From: William Harker
In his "The Theatre" column for the _American Mercury_ (which
he and Mencken also co-founded and co-edited) of November
1929, Nathan had some commentary regarding the mystery,
particularly mystery plays dominating the New York season
that year but also the mystery story.
He boiled his critique down to five "Analytical Meditations"
that I shall summarize due to length:
__________________________
And for all of Nathan's snobbery (fwiw, I'm not sure that the
stage, with a few noble exceptions, fewer then, has ever been
the place to find the better sort of mystery fiction), it's
notable that through his and his colleagues' efforts to keep
his ambitious magazines going, BLACK MASK and ELLERY QUEEN'S
MYSTERY MAGAZINE (and such stablemates as MERCURY MYSTERY)
were founded, and all the good things that have resulted from
those magazines owe a small, and probably unwanted, debt to
GJN. Perhaps it's also karmic that AMERICAN MERCURY
languished for its last three decades as an all-but-Nazi
magazine of little other distinction. TM
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