Dagger of the Mind

by Kenneth Fearing

"Dagger of the Mind" by Kenneth Fearing. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. ...

Genres: Noir, Mystery, Fiction

184 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1941

About the author

Kenneth Fearing (July 28, 1902 – June 26, 1961) was an American poet, novelist, and founding editor of Partisan Review. Literary critic Macha Rosenthal called him "the chief poet of the American Depression."

Fearing was born in Oak Park, Illinois, the son of Harry Lester Fearing, a successful Chicago attorney, and Olive Flexner Fearing. His parents divorced when he was a year old, and he was raised mainly by his aunt, Eva Fearing Scholl. He went to school at Oak Park and River Forest High School, and was editor of the student paper, as was his predecessor Ernest Hemingway. After studying at the University of Illinois in Urbana and the University of Wisconsin, Fearing moved to New York City where he began a career as a poet and was active in leftist politics.

In the 1920s and 1930s, he published regularly in The New Yorker and helped found Partisan Review, while also working as an editor, journalist, and speechwriter and turning out a good deal of pulp fiction. Some of Fearing's pulp fiction was soft-core pornography, often published under the pseudonym Kirk Wolff.

In 1950, he was subpoenaed by the U.S. Attorney in Washington, D.C.; when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party, he is supposed to have replied, "Not yet."

Reviews

[Glenn Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yaddo - a community of artists located on an estate in Saratoga Springs, New York

In a life cut short at age fifty-nine by the effects of alcohol, American author Kenneth Fearing wrote only a handful of literary novels such as Clark Gifford's Body, an overlooked classic anticipating postmodern experimentation, The Big Clock, classic noir adapted for film, and Dagger of the Mind, the novel under review here, an intriguing murder mystery employing multiple narrators. I cherish all of Fearing's novels. Darn! How I wish Kenneth wrote three dozen novels. Anyway, here are a string of reasons why I highly recommend Dagger in the Mind:

Yaddo-like Art Colony: Alumni of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York include such notables as Patricia Highsmith, Elizabeth Bishop, Langston Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Jonathan Franzen, John Cheever, Flannery O’Conner, and, yes, Kenneth Fearing. Let’s admit it, we’re in for a real treat having a novel set in such a center, filled to the brim with artists and writers having enough quirks and eccentricities to fill an entire shelf of novels.

Rotating First-Person: Unlike the vast majority of first-person novels written with a single narrator start to finish, Dagger of the Mind features eight different narrators rotating through eighteen chapters – among the narrators are: painter, poet, musician and police captain. Such an intriguing way to write a book, l have always wondered why the technique of multiple narrators isn’t employed more frequently by novelists.

Murder, as in stabbed in the back by a kitchen knife: “Murder is easy, and the majority of murderers by far, are never brought to justice. Most of the people know and understand one or the other of these two propositions, but few are able to believe both.” So muses one of our narrators speaking among the artists at their art community. As it turns out, his words possess a most ironic twist - in less than twenty-four hours he is the one who is found murdered, having been stabbed in the back. Ah, artists! Ah, writers! Ah, community!

Pointing the finger: As soon as Captain Wessex arrives on the scene to crack the case, all the artists, writers and musicians can’t point the finger at each other fast enough. In a couple of instances, they even point the finger at themselves since all the publicity of being a murder suspect will put them and their art in the pubic spotlight and will undoubtedly boost sales.

A Parallel to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment: Well, it isn’t Raskolnikov questioned by detective Porfiry but Fearing’s novel does feature Captain Wessex paying visits to the art studio of painter Christopher Bartel. At one point, as the good Captain watches him paint, Bartel considers, “It was the cop, with a drink. I must have been talking to myself, while he’d been mixing it. Or maybe I’d only imagined I’d been talking. Or perhaps it was part of a dream I might be having.”

Femme Fatale: She isn’t exactly Vivian Sternwood as played by Lauren Bacall in the movie version of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, but there is Lucille Nichols, who, in this Yaddo-like art colony, is femme fatale enough. Fearing writes: “With black hair, black eyes, fair complexion, height about five-four, weight one twenty-five or thirty, teeth perfect, white sport costume, no birthmarks or blemishes visible, she was not the most beautiful woman in the world, but what the reporters would soon start to call a striking brunette.”

Satire, over easy: With the lightest of touches, Fearing pokes his long satiric needle in the side of each artiste in residence, a good out-loud-laugh or two on nearly every page. Here is a snippet of poet Claudia Attelio’s observations of her fellow residents, “I had been disturbed, not to say amazed, at certain unmistakable undertones that had become barely audible from time to time.” We are given many a glimpse into the small mindedness and resentments of these artists and writers brought together in community. A common outcry each one keeps to themselves: How dare these other people claim to be creative! There's only one true creative genius around here -- ME!

Discover Kenneth Fearing: With all his talents, Fearing could have written the three dozen novels I wish he wrote, but, alas, a painful boyhood and alcohol really did him in. Oh, well, at least we have several.


American poet and novelist, Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961)

[Bruce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm tempted to give Dagger of the Mind four stars because there's so much in it that's good. Fearing's quirky point of view is the primary attraction, which shines through the terse, witty narrative. There are also flashes of poignant understanding of the human condition, as in this reflection by the wife of the first victim:

"He had been human once, something I had completely forgotten. And now the memory keeps coming back, again and again, always more vividly. There can certainly be happier relationships, even closer ones than those between a husband and a wife, but not many that remain so stubbornly alive in spite of all reason. In life, Walter would have said, Disembodied and disorganized sentiment is the cheapest luxury on earth. Now, however, he said, My God, I loved you, Lucille, and I gave an involuntary jump."

Unfortunately, the mystery takes an implausible turn, and the story ends weakly. But, as we readers all know, favorite authors are like friends in whom we're interested even when they're not at their best. For Kenneth Fearing's best, read The Big Clock and sample his poetry.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as incredible as The Big Clock, but then how many novels are?
This is a murder mystery of sorts set in a arts colony along the lines of Yaddo, which Fearing knew the ins and outs of from personal experience. Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, including a round-the-clock drinking painter, various writers, and the policeman who investigates the murder committed. Several of the characters voices are catty enough to be torn from All About Eve, and the back and forth bitching at meals in the colony is priceless. Hence I found much of it hysterically funny, and though some of the exposition at the end may be a bit far fetched, it might also be partly Fearing parodying of the genre. Far fetched plot details don't tend to bother me in a book with this much brilliant stuff in it anyway.

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Instead of a country house, this 1940s whodunnit is set in an arts colony (what would now be called a retreat), peopled by the requisite oddballs: thin-skinned, insecure, boastful artists, poets, philosophers, murderers. It's pretty easy to work out whodidit, there are more clues than in a Sherlock Holmes story, but it's an interesting bridge between detective fiction's golden age and the tough talking post-war hardboiled fiction.

[Raime · Rating 3 out of 5]

A stylish, inventive and complicated high-brow murder mystery.

In the three issues before me, only one contained an article by Walter Nichols. It was entitled “Toward a New Literature,”[...] "the best that can be said for Mr. Reilley, and this may be advanced for Mr. Janiston as well, is to say that here mediocrity reaches a peak, vulgarity outdoes itself, and ignorance fairly dazzles . . .”
"[I] found The Twelfth Hour by Millard Reilley. It was interesting to note that its cover displayed an advertisement that ran: “About the best . . . reaches a peak . . . outdoes itself . . . fairly dazzles—Walter Nichols.”

"A few clouds, white and heavy, slipped with immense silence and slowness across the sky that is always bluer than one can ever remember it."

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: there's a murder at an artists' colony. But when Captain Wessex arrives to ask questions, they all point at each other.