Synopses & Reviews
Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story-the history of which encompasses writers as diverse as Poe, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Auster, and Stephen King-that ends with a question rather than an answer. The detective not only fails to solve the crime, but also confronts insoluble mysteries of interpretation and identity. As the contributors to Detecting Texts contend, such stories belong to a distinct genre, the metaphysical detective story, in which the detective hero's inability to interpret the mystery inevitably casts doubt on the reader's similar attempt to make sense of the text and the world.
Detecting Texts includes an introduction by the editors that defines the metaphysical detective story and traces its history from Poe's classic tales to today's postmodernist experiments. In addition to the editors, contributors include Stephen Bernstein, Joel Black, John T. Irwin, Jeffrey T. Nealon, and others.
Synopsis
Although readers of detective fiction ordinarily expect to learn the mystery's solution at the end, there is another kind of detective story--the history of which encompasses writers as diverse as Poe, Borges, Robbe-Grillet, Auster, and Stephen King--that ends with a question rather than an answer. The detective not only fails to solve the crime, but also confronts insoluble mysteries of interpretation and identity. As the contributors to Detecting Texts contend, such stories belong to a distinct genre, the metaphysical detective story, in which the detective hero's inability to interpret the mystery inevitably casts doubt on the reader's similar attempt to make sense of the text and the world.Detecting Texts includes an introduction by the editors that defines the metaphysical detective story and traces its history from Poe's classic tales to today's postmodernist experiments. In addition to the editors, contributors include Stephen Bernstein, Joel Black, John T. Irwin, Jeffrey T. Nealon, and others.
Synopsis
Metaphysical detective stories reveal much about the relation of modernism to postmodernism and of high to low literary culture. Detecting Texts makes an excellent case for the coherence and breadth of the genre. Its broad scope, clear writing, an
Table of Contents
The game's afoot: on the trail of the metaphysical detective story / Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney -- Mysteries we reread, mysteries of rereading: Poe, Borges, and the analytic detective story / John T. Irwin -- Borges's library of forking paths / Robert L. Chibka -- (De)feats of detection: the spurious key text from Poe to Eco / Joe Black -- Gumshoe gothics: Poe's "The man of the crowd" and his followers / Patricia Merivale -- Work of the detective, work of the writer: Auster's City of glass / Jeffery T. Nealon -- "The question is the story itself": postmodernism and intertextuality in Auster's New York trilogy / Stephen Bernstein -- Reader-investigators in the post-nouveau roman: Lahougue, Peeters, and Perec / Michel Sirvent -- "A thousand other mysteries": metaphysical detection, ontological quests / Jeanne C. Ewert -- Postmodernism and the monstrous criminal: in Robbe-Gillet's investigative cell / Raylene Ramsay -- Detecting identity in time and space: Modiano's Rue des boutiques obscures and Tabucchi's Il filo dell'orizzonte / Anna Botta -- "Premeditated crimes": the dis-solution of detective fiction in Gombrowicz's works / Hanjo Berressem -- "Subject-cases" and "book-cases": impostures and forgeries from Poe to Auster.