The Long Wait: Timely Secrets of the Contemporary Detective Novel

Poetics Today, 2010

This essay explores closure in the detective story, a genre that is generally recognized as a paradigm case of strong closure and thus has a special claim to notice in a general study of narrative closure. The essay starts by outlining a theoretical model of narrative closure based on a synthesis of Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s approach to the problem of closure with Meir Sternberg’s rhetorical-functionalist approach to the definition and understanding of narrative in terms of three major types of interest (suspense, curiosity, and surprise). The essay then proceeds to extend this model to the closural mechanisms operating in the detective story and the reasons for their special force.To round out the picture, the argument concludes by examining two detective novels with unconventionally open endings: Anthony Berkeley’s The Poisoned Chocolates Case and Chester Himes’s Blind Man with a Pistol serve to illustrate the other pole on the closure/openness spectrum.

2005

In the pages that follow I would like to reread two novels with you. "Nothing very special about that," you might say. After all, most of us who write for and read papers like this one work in universities, those places that Matei Calinescu calls "institutions of rereading" (213). As students, professors, and critics of literature we obviously tend to be drawn not to those texts that exhaust themselves in one reading, but rather to those that stick with us, those that nudge us toward new approaches to other texts, those that after a first reading give us something to do other than to look for the next title in a series. In short, we deal in our classrooms and our professional meetings primarily and almost exclusively with texts that are for rereading. So it might be, in fact, that the rereading I do in this paper is nothing very special. I urge you, however, to read on. Even if this paper contains a rereading of the sort that is standard in our discipline, in wha...

Modernism/modernity, 2001

VECTORS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES AT THE MODERN STAGE, 2019

2009

Abstract The aim of the article is to analyse the status of the detective fiction in the 20th-century literary criticism. The article is divided into two parts. In the first one, the emphasis is placed on the examination of the classical and modern crime stories, their statuses and thematic components with reference to a structural approach to detective fiction delineated by Tzvetan Todorov in “The Typology of Detective Fiction.” The second part is devoted to the scrutiny of Martin Amis’s London Fields as the illustration of postmodern crime fiction. When examining the novel by Martin Amis, I underline that the British writer has made a substantial contribution to the modification of a classical pattern of crime fiction. Like many other artists of his generation, the author of Money, London Fields and Night Train has attempted to be in tune with his times, so his works touch upon the issues of the contemporary world, especially on the role of the writer at the end of the 20th century, next to the themes related to crime, violence and power, as well as the problem of human motive and existential anxiety. Finally, in this part I stress that in London Fields Amis has incorporated the elements of surrealism, hyper-reality, pastiche as well as metafictional linguistic games and a subjective narrative. Key words: M. Amis, T. Todorov, classical detective fiction, structural approach, postmodern crime fiction

Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi - DTCF Dergisi, 2017

Detective ction, one of the most popular genres of the novel, is grounded on the concepts of crime and detection. The rise in detective ction is followed by the surge of theories on this genre, particularly informed by (post)modern readings. Agatha Christie, "the Queen of Crime", not only contributed to the founding of the conventions of the genre, the "rules" of the "game", but she also deed and subverted the very codes of the genre during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Therefore, Christie's novels can be read as the decoding or deconstruction of the genre as well. Christie's And Then There Were None depicts the double-faced nature of truth or detection, as it reects the endless doubling and deferral of presence/absence, criminal/victim, and lawgiver/lawbreaker. The nursery rhyme "Ten Little Indians" ("niggers"/"soldiers"), which is central to the novel, is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force serving as the element through which meaning disseminates into others inside and outside. The rhyme enacts the uid nature of signiers of truth through the doubling of binaries such as innocence/guiltiness, childhood/adulthood, nurturing/indifference, white/black, self/other, primitive/civilized, and presence/absence. The rhyme, as well as the narrative is integral to moral, psychological, sociocultural, racial, and colonial/imperial implications. Even lacking a detective, this detective novel epitomizes detection as evasion or absence. The aim of this paper is to inspect the detective genre with a view to the performative, slippery, and ludic aspect of detection/truth as well as the dissemination, deferral or "purloining" of meaning through And Then There Were None. Kraliçesi" Agatha Christie, bu türün Altın Çağında başlıca kaidelerini, "oyun"un "kural"larını koymakla kalmamış, aynı zamanda türün kodlarını sorgulamış, tersyüz etmiştir. Bu nedenle Christie'nin romanları polisiye türünü deşifre edici ya da yapıbozucu yaklaşımlar olarak da incelenebilir. And Then There Were None romanında gerçeğin ya da suçluyu yakalamanın ikiyüzlü doğası, varlık/yokluk, suçlukurban, yasa yapan/yasa çiğneyenin sonsuz ikililiğinde ve sürekli elden kaçmasında görülür. Romanın merkezinde bulunan çocuk şarkısı/tekerlemesi "Ten Little Indians" (Niggers, soldiers) [On Küçük Yerli/Zenci/Asker], anlamın içerde ve dışardaki başka anlamlara dağılmasını gerçekleştiren, merkezkaç ve merkezcil kuvvettir. Bu çocuk ş a r k ı s ı , g e r ç e ğ i n g ö s t e r g e l e r i n i n a k ı ş k a n l ı ğ ı n ı , m a s u m i y e t / s u ç l u l u k , çocukluk/yetişkinlik, korumacılık/kayıtsızlık, siyah/beyaz, ben/öteki, ilkel/uygar ve varlık/yokluk gibi ikili zıtlıkların yerdeğiştirmesi yoluyla sahneler. Tekerlemenin yanı sıra anlatının kendisi de ahlaki, psikolojik, sosyokültürel, ırksal ve sömürgesel/emperyal anlamlar yüklüdür. Dedektiften yoksun olan bu polisiye romanda gerçek kavramı, kaçma ya da kaybolma olarak temsil edilir. Bu makalenin amacı polisiye türünü, gerçeğin edimsel, kaygan ve oyuncu yönleri açısından ve And Then There Were None romanında anlamın dağılması, ötelenmesi ya da "çalınma"sını "teftiş etmek"tir.

In the present scenario where, English Literature stands as a pivotal area of research and development, offbeat genres have taken a step ahead as areas of interest among scholars. Detective fiction which came into the literary scene in the second half of the Victorian Age, found its first prominent clues in the novels of Wilkie Collins. Though the chronology of detective fiction is short, it bloomed in the early years of the twentieth century through the works of great writers such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; who gave the world the most fascinating fictional detective figure i.e. Sherlock Holmes. The expanse of the genre, then, became inclusive of scientific understanding and techniques. As interdisciplinarity swept in detective fiction, kaleidoscopic views and analysis were generated regarding the works of detection. The genre became more prominent with writers like Agatha Christie and later J.K Rowling, Joe Pickett, etc. Detective fiction continues to flourish as a genre in the twentieth first century and is also welcomed in the form of adaptations on the digital screen and television. The paper aims to highlight the origin of Detective fiction and the journey of its development to one of the most eminent genres in the present time. The paper briefly throws light on oeuvre of Wilkie Collins and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who were the pioneers in the progress of the genre. The paper seeks to establish the significance and relevance of detective fiction and the various factors that led to its rise in the field of English Literature.According to Charles J. Rzepka: A Mystery detective story usually contains a detective of some kind, an unsolved mystery (not always technically crime), and an investigation by which the mystery is eventually solved, there is another component, however, that may be present in varying degrees, or may not be present at all. This is the so-called ‗puzzle element': the presentation of the mystery as an ongoing problem for the reader to solve, and its power to engage the reader's own reasoning abilities. The first elements of detective fiction-detective, mystery, investigation-make a conjoint appearance quite early in the history of the genre. However, the fourth, the ‗puzzle element', is conspicuous by its absence during most of this period. (Rzepka,p. 10) In his book Detective Fiction : Cultural history of Literature, Charles J. Rzepka defines four major components which contribute in building up a detective story-the first being the self-proclaimed detective who carries out the investigation throughout the plot; the second constituent i.e. an ‗unsolved mystery' or a baffling problem which governs the storyline and the behaviors of the characters. This problem should not necessarily be a crime. Lastly, an investigation should take place with the motive to solve the mystery or the problem. Rzepka adds that in later works of detective fiction a fourth element also emerged to prominence in detective story i.e. the ‗Puzzle element'. This ‗Puzzle element' introduced in modern detective fiction, added to the thrill and intensity in the work by involving and engaging the reader's reason and logic to figure out the solution to the ongoing problem. Giving the reader access to information important for solving mystery is considered significant by many critics in today's time for the stories of detection. These elements are quite consistent in the detective story. The detectives in question can be officials, privates, professionals, or amateurs. The problem may not always be a mystery but rather a difficulty that needs to be overcome-for example arrest and escape of someone, theft of something and retrieval, etc.These detective suspense tales had a history that dated back to several centuries before. Despite the fact that the most significant works of detective fiction were written in the nineteenth and twentieth century, the origin of the detective novels can be traced several years back in the history of literary writing. Both the detective-story proper and the pure tale of horror are very ancient in origin. All native folklore has its ghost tales, while the first four detective stories…hail respectively from the Jewish Apocrypha,

Sillages Critiques , 2018

This essay examines the ways in which metaphysical detective stories subvert one of detective fiction’s most emblematic features: the investigation’s resolution and the subsequent narrative closure. In the “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), the father of the genre, Edgar Allan Poe, already introduced mysteries that “[did] not permit [themselves] to be read.” Such texts enact quests for knowledge that cannot reach any kind of intellectual or emotional closure and are, instead, rewarded with more unfathomable questions. The sublime appears as a relevant concept to describe the “gaps” left open in the cognitive process of looking for answers, which will hopelessly remain beyond the detective’s — and the reader’s — reach. Including close readings of Henry James’s “The Figure in the Carpet” (1896) and Samuel Beckett’s Molloy (1951), this essay proceeds to show that the “metaphysical” character of these texts lies predominantly in their lack of faith in language as a reliable tool to convey the multiple and shifting identities of the unsuccessful sleuth confronted with the meaninglessness of his investigation.

This article aims to put a theoretical frame around the concept of the critical-creative nexus as it manifests itself in detective fiction. It argues that critical and creative practices in the context of detective fiction, and by extension in popular literature in general, are deeply interconnected: the writing of detective fiction always involves a critical positioning in relation to established genre conventions, while, conversely, detective fiction criticism, and certainly its most important exempla, involves an element of the creative, stretching from imaginative readings to a complete critical rewriting of the individual story. The article concludes by suggesting that the concept of the critical-creative nexus results in a new understanding of detective fiction as an inherently mobile genre constantly in the process of reinventing itself.

Exposure: Revealing Bodies, Unveiling Representations (Berne: Peter Lang, 2004), 93-106