Hello, and welcome back to the discussion of Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers. Chapter five opens with some tremendous writing and characterization of Parker:
He awoke, after a long day of arduous and inconclusive labour, to the smell of burnt porridge. Through his bedroom window, hygienically open top and bottom, a raw fog was rolling slowly in, and the sight of a pair of winter pants, flung hastily over a chair the previous night, fretted him with a sense of the sordid absurdity of the human form. The telephone bell rang, and he crawled wretchedly out of bed and into the sitting room, where Mrs. Munns, who did for him by the day, was laying the table, sneezing as she went…
‘You can take the porridge home for the family,” he added, viciously, and flung off his dressing gown with such determination that Mrs Munns could only scuttle away with a snort.
(62-3, Bourbon Street Books edition. Emphases mine.)
The boring bit I warned you about is in this chapter. I’d say it starts with Peter’s speech “Possibility 3 is knocked on its head.” and finishes with “Mr. Parker had listened with commendable patience to this academic exposition.” Which is characteristic of Sayers’s dry wit and tells me that she is trying to make Peter something of a pedantic ass, an annoying chatterbox who gets away with it because he’s 1. super rich 2. his family has a title, 3. he’s Mr. Cleverpants and 4. he’s a decent guy, willing to share his food and booze with others.
I think the person on Storygraph whose review complained about how Peter is “boring and unrelatable” is not making a fair criticism. Why yes, I can see how a woman in the 21st century might have trouble “relating” to a British noble from a century ago, living before World War II. If you must like a book’s main character, then perhaps this will not be the book for you. And if you must relate to him, well, that’s going to be a reach. Peter is a clown, or at least plays the clown when it suits him.
[Now, friends, here is where I admit that I have a tedious routine medical procedure coming up and had to do some unpleasant preparation for it, and am questioning all my life decisions, including how I said I’d put this up by Thursday.]
Things that amused me: Crimplesham throwing Peter out on his ear, and then, upon realizing his mistake: “Oh, dear,” said Mr. Crimplesham.
The dowager duchess sailing to the front of the inquest, and yammering on but getting a pass because she’s a duchess. Interestingly, she again gets the most offensive lines, about how the jury were like sheep or boiled cow heads. Important question: do we think that Sayers thought this? Do we think the other characters think this? Does Parker? How do you think Parker felt at that nasty sentiment, that dropped so trippingly out of her head and off her tongue?
Gladys on the stand: “it was a cruel shame a girl couldn’t ‘ave a bit of fun without a nasty corpse comin’ in through the window to get ‘er into difficulties.”
What I notice on this, my second read of this novel, is the many sparkles of humor. Sayers excels at both dialogue and characterization. Also, since I know whodunnit, and vaguely recall some of the how, I am able to enjoy the ride, where on my first read, I was trying to puzzle it out. I am less frantic about trying to keep the many clues in my head, and can simply fly by the ones that I now know are red herrings. I’m able to appreciate the humor better, which may also be due to having read the whole series before. Like Austen, Shakespeare, et. al., after I’ve been exposed, and saturated in some of its eccentricities, I’m able to consume them more adeptly, having acquired a facility with their language.
What did you notice? What sparkled for you? What bugged you? Did my warning about the boring speech help?
For next week read chapters 7, 8, and 9. See you then!
K.J. Boldon 
Your warning about chapter 5 definitely helped–I skimmed much of that. I think, though, my big question, now that we’re about halfway done, is this: Why is it necessary to read this book before the others? I confess I’m not loving it. I expected some kind of origin story, where we’d learn about Wimsey and how he came to this peculiar hobby, how he met Suggs, Parker, etc., but instead, it’s reading like a book further along in the series. You’ve said it’s not the best of the batch by far–why is it important to read it before reading the others since it’s not explaining all the whys and hows? Just curious.
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While this story doesn’t begin at the beginning of Wimsy’s sleuthing career, it does introduce to the reader many characters that come along for the rest of the series. Some, like Parker, have more important roles, and some, like The Honorable Freddy Arbuthnot, have minor roles. But they do all grow together. So it is an introduction in that way.
And by the end of this novel, you do get more information about Peter’s background, in particular his experiences during the War and his relationship with Bunter, that I think are pretty foundational.
I believe our blog host’s opinion about it being “not the best of the batch by far” has a lot to do with how later in the series we get Harriet Vane, Peter’s love interest. The Wimsy/Vane novels are easily the best of series; I think Sayers really hits her stride with them.
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I have been ruminating on a reply form days and haven’t managed. Short answer: trust me. I started w Whose Body and have thought about advising ppl to start w Strong Poison, as it’s where the series takes a big leap. BUT, many of the pleasures of the series are ones that accrue gradually, book by book. In this we get introduced to Bunter and his photography, we hear about the Attenbury Diamonds but with no details. This book on its own is a fine beginning to an excellent series. I think the series gets better as it goes (except for Five Red Herrings, which was tedious) and then as a whole becomes greater than its parts, IMO. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the series without starting with this. And I feel the series is worth appreciating to it’s fullest. Perhaps that’s just me. But there are enough DLS and Wimsey enthusiasts out in the world, even a century later, that I think it’s not just me, so I hope to lure a few more readers in.
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I can’t believe you didn’t mention the passage about cheese.
I found this site that has some annotations on some Wimsy works, including this and one of the other novels:
http://www.dandrake.com/wimsey/index.html
I always thought that the most valid criticism of Wimsy as a character was that he was too perfect (as we will see as the novels go on, there doesn’t seem to be anything he can’t do), not that he is boring. But my feeling is that he has many good qualities, which is why his friends put up with how annoying he is.
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