Mon 29 Sep 2014
by Marv Lachman
Though he died in 1956 and wrote only one true mystery novel, A. A. Milne is a writer who keeps cropping up. As parents we likely have read his Winnie-the-Pooh stories to our children. As mystery fans we probably have read his classic novel, The Red House Mystery, and Raymond Chandler’s devastating criticism of it in “The Simple Art of Murder.”
Milne wrote other works that fall into our genre, including his very first sale as a free-lance writer, a delightful little Holmesian parody, “The Rape of the Sherlock” (1903). He also wrote several plays with mystery elements, including one, The Perfect Alibi (1928), which is clearly a forerunner of Sleuth, Witness for the Prosecution, and Death Trap.
Though it is long out of print, Milne’s Autobiography (1939) is worth searching for in your local library. It’s a delightfully witty picture of someone growing up in Victorian England. At one point Milne remarks that “Very few Victorians were on Christian name terms with each other; Holmes, after twenty years of intimacy, was still calling his colleague Watson.”
Finishing a chapter on how he writes, Milne provides some clever, though helpful, advice to those of us with authorial ambitions:
September 29th, 2014 at 3:18 pm
I can never think of Milne without thinking of Dorothy Parker’s review of WINNIE THE POOH in the NEW YORKER Constant Reader section:
“At this point Tonstant Weader Throwed up.”
I like Milne and Pooh and that is still a great review.
September 29th, 2014 at 4:40 pm
That quote didn’t sound quite right, so I looked it up. The correct version is even better:
“…Tonstant Weader fwowed up.”
September 29th, 2014 at 6:48 pm
Yes, even better.
You can’t say she was shy about her opinions, but what would you expect from the only woman at the Algonquin Round Table?
September 30th, 2014 at 1:08 am
In the Diana Rigg book of damning theatre reviews NO STONE UNTURNED you can find Parker’s take on Milne’s GIVE ME YESTERDAY. It is scathingly hilarious, and deserves to be read by all lovers of vitriol. One line instantly springs to mind: when the hero falls asleep and returns to the time of his youth…”And so he is given yesterday. I would have given him twenty to life.”
September 30th, 2014 at 3:49 pm
Bradstreet,
That, her review of THE GLASS KEY and her hilarious take of Elinor Glyn … “Would you like to sin on a tiger skin with Elior Glyn Or would you prefer to err on some other fur?” as well as poems, stories, and essay are in the massive PORTABLE DOROTHY PARKER.
Oh to have been a fly on the wall when she, Alexander Woolcott, Robert Benchley, Moss Hart, George S. Kaufman, and on occasion Groucho or S.J. Perlman were in their cups and on target.
October 1st, 2014 at 1:55 am
Steve: I’ve been trying to e-mail you back to thank you for including the correction to my post, but it’s not working, so I had to use this way to leave a reply. Thanks.
October 1st, 2014 at 8:11 am
You’re welcome!