The Nine Tailors

#DorothySayers
#England
#MysteryNovels
#Writing

https://theowfactor.org/2026/05/08/the-nine-tailors/?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=jetpack_social

George Orwell hating the detective stories of Dorothy L. Sayers doesn't surprise me so much; I've read enough of Orwell's writing to know that the fellow had strong and nasty opinions about many authors whom I like, and didn't like women very much at all. But J. R. R. Tolkien writing to his son Christopher that he loathed Gaudy Night and loathed Sayers and Harriet Vane and that Busman's Honeymoon made him feel sick is…something. That's really something. Sayers collided with the Inklings scene at one point, and I know that Jack Lewis conceived an animus towards Sayers (q.v. the character of "Fairy" Hardcastle in That Hideous Strength, who seems aimed at Sayers) and maybe Tolkien did as well.

(sighs) Tolkien is quite fallen as a pop-culture hero, in my eyes anyway. I'm still deeply attached to his work, but now I feel like the man himself is in desperate need of harsh critical reassessment, just as it's well past time for a merciless dissection of Clive Staples Lewis and his posthumous cult. In a just and well-tempered literary culture, I daresay that Tolkien ought to be remembered more the way that his friend Charles Williams is remembered as a fascinating oddity, a writer of vision but not the godfather of all fantasy literature. Ironically, it seems as if Prof. Tolkien himself was profoundly ambivalent about his own fantastical writings. Oughtn't there to be more attention to Tolkien's misgivings about his own work? Is it actually a good thing to be locked into imitating and emulating his laborious, lore-heavy approach to writing fiction?

If he wasn't so damn American, Bing Crosby would have made a good cinematic Lord Peter Wimsey.

But it's still the damn cryingest shame in the world that Leslie Howard didn't get to play Lord Peter.

20 books that have had an impact on who you are. One book a day for 20 days. No explanations, no reviews, just book covers.

Day 6

Mystery #MysteryLovers #GoldenAgeOfMystery #Bookstodon #20Covers #DorothySayers

Just finished reading Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers. It’s absolutely savage about #capitalism, advertising & living paycheck to paycheck and was published in goddamn 1933. Ouch
“If this hells-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen?”

#reading #books #dorothysayers #amreading

#DorothySayers I recently misremembered Five Red Herrings as 6 Red Herrings, because I couldn't remember how many red herrings there were.

I have always felt that this book was written by Sayers to prove she could, but readers with nothing to prove are allowed to skip it. I do not have a grudge against it, but found it very difficult. However, are there Five Red Herrings stans? I would like to meet them!