• Corpus ID: 190124868

The Simple Art of Murder

@inproceedings{Chandler1950TheSA,
  title={The Simple Art of Murder},
  author={Raymond F. Chandler},
  year={1950}
}

• Raymond F. Chandler
• Published 1950
• Art

Fiction in any form has always intended to be realistic. Old fashioned novels which now seem stilted and artificial to the point of burlesque did not appear that way to the people who first read them. The detective story for a variety of reasons can seldom be promoted. It is usually about murder and hence lacks the element of uplift. Murder, which is a frustration of the indi vidual and hence a frustration of the race, may have, and in fact has, a good deal of sociological implication. But it has been going on too long for it to be news. If the mystery novel is at all realistic which it very seldom is) it is written in a certain spirit of detachment; otherwise nobody but a psycho path would want to write it or read it. The murder novel has also a depressing way of minding its own business, solving its own problems and answering its own questions. There is nothing left to discuss, except whether it was well enough written to be good fiction, and the people who make up the half-million sales wouldn't know that anyway. The detection of quality in writing is difficult enough even for those who make a career of the job, without paying too much attention to the matter of advance sales.