Literary Significance and Criticism
"For many reasons, no great favourite ... despite Dorothy's swotting up of bell-ringing and the two good maps. The cause of death, however, is original, and the rescue scene in the church amid the flood shows the hand of the master. It should be added that this work is a favorite with many readers. Sinclair Lewis judged it the best of his four "indispensables" ...".
"Dorothy L. Sayers incautiously entered the closed world of bell-ringing in The Nine Tailors on the strength of a sixpenny pamphlet picked up by chance -- and invented a method of killing which would not produce death, as well as breaking a fundamental rule of that esoteric art by allowing a relief ringer to take part in her famous nine-hour champion peal."
In his infamous essay attacking detective fiction, Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd, American critic Edmund Wilson decried this novel as dull, overlong and far too detailed; describing how he skipped a lot of the prose about bell-ringing (quote: "a lot of information of the kind that you might expect to find in an encyclopaedia article on campanology"), and also large amounts of Sayers' focal sleuth character, "the embarrassingly named" Lord Peter Wimsey.
Read more about this topic: The Nine Tailors
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new haut monde in letters and making up the public’s mind.”
—Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)