The Casual Vacancy & Lord Peter Wimsey

[donnaimmaculata]

So, the posting challenge that has been going around has finally inspired me to make a post with fannish contents. This makes me very proud (I'm easily pleased).

Over a month ago, I finally read JK Rowling's The Casual Vacancy. (I actually wanted to make a post about it straightaway, but... yeah.)

How had nobody pointed out to me how good it is? I loved it, deeply and passionately. It is precisely my kind of book. Despite my love for the Discworld novels and Harry Potter, I have never considered myself a fan of the fantasy genre. I like novels in which nothing of any earth-shattering relevance happens, that dissect the lives of ordinary people, provide a social commentary of close-knit (and narrow-minded) communities, where everybody is self-righteous and prejudiced and in some way or another a horrible human being. I started reading The Casual Vacancy with no expectations whatsoever, tore through it in the space of three days, and then listened to the audiobook that for some miraculous reason is available on YouTube. It's probably my favourite of all the books that I've read this year (50+). (The runner-up would be World War Z, which is the exact opposite, genre-wise.) I am very much looking forward to the BBC adaptation, because if done right, it has the potential to be absolutely fabulous.

The month of August has so far been dedicated to reading Dorothy L. Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. I've never read them before and thought it's about time to rectify this.

How has there been no adaptation lately? They adapt just about anything, and surely, Lord Peter Wimsey has all the necessary ingredients to appeal to today's audiences: a mind-blowingly attractive* detective who is also an aristocrat, an athlete and a scholar, has an angsty past and a vaguely homoerotic relationship with his gentleman's gentleman. The Lord Peter/Bunter hurt/comfort scenes alone would bring fandom to its knees.

Plus, they could cast David Tennant, if he can do the posh accent.

*Dorothy Sayers goes out of her way to point out that he had "no pretentions to good looks", but we know how well that works out, don't we, Professor Snape?

Comments

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Hah! As the only person on the Internet who wasn't into Sherlock, I would welcome a new Lord Peter adaptation, even if it made use of the same tropes ;-)

There one aspect in which Sherlock and Lord Peter definitely differ: Lord Peter is almost aggressively personable. Sherlock makes a point of not getting on with people (with the exception of a select few), Lord Peter relies on his charm and his people skills a lot. I would like to see how this is handled on screen - investigators in contemporary dramas tend to present themselves to the world as caustic and misanthropic, whereas Lord Peter would have to don the outgoing, foppish persona.

[cordelia_v]

You're right about that difference. Although I don't see Peter as really that naturally outgoing. He's actually quite nervous and certainly has moments where he has low self-esteem; the outgoing gregariousness is more of a role he plays (successfully) when needed.

Sherlock doesn't even try, of course. He's definitely misanthropic, but I see this not as a sign that he's on the autistic spectrum (as some people argue) but that he' so far out the bell curve in terms of intelligence that he cannot control his arrogance towards others, who are mostly hopelessly dull from his point of view.

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree that it is - for the most part - role playing. Still, high-strung as he is, he has got the necessary interpersonal skills to slip into that role easily. His giddy cheerfulness when faced with horrific murders strikes me as almost hysterical. I'm currently reading The Nine Tailors, and his reaction on finding a mutilated corpse is childish glee. Such a reaction could easily be mistaken for callousness, if it wasn't obvious that he has taught himself detachment. To make this absolutely clear, the author even included a dialogue that takes place shortly afterwards: Peter talks to Hilary Thorpe about how when "you're interested in a thing, it makes it less [personal]", and he says, "Because you have the creative imagination, which works outwards, till finally you will be able to stand outside your own experience and see it as something you have made, existing independently of yourself".

There are many parallels to Sherlock Holmes, I think, but Lord Peter cultivates such a different persona that I would like to see him tackled on screen as a sort of counterpart to the character of the BBC's Sherlock.

[cordelia_v]

Actually, you've now persuaded me that what I really want to read is a Wimsey/Sherlock crossover story!

[donnaimmaculata.livejournal.com]

There are crossover stories on Ao3, but I haven't read any yet and can't tell whether they're any good.