Arts & Culture

Commentaries

WKMS welcomes community members to self-voice self-authored compositions that express opinion, introspection or humor on topics of interest and importance to our audience. If you have an opinion, interest or review you'd like to share with WKMS listeners, please see the guidelines below. The views expressed in commentaries are the opinion of the commentator and don't necessarily reflect the views of WKMS.The station will review every script before it is recorded with respect to:Libel or slander.Content that is more promotional than provocative.Accuracy.Personal attacks and ad hominem attacks.Political or religious content that promotes rather than informs.Appropriate usage, language and form for civil discourse.The station will assist authors with:Making appropriate edits.Bringing the communication to proper time length, generally about 600 words or 3 to 4 minutes of spoken word.Recording the communication in the WKMS studio (unless other arrangements that yield equally acceptable audio are agreed to).Editing the communication and placing it in the WKMS schedule.WKMS will require authors to provide the station a final script that will be filed in the news department and will be placed on the station's web site.WKMS will need authors to provide a suggested introduction for each communication as well as a standard announcer outro script that includes author name, general place of residence, and whatever other personal information might lend authority or authenticity to the communication.WKMS will schedule produced communications and inform the author of time(s). Generally these are aired three times each, but the rotation is solely at the discretion of the station.WKMS will refuse to air communications that violate rules of the Federal Communications Commission for non-commercial, educational stations. Further, WKMS will refuse to air communications that would, for any reason, undermine its goodwill with the audience it serves.If you find these terms agreeable, please email msu.wkmsnews@murraystate.edu to schedule a time in a studio to record.

Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Self-Taught Lawyer

WKMS | By Matt Markgraf

Published March 10, 2010 at 4:01 PM CST

By Michael Cohen

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkms/local-wkms-889584.mp3

Murray, KY – As WKMS signed onto air 40 years ago, many mourned the death of author Erle Stanley Gardner, best known for the popular Perry Mason series. Mystery fan Michael Cohen takes a look at the life and work of the uncommon author in this commentary, which he calls "The Case of the Self Taught Lawyer."

Is there any one of Erle Stanley Gardner's 80-plus Perry Mason mysteries that could be called uncommon? They all seem pressed from a common mold. The same adversaries, Perry Mason and District Attorney Hamilton Burger, face each other in the courtroom. The same team of Della Street and private detective Paul Drake backs Mason up. And always there are courtroom fireworks, Mason's client is acquitted just when conviction seemed most certain, and the real culprit is unmasked. Or almost always: Mason loses The Case of the Terrified Typist; in the TV series, Raymond Burr's Perry Mason loses a second one, The Case of the Deadly Verdict.

Perhaps the book we should single out is The Case of the Velvet Claws, the very first Perry Mason novel in 1933, not because it differs from the others, but because it establishes just what is new and uncommon about the Perry Mason stories.

Certainly their creator was uncommon enough. Gardner spent only one month in a law school, but by working in a law firm as a clerk and cramming in his spare time, he managed to pass the California bar exam. His first clients were Chinese and Mexican immigrants ethnic groups who were never treated stereotypically in Gardner's fiction. Eventually he wrote not only eighty-two Perry Mason books but dozens of others under various pen names, and he was at one time the best-selling author in the world.

The real novelty here is that by uniting his detective with a criminal defense lawyer, Gardner gave Americans what they wanted to believe about American criminal justice. As formulaic and stylized as the Perry Mason stories are, they are far closer to perceived truth than the myths underlying traditional detective stories. Few people imagine they can find a real person much like Sherlock Holmes to do their investigating for them, but many people believe that they could find a Perry Mason if they were accused of a crime and had the money to hire the best lawyer available. Brilliant and unbeatable criminal defense lawyers have been an American institution since Abraham Lincoln successfully defended a man accused of murder by using an almanac to discredit the eyewitness's report of seeing the killing by the full moon.

The police bring to bear all their institutional machinery upon a case against those they accuse, but the odds can be made approximately equal if those people can find the right combination of lawyer, private detective, and support crew. Perry Mason makes this defense machinery look homey as well as efficient, almost like a family operation, and that is not the least of his claims to still high popularity forty years after Gardner's death.