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Anthony (Joshua) Shaffer |
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In 1970 in a brief, humorous essay, "Death of a Bloodsport," Anthony Shaffer bemoans the passing of "the classic, closed-circle English detective story." Though there are countless television crime series, Shaffer maintains that "lumpfish has replaced caviar," adding, "The most popular of modern bloodsports ... is dead, first outlawed by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and then polished off by Ian Fleming and his lackluster imitators." Yet in his two best-known plays, Sleuth (1970) and Murderer (1975), Shaffer himself has kept the classic detective story alive, dealing with it in much the same way that Tom Stoppard, for example, uses the conventions of the well-made plays of Oscar Wilde and the real-life characters of James Joyce, dadaist Tristan Tzara, and Lenin in Travesties (1974), that is, with parody that is at once humorous, affectionate, and often sympathetic to that which it burlesques. In a 1970 interview with Mel Gussow, Shaffer declared that his purpose in Sleuth was to spoof Agatha Christie and the "cozy crime" genre and "at the same time to use it--to have my cake and eat it too."
Anthony Shaffer was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Jack and Reka Fredman Shaffer.
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