FROM DUPIN TO OEDIPA: teur or professional, functions as a seeker of truth, of the disentanglement of the THOMAS PYNCHON’S mystery. The denouement generally in- PARODIC TAKE ON volves rational explanations, either with DETECTIVE FICTION the revelation or exposure of the criminal or an alleviating explication which eases 1 tensions gradually generated through the Suradech Chotiudompant narrative.2

Abstract Various writers have attempted to define this popular genre (see also Haycraft, 1946; Nevins, 1970; Knight, 1980; Most and This essay aims to investigate how Thomas Stowe, 1983). Yet most definitions can only Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, when be applicable to certain strands of detective juxtaposed with Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin fiction, since it has undergone a variety of short stories, can be read as a parodic structural and thematic evolutions and any reworking on the genre of detective fiction. attempt to define it by a fixed template By placing the works of the two authors in inevitably risks the danger of simplification. relation to theoretical lines of detective Yu. K. Scheglov (1975:56) attempts to fiction, the essay intends to highlight how analyse detective fiction from a the world-views of the two authors are dis- narratological perspective, dividing the tinctively formed, especially in terms of a narrative into two sub-stories, one inside the hermeneutical search for ultimate mean- other. The inner story, the story of a crime, ing. is placed inside the basic story, which pro- vides the reader with a narrative frame. The Theories of Detective Fiction Ground rules of detective fiction can mostly be identified in the basic story and this Detective fiction makes use of con- prompts the reader to respond to the text in a ventional and normative structures in a specific way. According to Scheglov rather obvious and conscious manner and, (1975:66), the basic story consists of two with its fairly patent formulae (see also main elements: the generic indicators of Cawelti, 1976), its form can be easily detective fiction and the particular distinguished. However, it is difficult to world-view. The indicators of detective define detective fiction and one can only fiction include: provide a rough, if not reductive, definition if one wishes it to be broad 2 This type of ending, which entails rational enough to cover its wide-ranging and explanations of the seemingly inscrutable nuanced spectrum. Yet a skeletal mystery can also be seen in the light of the framework is needed to pave the way for fantastic paradigm of Tzvetan Todorov. The our further analysis. It can be said that detective story, according to Todorov (1975:49-51), falls into the category of the detective fiction centres round a mystery uncanny since the mystery is explained from which a detective, be he or she ama- rationally at the end, while in the narrative of the pure fantastic, such as Henry James’s The 1 Instructor, Department of Comparative Turn of the Screw, the mystery remains Literature, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn unresolved at the end. University, Bangkok

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crime, which tells ‘what really happened’, a) a mystery; b) unsuccessful is equated with ‘story’, the crude account straightforward attempts to solve it; c) waiting to be narrated, while the second a solution reached from some story, that of the investigation, which unexpected angle [...]; d) a gradual explains ‘how the reader (or the narrator) growth of tension as the investigation has come to know about it’, is likened to 3 progresses [...]. ‘plot’, the already narrated story, filtered through such literary devices as point Like Scheglov, Tzvetan Todorov of view, characterisation and other (1977:44-45) maintains that detective narrative techniques. fiction consists of two stories. Yet instead of having one inside the other as Scheglov There is also another significant difference stipulates, he prefers to have them suc- between Scheglov’s and Todorov’s cessive in time: the first, that of the crime, theoretical constructions of the detective ends before the second, that of the investi- genre. Since Scheglov’s theory is mainly gation. Detective fiction also constitutes based on the Sherlock Holmes stories, it can a formal paradox, in which the first story is only be applied in those cases where the significant yet always absent, while the detective is detached from the crime and second story, though insignifi- enjoys the privilege of immunity from his or cant, is yet present. The second story, the her involvement with the mystery. story of the investigation, is normally nar- Perceiving that his theory of the two rated by a friend of the detective and sub-stories can fall into the same trap as the course of the narrative is presented Scheglov, towards the end of his study through the viewpoint of the narrator. To- Todorov distinguishes between two main dorov interestingly links the idea of the types of detective fiction: the whodunnit two stories to the Russian formalist no- and the thriller. His theory of two tion of ‘story’ (fabula) and ‘plot’ (sjuzet) consecutive narratives can only be applied respectively. The first story, that of the to the former, since, in the whodunnit, the first story is more significant yet is 3 It should be noted here that the indicators of suppressed and retold only through the point the detective story proposed by Scheglov are of view of the narrator in the second story. similar to those stipulated by Cawelti. For However, in the latter, the two stories are Cawelti (1976:132), the conditions of the fused together as the reader is no longer told detective genre include: ‘(1) there must be a about a crime anterior to the moment of the mystery, i.e. certain basic past facts about the situation and/or a number of the central narrative; on the contrary, the narrative of characters must be concealed from the reader investigation coincides with that of the and from the protagonist until the end, or, as in crime. ‘Curiosity’, which for Todorov is a the case of the inverted procedural story the form of interest that proceeds from effect to reader must understand that such facts have cause and is dominant in the whodunnit, is been concealed from the protagonist; (2) the substituted in the thriller by ‘suspense’, story must be structured around an inquiry into which is a form of interest that proceeds these concealed facts with the inquirer as from cause to effect. In the thriller, the protagonist and his investigation as the central detective is also subject to a different form action; however, the concealed facts must not of fate: the detective loses the immunity he be about the protagonist himself; (3) the or she enjoys in the whodunnit. The reader concealed facts must be made known to the is unlikely to imagine a detective in the end.’

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whodunnit who get beaten up and cused of committing the crime.4 Unlike the constantly risks his or her life. However, in detective in the whodunnit, whose exclu- the thriller, this loss of immunity is in- sive task is to solve the crime, his counter- grained in the characterisation of the de- part in the suspense novel has more tasks, tective. not only to disentangle the mystery, but also to escape risks he or she constantly Todorov’s theory of detective fiction encounters. Since in the who dunnit the de- becomes more complicated when he tective assumes a more de tached role from introduces the third type: the suspense the rest of the characters who are accused novel. This type of detective fiction of the crime and who are potential crimi- combines the characteristics of the who- nals, this innocent character is basically dunnit and the thriller (Todorov, 1977:50): equated with the reader, who in the same way independently observes the unfolding It keeps the mystery of the whodunnit of the narrative. In the suspense novel, and also the two stories, that of the as in the thriller, however, the detective is past and that of the present; but it involved in the crime as well as the inves- refuses to reduce the second to a tigation, thereby making the narrative more simple detection of the truth. [...] The complex. In other words, there is no longer two types of interest are thus united a locus where an independent observation here — there is the curiosity to learn is produced in this type of detective fic- how past events are to be explained; tion. and there is also the suspense: what will happen to the main characters? Crime writers have also made various These characters enjoyed an attempts to define detective fiction. For in- immunity, it will be recalled, in the whodunnit; here they constantly risk stance, in 1928 S. S. Van Dine laid down twenty rules that distinguish detective their lives. Mystery has a function 5 different from the one it had in the fiction, supporting the idea that detective whodunnit: it is actually a point of 4 departure, the main interest deriving Todorov (1977:51) calls this type of detective from the second story, the one taking fiction ‘the story of the suspect-as-detective’ place in the present. and considers it a sub-type of the suspense novel.

In Todorov’s suspense novel, like his 5 From the twenty rules Van Dine originally thriller, after the detective is integrated into proposed, Todorov (1977:48-50) cites only his the world of other characters, he or she is eight main rules: (1) the novel must have at no longer analogous to the reader due to most one detective and one criminal, and at least the loss of the privilege of ob- one victim (a corpse); (2) the culprit must not be serving from the outside. The detective in a professional criminal, must not be the detec- this kind of novel is so intertwined in the tive, must kill for personal reasons; (3) love has plot that the omission of his or her part in it no place in detective fiction; (4) the culprit must will affect the progress of the narra- have a certain importance: a) in life: not be a tive. The detective is therefore equated butler or a chambermaid, b) in the book: must with other characters and may even be ac- be one of the main characters; (5) everything must be explained rationally; the fantastic not admitted; (6) there is no place for descriptions nor for psychological analysis; (7) with regard to information about the story, the following

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fiction to a certain degree follows a thoughts the reader has been allowed to visible, though not always identical, follow. Agatha Christie challenges this rule pattern. Most of his rules deal with char- in her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, in acterisation, stressing the importance of which the narrator turns out to be the three main agents: a detective, a mur- murderer himself. Knox also postulates that derer, and at least one victim. The mur- the detective himself must not commit the derer then need not be a professional crime; however, this rule is violated by criminal and cannot be the same person as Alain Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes, in the detective. The reason is obvious: which the detective knows he must be at a during the course of the narrative, the certain place and time to catch the criminal, background of each character is gradually but it transpires that when he turns up, he displayed and this exposition will commits the murder himself. eventually reveal the motive as to why the murderer has committed such a crime. The rules set forth by Van Dine and Knox Apart from the identity of the murderer, are a clear example of how attempts to the motive of the crime also plays a central define detective fiction eventually undo part in the fiction. It is, however, debatable themselves, in the same way that how the rigorous norms set up by Van Dine Scheglov’s theory fails to accommodate the can be of practical use when one applies thriller and the hard-boiled novel. It is them to detective fiction. For example, the widely acknowledged that in writing and notion of crime does not restrict itself solely analysing detective stories, conventional to homicide, as Van Dine implies. In fact, rules are difficult to establish since, as in certain mysteries in Sherlock Holmes other literary genres, these rules are stories sometimes involve petty thefts. In constantly challenged and renewed. addition, figures such as chambermaids and Todorov (1977:43) is perhaps too hasty, butlers, which Van Dine deems too arguing that ‘detective fiction, the who- insignificant to be criminals, are hardly to dunnit in particular, is not the one which be found in detective fiction nowadays. The transgresses the rules of the genre, but the list, in other words, needs a thorough one which conforms to them’. Theoretical updating. analyses proposed by these authors mani- fest the difficulties, if not the impossibili- Richard Knox also proposes his ‘Ten Com- ties, of the pursuits of fixed norms of detec- mandments’, of which writers of the detec- tive fiction. The transition from the who- tive genre should be aware (see Ousby, dunnit to the thriller can be one example of 1997:67). Like Van Dine’s twenty rules, how detective fiction changes through time Knox’s guidelines also focus on the the- and any analysis which attempts to find a matic angle, rather than formalist or struc- fixed pattern of detective fiction may be turalist ones proposed by Scheglov or To- doomed from the start. dorov. Some of Knox’s rules are also dated: for example, the first rule maintains that the Edgar Allan Poe and the Tale of criminal must not be anyone whose Ratiocination homology must be observed: ‘author : reader = However dated they may seem, the rules criminal : detective’; (8) banal situations and proposed by Van Dine and Knox do raise solutions must be avoided. For the complete list, one interesting issue. In their strain of de- see Haycraft, 1946:189-93. tective fiction, the focal point is not the in-

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dividual psychology of each character but fiction.7 His imaginary personage, the interactive relationships among them Charles Auguste Dupin, becomes the that eventually form a narrative web. The prototype for later detectives such as Her- reader is not given elaborate details of the cule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes.8 What development of each character, as the pur- distinguishes Dupin from other detectives pose of this kind of fiction is not as much is that he is of a rather intellectual sort, insights into the human psyche as the picking up clues mostly by internalising pleasure derived from knowing who the the process and sorting the problem out in murderer is and why he or she commits the his head. The problem-solving crime. Characters in this type of detective process is, therefore, an internal one. Poe fiction are similar to pieces in a chess game uses Dupin as an embodiment of ana- and their characteristics are not as lytic power, which, he believes, is different important as their functions and positions. from ingenuity. The former requires a high In other words, it becomes a game in which level of intellectuality whereas the writer, as represented by the criminal the latter is, for Poe, nothing but a fanciful who creates a mystery, challenges the element.9 In this line of thought, Poe may reader to find a solution. According to Ian have followed Samuel Taylor Col- Ousby (1997:67):

7 The detective story should not just be However, for most critics, Poe is not the first a puzzle. It should be a game — a inventor of detective fiction. He is considered to ‘great battle of wits between the be one of the writers who popularised the genre. writer and the reader’ — pursued with Knight (1998) traces the origin of detective rigour and frivolity in more or less fiction back to The Newgate Calendar, a collection of tales written in the late eighteenth equal parts. It needs rules, and above century. However, Knight (2000:9) does all it needed a spirit of fair play. maintain that with the figure of Dupin, the

literary detective becomes a fully-formed Their formulae for detective fiction, or character. what Cawelti (1976:99) terms ‘the aes- theticising of crime’, were clearly influ- 8 Dupin appears in three of Poe’s tales: ‘The enced by imaginary tales written by Edgar Murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘The Mystery of 6 Allan Poe , who, for Jorge Luis Borges Marie Roge_t’, and ‘The Purloined Letter’. (1980:73), was the predecessor of detective Another tale, ‘Thou Art the Man’, is also considered by a number of critics to be a detective story (as it is included in Hoch, 1997).

9 According to Poe (1986:191-92), ‘the analytic 6 For Cawelti, Poe is not as much a predecessor power should not be confounded with simple of the detective genre as an interesting transi- ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily tional figure since his version of the detective ingenious, the ingenious man is often story moves strongly towards the aestheticising remarkably incapable of analysis. [...] Between of crime. The origin of the detective story ingenuity and the analytic capability there exists proves to be complex and multiple; it needs to a difference far greater, indeed, than that be- be considered alongside the myths that focus on tween the fancy and the imagination, but of a crime, criminals, detectives, and the police, character very strictly analogous. It will be which then are synthesised with different found, in fact, that the ingenious are always archetypal patterns. fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.’

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eridge’s distinction between ‘imagina- ternal structure to which it adheres. For tion’ and ‘fancy’, proposed in his Bi- Timothy Steele (1982:562), Poe does not ographia Literaria, first published in work from experience to form; on the 1817, more than two decades before Poe contrary, ‘he conceives a pre-established de- published the first of his Dupin trilogy (see sign and then casts about for material to ac- also Coleridge, 1975:167). Intellectu- commodate the design’. This ‘pre- ality, for Poe, is closely linked with Col- established design’ is where the analyti- eridge’s imagination, since imagination, cal faculty comes to be of use: the author for both Romantic writers, constitutes a needs to construct his or her narrative creative faculty, endowed by God, and its cogently and coherently since the reader, aim is to impose order and form upon raw after being provided with ample clues, is materials perceived by the five senses. In encouraged, along with the detective, the same manner, imagination is indispen- to unravel the mystery, chiefly by using the sable in art as it helps the author work on method of deduction. Even though the end- crude experience, enabling him or her ing may not be in conformity with the to give it a proper order and form (see also reader’s guess, it must be consistent with the Brett, 1969). This idea of intellectual imagi- whole course of the narrative.10 The craft of nation is appropriate when placed in our ratiocination can be explained in a historical framework, as detective fiction, expected to manner. According to Stephen Knight be a well-wrought literary form as it were, (1980:42-43): needs meticulous planning and coherence. Poe combines the twin For Poe, detective fiction, or what he nineteenth-century legends of the himself prefers to call ‘the tale of ra- scientist and the artist. [...] One of the tiocination’, works backwards: the author great excitements for the intelligentsia knows the solution to the mystery from the of the period was the growing sense start and tries to work his or her way back to that a sufficiently patient inquirer could the beginning. In ‘The Philosophy of Com- explain the structure of puzzling position’, Poe (1986:480) maintains that for phenomena. Another powerful theme, good artists the act of working backwards is found mostly in art, was that the fully sensitive individual could pass through compulsory: the limits of the physical environment

to see and know at some higher level. [...] every plot, worth the name, must

be elaborated to its dénouement before The combination of artistic and scientific anything be attempted with the pen. It discourses in Poe’s detective narrative, is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its therefore, reflects the faith in humanism; indispensable air of consequence, or that is, the human capability to comprehend causation, by making the incidents, and the complexity of natural or supernatural especially the tone at all points, tend to phenomena. the development of the intention. What is interesting is that the arrangement of details, from the occurrence of the 10 David Van Leer (1983:75) links this notion of mystery to its disentanglement, needs to be self-consistency in Poe’s detective fiction with cogent as well as self-consistent. It need not Poe’s own theory of fiction. Poe’s coherence be exactly true to life, but true to the in- model of truth, he argues, is in practice pertinent to his own principle of ‘the unity of effect’.

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In addition, Poe is also pioneering in his in- literary genres, detective fiction emerged at troduction of the figure of the narrator who the same time as its readers, who responded is not the detective. For Cawelti (1976:83- to the fiction in a specific manner (see also 84), there are certain formal reasons that Hernández Martín, 1995:3-11). Borges necessitate the intermediary figure of the confirms this notion, claiming that in narrator. With this character, writers can not creating detective stories, Poe only misdirect the reader’s attention and institutionalised the reader of detective prevent him or her from solving the crime fiction. The beginning of the essay, ‘The prematurely, they can also make the mo- Detective Story’, sees Borges (1999:492) ment of solution an extremely dramatic attempting to read Don Quijote in the and surprising climax by keeping the reader manner of detective fiction: away from the detective’s point of view. The narrator, for Scheglov (1975:64), also ‘In a place in La Mancha whose name I represents the average reader and is de- do not wish to recall, there lived, not picted as relatively obtuse and mediocre. long ago, a gentleman ...’ Already this However, the narrator should not be ana- reader is full of doubt, for the reader of lysed only in terms of structure, as the detective novels reads with incredulity emergence of this mediatory figure and suspicions, or rather with one also has sociological implications. For particular suspicion. Knight (1980:43-44), it signals the simulta- neous emergence of the individualising For example, if he reads: ‘In a place in La Mancha ..’, he naturally assumes process whereby an individual could that none of it really happened in La also respond to the material in his or Mancha. Then: ‘whose name I do not her own way: wish to recall’ — and why didn’t Cervantes want to remember? [that the narrator] provides a figure of Undoubtedly because Cervantes was identification for the audience is in the murderer, the guilty party. Then: itself an emblem of individualism. [...] ‘not long ago’ — quite possibly the fu- Individualised and especially ture holds even more terrifying things characterised narrators embody the in store. concept that people know the world and exist in it as individuals, not as The reader of detective stories, as Borges part of an integrated, mutually reliant implies, needs to possess a certain degree of society. suspension of belief in everything that is In other words, the emergence of the told to him or her and is supposed to select narrator, who is a friend of (and at the same only relevant hints that can eventually lead time a foil to) the detective, coincides with to the criminal, who carries out a crime the developing bourgeois consciousness, within the rational framework. This particularly of the avid magazine readers tendency towards self-critical reading is also who followed a series of Poe’s tales. supported by Jorge Hernández Martín (1995:11): As we have seen, even though Poe wrote only a handful of detective tales, he set up a The detective story reader is a conscious reader who questions his or relatively new literary creation to offer her own intuitions and provides contemporary readers. In fact, like other tentative evidence for the feeling of

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suspicion on the way to a conclusion. inscrutable mystery. Once this causal law is In some rational manner, the reader applied, evil is reduced to a simple model of must account for feelings and stimulus and response. Truth in Poe’s impressions in terms of facts and narrative, therefore, assumes a distinctive argument. The act makes a critic out of air. According to Van Leer (1993:75): the reader for the purposes of fiction. ‘truth is true not because it corresponds to an external reality but simply because it is In this sense, the reader, therefore, is internally self-consistent and hangs together equated with a detective and both of them (‘cohere’)’. are similarly engaged in their search for 11 Detective fiction, thanks to Poe, becomes rational explanations of the mystery. They an intellectual game between the author need to use the basic method of reading and and the reader, where reason is a interpreting clues, or what Peter Hühn predominant element (see also Caillois, (1987:455) identifies as the ‘hermeneutic 1983). It becomes a stage where hints in- circle’, which ‘involves devising variably lead back to the criminal and there interpretive patterns to integrate signs and are always rational relationships between then using new signs to modify and adjust hints and the eventual discovery of the these patterns accordingly’. To a degree, criminal. The law of cause and effect is this reading process is analogous to the sci- privileged in this type of fiction and the entific method of deduction: Dupin prefers reader is invited to play along, using to deduce conclusions from his own closed clues the detective gradually picks up from system of generalised concepts to bolster his the crime scene, from interviews with in- thinking process. The detective’s closed volved parties, and from various other in- system of deduction can be attributed to his vestigations. Reading Poe’s fiction, the own method of reasoning, which, for Van reader is exposed to an awareness of a cer- Leer (1993:70), ‘depends on the logical in- tain form of attaining truth, a means of evitability of any thought process’. This un- knowing the world. The points at stake in avoidably leads to a relatively simplified reading Poe’s tales are not only who the rendition of the real since the system of criminal is, but also what ‘truth’ and cause and effect is needed in the process of ‘world’ are, how they may be re- detection to explain the seemingly constructed, and what follows from that construction. 11 Van Dine also identifies this analogy in his list of twenty rules. However, it remains to be argued whether the reader identifies himself or herself more with the detective than with the From Dupin to Oedipa narrator. Even though the reader is invited, in terms of formal structure, to identify with the 12 figure of the narrator since the detective’s First published in 1966, Pynchon’s The feelings and preceptions remain largely hidden, Crying of Lot 49 can be seen to follow the the reader is at times discouraged from pattern of detective fiction, especially in the identifying with the narrator as the narrator sense that its female protagonist’s encounters represents a somewhat below average reader, as opposed to the detective who seems to be equipped with a god-like intelligence. In my 12 Part of the novella was originally published in opinion, the identification of the reader is no Esquire in 1965 under the title ‘The World longer static and wavers between the narrator (This One), the Flesh (Mrs Oedipa Maas), and and the detective. the Testament of Pierce Inverarity’.

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with a mysterious underground post system Paradoxically, the more Oedipa discovers represent a search for truth. The novella the traces and signs of the secret organisa- embodies an interesting development of the tion, the more agitated she becomes, unsure detective genre while conforming to the ba- of its existence. Unlike traditional detectives sic paradigm of mystery and an attempt by a who become increasingly certain of the mur- protagonist to unravel it. The fact that the derer upon gathering more clues, Oedipa is protagonist is named Oedipa is telling since, aware that the existence of the organisation for some critics (see Hartman, 1975; may simply be conjured up by her own fan- Grossvogel, 1979), Sophocles’s tragedy tasy and hallucination: Oedipus Rex is hailed as a prototype of detective fiction, with its plot entailing the Either Trystero13 did exist, in its own disentanglement of a mystery (Oedipus be- right, or it was being presumed, ing in adamant search of his father’s killer). perhaps fantasied by Oedipa, so hung In the same way, the origin of The Crying of up on and interpenetrated with the Lot 49 involves the death of Pierce Inverar- dead man’s estate (Pynchon, ity, Oedipa’s ex-lover. However, there re- 1996:75). main certain differences between traditional detective stories and this novella: Oedipa is In this sense, the analogy between her and not intended to be a detective and need not Oedipus is clear, as Mendelson (1978:118) scrutinise the reason for Pierce’s death. Their argues: both begin searching for the remaining connection is that his will requests solutions to their mysteries as almost de- that she be an executor of his estate in San tached observers, only to discover how Narciso. deeply implicated they are in what they find. Unlike Poe’s Dupin, who enjoys As she sets about exploring the property of immunity in his inquests, Oedipa is exposed the real-estate mogul, she is increasingly to the uncertainty surrounding the emer- aware of the existence of an underground, gence of an alternative system that can eas- somewhat anarchic organisation called the ily rob her of sanity. The Crying of Lot 49 Tristero, in which Inverarity may have been thus gravitates towards what Todorov calls involved. The symbol of the organisation is ‘the suspense novel’ since, as the narra- a muted posthorn, marking its status as tive unfolds, Oedipa finds out that not only her own state of mind but also her compan- an alternative, silenced channel of 14 communication. She takes upon herself the ions’ lives are constantly put at risk. responsibility to account for this secret or- ganisation: 13 Pynchon makes it clear throughout the no- If it was really Pierce’s attempt to vella that Tristero can alternatively be spelt leave an organised something behind Trystero, signalling its relation to the word after his own annihilation, then it was ‘tryst’. part of her duty, wasn’t it, to bestow life on what had persisted, [...] to 14 This is evidenced in the apparent suicide bring the estate into pulsing of the director Randolph Driblette, the stelliferous Meaning, all in a soaring disappearance of Metzger her co-executor, the dome around her? (Pynchon, 1996:56) arson at a used bookshop where she found Wharfinger’s text, and the madness to which Dr Hilarius has succumbed.

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Furthermore, the name Oedipa is appropriate since what she is doing can be No hallowed skein of stars can war, I trow, construed as a willingness to let herself be Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero. seduced by her ‘father figure’, Inverarity, to interpret the reality bestowed by him.15 The The reaction the word has on Oedipa is sense of truth and reality can be partially overwhelming: ‘the word hung in the air as seen in his name as it indicates such words an act ended and all lights were for a as ‘verity’ or ‘veracity’.16 In this sense, the moment cut; hung in the dark to puzzle Tristero can be linked to Inverarity’s Oedipa Maas, but not yet to exert the power ‘estate’ on a deeper level, not only in that over her it was to’ (Pynchon, 1996:51). Inverarity possesses stamps that are used in the Tristero system or that he might be Puzzled by the play, Oedipa makes her way directly involved in the organisation itself, backstage to ask the director, Randolph but also because they make Oedipa Driblette, what he knows of Inverarity or (ironically given her search for truth) the secret organisation. Driblette, annoyed question what she means by truth and re- at her interest in the text, rather than in the ality and wonder whether perhaps the Tris- performance as such, retorts: tero is part of Inverarity’s ‘estate’, awaiting her discovery, or is generated out of her fan- ‘You don’t understand’, [Driblette is] tasy and paranoia. It should be noted that getting mad. ‘You guys, you’re like Oedipa first becomes aware of the word Puritans are about the Bible. So hung Tristero when it is uttered in Richard up with words, words. You know Wharfinger’s The Courier’s Tragedy, a where that play exists, not in that file cabinet, not in any paperback you’re Jacobean play that she goes to see with looking for, but’ — a hand emerged Metzger. One of the acts ends as follows from the veil of shower-steam to (Pynchon, 1996:50): indicate his suspended head — ‘in

15 here. That’s what I’m in for. To give Seduction occurs throughout the novella. On the spirit flesh. The words, who cares? their first meeting, Metzger tries to seduce They’re rote noises to hold line bashes Oedipa by asking her to play ‘Strip Botticelli’ with, to get past the bone barriers (Pynchon, 1996:23). The motel where Oedipa around a [sic] actor’s memory, right? stays in San Narciso is called Echo Courts, But the reality is in this head. Mine. pointing to the myth of Narcissus, whose I’m the projector at the planetarium, all appearance seduced the nymph Echo yet whose the closed little universe visible in the love she cannot win. The face of the nymph on circle of that stage is coming out of my a sign in front of the motel is much like Oedipa’s and yet its mythical relationship is mouth, eyes, sometimes other orifices somewhat thwarted: ‘[The nymph on the sign] also’ (Pynchon, 1996:53-54). was smiling a lipsticked and public smile, not quite a hooker’s but nowhere near that of His reply is worthy of being quoted in full any nymph pining away with love either’ since it elicits the dubeity and multiplicity (Pynchon, 1996:16). that surround textual interpretation and a loss of original meaning or ultimate truth. 16 Tony Tanner (1982:57) suggests that ‘the For Driblette, there is no original or name itself can suggest either un-truth or transcendental meaning but a variety of in- in-the-truth; I have seen it glossed as ‘pierces terpretations, dependent upon where they or peers into variety’ and ‘inverse’ and are created. It is the disappearance of centre ‘rarity’.’

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and the substitution of self that are implied To make matters more complicated, the when Driblette says that he is ‘the projector issues of intention and chance are also at the planetarium’. Oedipa’s meeting with brought to light, as Oedipa is never certain the director has significant implications as whether her experiences are actually she starts to realise that perhaps the preordained or whether they are simply existence of the Tristero may arise out of contingent events. This can be seen in the her own construction of reality, of a scene in which, after she meets Metzger and paranoid belief that there must be an he claims that he was once a child actor alternative reality underlying all these named Baby Igor, his past image appears on seemingly relevant traces. This leads her to screen. The contingency of the whole scene write down a haunting question, ‘Shall I amazes Oedipa and makes her wonder: project a world?’, in her memo book, as if to ‘Either he made up the whole thing, Oedipa remind herself that solipsism is somehow thought suddenly, or he bribed the engineer unavoidable. At stake are the related issues over at the local station to run this, it’s all of reading and interpretation: how can part of a plot, an elaborate, seduction, plot’ Oedipa be sure that her understanding is jus- (Pynchon, 1996:19). Oedipa thus wonders tified and how much do paranoia and fan- whether the reality that presents itself to her tasy play a part in her attempt to make sense may not be totally fortuitous, but may of the whole event? Following this line, perhaps be manipulated by a mastermind. Oedipa’s reading can be related to Paul Ri- This is especially stressed towards the end coeur’s concept of reading as ap- of the novella when Mike Fallopian reminds propriation (Ricoeur, 1981:158): Oedipa that perhaps the existence of the Tristero and its accompanying signs and [...] that the interpretation of a text traces may be part of a prank set up by culminates in the self-interpretation of Inverarity: a subject who thenceforth understands himself better, understands himself ‘But there’s another angle too.’ She differently, or simply begins to sensed what he was going to say and understand himself. began, reflexively, to grind together her back molars. A nervous habit she’d For Ricoeur, meaning is no longer a stable developed in the last few days. ‘Has it entity awaiting the reader’s discovery of the ever occured to you, Oedipa, that author’s intention. Rather, it is a product of somebody’s putting you on? That this the interactive clashes between the text and is all a hoax, maybe something the reader, of how readers reveal Inverarity set up before he died themselves in their attempts to appropriate ( Pynchon, 1996:115-16). the text. Truth and meaning thus change every time as the accumulative experience Oedipa somehow knows what Fallopian is of the reader is always disparate. For going to say, as it is what she herself has Oedipa, truth has never before been thought for a long time but has kept at the considered so far-fetched; now that she back of her mind. If the whole thing learns that her own self plays an active part becomes a set-up created particularly for in constructing reality, she realises that her, it means that there is no such thing as ultimate truth may no longer be attainable. ultimate meaning or truth (symbolised in the existence of the Tristero itself). Moreover, it signals that the truth about the

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Tristero is more complicated, espe- to begin, leaving the reader in suspense: ‘the cially considering ‘symmetrical four’ auctioneer cleared his throat. Oedipa settled (Pynchon, 1996:118) explanations back, to await the crying of lot 49’ (Pyn- available to account for Oedipa’s dis- chon, 1996:127). Pynchon thus does not ex- covery: plain which of the symmetrical four expla- nations is right. As with the case of Henry Either you have stumbled indeed, James’s The Turn of the Screw,17 the ending without the aid of LSD or other indole is not so much an opening of possibili- alkaloids, on to a secret richness and ties of various endings as a confirmation concealed density of dream; on to a that perhaps the reader will never know network by which X number of what the ending is, in the same way that Americans are truly communicating they will never know what truth and reality whilst reserving their lies [...]. Or you are.18 are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you, so expensive According to Mendelson (1978:135), the and elaborate [...]. Or you are fantasy- number 49 of the novella’s title has a ing some such plot, in which case you religious subtext, especially if one views the are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull (Pynchon, 1996:117-18). ending as a parody of Pentecost: Because Pentecost is the Sunday For Oedipa, these four equally plausible seven weeks after Easter — forty-nine explanations of the whole phenomenon days. But the word Pentecost derives from the Greek for ‘fiftieth’. The point to the fact that reality and truth can be crying — the auctioneer’s calling — constructed, influenced, and even of the forty-ninth lot is the moment manipulated by her own self, by her before a Pentecost revelation, the end delusion and paranoia, by other people who of the period in which the miracle is have vested interests, or simply by chance. in a state of potential, not yet mani- This realisation of the flimsy nature of fest. reality makes Oedipa aware of the void beneath the web of events that make up her Number 49 thus signals an approximation to reality: the moment of revelation; yet this critical moment seems to be frozen in time as the That night she sat for hours, too numb revelation never seems to arrive.19 This is in even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, 17 The manager of Echo Courts is called Miles, was the void. There was nobody who the same name as that of the boy protagonist in could help her. Nobody in the world. The Turn of the Screw. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead (Pynchon, 18 In Frank Kermode’s words (1978:166), ‘that 1996:118). plot is pointed to as the object of some possi- ble annunciation; but the power is in the point- This sophisticated view of reality is also ing, not in any guarantee’. highlighted in the novella’s conclusion when Oedipa appears at an auction upon 19 For Tanner (1982:63-64), this is the reason hearing that a Tristero representative may why Pynchon chooses to use the word ‘crying’ turn up to buy the stamps. The narrative rather than ‘cry’ in the novella’s title: ‘Oedipa comes to a close just as the auction is about is doomed to be the recipient/percipient of an ever-increasing number of clues which point to

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line with Oedipa’s gradual recognition that perhaps ultimate truth may never be Pynchon’s novella serves as a parodic reached. Reality, for Pynchon, is thus a reflection of the tradition of detective fic- complex concept that cannot be taken for tion as a whole. Etymologically, the word granted. Unlike Poe, Pynchon does not ‘parody’ has its root in the Greek noun guarantee that an accumulation of hints will ‘parodia’, meaning ‘counter-song’ (see also lead automatically to the unfolding of a Hutcheon, 1985:32). Yet, when looked at mystery; in contrast, clues here lead to closely, the meaning of the term is nothing but further mystification, confusing ambiguous, since the prefix ‘para’ can mean Oedipa and the reader alike. According to ‘counter’ and ‘against’ as well as ‘beside’. Mendelson (1978:123): Linda Hutcheon (1985:6), taking this direction, posits that parody conveys a Pynchon’s novel uses mechanisms sense of repetition with difference and borrowed from the detective story to defines parody as: produce results precisely the opposite of those in the model. Where the a form of imitation, but imitation object of a detective story is to reduce characterised by ironic inversion, not a complex and disordered situation to always at the expense of the parodied simplicity and clarity, and in doing so text. [...] Parody is, in another to isolate in a named locus the formulation, repetition with critical disruptive element in the story’s distance, which marks difference world, The Crying of Lot 49 starts rather than similarity. with a relatively simple situation, and then lets it get out of the heroine’s Parody then implies both sameness and control: the simple becomes complex, difference at the same time, with the responsibility becomes not isolated emphasis on the latter. In the same man- but universal, the guilty locus turns ner, Pynchon partially imitates generic out to be everywhere, and individual conventions of detective fiction such as the clues are unimportant because neither introduction of mystery and a series of clues nor deduction can lead to the inquests conducted by an inquisitive solution. protagonist. Yet the ending of Pynchon’s

novella is far from traditional as the de- While the ending of Poe’s detective stories tective (and, by proxy, the reader) is left always promise the revelation of a suspended in a frozen moment awaiting murderer, that of The Crying of Lot 49 revelation. promises no such thing and leaves the reader in limbo. If the reality of Poe’s world In twisting the ending and circumventing is clearly substantiated by the laws of cause our expectations, Pynchon imparts an and effect, Pynchon’s version of reality does ideological deconstruction of traditional nothing but undermine these laws by show- detective fiction. In general, the detective ing how we mediate and manipulate our genre is regarded as a triumph of reason own realities. over chaos, a long-brewed product of the Enlightenment. From Poe to Conan Doyle, other possible clues which point to other the detective had been provided with a possible clues which ... there is no end to it. god-like intelligence and legendary The ‘cry’ that might have ended the night is analytical powers that almost always replaced by a ‘crying’ that can only extend it.’

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helped him or her to find a solution to operate effectively in every case, either be- every mystery. For José Fernández Vega cause reality may be solipsistically con- (1996:50-51, my translation), the detection ceptualised or the causal chains may be is in a sense a way to explore the world manipulated and influenced. At any rate, with the privileged use of reasoning: human reason is shown to be defective in its claim to interpret natural phenomena; in Detection is an aesthetic act of dis- addition, its limits are also highlighted, covery by means of reasoning. The especially because reason, in fact, is noth- world, which lacks other meaning, ing but a product of human projection, a provides an occasion to exercise the wish to impose order upon the world of intellect and to test the reasoning that chaos. Pynchon’s novella may be qualified is used to find out causal chains: an as what Cawelti (1976:137) terms an aesthetic allegory of rationalist ‘antidetective’ story, since it is a demon- philosophy. [...] The detective is only stration that order can no longer prevail an instrument of unilateral reason and over chaos, as Michael Holquist this explains why the detective is a (1971:155) also argues: character which lacks human density

but shows a great capability for instead of familiarity, it gives travesty. strangeness, a strangeness which more

often than not is the result of jumbling For Cawelti (1976:97), this is clearly the well known patterns of classical shown in the ways detective writers choose detective stories. Instead of to present the settings: reassuring, they disturb. They are not an escape, but an attack. [...] the contrast between the locked room or the lonely country house and In other words, The Crying of Lot 49 ex- the outside world constitutes a poses the reader to the fact that there are symbolic representation of the relation no longer causal chains that incorporate between order and chaos, between ultimate meaning. Perhaps behind these surface rationality and hidden depths facades of realities already interpreted and of guilt. [...] By solving the secret of mediated by human beings lies the locked room, the detective brings the threatening external world under nothingness, the nada (the Spanish word control so that he and his assistant can for nothing) that Oedipa’s husband is return to the peaceful serenity of his terrified of, hence the organisation name library, or can restore the pleasant Tristero, signalling tristesse, a lingering social order of the country house. sadness upon recognising that there is no transcendental meaning or ultimate truth to Thus, traditional detective fiction (i.e. hold on to. Poe’s) is a representation of the triumph of order over chaos, of a return to the pre- In essence, The Crying of Lot 49 can be vailing social status quo after a brief pe- construed as a testament of how the riod of confusion and muddle. detective genre has so far progressed and of how its progress in terms of structure As a form of parody, The Crying of Lot 49 and theme has philosophical implications. attempts to demonstrate that this is not Unlike Poe’s, Pynchon’s weltanschauung always the case. In reality, reason may not signals that the belief in the ‘Word’ has al-

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ready receded; in its place are ‘clues’ that Detective Fiction and Literary The- Oedipa uncovers and utilises to create her ory, ed. by Glenn W. Most and Wil- version of meaningful truth, no longer liam W. Stowe, pp. 1-12. San Diego: ‘Truth’ but at least a truth that is justified Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. by her own circumstances.20 In this sense, The Crying of Lot 49 can be regarded as a parody of the detective genre, especially in Castillo, Debra A. 1991. Borges and its claim to the truth, to the objective and Pynchon: The Tenuous Symmetries explanatory powers of reason, and to the of Art. In New Essays on The Crying faithful obligation to overlook the essential of Lot 49, ed. by Patrick O’Donnell, void that lies underneath. pp. 21-46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. References Cawelti, John G. 1976. Adventure,

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