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| a pretentious upper class doofus? |
Nevertheless, lots of people couldn't and can't stand Vance, as the Ogden Nash couplet suggests. One of Dashiell Hammett's most famous book reviews is devoted to ridiculing the original Philo Vance outing, The Benson Murder Case (1926).
Over at the Thrilling Detective website, Vance is rather bluntly referred to as a pretentious upper class doofus and a pompous blowhard.
Granted, Thrilling Detective is partial to hard-boiled private eyes, pretty much the antithesis of Vance, but even Golden Age true crime writer Edmund Pearson, a great admirer of "classic crime," couldn't take Philo.
This is a pretty amusingly-written take-down by Pearson, I think:
The author [of The Canary Murder Case] seems to be enormously pleased with the mannerisms and peculiarities of his amateur detective, Philo Vance. As Vance is represented as a Harvard man (who has later studied at Oxford and lived in England) I can only understand his creator's animus on the ground that Mr. "Van Dine" is a graduate of Princeton, seeking revenge. Vance is very nearly the most insufferable ass whom I have ever met in the pages of a novel. Any man who met him in a club would instantly get up and seek refuge in another room. He is a dilettante, a flaneur, a poseur, a viveur, and if you can think of any other foreign terms, he is all of them to boot. He talks like a high school girl during her first year in studying French [Hammett made this charge too]....Surely the author could have suggested this type of man without overloading his conversation with foreign phrases and perpetual airy references to various learned matters.
On the plus side for Van Dine, however, Pearson declares that the "irritating personality of Vance is almost the only weak point in the book." And judging by the sales of The Canary Murder Case in 1927, plenty of people agreed with him about the quality of the novel!
I enjoy the Van Dine books -- sorry to be a contrarian, don't you know? Most embarassin'
ReplyDeletePhilo Vance
ReplyDeletePuts you in a trance?
I'm one of the men who would "seek refuge in another room" if Vance entered; I think there are two or three readable volumes out of the dozen in which he appears, most of them spoiled either by haphazard writing or Vance's obnoxious posing. For a long time I thought that Van Dine had meant Vance to be part of the Silly Ass tradition outlined by Colin Watson in "Snobbery With Violence", including Peter Wimsey, Albert Campion, and Reggie Fortune. But lately I've been wondering; was it merely that Van Dine was trying (incompetently) to depict a gay man? According to Wikipedia, there's a line in the Benson Murder Case where the DA asks Vance if he intends to wear a green carnation, "the symbol of homosexuality during the late 19th and early 20th centuries". Admittedly Van Dine's "Rules" (#3) says specifically "There must be no love interest," so Vance could not have gone much beyond visually appreciating the occasional pretty girl. I read the books at such a young age, it wouldn't have crossed my mind and that point of view has remained with me, but I wonder what other readers think.
ReplyDelete"John Riddell" (aka Cory Ford) did a hilarious job of mocking Vance in THE JOHN RIDDELL MURDER CASE. The thought of some of those jokes still puts a smile on my face, and that final plot twist would make the boldest postmodernist blush!
ReplyDeleteI would like to read more about what Hammett said on Philo Vance...
ReplyDeleteThe review is in the anthology The Art of the Mystery Story, I will try to dig you up a nice quotation from it!
DeleteI've quoted Hammett on Vance in my blog, as follows: “This Philo Vance is in the Sherlock Holmes tradition and his conversational manner is that of a high-school girl who has been studying the foreign words and phrases in the back of her dictionary. He is a bore when he discusses art and philosophy, but when he switches to criminal psychology he is delightful. There is a theory that any one who talks enough on any subject must, if only by chance, finally say something not altogether incorrect. Vance disproves this theory; he managed always, and usually ridiculously, to be wrong.” I'm not sure precisely what Hammett meant by "delightful" but I suspect he was being sarcastic.
DeleteFor me, this is all the more reason to dig into a Philo Vance novel. I have never read S.S. Van Dine before.
ReplyDeleteMost people would say start with Greene or Bishop, or you caould start at the beginning with Benson.
DeleteI loved these as a teen and on re-reading BISHOP recently found that it still gave me great pleasure, though there is a big drop in quality in the series after the initial half dozen, no question about it. Curt, do you knwo where and when Nash originally published his little rhyme? I've founded it quoted endlessly, but have no idea about the original source.
ReplyDelete"The irritating personality" (I would add, too snob, also) is the direct is a direct consequence of the theory of the Superman, released by Nietzsche, of which Willard was an admirer, in his more human and less philosophical meaning. If you do not observe Vance through this lens, the character in the sometimes may seem unbearable and incomprehensible, and in The Canary Murder Case there are indeed many passages in which the scholarship wildest becomes almost an end in itself.
DeleteMoreover, all the fictional characters of the novels of that period have the same characters of Vance, at least initially: the Ellery Queen of the first four novels is very different psychologically from that of the years from 1935 onwards, and the De Puyster by Rufus King, is so similar to Philo Vance and so contemporary (his stories are published in the same period in Benson comes out) that it would not be a surprise if one day you find out that maybe came before the character of Rufus King to that of Philo Vance .
Pietro
I would dispute the idea of Reggie Fortune as a silly ass in any way, shape, or form. I'm a huge fan, at least of the short stories. Reggie is brilliant and ruthless and erudite. You cannot have read much of him.
ReplyDeleteWhat I hate is when Philo Vance starts talking like Reggie Fortune! If anyone has to talk that way, it should stop with Reggie!
DeleteWith respect to Reggie Fortune -- I've read them all, thanks, and enjoyed most of them. I was quoting Colin Watson's opinion in "Snobbery With Violence: English Crime Stories and their Audience", and refer you to page 185 of Chapter 14, "Gifted amateurs". "By no means new in 1920 was the device of presenting an apparently foolish, irresponsible young man to readers or audience and then surprising them by revealing his unsuspected depths of intellect or courage. ... young men dismissed by one and all as mental deficients with large bank accounts proved to have been languidly but brilliantly assembling the case for the prosecution." So I think we actually agree. No one would suggest that any of the names I mentioned were not clever crime-solvers, they merely presented as Silly Asses.
DeleteReggie is very clever indeed and even a righteously avenging angel. I just wish he didn't talk like a telegram!
ReplyDelete