THE POSTMODERN DETECTIVE

IN PAUL AUSTER, CITY OF

GLASS (1985)
WILLIAM SPANOS CITING HEIDEGGER’S
BEING AND TIME (1927)
‘In dread, as we say, “one feels something uncanny.” What
is this “something” and this “one”? We are unable to say
what gives “one” that uncanny feeling. All things, and
we with them, sink into a sort of indifference. But not in
the sense that everything disappears; rather, in the very
act of drawing away from us everything turns towards
us…There is nothing to hold on to. The only thing that
remains and overwhelms us whilst what-is slips away, is
this “nothing”.’

William Spanos, ‘The Detective and the Boundary: some

notes on the postmodern literary imagination’ in
boundary 2, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn 1972)
 ‘For just as the form of the detective story
has its source in the comforting certainty
that an acute “eye”, private or otherwise,
can solve the crime with resounding
finality by inferring causal relationships
between clues which point to it…so the
“form” of the well-made positivistic
universe is grounded in the equally
comforting certainty that the scientist
and /or psychoanalyst can solve the
immediate problems by the inductive
method, a process involving the inference
of relationships between discontinuous
“facts” that point to or lead straight to an
explanation of the “mystery”, the “crime”
of contingent existence.’ (p.150)
William Spanos, ‘The Detective and the
Boundary: some notes on the postmodern
Sherlock Holmes
literary imagination’ in boundary 2, Vol. 1, illustrated by Sidney
No. 1 (Autumn 1972) Paget 1891
SPANOS
 ‘thepostmodern strategy of decomposition
exists to generate rather than to purge pity
and terror; to disintegrate, to atomise
rather than to create a community. In the
more immediate language of
existentialism, it exists to generate anxiety
or dread…’ (p.155)
TODAY…
The detective in relation to:
 Language and meaning: traditional and post-
structuralist views of language
 Authorship and authority
LANGUAGE
ADAM NAMING THE ANIMALS: (PETERBOROUGH
BESTIARY) PRELAPSARIAN VIEW OF LANGUAGE

‘Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every
beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and
brought them to the man to see what he would call
them. And whatever the man called every living creature,
that was its name’ (Genesis 2:19)
PAUL AUSTER, CITY OF GLASS
 ‘Adam’s one task in the Garden had been to invent
language, to give each creature and thing its name. In
that state of innocence, his tongue had gone straight to
the quick of the world. His words had not been
merely appended to the things he saw, they had
revealed their essences, had literally brought them to
life. A thing and its name were interchangeable. After
the fall, this was no longer true. Names became
detached from things; words devolved into a collection
of arbitrary signs; language had been severed from God.’
PIETER BRUEGEL, THE TOWER OF
BABEL (1563)
FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE: INTRODUCTION TO
GENERAL LINGUISTICS (1910): IN RIVKIN AND
RYAN LITERARY THEORY: AN ANTHOLOGY
THE SIGN

SIGNIFIER
(word/image)
i.e. the word for or
image of a horse
--------------------------------------------------

SIGNIFIED
(concept)
ie the concept of
what a horse is
JACQUES DERRIDA: BUT DO SIGNIFIERS
ATTACH TO SIGNIFIEDS?

‘I have forgotten my umbrella.’

Language conveys and obscures

meaning
 BARBARA JOHNSON ‘WRITING’ IN RIVKIN AND
RYAN EDS., LITERARY THEORY: AN
ANTHOLOGY (BLACKWELL 2017)
 ‘… the search for the signified can only take the form of
a sliding along a chain of signifiers. In other words there
is no one-to-one link between signifier and signified but
rather an “effect of signified” generated by the
movement from one signifier to another.’
 ‘…speech, like writing, is based on a différance (a
Derridean neologism meaning both “deferment” and
“difference” between signifier and signified inherent in
the sign. Speakers do not beam meanings directly from
one mind to another.’
DERRIDA IN A VERY SMALL
NUTSHELL…
 ‘Derrida is … arguing that there is no way to conceive,
imagine or even perceive ‘the world’ without stubbing
our toes on the question of language. Put very crudely,
Derrida suggests that there is no access to the world
except in the broadest sense through language.
‘Language’ here need not be simply verbal, but may
include everything that works as a system of signs… -
there is the language of eyes, gestures, touch, a
complex olfactory system, and so on.’
 ‘There is no outside-text.’

Bennett and Royle, ‘The text and the world’ in An

Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Oxford
Routledge 2014)
THE SIGNIFIER

Stillman
‘Peter Stillman’: Jr or Sr?
Which is father, which son?
Which is the origin?
How do we read ‘still’ and ‘man’? How do
we read them in combination?
STILLMAN CITES ALICE THROUGH THE
LOOKING GLASS
 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said,
in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what
I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you
can make words mean so many different
things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty
Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that’s all.'
JACQUES DERRIDA, ‘STRUCTURE, SIGN AND PLAY IN THE
DISCOURSE OF THE HUMAN SCIENCES’ IN DAVID LODGE
ED., MODERN CRITICISM AND THEORY (1988)

 ‘There are thus two interpretations of

interpretation…The one seek to decipher,
dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin
which escapes play and the order of the
sign…The other, which is no longer
turned toward the origin, affirms play and
tries to pass beyond …[the dream] of full
presence, the reassuring foundation, the
origin and the end of play.’
CITY OF GLASS
Semantic cityscape
City as text
Text as city
Glass: transparent or a mirror?

Writer as detective
Detective as writer
Writing as detection
Detection as writing
CITY OF GLASS
 ‘This picture made Quinn think of a bird, a bird of prey
perhaps with its wings spread, hovering aloft in the air.
A moment later this reading seemed far-fetched to him.
The bird vanished, and in its stead there were only two
abstract shapes…Quinn paused for a moment to ponder
what he was doing. Was he scribbling nonsense? Was he
feeble-mindedly frittering away the evening or was he
trying to find something?...It seemed to him he was
looking for a sign. He was ransacking the chaos of
Stillman's movements for some glimmer of cogency…
He wanted there to be a sense to them, no matter how
obscure.’ (p. 69)
T. TODOROV, ‘THE TYPOLOGY OF DETECTIVE
FICTION’ IN LODGE ED., MODERN CRITICISM AND
THEORY (LONDON: LONGMAN 1988)

‘The first [story], that of the crime, is in fact the

story of an absence…the second has no
importance in itself, it serves only as the
mediator between the reader and the story of the
crime. Theoreticians of detective fiction have
always agreed that style, in this type of literature,
must be perfectly transparent, imperceptible; the
only requirement it obeys is to be simple, clear,
direct.’
TODOROV…
 But what and when is the crime?
 Is there a crime? Or is the crime yet to come?

 Who is the criminal?

 Who is the victim?

 What is the resolution?

 What is the role of the un-named narrator who finds

Quinn’s notebook and tells the story?
 Which is Todorov’s first story and which the second?
NAMES AND IDENTITIES
 ‘Paul Auster’: name on the jacket of the book; character
in the novel; Paul Auster detective agency; Quinn as Paul
Auster
 Stillman Sn and Jnr

 Virginia Stillman, textual noir double (femme fatale)

 Quinn’s pseudonym is William Wilson, the title of an

1839 Poe short story about a double
 Auster’s son, Daniel, and Quinn’s dead son

 Quinn as double of Stillman Sn and Jnr

QUINN…
• detective - criminal
• alive - dead
• real - textual
• father - son
• absent - present
• sign - origin
• author - text
• William Wilson-Max Work
• self – other
• sane – mad
• imprisoned -free

• A double of: Stillman Sr and Jr; of Auster the

writer and Auster the detective; of William
Wilson; of Max Work
THE AUTHOR AND AUTHORITY
ROLAND BARTHES, ‘THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR’
(1967) IN THE RUSTLE OF LANGUAGE (OXFORD:
BLACKWELL 1986)
‘…the Author is supposed to feed the book — that is, he
pre-exists it, thinks, suffers, lives for it; he maintains
with his work the same relation of antecedence a father
maintains with his child. Quite the contrary, the
modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his
text; he is in no way supplied with a being which
precedes or transcends his writing, he is in no way the
subject of which his book is the predicate; there is no
other time than that of the utterance, and every text is
eternally written here and now.’
CITY OF GLASS
 ‘Inthe triad of selves that Quinn had
become, Wilson served as a kind of
ventriloquist, Quinn himself was the
dummy and Work was the animated voice
that gave purpose to the
enterprise….Work had become a presence
in Quinn’s life, his interior brother, his
comrade in solitude.’
‘THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR’
‘ We know now that a text consists not a of a line of words,
releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message”
of the Author-God) but of a multi-dimensional space in
which are married and contested several writings, none
of which is original: the text is a fabric of quotations
resulting from a thousand sources of culture.
[The writer’s] sole power is to mingle writings, to counter
some by others, so as never to rely on just one; if he
seeks to express himself, at least he knows that the
interior “thing” he claims to “translate” is itself no more
than a ready-made lexicon, whose words can only be
explained through other words, and this ad infinitum.’
‘THE TEXT IS A FABRIC OF
QUOTATIONS…’
 Genre of detective fiction
 Quinn’s notebook
 Stillman’s notebook
 Henry Dark’s text on Babel
 The novel, City of Glass
 HD: Henry Dark, Humpty Dumpty and H.D.
 Bible
 Alice in Wonderland
 Paradise Lost
 Don Quixote
 Poe, ‘William Wilson’
 Hawthorne eg ‘Wakefield’
 Montaigne’s essays
 Charles Baudelaire (and his essay, ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ on the
flaneur)
 Walter Benjamin (eg Arcades Project, the rag-picker)