04-30-2011, 02:31 PM
I don't see any particular reason a murder mystery couldn't be "intellectually and emotionally challenging art".
Think about it this way--I can't imagine enjoying torturing someone to death but I know that there are people who do enjoy that. A lesser artist could write a story about such a person, painting a black and white picture of a person who was bad doing bad things--the story of whose eventual capture/death might be entertaining. But a greater artist could perhaps make one understand why the person behaved that way, and what it was they got out of it. Not merely at an intellectual level but at an emotional level.
I'm not going to attempt to judge the quality of the art, but it's the sort of thing the guy who wrote The Silence of the Lambs tried to do with one of the prequels--where he explores Lecter's childhood. [Actually, I will judge, since I think anyone who writes more than one book about any given character is a hack rather than an artist, but that doesn't really change the point I'm trying to make.]
Think about it this way--I can't imagine enjoying torturing someone to death but I know that there are people who do enjoy that. A lesser artist could write a story about such a person, painting a black and white picture of a person who was bad doing bad things--the story of whose eventual capture/death might be entertaining. But a greater artist could perhaps make one understand why the person behaved that way, and what it was they got out of it. Not merely at an intellectual level but at an emotional level.
I'm not going to attempt to judge the quality of the art, but it's the sort of thing the guy who wrote The Silence of the Lambs tried to do with one of the prequels--where he explores Lecter's childhood. [Actually, I will judge, since I think anyone who writes more than one book about any given character is a hack rather than an artist, but that doesn't really change the point I'm trying to make.]
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."