Whodunit and Other Questions: Metaphysical Detective Stories in Post-War Fiction

Author(s): Michael Holquist

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 3, No. 1, Modernism and Postmodernism: Inquiries,
Reflections, and Speculations (Autumn, 1971), pp. 135-156
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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 Whodunitand OtherQuestions:
MetaphysicalDetectiveStoriesin Post-WarFiction

MichaelHolquist

I
HIs paper seeksto make two points: first, what the structural
and philosophicalpresuppositionsof mythand depth psychol-
ogy were to Modernism (Mann, Joyce, Woolfe, etc.), the
detectivestoryis to Post-Modernism(Robbe-Grillet,Borges,Nabokov,
etc.); secondly,if such is the case, we will have establisheda relation-
ship between two levels of culture,kitschand the avant-garde,often
thoughtto be mutuallyexclusive.

II

Popular cultureis a skeletonin our academic closets. And like other

disturbingtopicsit generatesdiscoursewhichseemsinevitablyto end in
a polarity. Clement Greenbergstatesthe dilemma veryclearly:
One and the same civilizationproducessimultaneously two such different
thingsas a poembyT. S. Eliot and a Tin Pan Alleysong,or a paintingby
Braque and a SaturdayEveningPost cover . . . a poem by Eliot and a
poem by Eddie Guest-what perspectiveof cultureis large enough to
relationto each other?"1
enable us to relatethemin an enlightening

Greenberg'suneasinessis shared by the majorityof criticswho have

addressed the problem at all.2 He and many othersfind disturbing

I "Avant-Garde and Kitsch," in Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America,

ed. Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White, (Glencoe, Ill., 1958), p. 98.
2 A brilliant (and occasionally hysterical) case in point would be Gunther Anders'
essay, "The Phantom World of TV," also in Mass Culture, pp. 358-367.
Further evidence may be found in Gillo Dorfles' Kitsch, an Anthology of Bad
Taste (London, 1969); Karlheinz Deschner, Kitsch, Konvention und Kunst
(Miinchen, 1962); Walter Nutz, Der Trivialroman: seine Formen und seine
Hersteller (K61n und Opladen, 2-e Auflage, 1966); and two rich collections of
essays: Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel,Horst Enders, et al, eds. Trivialliteratur (Berlin,
1964), and Norman Jacobs, ed., Culture for the Millions: Mass Media in Modern
Society (Boston, 1964).

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136 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

what appears to be an absolute cut offbetween theirown traditions

and responses,and those of the millionswho sit beer can in hand,
glued to the televisionset. In thisview the distancebetweenSophocles
and the sit-com,the museumand the dime-storeseems immeasurable.
And it no doubt is if seen as so many sociologistsdo, as a staticsyn-
chronic relationship.But the cultural historianperceivesa different,
more dynamic and ultimatelya more hopeful connectionbetween
popular and high culture. Viewed historically it is clear that therehas
been and continuesto be a dialectical apposition between the two
poles. In order for our argumentto proceed it is not necessaryto
advance new definitions for termswe are using,each of which has a
history.Rather we shall appeal to the cliches which have grown up
around each. Kitsch and the avant-gardeare both in a problematic
relationshipto the main stream traditionof high culture,which is
perhapsmosteconomicallydefinedby the curriculaof our universities.
A college catalogue is a kind of telephonebook forthe cityof culture.
In the area of literaturethumb-naildescriptionsof culture may be
found in all those courseswhich begin the firstsemesterwith Homer
and the Bible. These models are to college graduates what the oral
traditionis to the savage. Not included in such lists will be works
definedby thosewho compilethemas being below the canon (kitsch)
or beyondit (avant-garde). Both phenomena are of relativelyrecent
origin,a point which has been made forkitschby Gillo Dorfles3and
forthe avant garde by Renato Poggioli.4 Why both tendenciesshould
have not developed earlier is an exceedinglycomplex question. But
certainlymass industrializationmightbe adduced as a cause in both
cases. Kitsch springs not from artistsor craftsmen,but from the
machine. Our increasinglysophisticatedtechnologyrepresentsnew
possibilitiesfor mass culture. At the same time it representsa new
threat to the avant-garde. As has so oftenbeen pointed out, newly
developed means for the rapid and widespread transmissionof ideas
have relentlesslyclosed the distance between what is known to the

3 ". ... in everyage before our own, there was no such thing as ... kitsch ....
In ages other than our own, particularlyin antiquity,art had a completelydifferent
function compared to modern times; it was connected with religious, ethical or
political subject matter, which made it in a way 'absolute,' unchanging, eternal
(always of course within a given cultural milieu)." Dorfles, op. cit., pp. 9-1o.
P. O. Kristeller argues that the interdependenceof art and other human activities
and concerns, such as those cited by Dorfles, broke down somewhere at the end
of the 17th,beginningof the I8th century,in his magisterialsurveyof the problem:
"The Modern System of the Arts." Renaissance Studies II: Papers on Humanism
and the Arts (New York, 1965), pp. 163-227.
4 ". .. it is by now an undoubted fact that the term and concept of avant-garde
art reach no furtherback in time than the last quarter of the past century." The
Theory of the Avant-Garde, tr. Gerald Fitzgerald (New York, 1971), p. 13.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS
I37

cognoscentiand to the man in the street.Today's experimentbecomes

tomorrow'shabit: Reproductionsof JacksonPollock paintingsare to
be foundin motel roomsall across the country.
The more uniformmass culture becomes, the more violentlythe
avant-gardestrainsafteridiosyncrasy, creatinga situationin which the
truthof an old dichotomybecomes daily more apparent: art is diffi-
cult, kitschis easy. The difficulty of experimentalart in the last one
hundred years hardly needs demonstrating.But the assumption of
mass culturethateverything is, or shouldbe, understandable,easilyand
quickly accessible, bears some furtherreflection. Kitsch seems to
appropriate art by robbing it of the demonic, not just its "aura" as
Walter Benjamin has argued,5but its dangers. Even if you assume
that art is therapeutic,you mustfirstexperiencethe pityand terrorof
a tragedybefore winning the catharsisit may then provide. Such
unsettlingemotionsare preciselywhat kitsch operates against in its
urge to avoid all difficulties, whether of perception,execution, or
It
reception. gives not pain, but bromides,not deep questions,but easy
answers. It opposes to Hamlet's dilemna the advice of the gum
huckster: "Chew yourlittletroublesaway."
GuntherAndershas suggestedthatthe bestmetaphorforkitschmay
be modem travel:
For modernman does not attachvalue to his travellingbecause of any
interestin the regionshe visits,actuallyor vicariously;he does not travel
to become experiencedbut to stillhis hungerforomnipresence and for
rapid change as such. . . . A publicityposter of a well-known airline,
utterlyconfusingprovincialismand globalism,appeals to its customers
with thesewords: "When you use our services,you are everywhere at
home." 6

Touriststravelfromthe Istanbul Hilton to the AthensHilton,the only

differences being in the quality of the plumbingand the "motif" of
the hotel restaurants.There is no strangeness.Our internationalair-
ports are all the same; theycollectivelyconstitutea countryall their
own, have more in common with each otherthan theyhave with the
countriesin which theyare actuallylocated. And that is what kitsch
is-a countryall its own, unlike any other,but giving the sense of
reassuringsameness. It is not real,but it is familiar.
If so much is assumed,we may differentiate betweenvarious genres
of literarykitsch by focusing on the particularpatternof reassurance

5 In: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Illuminations,

ed. Hannah Arendt, tr. Harry Zohn (New York, I969), pp. 217-252.
6 Mass Culture,p. 364.

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138 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

each provides. For instance,it is clear that much recentspy fiction

is aimed at allayingfearsaroused by two human activitieswhich seem
to have got out of human control,science on the one hand and
diplomacy on the other. The patternof spy thrillerschanges quite
markedlyafterHiroshima. Instead of the elegant,patrioticheroes of
E. PhillipsOppenheim,who merelypreventone or two countriesfrom
going to war (by stealingnaval secrets,or somethingequally innocu-
ous), we now have amoral supermenwho save the entireplanet from
atomic destruction-the suggestionbeing that while the world may
be fullof mad scientistsand bumblingstatesmen,a lone hero can still
keep us all frombeingblown up. At a timewhen enormousdestruction
is in the hands of facelesscommittees,it is reassuringindeed to follow
the adventuresof a singleman who, by exploitingthe giftsof courage
and resourcefulness which have always characterizedthe hero, can
offsetthe ineffectiveness of governmentas well as the irresponsibility
of the scientists.
The same patternof easy reassuranceis to be foundin the increas-
inglyless comic comic strips,where,as in Dick Tracy, the brutalityof
crime is always overcomeby the brutalityof Chester Gould. Other
stripshave become the elephant's graveyardfor those novels which
really are dead: On Stage is a Frauenroman in pictures,constantly
engagingissues of currentconcern (the generationgap, women's lib,
etc.) merelyto provide easy answersonly slightlymore sophisticated
than the equally formulaic"they all lived happily ever after."
So much for generalities.What, then,is the particularpatternof
reassurance provided by detectivefiction? In order to answer this
question we must firstof all determinewhat is meant by detective
story,and in orderto do thata brieflook at itshistorywill be necessary.

III
Very little crime fictionis of the classical detective story variety.
Crime is veryold, detectivefictionverynew. There have always been
criticsready to see crimefictioneverywhere, such as Peter Haworth,7
who puts forwardas examples of the genre such ancient tales as the
"Historyof Sussanah" fromthe Apocrypha,the storyof King Rhamp-
sinitus' treasurehouse fromHerodotus,tales fromthe Gesta Roma-
norum,etc. Regis Messac8 begins his studyof the genrewith Archi-
medes' discoveryof his famousprincipleof hydrostatics.A. E. Murch's

7 In: Classic Crimes in Historyand Fiction (New York,

1927).
8 Le "Detective Novel" et l'influencede la pensee scientifique(Paris, 1929), p. 54.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 139

standard history9opens with I7th centuryBritishrogue tales, such

as Dekker's The Belman of London (16o8). And it has long been a
favoritetrickof classiciststo teach Oedipus Rex as a detectivestory.
Such eclecticdefinitions of the genrecreate obvious difficulties.
What is meant in this paper by detectivestoryis ratherthe tale of
pure puzzle, pure ratiocination,associated with Poe, Conan Doyle,
Agatha Christie. As Jacques Barzun and W. H. Taylor have recently
written: "A detectivestoryshould be mainly occupied with detect-
ing,"10which would exclude gothicromances,psychologicalstudiesof
criminals,and hard-boiledthrillers.
The paradox thatthereis nevertheless no detectivefictionbeforethe
19thcenturycan be explained in many ways,all too complicatedto go
into here, except for adducing the obvious reason that you cannot
have detectivefictionbeforeyou have detectives. It is a curious fact
that the institutionof the modernmetropolitanpolice forceas we now
know it did not existbeforethe 19thcentury.It was the earlydecades
of that centurywhich saw the almost simultaneousfoundationof the
Suret6 in Paris and the precursorsof Scotland Yard, the Bow Street
Runners,in London.
But the foundationof theseforceswas not enoughin itselfto inspire
the creation of the fictionaldetective. For one thing they did not
immediatelyinspireconfidencein theirmethodsor theirmorals. One
of the foundersof the Surete was
Eugene Fran?ois Vidocq (1775-
1857), a notoriousthiefand adventurerwhose early successesin the
bureau were made possibleby his intimate-indeed personal-knowl-
edge of the French underworld. In 1828 he publishedhis Mimoires,
which contain improbableand hyperbolicaccounts of his double life.
It is a fact that this fictiveaccount has had a greatereffecton the
historyof detectivestoriesthan his actual career with the historical
Suret6. As forthe Bow StreetRunners,we have the words of Dickens
himself,that they "kept company with thieves and such like . . ."
and were to be foundin the lowestand mostdegradedgin mills,where
theywere quite at home.11
It took some time beforepeople believed in the police as forcesfor
good. And this bit of historicalsociologyexplains, in a small way,
whythe riseof the practicingdetectivedid not coincidewith the riseof
tales and novels about him. Because the emphasiswas stillon crime;

9 The Development of the Detective Novel (New York, 1958).

Io A Catalogue of Crime (New York, I97I), p. 5.
I In an I862 letter to W. Thornbury, quoted by Dorothy Sayers in her essay
"The Omnibus of Crime," The Art of the MysteryStory, ed. Howard Haycraft
(New York, 1946), p. 75.

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140 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the forcesof law had not yetbecome glamorous. It had always been
true,of course,thatwhile evil was reprehensible, it was also fascinating
in a way virtuesimplywas not. Thus the few genreswhich may lay
claim to the title of criminal-but not detective-fictionbefore the
19th century,have as their heroes the villains who were hanged at
Tyburn,in such romancesas FrancisKirkman'sThe CounterfeitLady
Unveiled (1673) or Elkanah Settle's The Complete Memoires of the
Life of thatNotoriousImposter Will Morrell (1694). The degree to
which these and othersuch I7th centurycriminalbiographiesdepart
fromthe traditionof the true detectivestorymay be gleaned fromthe
fact that such tales are today rememberedmainly for the role they
played in establishingthe traditionof the realisticnovel.12
No, we mustrestatethe reason forthe seeminglytardydevelopment
of detectivefiction: We said it had to wait forthe historicaladventof
the institutionof the detective. We must now add that the detective
who made detectivefictionpossiblewas himselfa fiction: Detective
storieshave their true genesis not in Vidocq or any other real life
detective. The fatherof them all, is, rather,Edgar Allan Poe's Che-
valierDupin.
We may argue about the birthof tragedy,whence arose comedy,
the antiquityof the lyricor the rise of the novel. But about the first
detectivestorytherecan be no such uncertainty.We know the precise
time and place of its origin. It was in Graham's Magazine of April,
1841, in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,U.S.A. that The Murders in the
Rue Morgue appeared, and the character which there made his
entrance,sprungfullblown fromthe bulgingbrow of Poe, has, under
different aliases,been withus eversince.
Why Poe the creatorof the classical detectivestory?A clue may
is
be found in JosephWood Krutch's statementto the effectthat "Poe
inventedthe detectivestorythat he mightnot go mad." 13
Poe's biography,of course,is a paradigm for that of the romantic
artist:14 a precociouslybrilliantchild, raised by fosterparents,a 17
year old drop-outfromthe Universityof Virginia, then a drop-out
12 See, for instance, Spiro Peterson, "Foreword," The CounterfeitLady Unveiled
and Other Criminal Fiction of SeventeenthCenturyEngland (New York, i96i), p.
Xi1.
13 Quoted in Howard Haycraft, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of
the Detective Story (New York, I94I), p. 9.
14 Richard Alewyn ("Das R~itsel des Detektivromans" in Definitionen: Essays
zur Literatur,ed. Adolf Fris6 [Frankfurta. M., 1963]) has argued that the detective
novel is a product not of Rationalism or Realism, but of Romanticism (p. 136).
As support for this he outlines the biography of an archetypal romantic artist,
charged with a sense of the everydayworld as only a thin layer of deception over
an abyss of dark symbols which the artist seeks to penetrate. Alewyn then asks
"Could one betterdescribethe talent and the professionof the detective?" (p. 135).

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 141

fromhis father'sbusiness,dismissalfromWest Point in a scandal-his

beloved child bride wasting away of an incurable disease, a life de-
voted to art, but threatenedby heavy drinkingand drugs. He died
on an uncompletedjourney,afterbeing found wanderingthe streets
of Baltimorein a ravingdelirium. The world was a place of chaos for
Poe, a vale not only of tears, but also of unspeakable horrors;some-
timeshe caught thisworld in the metaphorof a crumblingmansion,
haunted amidst its weird landscape; at other times it was the black
labyrinthinecanals of Renaissance Venice, or the great whirlpoolof
the Maelstrom. But it is in the verydepthsto which he experienced,
and was able to capturein words,the chaos of the world,thatwe must
search forthe keyto the ordered,ultra-rationalworld of the detective
story.
It was to this powerful impulse toward the irrational that he
opposed the thereforenecessarilypotent sense of reason which finds
its highestexpressionin The Murders in Rue Morgue and The Pur-
loined Letter. Against the metaphorsfor chaos, found in his other
tales, he sets,in the Dupin stories,the essentialmetaphorfor order:
the detective.
The detective,the instrument of pure logic, able to triumphbecause
he alone in a world of credulousmen, holds to the Scholasticprinciple
of adequatio rei et intellectus,the adequation of mind to things,the
belief that the mind, given enough time, can understandeverything.
There are no mysteries, thereis only incorrectreasoning. This is the
enabling discovery Poe makes for later authors; he is the Columbus
who lays open theworld of radical rationality whichis wheredetectives
have livedeversince.
Considersome of the otherspecificconventionswhich Poe firstuses:
the firstif exceedinglyawkwarduse of the least likelypersontheme;the
firstinstanceof thescatteringof falseclues by the real criminal;and the
firstextortionof a confessionby means of the psychologicalthirdde-
gree.. .15
Poe created
thetranscendent and eccentricdetective;theadmiringand slightly
stupid
foil; thewell-intentioned
flounderingand unimaginativenessof theofficial
guardiansof the law; the locked room convention;. . . deductionby
puttingoneselfin another'sposition. . .; concealmentby means of the
ultra obvious; the staged ruse to force the culprit'shand; even the
expansiveand condescendingexplanationwhen the chase is done,. ..16
These are the basic conventionsof the classical detectivestory,and so

15 Haycraft,Murder forPleasure, p. Io.

I6 Ibid., p. 12.

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142 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

fixedare theythatsome of the morehallowed among themare actually

included in an oath which must be taken by new membersof the
Britishassociationof detectivestorywriters,the Detection Club. Con-
sider,forexample,the followingtwo articleswhich mustbe swornto:
Do you solemnlyswearneverto conceal a vital clue fromthe Reader?-
Do you promiseto observea seemlymoderationin the use of Gangs,
Conspiracies,Death Rays,Ghosts,Hypnotism, Chinamen,. ..
trap-doors,
and utterlyand foreverto forswearMysteriousPoisons Unknown to
Science?17
The vow not to use ghostsand death raysmay seem amusing-cer-
tainlyin theirelephantineway, the foundersof the club intendedit to
be so; but it containsgreatwisdomtoo. For theseelementsare foreign
to theworldof the detectivestory-theybelongto otherworldsofsheer
convention,pure fiction,the ghoststoryand science fiction. There is
an importantpointto be learned about conventionshere. They do not
exist in isolation; to do theirwork theymust determinewhole land-
scapes, conjure up specificplots which are peculiar to them alone.
Conventionsmust be familiar.
Each fictiveworld has its own magic, its own form of reassuring
omnipotence. In the fairytale, a good heart and patiencein the face
of misfortune will always avail; so, in cowboystories,will a good heart
and a quick gun. In spystoriesa peculiarkind of committedamorality
coupled with an abilityto surviveunusual amounts (and kinds) of
physical punishmentovercome atomic destructionagain and again.
In the Tarzan novelsgreatphysicalstrengthand intimacywith nature
conquersall. (Tarzan is,in a sense,thelast ofthe noblesavages. He is,
it will be remembered,a memberof the House of Lords.)
We have spoken of several sub-genresof popular literature,each
of which is definedby its own systemof conventionsand its own re-
assuring magic. The basic clich6s of the detective storyespecially
should now be clear. But what is its peculiar magic, how does it re-
assure in a way otherpopular modes do not? Its magic is, as we saw
in the case of Poe, the power of reason,mind if you will. It is not, as
is so oftensaid, the characterof great detectiveswhich accounts for
theirpopularity.18If charactermeans anything,we must admit that
mostof themhave verylittleof it. Take SherlockHolmes,forexample.
He does not reallyexistwhen he is not on a case. The violin,the drugs

17 Haycraft,The Art of the MysteryStory,p. 198.

I8 As, for instance, William S. Baring-Gould: "What we may ask, inspires the
great devotion to [Sherlock] Holmes displayed by three generationsof readers? ...
it is the character of Holmes that grips us . .. .", in his Introduction to The
Adventuresof the Speckled Band and other Stories of Sherlock Holmes (New York,
1965), p. xi.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 143

merelykeep him in a state of suspendedanimationuntilthe inevitable

knock on the door comes, announcinga new problem. He does not
solve crimes,he solves puzzles. There is no death in his world-only
the statementof riddles. You will rememberthat famous bit of
"Sherlockismus"which begins, "I would call your attentionto the
curious incident of the dog in the nighttime." Watson says, "The
dog did nothingin the nighttime."And Holmes replies,"That was the
curiousincident."
This is a metaphorforwhat happens in all the stories.Nothingreally
happens,but it is all thereforecurious. Holmes is less a detectivethan
a mathematician;he is his function.Thereforeotherpeople simplyare
not people for him. Watson is regarded,as he himselfadmits in an
unguarded moment,as merely"the whetstonefor [Sherlock's]mind."
The degree to which Holmes is pure mind may also be seen in the
officialiconographyof him; in the later illustrationshe is all nose and
bulgingbrow.19
It is thissupremelyrationalqualitywhichaccountsforthe popularity
of such stories-the magic of mind in a world that all too oftenseems
imperviousto reason. Popular-but withwhom? Detectivestories,at
least of the sort we are here concernedwith, are not popular in the
sense everyonereads them. Who does? Not surprisingly-inlight of
what we've said about their emphasis on mind-it is largely intel-
lectuals who keep Agatha Christie and Rex Stout writinginto an
indecentold age.20
Not only do intellectualsread detectivestories,theywritethem. It
is significantthat in such tales the body is usually discoveredin the
library,fortheirauthorstendto be oppressively bookish. Many of them
are scholarsof real note, such as Michael Innes, in real life,J. I. M.
Stewart,a well known expert on the modern novel and one of the
editorsof the Oxford Historyof English Literature,or Nicholas Blake,
in real life C. Day Lewis, Oxford professorof Poetryfrom1951-1956,
and translatorof Virgil's Aeneid; or Dorothy Sayers,one of the first
women to receive an Oxford degree and a rankingDante translator
and critic. The listcould be extendedto includeAmericanacademics,21

19 He begins to look somethinglike Edgar Allan Poe, as a matter of fact.

20 This is difficultto prove, of course, but it is taken forgranted by most students
of the subject. See, forinstance,Marjorie Nicolson's delightfulessay, "The Professor
and the Detective," in Haycraft's Art of the Mystery Story, pp. 11o-127. It is
clear, at any rate, that detective fictionis the one aspect of popular culture which
most exercisesthe imaginationof intellectuals.
21 For example, chosen at random: C. Daly King, Yale Ph.D. and author of
several books on psychology,as well as at least six detective novels, all writtenin
the I930's, or Alfred Harbage, the Elizabethan scholar and professorat Harvard;
Walter Blair, expert on American humor, professorat Chicago.

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144 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

who, forsome reason,clingmuchmoretenaciouslyto theirpseudonyms.

But for every intellectualwho writes detectivefiction,there are
several more who write about it.22 And when they do, some very
strangethingshappen. Consider what W. H. Auden has to say on
the subject. Such tales are an occasion to writeabout sin and purga-
tion:
I suspectthatthetypicalreaderof detectivestoriesis,likemyself,a person
who suffersfroma senseof sin. From the pointof view of ethics,desires
and acts are good and bad, and I mustchoose the good and rejectthe
bad, but theI whichmakesthischoiceis ethicallyneutral;it onlybecomes
good or bad in its choice. To have a senseof sin means to feelguiltyat
therebeing an ethicalchoice to make, a guiltwhich however'good' I
maybecome,remainsunchanged.23
This quote is froman essayon the detectivestory,and one can't help
suspectingits aim of rationalization;the productnot of the guiltabout
which Auden is here so eloquent,but ratherof the guilt of reading
detectivestories.
Auden's friend,C. Day Lewis, perhapsbecause he writesthem,has
even more extravagantclaims to make for detectivestories.
We may imaginesome JamesFrazier of the year 2042 discoursingon
'The DetectiveNovel-the Folk-Mythof the 20th Century.'He will, I
fancy,connectthe riseof crimefictionwiththe declineof religionat the
end of the Victorian era . . . When a religion has lost its hold upon men's
heartstheymusthave some otheroutletfor the senseof guilt . . [the
futureanthropologist]will call attentionto the patternof the detective
as
novel, highly formalized as that of a religiousritual,with its initial
necessarysin (the murder),itsvictim,itshighpriest( thedetective). He
willconjecture-and rightly--that thedevoteeidentifiedhimselfbothwith
the detectiveand the murderer,representing the dark sides of his own
nature. He willnotea significantparallelbetweentheformalized denoue-
mentof the detectivenovel and the Christianconceptionof the Day of
Judgement, whenwitha flourishof trumpets, the mystery is made plain
and thegoatsare separatedfromthesheep.24

22 We have alreadymentionedJacquesBarzun; one mightalso cite Jacques

Lacan's essayon "The PurloinedLetter" ("Le s6minairesur 'La lettrevol6e,'"
Ecrits,I [Paris,1966]pp. 19-78); or W. K. Wimsatt'scritiqueof Poe's workon the
mystery of Mary Rogers (PMLA, LVI [1941], 230-248). Gide's fascination with
Americanhard boiled fictionis well known. As GeorgeGrella has written,"the
detectivestory,unlike most kinds of popular literature,prizes intellectualgiftsabove
all." ("Murder and Manners: The FormalDetectiveNovel," Novel, IV [197o],
36).
23 "The GuiltyVicarage,"in The Dyer'sHand and OtherEssays (New York,
1968), p. 158.
24 "The DetectiveStory-Why,"in Haycraft,The Art of theMysteryStory,p.
399.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS I45

C. Day Lewis, like Matthew Arnold,fearsthat religionhas declined.25

Arnold hopes literature-high culture-will take its place. Lewis sug-
gestsdetectivestorieshave taken its place. It can be shown that in a
sense,Arnold was right;literaturein the modernperiod did try,con-
sciously or unconsciously,to substitutefor religion. But Lewis has
completelymissed the point about detectivestories,particularlythe
ones he has in mind.
The mouldersof the Modernisttradition,however,sensed, as did
Arnold, that Christianity was losing its power to console and explain,
to flood a hostileworld with meaning. Such mastersas Joyce and
Mann sought to fill this religiousvoid with differentsymbols,more
oftenthan not taken frommythicalsystemsolder than Christianity.
Mann is exceedinglyself-conscious about his own attemptsto lightthe
Christmastree of the world again, as can be seen in his account of
how Dr. Faustus grewintoa novel,and in thepublishedcorrespondence
he had with Karoly Ker6nyi.2 The case of Ulyssesis obvious. Eliot
appends learned footnotesto The Wasteland, explaininghis symbols
on the basis of work done by Sir James Frazer and JesseL. Weston.
Yeats' whole life is a search for a mythicalsystemon which he could
groundhis poetry. And theyall used-in one way or another-Freud,
who when confronted by the death of God in the universe,discovereda
new cosmos inside man himself. The Freudian systemgave a new-
and profound-dimension to all symbols,independentof, or under-
lying,whateverreligiousmeaning they might (or more importantly,
might not) still have.
Modernism had dual roots in psychologyand myth,Freud and
Frazer were the Siamese twinswho presidedmuse-likeat the creation
of The Waves or Ulysses. The emphasiswas on the innermostinner
life,resultingin a psychologicalimpulsethat was lyrical,non-societal,
relational-constantlyexposingitselfto the danger of aestheticsolip-
sism. Nineteenthcenturynovels had unfolded in an extremespec-
ificityof time and place-there is a sense in which they are all
historicalnovels. They took place in Paris or London, whereas Mod-
ernistnovels essentiallytake place in a countryof the mind, inside.
To this degree they are ahistorical,their time is Bergsonian, not
chronological. Thus these works are marked by an emphasis on re-

25 It is significantthat so many authors of detective stories were in one way or

another deeply involved with religious issues. Lewis is also a well known apologist
forAnglican Christianity,as was Dorothy Sayers in her later years. Ronald Knox, a
student and author of detective fiction,was also a theologian, indeed a monsignor.
G. K. Chesterton's Catholicism is as present in his Father Brown stories as in his
essays.
26 Gespriichin Briefen (ZiUrich,I96o).

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146 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

curringpatternsof experience,those paradigmatichuman occasions

that seem to happen outside of time: the trauma of being cast into
the world in birth,the sorrowsof travel, the joys of love, and the
mystery of death. These are the matterof all art,but in the Modernist
periodtherewas a consciousattemptto get at the archetypalahistorical
meaning of such events,and the most frequentmethod for doing so
was to dramatize subtly-and sometimesnot so subtly-parallels be-
tween archetypaloccurrencesof ancientmythand modernexperience,
much as Freud was to seeka patternin the Oedipus storywhichwould
unlock certainsecretsof 20othcenturybehaviour.
Now is it preciselyduringthe 20o's and 30's of this century,when
Modernismwas in its deep-divingprime,achievingits mostcompletely
realized personsand its densestworld, that the detectivestoryhad its
golden age. It is a period when the two strands,experimentallitera-
ture-high culture, on the one hand, and popular literature-the
detectivestory,on the other, are more than ordinarilysplit in their
techniques,basic assumptionsand effect. It is the age when Agatha
Christie,John Dickson Carr, Dorothy Sayers,and Michael Innes, to
name only a few,are at theirpeak. And far fromseekingto populate
the corporealworldwithsymbols,theyare concernedfurtherto purify
theirown narrowworld of impossiblyeccentricOxbridge colleges,im-
probably quaint littleEnglish villages,that hermeticworld of cruise
ships,the Blue trains,and week-endsat countryhouses. Plots become
more outr6 (such as The Murder of Roger Ackroyd), weapons more
exotic (such as poisoned toothpaste)-but the basic conventionsre-
mainedessentially unchanged.
A small digressionis in order here: during the I930's there did
arise a new (if we exclude Wilkie Collins in the I9th century) kind
of detectivestoryrepresentedin England by DorothySayers' new style
which became apparent after her I935 novel Gaudy Night, and
represented in Americaby RaymondChandlerand laterDashiell Ham-
mett. The Britishand American types are quite distinctfrom each
other,but both have in common an attemptto break away fromthe
rigid conventionsof detectivefiction. Each strand resultedin stories
of crimewhichdependedfortheirappeal on the devicesof mainstream
fiction;literature,ifyou will. They soughtto writenovelsnot detective
novels as such. The characterswere more fullyrounded,the settings
more ordinary-or at least less formulaic-the plots less implausible.
The detectiveis more human and so are the criminalsand victims.
You get, at least in the hard-boiledAmericanschool,somethingmore
like real blood, actual corpsesinstead of mere excuses for yet another
demonstrationof the detective'ssuperhumanskills. Chandler did for

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 147

detectivefictionwhat John Le Carre was later to do for spy fiction.

Books in thisthird--callit novelistic-stream (Ross MacDonald, John
D. MacDonald and Donald Hamilton continue the tradition in
America, as Graham Greene and James Hadley Chase did in Eng-
land)-books in this thirdstream are obviouslynot-whatever their
othermeritsmay be-what I have been talkingabout as the classical
detectivestory. The thirdstreamis impure-and I mentionit only as
an exception.
But to returnto our argument: it was duringthe same period when
the upper reachesof literaturewere dramatizingthe limitsof reasonby
experimentingwith such irrational modes as myth and the sub-
conscious,that the lower reaches of literaturewere dramatizingthe
power of reasonin such figuresas InspectorPoirot and ElleryQueen.
What mustbe rememberedhere is that it is essentiallythe same group
of intellectualswho were reading both. We began by assumingthat
literatureis difficult,popular literatureeasy, and we are now in a
positionto be more specificabout this formulation: What is difficult
about a Mann novel,forexample,is not onlyitsstyleand architechtonic
complexities,but-and perhaps above all-its unsettlingmessage: all
the certaintiesof the 19th century-positivism,scientism,historicism-
seem to have brokendown. Dangerous questionsare raised,the world
is a threatening,unfamiliarplace, inimical more often than not to
reason. Is it not naturalto assume,then,that duringthis periodwhen
rationalismis experiencingsome of its most damaging attacks,that
intellectuals,who experienced these attacks firstand most deeply,
would turn for reliefand easy reassuranceto the detectivestory,the
primarygenreof popular literaturewhichthey,duringthesame period,
were,in fact,consuming?The same people who,spenttheirdays with
Joycewere reading Agatha Christieat night-and if the patternof
reassurancewe've adduced as peculiarto the detectivestoryis accepted,
we should not long have to wonderwhy.
At any rate, in order for our argumentto proceed, it is necessary
onlyto keep in mind the polar oppositionbetweenthe high art of the
novel withits bias towardmythand depthpsychologyand the popular
art of the detectivestorywithits flatnessof characterand settingdur-
ing thefloweringof Modernism. Because it is just thisoppositionwhich
is bridgedin the period followingWorld War II.
Post-Modernism-or at least that strand of it which here concerns
us and which is arguablythe mostdefiningstrand-can best be under-
stood as springingfrom a differentview of man, and thereforea
differentview of art fromthat which obtained in Modernism. It has
at its heart the exact opposites of the two tendencieswhich define

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148 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

Modernism. The aestheticsof Post-Modernismis militantlyanti-

psychological (if that word is taken in its usual meaning) and
radically anti-mythical.It is about things,not people, as Robbe-
Grilletpointsout when he says:
All aroundus, defyingour pack of animisticor domesticating adjectives,
thingsare there. Their surfaceis smooth,clear,and intact,withoutfalse
glamour,withouttransparency.[Let me interject-theyare not sym-
bolical,the forestis a forest,not a forestof symbols.But it is not,there-
fore,less mysterious]. The whole of our literaturehas not yetmanaged
evento beginto penetratethem,to altertheirslightest curve.27

And for from wishing to deal with recurringpatternswhose uni-

versalitywill be emphasized, novelistsin the post-modernperiod
ingeniously-and sometimes,it mustbe admitted,ratherstrenuously-
seek to avoid the familiar. Nathalie Saurraute writes: demands for
universality
With regardto the novel,are all the more familiarto the authorwho,
beinghimselfa reader,and oftena veryperceptiveone, has also experi-
enced them. The resultis thatwhen he startsto tell a storyand saysto
his selfhe must. . . writedown forthe mockingeye of the reader'The
Marquise went out at five he hesitates,he hasn't the heart,he
simplycan'tbringhimself too.'clock,'
do it.28

Now, if,as such figuresas Robbe-Grilletand Borgeshave been, you

are interestedin disestablishing
the mythicand psychologicaltendencies
of the traditionyou are definingyourselfagainst,what betterway for
doing so could recommenditselfthan that of exploitingwhat had
already become the polar opposite of that traditionin its own time?
Detectivestorieshad always been recognizedas escape literature.But
escape fromwhat? Among otherthings,escape fromliteratureitself,
as we emphasizedabove in the dichotomybetweenthe detectivestory
with its exteriorsimplicitiesand Modernism with its interiorcom-
plexities. Thus, when afterWorld War II Robbe-Grilletwas search-
ing for ways to overcome the literarytraditionof the novel he so
naturallyturnedto the detectivestoryas a mode. What mythwas to
experimentalfictionbeforeWorld War II, detectivefictionis to avant-
garde prose afterWorld War II. The possibilitiesforsymbolicaction
and depth psychologywhich Homer provides for James Joyce are
replacedin the laterperiodby the ambiguouseventsthe psychologically

27 "A Path for the Future of the Novel," in Maurice Nadeau, ed., The French
Novel since the War, tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York, 1969) p. 185.
28 "The New Novel," in Nadeau, op. cit., p. 181.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 149

flat and thereforemysteriousworld which Holmes and Poirot make

available to Robbe-Grilletand Borges.
That is to say that Post-Modernismexploits detectivestoriesby
expanding and changing certain possibilitiesin them, just as Mod-
ernismhad modifiedthe potentialitiesof myth.. There is a difference
in the way that Homer and Joycecome at Ulysses,and thereis also
a difference in the way that Agatha Christieand Borges come at the
detectivestory. Robbe-Grilletis quite explicitabout this. In a 1956
essay on the nouveau roman he speaks of it in termsof an inverted
detectivestory.He says:
The exhibitsdescribedin a thriller. .. providea fairlyaccurateillustra-
tion of the situation.The variouselementscollectedby the detectives-
an object abandonedat the scene of the crime,a movementimmobilized
in a photograph,a phraseoverheardby a witness-thesewould all seem
at firstsightto call foran explanation,to existonlyas a functionof their
rolein an affairwhichis beyondthem. But now varioushypotheses begin
to be built: the examiningmagistratetriesto establisha logical and
necessaryconnectionbetweenthe things;you thinkeverything is goingto
resolve itselfinto a trite collection of causes and effects. . . But the plot
startsto thickenalarmingly, witnessescontradictone another,the suspect
multiplieshis alibis,new factorscrop up whichhad previously been over-
looked ... And you have to keep comingback to the recordedevidence:
the exact positionof a piece of furniture, the shape and frequencyof a
fingerprint,a word writtenin a message. The impressiongrowson you
thatnothingelse is true. Whethertheyconceal or reveala mystery these
elementsthatdefyall systems have onlyone serious,obviousquality-that
of being there. And that is how it is with the world around us. We
thoughtwe had come to termswith it by givingit a meaning,and the
whole art of the novel,in particular,seemeddedicatedto thistask. But
that was only an illusorysimplification and far frombecomingclearer
and nearer,all thatwas happeningwas thattheworldwas graduallylosing
its lifein the process. Since its realityconsistsabove all in its presence,
what we have to do now, then,is to build a literaturewhich takes this
into account.29

If Robbe-Grilletknew more about the historyof detectivefiction

he would not have chosen the typeof tale he does in fact adduce as a
metaphorfor his own method. He would ratherhave chosen as his
example the four murderclassics publishedby Dennis Wheatley and
J. G. Links in the late 1930's.
Althougheach storywas remarkablyintricate,the dossiers'particular
lay in theirpresentation
originality or construction;construction
in the

29 Robbe-Grillet,op. cit., p. i88.

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150 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

literalsense,forthe dossierscontainthe actual evidenceof the murders,

photographsof the victimsand centralcharacters,bits and pieces of
pillsand so on.30
material,cigarettes,
In fact, very much the same sort of thing Robbe-Grillethas listed
as evidence in his essay-and in his novel. The Wheatley-Links
dossiersreceiveda mixed reception. The Times reviewerwrotethat if
thiswere the startof a new fashion,
The critics,it may be imagined,will be replaced by analysts-experts
who, instead of hoveringlengthilyover literarymeritswill be able to
pronouncewithfinality suchverdictsas 'The hay in Mr. Blank'spastoral
scenesis definitely
best he has givenus yet,'or, 'Miss Dash's pictureof
nurserylifeis marredby an unimaginative use of tapioca.'31

Another criticmade the same point with less hyperbole: ". .. the
principalactorsin the dossierare not [thecharactersin it], but the real
cretonne,the detachable match end and the engagingtwistof hair."32
The dossiers became increasinglycomplicated, until, in the fourth
and last one, thereader
had to remember thecompletedetailsof sixteenpeople and backgrounds,
and thenpick out the fiveor six key details. For example,a man has
asthmaand mighttherefore smokean herbalcigarette: but to discover
this the reader would have to take the butt ends and actuallysmoke
them.33

The solution to the mysterywas always found under a seal on the

last page of the book.
Now, withsome importantdifferences which mustbe kept in mind,
it can be seen that theselong forgottentoysprovide an easilygrasped
metaphor for certain essentialcharacteristicsof recent experimental
fiction. What the reviewerjokes about in the Wheatleydossiershas
become a seriousbusinessin Robbe-Grillet: "experts. . . instead of
hoveringlengthilyover literarymerits"will in fact be constrainedto
examine the objects themselves;the principal actors have, in Robbe-
Grilletceased to be the characters,and have ratherbecome the things
of the world. Justas Wheatleyand Links wishedthroughtheirobjects
to create a greaterreality,so does Robbe-Grillet,in his vastlysubtler
way wishto do so withhis. But the basic differencebetweenthe British

30 Reg Gadney, "The Murder Dossiers of Dennis Wheatley and J. G. Links,"

The LondonMagazine,VIII (1969), 41.
31 Quoted by Gadney, op. cit., p. 46.
32 Ibid., p. 46.
33 Ibid., p. 49.

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 151

murdermysteryand the French new novel is the different sense each

has of the operationplot performs.The solutionto a novel like The
Voyeur,forinstance,is not to be found under a seal on its last page.
Indeed, The Voyeurhas no last page in the sense in which that term
is normallyused. No, the solutioncannot be had by breakinga seal in
a book-the solution must be found in the experienceof the reader
himself,as a briefexaminationof The Voyeurwill show.
We will not have timeto discussthe manifoldclues which the reader
is temptedto gather,to put togetherin an orderlysequence, such as
the at-first-seemingly-significant,
recurringmotifsof the figureeight,
the newspaper clipping,the precise distance (20 feet) which a gull
keeps between himselfand Mathias, or the differencebetween gum-
drops and caramels. But in order to see the trickwhich is contained
in each of these booby-traps,we should examine at least one set of
those parallels which teem in The Voyeur. There are three different
movie posterswhich are describedat the beginning,middle and end of
thebook.
The firstone looks like this:
In frontof the door a bulletin-board, supportedfrombehind by two
woodenuprights, offeredtheweeklyprogramof thelocal moviehouse ...
In the garishlycoloredadvertisement,a colossalman dressedin Renais-
sance clotheswas clutchinga younggirlwearinga kindof longpale night-
gown; the man was holdingher wristsbehindher back with one hand,
and was strangling her withthe other. The upper part of her bodyand
her head were bent backwardin her effortto escape her executioner,
and her long blond hair hung down to the ground. The settingin the
backgroundrepresenteda tremendouspillaredbed with red covers.34

What are the significantpoints here? First,what kind of a plot

does thispostercall to mind? It is an absurd,theatricalsituation,very
much like that found in cheap historicalnovels or thrillers;colossal
men, younggirlsin long pale nightgowns,a tremendousbed with the
conventionalred covers on it of conventionalfictivepassion. The
hyperboleofthespecificadjectives-colossal, tremendous-is subsumed
by the "garishcolors" of the whole thing. But noticealso what is hap-
pening: a young girl is being strangled,just as Mathias strangles
Violet/Jacqueline. What we have here is the firstpart of a verycom-
plicated, serial joke, which is a key to the non-plotof The Voyeur.
That is, in thisscene, Robbe-Grilletsets up what he mighthave done,
had he writtena conventionalmurder novel. This firstposter is a

34 Alain Robbe-Grillet, The Voyeur, tr. Richard Howard (New York, 1966),
P- 34.

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152 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

metaphorforwhat would have been the traditionalliterarytreatment

of his subject-garish, hyperbolic,narrative.
The second posteris a metaphorfor the novel he actually writes,
a metaphorforthe structureof The Voyeuritself:
The newadvertisement representeda landscape. At leastMathiasthought
he could make out a moordottedwithclumpsof bushesin itsinterlacing
lines but somethingelse musthave been superimposed:here and there
certainoutlinesor patchesof color appeared whichdid not seem to be
part of the originaldesign. On the otherhand theycould not be said to
constituteanotherdrawingentirely;theyappeared to have no relation
to one another,and it was impossibleto guess theirintention.They
succeeded,in anycase, in so blurringthe configurations of the moorthat
it was doubtfulwhetherthe posterrepresented a landscape at all . . .
Underneathwas spreadin huge letterswhatmusthave been the name of
the film: "MonsieurX on the Double Circuit." Not conforming to the
trendsofrecentproductions, thistitle-whichwas scarcelyenticing, having
littleor no relationto anythinghuman-providedremarkably littleinfor-
mationabout what typeof filmit described.Perhapsit was a detective
story,or a thriller.35
First of all, this is a physicallandscape roughlysimilarto the one
in which the novel's crimeis committed-the lonely,moorlikegrazing
ground where the girl tends her flock,the clumps of bushes under
which Mathias forgetshis threecigarettebutts. But moreimportantly,
thereis a suggestionof two different posters,one on top of the other,
in other words, a palimpsest,and remaining,therefore,still slightly
visibleunderthenew text.
Robbe-Grilletsaysthatthispalimpsesteffectofthetwo superimposed
postersso blurs "the configurations of the moor that it was doubtful
whether [they] representeda landscape at all." And indeed, it is
not a landscape. Perhaps it was a detectivestoryor a thriller.And
of course it is, and we can tell fromits titlejust which detectivestory
it is: Monsieur X on the Double Circuit. Monsieur X is, of course,
Mathias, who is on several double circuits,each of which is marked
by the double circuitof a figureeight. He is on a double circuitfrom
mainlandto island,frompresentto his past,fromthevillageto the out-
lyingcottagesby the sea and back again, etc. But Mathias' tale is not
just a detectivestory. This title,as Robbe-Grilletsays, does not con-
form"to the trendsof recentproductions,[it] was scarcelyenticing,
having littleor no relationto anythinghuman." What betterdescrip-
tion of The Voyeur? It is about things,not humans, and it certainly
does not conformto recent productionsby other, more traditional
writers. And it is non-conventionalin a specific way, specifically

35 Ibid., p. 143-

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 153

suggestedby the double trackof the palimpsestmetaphor: it is a new

text,a new kindof plot,writtenoverthe face of the old detectivestory,
whose traditionalelementsstillare legibleunderneaththe new message.
The thirdpostercomes up verynear the end of the book:
On the otherside of the monumenthe noticesthat the bulletin-boardis
coveredwitha completelywhitesheetof paper pasted on the surfaceof
the wood. At thismomentthe garagemencomesout of his tobaccoshop
carrying a littlebottleand a finebrush. Mathiasaskshimwhathappened
to thesignthatwas up thedaybefore: it wasn'ttherightone, thegarage-
man answers,forthefilmtheyhad sentalong withit; thedistributor had
made an errorin theshipment.He wouldhave to announcenextSunday's
programbya hand-madeinkinscription.Mathiasleavestheman already
busywithhis taskfirmly tracinga largeletter0.36
The formerposter was the wrong one-its suggestionof clashing
messageswas adequate to the methodof the novel,but not to its telos.
That is, the palimpsestof old and new detectivefictiondoes not, in
itself,indicate the specificdifferencebetween the two levels. That is
given to us here: the new metaphysicaldetectivestoryfinallyobliter-
ates the tracesof the old which underlieit. It is non-teleological,is not
concerned to have a neat ending in which all the questions are
answered,and which can thereforebe forgotten.No, the new story
is purged of such linear teleology,it is not, like the old posters,mass
produced, printedin the sense other books are. It is rathera fresh
sheet of paper, on which the reader, as in our example, must hand
letterhis own answers. That is the meaningof the new titlehere: it is
not yet writtenout, not yet completed. The double cycle has been
broken,the bottomhalf of the figureeighthas been strippedaway to
reveal the letter0, the only letterwhich also may be a cipher-zero.
This zero worksin severalways: it is a clue to the author'spolemical
intentionin that it realizes the metaphor contained in the anti-lit-
erary manifestoof Robbe-Grillet'sfriendRoland Barthes, Le digrd
zdro de l'dcriture(1953). But more to the point, it representsthe
real end of the novel: its telos is the lack of telos,its plot consistsin
the calculated absence of plot. It is not a story-it is a process; the
reader, if he is to experiencethe book, must do what detectivesdo,
mustturnit into a seriesof objects,mustthencollate all the clues which
Robbe-Grillethas provided.But all theseclues end-when put together
-in zero, or a circle,the line which has no end. It is not a story-it
is not about Mathias or a littlegirl-it is not about fictivepeople. It
is about--or rather-it is a real process. It is a kind of calisthenicsof

36 Ibid., p. 214.

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154 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

perception. In absorbingthe book, the reader exercisesthe muscles

which controlhis inner,"private,"eye.
Robbe-Grilletwas not the firstto subvertthe cliches of detective
fictionin the serviceof a programmaticattemptto achieve less "lit-
erary"plots. He had been preceededin thisdirectionby Nabokov and
Borges. Patricia Merivale has pointed out that both men
exploitfortheirownthematicpurposes,all thenarrativetricksand devices
of the Gothic fantasywritersof the last two centuries,and theyblend
mannerism and Gothicismtogetherin theirsinglemostimportant parodic
pattern,the metaphysicaldetectivestory...37
Five of Nabokov's major fictionsend in fatal gunshots,and several of
his most importantprotagonists, such as Humbert Humbert in Lolita
(1955) or Kinbote in Pale Fire (1962), are cosmic detectives,who
wish to solve the crimeof theirown existence.
Borges,in particular,is a greatreader of detectivestories: in 1951
he published (in Spanish) an anthologywhich included classical
representatives of the genre by Agatha Christie,Ellery Queen, and
G. K. Chestertonand others.38And he himselfwritesat least two kinds
of detectivestories: the firstof which is fairlyconventional,at least
when compared to the rest of his work; examples of this type would
be the tales collected under the title Six Problems for Indio Parodi
(1942). His otherexperimentswith the formare probablythe purest
example of the metaphysicaldetectivestory. It is thistendencyhe has
also in common with Robbe-Grillet,a point made several times by
students of both, who usually compare The Erasers (1953) with
Borges' shortstoryDeath and the Compass.39 The firstis the story
37 "The Flaunting of Artifice in Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges,"
WisconsinStudies in ContemporaryLiterature,VIII (1967), 295. While recognizing
as much, and even pointing to parallels in Robbe-Grillet,Miss Merivale does not
directlyengage the problem of why these men should choose preciselythe detective
story as a point of departure. Her concern is the subject of her title, of course;
but even so, in her otherwiseadmirable study,she establishesa grammar,but not
a semantics,forthe parody in both Nabokov and Borges.
38 Chestertonis of particular interesthere. English and American audiences have
long been baffledby the extravagant praise Borges bestows on such otherwiseun-
canonical authors as Robert Louis Stevenson or the author of The Man Who Was
Thursday. But it should be rememberedthat Howard Haycraft coined the phrase
(as far as can be determined) "metaphysical detective story" in 1941 (Murder for
Pleasure, p. 78) to describe Chesterton'sunique contributionto the genre.
39 As in Merivale, op. cit., pp. 296-297. Anothertwiston the relationshipbetween
detective and criminal is found in a 1936 storyof the Polish master, Witold Gom-
browicz ("Premeditated Crime"). An old man has died, apparently of natural
causes, yet the detective convinces the dead man's son that he (the son) has
murdered his father. There are no clues, so the son obliginglychokes the corpse,
leaving fingerprints,which "together with the murderer's clear confessionat the
trial, were finallyconsidered as adequate legal basis."

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WHODUNIT AND OTHER QUESTIONS 155

of a detectivewho knows he must be at a certain place at a certain

time in orderto catch the criminal,but when he shows up he himself
commitsthe murder. The Borges tale uses the same twistto achieve
the oppositeeffect: when the detectiveworksout wherethe next in a
seriesof murdersmustoccur, he shows up only to become the victim.
We have seen how two leading Post-Modernistsplay with the con-
ventionsof the detectivestory,miningthe genreforplotsand surprises.
Justas earlier Mann had depended on his readers' knowledgeof the
Faust legend, and thereforecould achieve certaineffectsby changing
the familiarstoryin crucial ways,so Robbe-Grilletand Borgesdepend
on the audience'sfamiliarity withthe conventionsof the detectivestory
to provide the subtextthey may then play with by defeatingexpec-
tations.
The most common expectation,based on reading classical detective
stories,which Post-Modernismdefeatsis that of syllogisticorder. Like
Poe, Robbe-Grilletand Borges have a deep sense of the chaos of the
world, but unlike Poe, they cannot assuage that sense by turningto
the mechanical certainty,the hyper-logicof the classical detective
story. Post-Modernists use as a foilthe assumptionof detectivefiction
that the mind can solve all: by twistingthe details just the opposite
becomes the case. Take as an example Borges' storyThe Garden of
Forking Paths. Its whole effectdepends on the clash between two
levels, one a disturbingphilosophical propositionabout a temporal,
insteadof a spatial,labyrinth,the othera framestory,a kind of narra-
tive sandwich which has all the cliches of detective (and certain of
spy) fiction.The endingis verywell made, with a kind of O. Henry-
like twist-but this tyingup of loose ends at the conclusionhas the
opposite effectfrom that which obtains, say, in a Sherlock Holmes
story. The neatnessof the ending,its pat explanation,far fromhaving
the reassuringeffectof demonstrating the mind's capacityto orderthe
world in the Borgestale, looks shaky,hollow; its logic is unconvincing
in the face of the complexitywhichhas precededit.
Thus the metaphysicaldetectivestorydoes not have the narcotizing
effectof its progenitor;instead of familiarity,it gives strangeness,a
strangenesswhich more oftenthan not is the resultof jumbling the
well known patternsof classical detectivestories. Instead of reassur-
ing,theydisturb. They are not an escape, but an attack. By exploiting
the conventionsof the detectivestorysuch men as Borges and Robbe-
Grillethave foughtagainstthe Modernistattemptto fillthe void of the
world withrediscoveredmythicalsymbols. Rather,theydramatizethe
void. If, in the detectivestory,death must be solved, in the new
metaphysicaldetectivestoryit is lifewhich mustbe solved.
And in this attack on the reader lies all the differencebetween art

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156 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

and kitsch. I hope our tentativehistoricalmodel has suggestedat least

one way in which the kaleidiscopeof popular and high culturecon-
stantlyrearrangetheirpatternsof relationshipto each other. In art
thereis alwaysthe potentialforreductionto kitsch,especiallyin an age
in which we possessthe technologyto print the Mona Lisa on bath
towels. That is unfortunate, but not the cause foralarm it is so often
feltto be. If we reallybelieve in culture,we should have faithin its
capacity to surviveeven such indignities.And one of the ways that
art does surviveis by going on the counterattack,exploitingkitschfor
new effectsof whichkitschin its complacency,its urge to reassurewas
itselfunaware. That is the lesson of the metaphysicaldetectivestory
in our own time. It sees the potentialforreal violence-violence to our
flabbyhabits of perception-in the phoney violence of the detective
story. And out of it Post-Modernismcontrivesto performthe tra-
ditional functionof all art, which Wallace Stevens has defined as
"the violencefromwithinwhichprotectsus fromtheviolencewithout."

YALE UNIVERSITY

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