The pseudo–detective in postmodern literature

JOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE Interdisciplinary Science, 2013, Vol. 58, No. 5, pp. 60-65 This paper is available online at THE PSEUDO–DETECTIVE IN POSTMODERN LITERATURE Le Huy Bac Faculty of Philology, Hanoi National University of Education Abstract. Pseudo-detective is one of the main tendencies in postmodern literature. Postmodernists consider that the goal is not as important as the journey we are on. So, postmodern detectives concentrate on the journey. This does not use the structure of the traditional detective story but rather uses a detective to detect a criminal who in the end turns into a detective himself. Umberto Eco, Paul Auster and Orhan Pamuk are masters in this field. Keywords: Pseudo-detective, postmodern literature, journey. 1. Introduction Not believe in a ‘fixed’ point of view because it always has the risk of containing the ‘grand narrative’ (JF.Lyotard, [5]), postmodernists often put their characters on journeys. For postmodernists, the purpose of a journey is never as important as the journey itself. Thus, the journey is the ultimate criteria of the characters’ action. Up on stop, people will be satisfied and a great narrative is established respectively at each stage of a journey. Therefore, ‘go’ results in the creation of ‘petit narrative’ in the world. Detective stories are based on ‘journeys’, on a situation that includes a thrilling or mysterious event which is often related to a case [6]. Therefore, important elements of a detective story are plots which contain several mutations and a wise detective. When postmodernists produce works that make use of a pseudo–detective they in fact using ‘fake plots’ and ‘fake detectives’. They keep trace’s purposes which are nature of detective stories but they change tracing purposes by adding many topics and plots. The aim is to recreate the chaos of life and obscurity without escape when detectives are involved in the quest and, in most cases, postmodern detective works are an immersion into the foibles of human nature. 2. Content As we may know, with a detective story plot, its center always includes a mysterious case, possibly a crime. However, the detectives do not focus on the crime itself but rather Received January 25, 2013. Accepted April 29, 2013. Contact Le Huy Bac, e-mail address: lehuybac@gmail.com 60 The pseudo–detective in Postmodern literature look for clues as to the cause of the crime in the course of their ‘investigation’. The process of the investigation leads the narrator and the readers into the mystery of sin to help people realize the truth and know who is guilty and who should be praised. A complete structure of the detective story will include: a victim – a detective – a crime, and of course a time and location which also play an important role in the story. Postmodernists prefer this kind of structure because the similarity of the process of finding the truth in a detective story is also the entry process into the unconscious to find our own ego and into the nature of the writers’ language as he reproduces reality. The purpose is to release maximal individual capacity. There are famous pseudo–detective works such as The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco) and City of Glass (Paul Auster). About The Name of the Rose, The New York Times wrote: ‘Imagine a medieval castle run by the Benedictines, with cellarers, herbalists, gardeners, librarians, young novices. One after the other, half a dozen monks are found murdered in the most bizarre ways. A learned Franciscan who is sent to solve the mystery finds himself involved in the frightening events inside the abbey. Imagine also that toward the end of the narrative it turns out that all those horrible crimes were committed for highly ethical and cultural reasons. Just fancy that the manuscript of the lost second part of the ‘Poetics’ by Aristotle – the lost book containing his theory of comedy and laughter – has been found in the library and that somebody will do anything to stop the circulation of that’ [2]. Umberto Eco’s first novel instantly became ‘a literary event,’ a shock of contemporary fiction. Printed in 1980, The Name of the Rose is a work mixed of many kinds of genre. On the background of a detective story, the novel contains in itself semiotic theory, open text theory, medieval studies as well as biblical legends. In short, it is a document carrying the great challenge for knowledge and human feelings. Using the form of a fascinating detective story, Umberto Eco interlocked history and medieval religion in The Name of the Rose. The work especially targets the problems of the essence of being human, a great concern of postmodernists. In the search for truth while constantly being skeptical, the final destination of the work is to answer the question of the detective story – who is the sinner? But the answer does not fit the nature of this genre of fiction but involves the philosophical problem – we are the sinners. The title of the work is The Name of the Rose but there are no roses in the work. It contains metaphorical meanings, which puts The Name of the Rose in the framework of a detective novel: there is the case, the hymn, the church, Aristotelian philosophy, all of which is to lead readers into a labyrinth of medieval society which is also a silhouette of the postmodern labyrinth where light flashes up upon the ‘path’ show the truth. The truth is not as the preacher intended, which is located right in itself, tracers themselves: the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth. The story about Guillaume tracing the culprit, tied to the mysterious book of Aristotle, did elicit a protest that the sacred law of the church cannot be damned to detain people. The power of will led people to the truth, helped them to overcome God’s rules. The work ended when the library was engulfed in a great fire and the librarian Jorge de 61 Le Huy Bac Burgo, who embodied religious ignorance, a conservative and cruel who caused the tragic death, is seen to be the one who destroyed the book of Aristotle and immolated himself. Umberto Eco was voted as one of top twenty contemporary thinkers in the world, and also a permanent candidate for the Nobel prize in literature. He occupies a very special position in the world of postmodern theory. As a philosopher, semiotician, novelist, literary critic and professor of many universities, Eco’s academic ideas have had a strong and positive impact on the intellectual lives of researchers for decades, especially with his theory of open text. Twenty years have gone by since the publication of The Name of the Rose and people have come to know of another work using the same method of ‘pseudo–detective’ composition. It is a masterpiece of a writer named Orhan Pamuk who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Readers can easily recognize resemblances to the works of the Turkish writer, Umberto Eco, works such as such as My Name is Red. The novel was published in 2000 and is considered the greatest work in the writing career of Orhan Pamuk. It is in an Istanbul context in the sixteenth century, and, based on the plot of a detective story concerning the death of a foreman, Zarif, Pamuk has recreated hot arguments, intense conflicts and the souls which cannot find a common language. It results in the three tragic deaths of the foreman Zarif, dear Enishte and another foreman, Zeytin. The plot of the detective novel has the following main events: after nearly four days missing, the body of foreman Zarif was found at the bottom of an abandoned well. The death worried miniatures in Istanbul and led to distrust between the miniaturists. On the night of the funeral of foreman Zarif, Enishte – the man who was secretly assigned by the king to make a book to memorializing the history and demonstrate the strength of the Ottoman Kingdom – was savagely killed. He was beaten on his face and head with an ancient ink bottle by his enemies. Beautiful Shekure, the only daughter of Enishte, four years after her first husband’s death and while staying at her mother’s house under her father’s sponsorship, secretly marries Siyah – who was trusted by Enishte to continue writing the secret book – to investigate the crime. One night after Enishte died, his death was announced and Siyah, who was then Enishte’s son-in-law, asked to see the treasury head, the second powerful person of the kingdom who reports issues. Spreaded among miniatures at the moment is confusion and fear that there may be many catastrophic deaths without reason. The king ordered that the murderer be found at all cost. Master Osman and Siyah are told to find the culprit within three days and, if they fail, all of the miniatures would be charge with the deaths. The only clue is a crumpled and blurred painting of a horse which the culprit left on the first victims. Two people are allowed to go into the King’s Treasury to study the drawings and find the culprit. After two days and three nights, with a deep understanding of history as well as ancient painting theory, Osman found the person who did the painting. That was foreman Zeytin, the best painter in the palace workshop. 62 The pseudo–detective in Postmodern literature After finding the culprit, Siyah put needles with handles carved of pearl in the suspect’s eye to forcing him to admit his guilt, vindicating the miniaturists and revenging the dead victims. Zeytin, after he was blinded, stabbed Siyah with a dagger and escaped. When running way from Istanbul, Zeytin had his head cut off by Hasan, a rival of Siyah and also the brother of her ex-husband Shekure, because he was jealous and confused. At the end of the work, Siyah lived happily with his wife for the last twenty-six years left of his life until he died of a heart attack one early morning alongside the well. The story of hunting the perpetrators is interlocked with a romance story of both Shekure and Siyah, and at the same time it was the historic story of the Turkish miniatures. Up about four-fifths of the work capacity is related to the event of this miniaturist; there is the main focus of the work. But a rising matter of the story is the murder and tracking down the culprit, so there is a woven phenomenon of the three plots altogether. This is a multiplot. This feature has created non-central plots and non-central narrators which make up the multivalues of the work. In addition, writers use a variety of narrative points of view. These are the ‘chaotic creation’ tools in the work. They create multiple voices and perspectives on the phenomena and events. In the opening chapter, readers were horrified to hear the whispering about the sudden death. After a person whispers the words of different and strange persons in chapter one and two, there was a jump to the word of a mischievous dog in chapter three. So, the events and narrative styles of the work were always a dichotomy, and the simultaneousness of the many meanings and inference are always pushed toward the readers. The words of the corpse, the foreman Zarif Effendi, let the readers know that he was dead four days ago and was but in the bottom of a well by his brutal killer. Readers are led on the offense in an atmosphere of who is the murderer and why has he angered the dead so much? Why did he kill in such a surprising way? There is a hypothetical mystery: the death lies within a sinister scheme that ‘targets our religion’ and is aimed at ‘our tradition’. The hypothesis in this manner is oriented in a detective story manner. High generalization is not the main stress in the narrative My Name is Red but rather serves to distract the readers and take them into a labyrinth of events and issues in the same complex. If they step out of the detective journeys, readers will recognize that there are many issues which the writer set out merely to present dialogue and suggest that readers clarify or exploit images. Postmodern detectives turn the detectives into a self reconnaissance: detective of the soul and ego with the ability to perceive the objective world and the cognitive capacity of individuals. Thus there has been swapping the roles of the characters in the detective structure. The sinner is a sinner who has just not been a sinner. The detective is both a testament and a detective for both the acts of his detectives. And it is worth mentioning that the end of this postmodern detective story turns out to be the other detective, the detective went appraisal has been carried out there. The process of detectives investigating is the process of evaluation of the reader. The opened structure of the texts in postmodern detective 63 Le Huy Bac narrative has created a labyrinth that invites an explanation of the action, crime and human truth. City of Glass (1985) by Paul Auster is typical for the postmodern detective story. It seems that the narrator creates a labyrinth through using all the names in the work. There is a character named Auster, and a detective with the same name. There was another writer named Daniel Quinn. One day Quinn received a phone call asking for his help to prevent a father named Stillman from killing his son who is also named Stillman, and who had been violently disabled by the father. Quinn said it was a mistake because he is not Auster the detective, but the calls continued and he decided to meet them. Finally, Quinn accepted as a detective Stillman son. His mission was closely monitored by Stillman’s father daily, and he did not take his eyes off him in order to detect any sign of vengeance or wish to intervene. One day Quinn lost track of Stillman’s father, and then he could not find the new house of the couple’s son, Stillman. Quinn finally came to the room where the Stillmans lived before and he laid there, exhausted. Later, Quinn was accidentally saved by the writer Auster. The detective journey seemed to be a dead end for both the victims and the criminals who disappear. The detective fell into confusion when he faced with his own self. The detective became blind before the ‘disappearance’ and he detected his own detective. The story is full of wisdom. This is typical of the detective story. It was written using the capacity of judgment, logical thinking and intelligence to make the reader pay attention to a journey following a maze to find his answers to the mystery. This is the traditional detective style. To the postmodern detective, it is intellectual in substance, but the reader will notice the intellectual bankruptcy here. More people has much more patience with his reconnaissance mission to finally confront a dreadful truth, all gone and they could ever had grounds to hunt and explain the disappearance. The reader is led on a path with just enough light to get out of the way, the story being an exploration of the writing and itinerary created by writer Paul Auster as submitted here. Created in a certain perspective, it is an entrance into the mysterious world of the unconscious. That is not the detective journey. It is no coincidence that writers have a child – Auster’s son named Daniel, identical to the name Quinn. Did Quinn did not have a main character due to the new fictional Auster name that matched that style? To answer this, we follow that same stage pedigree series. Writer Paul Auster’s life with his wife and son, Daniel, gave birth to the writer Paul Auster, and detective Paul Auster (the character just referred to) in the series, while also giving birth to a Daniel Quinn writer again. Quinn was hired as the husband and wife detective Stillman and Quinn is mistaken for the hired detective Paul Auster. So, is it referred to the writer of the writer’s creative process is also a journey of adventure, the journey to enter and explore a sin or a crime there. When writers try Quinn’s detective role they is also embarking on a new creative adventure. But, when both victims and criminals suddenly disappear, Quinn has nothing to do. He’s all roles and he lays dying in the deserted apartment the couple’s son, Stillman. This character is ‘saved’ by Paul Auster. This suggests that there are more details 64 The pseudo–detective in Postmodern literature referring to Quinn as ‘I’, Auster’s fictional artists. At the end of the work, there is only one who has completed his detective story. 3. Conclusion Under the impact of multi-value insight from postmodern philosophy, there have ever been many changes in postmodern literature. The revolutionary style of writing appears increasingly strong and bold. Postmodernism creates a unique form of creativity, how to perceive the world with deep imagery, all to help people realize that human creativity is not limited to beauty and truth in a world that is not immutable. It is important that readers can enter and participate in the creative journeys herein. REFERENCES [1] Ken Binmore, 2007. Game Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press Inc., New York. [2] Franco Ferrucci, 1983. Murder in the Monastery. The New York Times, June 5, www.nytimes.com. [3] L. H.Martin, H. Gutman and P.H. Hutton (eds), 1988. Truth, Power, Self: An Interview with Michel Foucault (October 25th, 1982). In Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, London: Tavistock. [4] A.R.Lacey, 2005. A Dictionnary of Philosophy. Taylor & Francis e-Library. [5] Jean-Franc¸ois Lyotard, 2010. Postmodern Circumstances. Translated by Ngan Xuyen, Knowledge Publishing House. 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