SECTION III

Time-35 minutes

27 Questions

Directions: each passage in this section is followed by a group of questions to be answered on the basis on what is stated or implied in the passage. For some questions, more than one of the choices could conceivably answer the question. However, you are to choose the best answer, that is, the response that most accurately and completely answers the question, and blacken the corresponding space on your answer sheet.

Wherever the crime novels of P.D. James' are discussed by critics, there is a tendency on the one hand to exaggerate her merits and on the other to castigate her as a genre writer who is getting above herself. Perhaps underlying the debate is that familiar, false opposition set up between different kinds of fiction, according to which enjoyable novels are held to be somehow slightly lowbrow, and a novel is not considered true literature unless it is a tiny bit dull.

Those commentators who would elevate James' books to the status of high literature point to her painstakingly constructed characters, her elaborate settings, her sense of place, and her love of abstractions: notions about morality, duty, pain , and pleasure are never far from the lips of her police officers and murderers. Others find her pretentious and tiresome; an inverted snobbery accuses her of abandoning the time-honored conventions of the detective genre in favor of a highbrow literary style. The critic Harriet Waugh wants P.D. James to get on with "the more taxing business of laying a tricky trail and then fooling the reader" Philip Oakes in The Literary Review groans, "Could we please proceed with the business of clapping the handcuffs on the killer?"

James is certainly capable of strikingly good writing. She takes immense trouble to provide her characters with convincing histories and passions. Her descriptive digressions are part of the pleasure of her books and give them dignity and weight. But it is equally true that they frequently interfere with the story; the patinas and aromas of a country kitchen receive more loving attention than does the plot itself. Her devices to advance the story can be shameless and thin, and it is often impossible to see how her detective arrives at the truth; one is left to conclude that the detective solves crimes through intuition. At this stage in her career P.D. James seems to be less interested in the specifics of detection than in her characters' vulnerabilities and perplexities.

However, once the rules of a chosen genre cramp creative thought, there is no reason why an able and interesting writer should accept them. In her latest book, there are signs that James is beginning to feel constrained by the crime-novel genre, here her determination to leave areas of ambiguity in the solution of the crime and to distribute guilt among the murderer, victim, and bystanders points to conscious rebellion against the traditional neatness of detective fiction. It is fashionable, though reprehensible, for one writer to prescribe to another. But perhaps the time has come for P.D. James to slide out of her handcuffs and stride into the territory of the mainstream novel.

1. Which one the following best states the author's main conclusion?

(A) Because P.D. James's potential as a writer is stifled by her chosen genre, she should turn her talents toward writing mainstream novels.

(B) Because the requirements of the popular novel are incompatible with true creative expression, P.D. James's promise as a serious author has been diminished.

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