Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.
The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.
Writing enlarges the landscape of the mind.
A touch of science, even bogus science, gives an edge to the superstitious tale.
The profoundly humorous writers are humorous because they are responsive to the hopeless, uncouth, concatenations of life.
The detective novel is the art-for-art's-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.