Self-Referentiality As Metafictionality in Detective Fiction

IF ONLY THIS WERE A DETECTIVE NOVEL Self-Referentiality as Metafictionality in Detective Fiction Malcah Effron Thesis submitted towards the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics at Newcastle University, February 2010 Supervisor: Dr. Stacy Gillis Abstract This thesis constitutes the first attempt to examine formally the use of self-referential forms in the detective genre. By focusing detective fiction’s self-referential invocation of the genre within its narratives, it explores the relation between generic boundaries and the boundaries between reality and fictionality. Because the self-referential moments in detective fiction maintain the realistic representation of the narrative frame, they unselfconsciously indicate the textuality of the detective form, so they never wholly expose the disjuncture associated with metafiction. This creates an impression rather than an awareness of metafictionality. These self-referential moments in detective fiction directly relate to critical explication of metafiction because they negotiate the boundaries of reality and fictionality, particularly as implied in fictional narrative. Since these forms appear throughout detective fiction, my project tracks this self-referential examination of the boundaries of reality and fictionality across subgenre. As this examination continues throughout these forms, self-referentiality in detective fiction suggests that the nature of reality is the one mystery that the detective genre has not— and perhaps cannot—solve. To explore this, Chapter One considers self-referential statements that explicitly acknowledge detective fiction and its tropes, which I call overt self-referentiality. Chapter Two broadens the criteria, examining intrageneric intertextuality, where the texts refer to classic examples of detective conventions. Chapter Three explores the self-referentiality implicit in the figure of the detective protagonist who is a detective writer. The self-referentiality in these moments metafictively engages with the boundaries of text and criticism and of reality and fictionality. By considering how these moments work simultaneously to construct and deconstruct the boundaries of the genre, this study of self-referentiality provides a method for considering deviations as a means of underscoring, rather than simply undermining, our understanding of what constitutes a novel. As it exposes the critical analysis of literary construction embedded within the detective genre, this thesis challenges both the division between the popular and the literary and the dominant association of metafictionality with experimental art, revealing the philosophical debates about the nature of reality in literary realms not traditionally considered as metafictional. ii No literary man in his right mind and under ordinary conditions is going to take three years from his life to study detective fiction. S. S. Van Dine (1928) iii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v INTRODUCTION 1 SETTING THE SCENE 4 CAST OF CHARACTERS 19 THE BODY 59 CHAPTER ONE – ELABORATE EXCUSES 66 DENYING THE FICTIVE 74 ASSERTING THE REAL 88 DENYING THE FICTIVE AND ASSERTING THE REAL 105 EFFECTS OF ELABORATE EXCUSES 122 CHAPTER TWO – INTERTEXTUAL ENCOUNTERS OF THE INTRAGENERIC KIND 126 INVOKING INTRAGENERIC CONVENTIONS 133 INTRODUCING INTERTEXTUAL FIGURES 155 INDEXING DETECTIVE FICTION AUTHORS 170 IMPLICATIONS OF INTRAGENERIC INTERTEXTUAL ENCOUNTERS 189 CHAPTER THREE – MURDER, THEY WROTE 192 (T EXTUAL ) REALITY AS (A) FICTION 202 (T EXTUAL ) REALITY AS “B AD ” FICTION 222 (T EXTUAL ) REALITY WRITTEN AS FICTION 233 WRITING THEIR CONCLUSIONS 254 DENOUEMENT 258 GATHERING THE SUSPECTS 259 RESOLUTION 262 WORKS CITED 266 iv Acknowledgments Between 2006 and 2009, this thesis was written with the generous support of the Newcastle International Postgraduate Scholarship , and I am grateful for this financial assistance. I have also been incredibly blessed by the love and support of my parents, Rochelle Adler and Mark Effron , who have made it both possible and easy to come to England and complete my Ph.D. Also, special thanks to my mother for introducing me to the detective genre and encouraging me in this pursuit. As in all things, she was correct about my research: I should have started keeping notes when I was sixteen. I owe a great debt of thanks to my friends and colleagues who have supported me, intellectually and emotionally in all my endeavors throughout the doctoral studentship. While all my friends have made the Ph.D. a rich and rewarding experience, I offer a special thanks to those who went above and beyond and helped me edit this thesis: Victoria Adams , Sarah Burton , Katherine Farrimond , Rebecca Gill , Dr. Siân Harris , Talya Leodari , Margaret Love , Amy Slowik , Maureen Sunderland , and Ellen Turner . In addition to these friends and editors, I owe an irreparable debt of thanks to my best friend and principal editor, Vanessa Guglielmo , who has read and corrected the first draft of everything I have written since 2004. Most importantly, my sincerest thanks to my supervisor, Dr. Stacy Gillis , who has advised and encouraged me through this thesis and the larger world of academia in an official capacity since 2006 and unofficial capacity for even longer. Stacy was the first to show me that it is possible to write both intelligently and unapologetically about detective fiction. For all her help, but especially for this, I am immensely grateful. v Introduction ‘Because,’ the doctor [Dr. Fell] said frankly, ‘we’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool a reader by pretending we’re not. Let’s not invent elaborate excuses to drag in a discussion of detective stories. Let’s candidly glory in the noblest pursuits possible to characters in a book.’ —John Dickson Carr , The Three Coffins (1935) Because of Dr. Fell’s recognition of his place in a detective novel, John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins explicitly breaks from realistic, or mimetic, narration into metafictional self-consciousness, locating a reader’s extratextual position in relation to them. 1 By shifting the textual criminal investigation to a metatextual discussion of detective story patterns, Dr. Fell’s comment anticipates Tzvetan Todorov’s foundational criticism of detective fiction as a form where “[w]e have no need to follow the detective’s ingenious logic to discover the killer—we need merely refer to the much simpler law of the author of murder mysteries” (86). The epigraph has come to serve as detective fiction scholars’ benchmark for self-referentiality. 2 But, rather than exploring such statements that interrupt the narrative, this thesis examines the self-referential statements criticized in the epigraph, those that occur when the narratives pretend they are not detective novels. This thesis thus explores moments that self-referentially, yet 1 In this novel (also published as The Hollow Man by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom), Dr. Fell investigates two murders that are variations on the locked- room trope, as they occur at approximately the same time, with the same weapon, in two different locations, with fresh snow separating the two places. This allows for Fell’s extended exposition on the locked-room trope that follows the epigraph. Summary footnotes will appear with the first mention of each text in the thesis and will not be repeated in each chapter. 2 Some of these critiques are analyzed later in the introduction (see page 2). Others include Robert Champigny’s appendix on Dr. Fell in What Will Have Happened (1977) and Martin Priestman’s reference to this passage in Detective Fiction and Literature (1991). 1 unselfconsciously, invoke the genre within the narrative frame. This self-referentiality, which critics also address in its similar form of self-reflexivity, indicates moments where a detective novel refers to generic forms within the narrative. When these comments break the mimetic frame, they behave metafictively, as they expose generic self- consciousness engaging with the boundaries between reality and fictionality and between fiction and criticism. This textual self-consciousness is predominantly assumed the domain of experimental fiction, so these anomalies in genre fiction have received much critical consideration. 3 By focusing instead on moments that do not break the narrative frame, and thus simultaneously create a mimetic and a metafictive experience, this thesis explores the relation between generic boundaries and the boundaries of reality and fictionality. Because of its self-consciousness, critics frequently consider the epigraph’s self- referentiality, but Lee Horsley rejects the idea that this self-referentiality implies metafictionality. She claims that Carr’s work “is not a novel that seeks to destabilize our sense of the outside world. [The epigraph] might strike us as distinctly postmodern [but it] is very much part of the […] self-referential world of ‘classic detective fiction’” (12). Horsley limits detective fiction’s self-referentiality both to a basic plot structure and to a subgenre, namely the “classic” puzzle-oriented whodunit. 4 These limits echo Carl 3 See the previous footnote for examples of such attention. 4 Many terms are used to describe the classic detective narrative that rose to preeminence in the period between the two world wars; I refer to novels of these varieties as whodunits. These novels emphasize the investigation of murder in a closed setting with a defined cast list of suspects, as exemplified by earlier writers

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