The three factors that "supposedly" define detective fiction are incomplete. There should be a fourth factor that inquire about the detective's background.
The following three factors define detective fiction: a detective who detects, a protagonist (detective himself), a detective who triumphs over evil. Those factors are too ideal for defining a detective story with any real depth. That is, if this particular fiction is defined securely by the detective alone. Not by who the man is who the man is behind the badge. Yet, there should be a factor that pose an inquiry about the detective's personal past, that qualifies him above all else to be a detective along with the other three factors.
A person's background is what makes them who they are. The three factors merely act as the surface for detective fiction. There is another counter part missing. I believe there is another explanation for why Poe, who is a pioneer for this genre, stories are so dry. Poe wanted, as much as possible, to distant his extraordinary character, Dupin, away from the audience. We are not to know any of Dupin's dirty little secrets. Yes, Dupin is a fictional character, but there is no realism to him making him somewhat relatable or engaging other than his extraordinary intelligence. As the reader, I was delighted when Poe gave me some background material on Dupin, in "The Purloined Letter" , in correlation to Dupin solving the crime. It made the story more engaging.
The irony here is that the three factors that define detective fiction implies that the reader will get some personal background about the detective(s),but we don't at least not with Poe.
All of the authors that come after Poe such as Doyle with Sherlock Homes include personal details about the detective. Doyle made Holmes a user of cocaine; this information did not taint his character, if anything it made Holmes, who is fictional, appear real. Also, in Summerscale's Mr. Whicher there is some personal information about Whicher fathering a child and having a wife. However, there is no record of where they are. For me, this information help form Mr. Whicher's whole character outside of his detective skills. So I propose a fourth a factor that enforces the author to have some, if not a lot, of personal background history on the detective(s).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I was happy to see that you took issue w/ the Ellery Queen Yardstick, and so decided to improve upon in—so much so that you inspired one of your classmates to do the same! As you explained well in class, the lack of any “history” for the detectives Dupin and Holmes keeps them at a distance from the reader, even more so b/c the Narrator and Watson, respectively, do seem to know such history but never share any broad sense of it. The fact that we, as the reader, would want to know one’s history, in order to provide what you call “depth” to the character of the detective, certainly speaks to a kind of Victorian taboo: privileging the private over the public. While I enjoyed the explanations of your thesis idea, I was puzzled by the absence of explicit textual evidence to support your claims. Had you given concrete examples from the texts you were discussing, your argument overall would have been that much more persuasive. Just as you wanted more “depth” to the character of the detectives under discussion, I wanted more layers of your discussion of this lack. Also, how do the three factors of the Ellery Queen Yardstick necessarily imply that we will gain some depth of character? Or, is it that your fourth characteristic more accurately describes the evolution of the detective fiction genre post-Poe?
ReplyDelete