers' books. Probably because it's so obviously written by a woman.

Thank you for sharing your commentary, nona! <3