Meta: Rambling about Detectives

[alixtii]

After I accidentally deleted my open windows at skip=525, I worked my way back through my flist, reopening the windows, and IE crashed at skip=475. At that point, I gave up, and I'm just going to rely on newsletters to catch up. If anything interested, don't be afraid to drop a link in the comments.

Speaking of which, metafandom introduced me to this incredibly insightful comment:

JKR strikes me as a huge control freak a lot of the time, and it extends to the way the text is received, I think. It's as if she really thinks that we all should be reading the text a certain way, otherwise we're 'delusional' or whatever. And this approach trickles down to fandom where it becomes a problem because the point of any fandom is to bring together different interpretations of the text. I think it happens because overall JKR's trying to write a mystery, and in a mystery, other interpretations of the set evidence aren't important, and in some ways are even a threat to the end conclusion of the mystery itself. The problem is, I think, so much of her mystery relies on a concrete, black-and-white understanding of character motives when the characters she's created are all very deliberately grey. If that makes any sense.

I think this is brilliant, personally, because I do think that there is something about an Agatha Christie novel which challenges the sort of assumptions those of who are theoretically sophisticated routinely make. I think it comes out of the ethos which informs the detective novel, which is really positivistic at its core: it's the assumption that all questions can be solved by science, i.e. is the process of observation and deduction. If we all just knew how to look, the way that a Sherlock Holmes does, everything would be instantly transparent instead of seeing through a glass darkly.

(Tomorrow I get to write a critical theory on Lacan's "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'," so right now I'm full of all kinds of thinky thoughts about how it sometimes seems that a detective is looking for a transcendental signified, or rather like any positivist the police want a transparent non-contingent non-transcendental object, but Dupin is really looking for a signifier in a web of signifiers. Like any positivist, the police are just deluded transcendental idealists, but Dupin is able to make the Nietzschean/post-structuralist move.)

This conception of the detective story was at its height in the 1920s and '30s, and for me is really most purely epitomized by S.S. Van Dine's "Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories", just a few of which I'll quote here(a similar list can be found here:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

3. There must be no love interest. The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar.

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

What is interesting, instructive even, in this list is Van Dine's absolute certainty that the point of a novel is to act as a puzzle, and the goal of the reader is to discover the one and only "right" answer. "The detective story," he writes, "is a kind of intellectual game. It is more — it is a sporting event."

There's no wrong way to approach a text, and those who see a detective novel as a sort of one-person parlor game will get no reprimand from me. But this is not how I like to read an Agatha Christie novel or a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle story, and my guess is that it is people like me and not Van Dine who are in the majority. My blessing to those who read them as a puzzle, but if I choose instead to use it as a source text for a fanfic in which Tommy and Tuppence have an orgy with Irene Adler, Vera Claythorn, and Neville Chamberlain, then that's fine too.

In Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel The Big Sleep, after all, the chauffeur is killed, and no one--including Chandler himself--knows who did it. That ambiguity was preserved in the 1946 film version written by no less greats than William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Does anyone really care? Both the book and the movie are classics, and rightfully so. (Well, I haven't actually read the book.) (ETA: karabair gives a few more details here.) The Da Vinci Code is an international bestselling phenomenon, and there's no way that a reader could keep up with the hero, who uses obscure and almost-true history to concoct an implausible chain of reasoning. And I'm excited to see Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, and Ian McKellan acting it out--although with a cast like that, how could I not?

And this brings me to Veronica Mars. Despite it being so often mentioned in the same breath as Buffy, I haven't seen it--or hadn't, until about three weeks ago, when I saw the beginning of an episode. I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled by what I saw; it seemed very soap opera-ish and I already knew there wouldn't be any vampires or witches, so what's the point? But then I watched the end of an episode two weeks ago, and it was all about her solving a mystery, and I was beginning to feel the love. And then it dawned to me: a detective is a sort of ubermensch, using hir intellect to take control of the world. And as such, a detective novel is as much an expression of the will-to-power or adolescent fantasy as a show about a teenage girl chosen to slay the vampires, isn't it? (I've done a JSTOR search and it seems this has been undertheorized, at least in article form, which really surprises me.) So if I do get into VM, I suppose it'll fit perfectly into my supergenius-teenaged-girl-who-takes-over-the-world kink.

I hope to do some longer and more sustained meta later, particularly a craft-of-writing on how we structure fic and how only a subset of fics are strictly speaking "stories," but as my life is going at the moment that "later" promises to be very long from now.

Okay, back to watching the Lindsay Lohan Parent Trap on ABC Family. I really love this film, but a Londoner likes to eat her Oreos with peanut butter? WTF?

Where is the Annie/Hallie twincest?

Comments

[wisdomeagle]

So if I do get into VM, I suppose it'll fit perfectly into my teenaged-girl-who-takes-over-the-world kink.

Yes. It really will.

Also, there's incest.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

My favorite detective story is Anthony Berkeley's "The Poisoned Chocolates Case" precisely because it attacks the whole convention of "one and only solution."


PS--Annie/Hallie twincest: presumably while wearing vests and big hats and ties. And killing spiders the size of Buicks.

[wisdomeagle]

Where is the Annie/Hallie twincest?

That is such a good question! I'll write you Annie/Hallie if you write me Jenny/Matilda! *g* (Or maybe even not, since I do have the canon right here.)

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

Hah. So, I was reading your whole post, and thinking about how it applied to Veronica Mars, and then that's were you were going. Super!

I'd respectfully suggest, if you decide to watch more Veronica Mars, that you start from the beginning. It's got a heavy story arc and makes much better sense if watched in order.

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

Interesting thoughts on the detective story -- I do think that Van Dine's rules are not accepted by the majority of today's readers. They probaly weren't even that widely applicable at the time. What they do, though, is give a framework which to some extent is what makes genre genre.

Mostly, though, I have to bust the Chandler myth. It's fairly clear, in the book, who killed the chauffeur. It becomes confusing, later on, b/c Marlowe lies about it in order to protect his client. Also, TBS, like most of Chandler's work, is "cannibalized" from several older, shorter stories. So the plot has a series of stops and starts; but structurally it actually comes together very well, once you figure out the structure. The film works less well because the censors wouldn't let them use the original solution to the mystery for lots of reasons. And also because most of the exposition got cut in favor of Lauren Bacall in elaborate gowns. Not that I'm complaining, mind.

It's POSSIBLE that Chandler might not have known who killed the chauffeur but more likely (if that story ever actually happened) that he didn't particularly feel like refreshing his memory on something he'd written a decade before that he wasn't getting paid for.

[r-becca.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to look at Harry Potter in the context of Van Dine's list... especially in terms of GoF, which is much more a mystery than many of the other books, and the reader is actively trying to solve the mystery... and the solution just comes out of left field. The reader has absolutely no chance to solve the mystery... it's sort of a combination of one of the official investigators being the culprit (violation of #4 above), and an unmotivated confession (violation of #5). :P But it works. It's not really a detective story, but it is a good mystery anyway. :)

I do think that JKR is writing plot-driven books, and fandom is all about characters... so we have a natural disconnect with her there that doesn't come up in a much more character-driven series like BtVS.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I figured out the central mystery of The Da Vinci Code fairly early on, and thought it wasn't particularly well done.

I think a mediocre detective novel can be enjoyed as a puzzle and nothing more - once the puzzle is solved, the book itself becomes obsolete and uninteresting. A good detective novel, otoh, is a good story, and can therefore be reread and new things will make themselves known upon the rereading, not just the clues one may have missed before, but subtle character interactions that may or may not be clues, but which lend the story depth and texture. And also, I find with detective series - like Nero Wolfe or Amelia Peabody - after a while, the mysteries become secondary to loving the characters and wanting to visit with them.

I do think Rowling sees herself as writing a mystery - hence her quoting of Dorothy Sayers in interviews - and so she sees as less important things that make a fandom excited. Of course, Rowling also stacks the deck against the reader figuring things out because of the way the story is serialized. And also the way she pokes fandom and watches it jump.

I don't think I have anything useful to add, so I'll just shut up now.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

4. The detective himself, or one of the official investigators, should never turn out to be the culprit. This is bald trickery, on a par with offering some one a bright penny for a five-dollar gold piece. It's false pretenses.

I'm definitely going to disagree with that one. There are a lot of interesting twists around the idea that one of the investigating officers, or even the hero in a really clever story, is actually the guilty party. Val McDermid did a particularly good job of the former -- once the hero realises that the only other person definitely in the area at the time of the first death was the local Bobby he then has to find the one bit of evidence that will prove his theory before it's too late. Of course the reader gets to suspect earlier because the bad cop offers to lie about where he was for a later death, supposedly to protect a fellow officer with motive but no alibi for that particular crime.

As for me, I break the rules all the time. I don't think it matters that a death was technically suicide or an accident if the investigation uncovers facts that would otherwise have remained unknown. I'm going to be very interested to see who works out what amongst my test readers too.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I weep that Ian McKellan is involved in The DaVinci Code. (And it makes my purist heart sad that you have only seen the HP movies rather than reading the books, but since my personal rule is I'll watch movies of stories I'm not willing to commit the time&energy to a book of, I definitely validate your choice.)

I can definitely understand where Van Dine is coming from, though I certainly have no problem with an interest in detective novels for the characters :) Interestingly, I don't think of the HP novels as mysteries at all. I mean, Book1 and in some ways GoF very much have that bent to them, but I think of them far more as plot&character-driven in a broader sense.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Finally came over to read this and I'm glad I did! Those rules are interesting, not because everybody should follow them, obviously, but they do lay out a good extreme to compare things against. As you said in a comment above, in GoF the mystery is so besides the point and that's absolutely true--you really can't solve it on your own. I don't think that's what Rowling is about anyway. Her "mysteries" aren't about figuring out who dunnit at all. It's more that you read the book one way, then something is revealed which casts everything before it in a different light.

But that probably plays into the comment you quoted, because people a) get used to thinking there's a "solution" to a character and a character's actions, so they get attached to certain readings, always claiming that no one is what they appear and b) get used to certain readings being rejected in the text--no, this character was not a good guy, but a bad guy; he was not helping Harry but setting him up, etc.

I wrote some

[dartxni.livejournal.com]

Matilda/Jenny WIP
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2153244/1/

and Anne/Hallie short
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2953182/1/