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The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon's Postmodern

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The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon's Postmodern 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 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:18:45AM via free access From Dupin to Oedipa 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.’ Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:18:45AM via free access 69 MANUSYA: Jouranl of Humanities 8.1, 2005 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.
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