LITERARY ARCHEOLOGY by Janice Law Inspired by the big white square on the computer screen, I’ve been off on some literary archeology this week, 697 pages worth, to be exact, of the early gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Published in 1794 by Ann Radcliffe, always known to her admirers as Mrs. Radcliffe, The Mysteries […]

RESTING ACTORS AND THE HYDRAULIC THEORY OF COMPOSITION by Janice Law The British have a charming term for out of work actors: they are said to be “resting.” What a nice thought, and one that is apt for writers as well. Certainly there are writers who never turn from the oar—what the nineteenth century called […]

MIRRORS by Janice Law John Floyd’s good March 12 blog on literary genres got me thinking about other differences between work focused on art and work focused on entertainment, not that those categories are ever mutually exclusive. Shakespeare, after all, was big on contemporary genre entertainment: revenge tragedy, cross-dressing siblings, blood and gore warfare, and […]

DO WE NEED NEW PLOTS? by Janice Law Years ago I had the task of teaching somewhat reluctant students the refinements of English style. These were nice people who had difficulty telling Shakespeare from Austen or Keats from Ginsberg, and to assist them, I made up a sheet of quotations. This required typing and a […]

AMAZING! BRILLIANT! ABSOLUTELY PERFECT! by Janice Law Short mystery fiction may represent the absolutely last frontier of hype, a lonely headland free from multiple adjectives and dangling participles. Consider novels which in the bad old days were considered good, bad or indifferent, pleasant or stimulating or boring things to read. Now no novel worth an […]

OUR AMERICAN GODFATHER by Janice Law Edgar Allan Poe helped father not one, but two, types of mystery story. The line featuring puzzles and a super rational detective comes via works like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter” with the redoubtable C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin, like the later Sherlock Holmes, comes […]

TAX TIME AND F. SCOTT FITZGERALD by Janice Law 1 March and tax time approaches. As I tote up my slender profits, my thoughts turn to George Harrison’s funny song and to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Most people of a certain age will recall “The Taxman,” but Fitzgerald strikes a chord with writers, specifically short story […]