without a following. It is ever so
long since the girls of
Little Wom–
en
played Pilgrim's Progress up
and down the stairs; and almost
that long since the young lad (later
Lord) Allenby stored up in his
youthful unconscious the grand
strategy of Mr. Christian for use
(according to Allenby's biographer,
Wavell) in the Palestine Campaign
of the First World War. And as
far as thought can reach we can–
not imagine anybody ever again
wanting to play Tyrone Power on
his way to the Celestial City.
But the religious novel's failure
was the detective story's oppor–
tunity. For the careers of the crim–
inal
and
the detective provide a
direct, universal, and irresistible
challenge to participation by the
LIBERAL PRESS, INC.
printers of
PARTISAN REVIEW
•
80 FOURTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 3, N.Y.
840
reader. Everybody, in other words,
has played the game of cops and
robbers; and ·things being what
they are,
everybody must play it.
The game went metaphysical, and
the detective story became the au–
thentic religious novel-more than
that, the passion play--of today.
In whodunits are now to be found,
suitably disguised as in a parable
and stripped bare of all sectarian
refinements, all the possible relig–
ious themes and all the theolog–
ical problems that we have any
time fe>r.
At the center of every detec–
tive story lies the prime theological
problem: original sin.
The story begins one day when
the garden of the world lies at
peace. Time hangs heavy over the
detective's desk but because the
categories of time and mortality
have not yet entered the world.
The stage, is set for "Man's first
disobedience"; and the first stage
of Disobedience, as De Quincey
has shown in his frustrated essay
apropos, is murder.
The one who will do it is
Everyman.
Who will find him? The police
take time; and they bungle. We
may think of the cops' phase of
the cosmic drama as the Phase
<..f
the Bungling of Time. But beyond
the Bungling of Time lies the Ful–
fillment of Time.
If
the regular police are the Old·
Morality, representing the Law,
the hero detective is the New
Morality, representing Grace. The
