“The Vicious Circle: Mystery and Crime Stories by Members of the Algonquin Round Table”, edited by Otto Penzler

 

304 pages, Pegasus Books, ISBN-13: 978-1933648675

The Vicious Circle: Mystery and Crime Stories by Members of the Algonquin Round Table was compiled by Otto Penzler, the German-born American editor of mystery fiction and proprietor of “The Mysterious Bookshop” in New York City. So, I guess one could do worse to find an editor of these short stories written by (let’s be honest) these long-forgotten American writers. These dozen stories by nine authors – Marc Connelly, Robert Benchley, S.J. Perelman, Ring Lardner, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Howard Dietz, Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber – are here gathered as a kind of showcase as to their diversity of talent, for these writers were really known for other types of writing.

As to the subtitle (for any of you who didn’t know), The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits who met for daily lunch at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. “The Vicious Circle” (as they dubbed themselves) started meeting initially as part of a practical joke, while during these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country. It may seem strange to us today that writers could be stars, but this was, or course, a different time – a more literate time; that they have been by-and-large forgotten can be read anyway you’d like.

I’ve said before about compilation works that the quality can vary from one story to the next, but I found this not to be true with this collection. While the terms “mystery” and “crime” in the subtitle might be stretching things a bit, this is still a great collection of light fiction that was really a joy to read and that took one back to the Roaring 20s. The style was that of the old pulp fiction magazines of the era, filled as it is with so many clever and acidic blurbs from a bygone age; yet upon reading it is easy become immersed in this world a century gone. The Vicious Circle is also, I might add, a reminder of the fleetingness of fame and the permanency of greatness, in this case, light literature from a time more concerned with the written word.