Ida Arnold and the Detective Story: Reading Brighton Rock

Alibis of the Police D. A. Miller M URDER GETS PRIORITY,’’says a criminologist in a novel by P. D. James,1and indeed, whatever might be implied in the name of the genre, the so-called detective story (or, in French, “roman policier”) gives structural precedence not to the police (by which I mean here either official agents or the private detectives who often take their place), but to the crime whose violent yet mysterious commission authorizes their appearance. The activities of the police, however much in evidence, are strictly secondary, derived from the first, original fact of crime. The structure of detective fiction—act one, the crime; act two, the police—thus provides the police with a justification: that they “go after” a criminal most importantly signifies that they come afterwards, in response to an already demonstrated need for them. And if crime is the first fact in the structure of detective fiction, it is also in a sense the last. For it is with the full predication of crime, with all that is encompassed in the “apprehension” of its agent, that the detective story —along with, of course, the activities of the detective—comes to conclu­ sion. Having called for the police, crime as it were remains on hand to supervise their activities, orienting and limiting their intervention to a specific task that lasts only so long as its object goes unmet. Capable of conferring on the police their raison d’être, crime also grants them a raison de ne plus être, bringing them forth no more magically than it eventually arranges for them to disappear. A theory of detective fiction that is content to respect this structure finds no trouble in confirming both the priority of crime and the conse­ quent secondariness of the police. To take a single, but prominent exam­ ple, Tzvetan Todorov locates the structure of detective fiction in the asymmetrical interplay of two stories: “l’histoire du crime,” which is primary and essential, but unhappily missing or lacunary; and “l’histoire de l’enquête,” which is secondary and inessential, but fully in evidence.2 1. P. D. James, Death of an Expert Witness (New York: Fawcett Popular Library, 1977), p. 29. 2. Tzvetan Todorov, “Typologie du roman policier,” in Poétique de la Prose (Paris: Seuil, 1971), pp. 57-59. Vol.XXVI, No. 2 37 L ’E sprit C réateur The “plot” of the narrative (“l’histoire de l’enquête”) would consist in the pursuit of its own “story” (“l’histoire du crime”). Theoretically, too, the police are thus reduced to a mere instrumentality, what Propp would call a donor or Henry James a ficelle, whose function is exhausted in securing the full articulation of crime. In what follows, it will not be a question of denying the priority of crime in detective fiction, but rather of seeing this incontestable structural effect in terms of its strategic func­ tioning, as the keystone of a popular mythology, within the modern organization of social power. “Murder gets priority,” says the crim­ inologist in P. D. James; to which someone replies with relief, “Thank God something does.” It has always been a paradox that a genre con­ cerned with violent crime speaks so convincingly a rhetoric of reassur­ ance that few things in life are felt to be as comforting as settling down with “a good murder mystery.” From the perspective of the “strategic” reading of the genre undertaken here, this comfort will not be derived (as is usual) from the triumph of rationality, but instead from the successful occultation of power. And if comfort always also implies an anxiety that it allays, then the anxiety inspiring the genre will have its source less in the discrete moments of crime than in the continuous filiations of a general social discipline. To elaborate these issues, we take them up where detective fiction best raises them; in its notoriously, suspiciously secondary theme of the police. Regularly, of course, the theme of the police comes announced in detective fiction as the scandal of the police, their violent, violating presence there where they are not ordinarily supposed to be. “The police in the house!” The maids scream...

Literary studies and memory studies have in common that the main objects of their interest, literature and memory, may be broken down into heuristic triads: author/text/reader and encoding/storing/retrieval, respectively. The two triads may be compared historically and even blended metaphorically, the latter being a procedure present in most human discourses, including science (see Turner 2002; Lakoff and Johnson 2003). The metaphorical blend of memory with literature, where memorizing is the source domain and writing is the target domain, has been indirectly present in Western thought since Plato’s wax tablet (see Draaisma 2001), influencing the way memory is conceptualized and explained. The opposite blend, where writing is the source domain and memorizing is the target domain, would conceptualize the writer as the encoder of meaning that is stored in a text and later recalled by a reader.1 The second metaphor has not been used nearly as widely as the first one, and the most obvious reason for that would be that the metaphor applies fully only to the writer who remembers the text that he or she had written, which limits the usefulness of the metaphor. But the primacy of the author as the most privileged interpreter of the text has been disputed for a long time in literary theory, at least since Wimsatt and Beardsley (1998 [1954]) succinctly labeled the phenomenon “intentional fallacy.” Furthermore, different interpretations of any literary text make it a reconstructive effort towards meaning constructed by various readers (the common wisdom

Graham Greene's description of his conflicting intentions regarding structure and content of The Heart of Matter reveals quandary of combining two novels into one. In his introduction to 1971 edition he writes: Two very different novels began on same balcony with same character, and I had to choose which to write. One was novel I wrote; other was to have been an entertainment. I had long been haunted by possibility of a crime story in which criminal was known to reader, but detective was carefully hidden, disguised by false clues which would lead reader astray until climax. The story was to be told from point of view of criminal, and detective would necessarily be some kind of undercover agent.... When I left Wilson on balcony and joined Scobie I plumped for novel. (xiii) But as in Brighton Rock ostensible shedding of one form for another - replacement of a thriller with a serious novel(1) - only succeeds in stripping away surface trappings of an ordinary suspense or detective story, such as focus on a crime and a subsequent investigation and pursuit, for novel still resembles a thriller in its growing atmosphere of spying and suspicion, trust and distrust, centered on Scobie's attempts to hide his adultery and reconcile his desire to remain uncompromised with his dealings with Syrian trader, Yusef. Scobie traces his affection for West Africa to his sense that nature hasn't had time to disguise itself.... Here you could love human beings nearly as God loved them, knowing worst: you didn't love a pose, a pretty dress, a sentiment artfully assumed (31). Despite his love for this lack of artifice, however, Scobie too will become an inhabitant of country of lies; his increasing need to hide his actions is directly proportionate to breakdown of his ability to trust anyone or believe in anything: seemed to Scobie one of qualities of deceit that you lost sense of trust. If I can lie and betray, so can others (269). It is this special quality of distrust that is core landscape of novel, and though it is a topography which is displayed in other Greene works, here it finds its most emblematic representation.(2) The figure of a police officer becoming a symbol of dishonesty or questionable ethics is part of a larger pattern in Greene's writing of subverting role of forces of detection, be they officials of police or private investigators. This subversion can take form of implied incompetence, as with Mather in A Gun for Sale and Rennit in The Ministry of Fear, or it can be a questioning of moral authority, as with Ida in Brighton Rock or lieutenant in The Power and Glory. The Heart of Matter, while it suggests Scobie's commitment to his job, also immediately challenges his efficacy and policing power. Scobie is quite self-conscious about what his work entails, and he believes that it is a vocation requiring perceptiveness and a strong sense of justice; asked by Helen Rolt how he knows about her stamp album, he replies, |That's my job. a policeman' (159), and in his dialogue with God he states, I'm not a policeman for nothing - responsible for order, for seeing is done (305). Maria Couto asserts that the novel does not explore ineffectiveness of [Scobie's] role as arbiter of justice (80), but I would argue that Greene does indicate, on a number of occasions, Scobie's weaknesses in that area; years of being a police officer in far reaches of Africa have left Scobie with a sense of his own deep limitations, especially in mediating local housing disputes: At beginning of his service Scobie had flung himself into these investigations; he had found himself over and over in position of a partisan, supporting as he believed poor and innocent tenant against wealthy and guilty house-owner. …

Reading comprehension is a multi-dimensional process that includes the reader, the text, and factors associated with the activity of reading. Most research and theories of comprehension are based primarily on research conducted with monolingual English speakers (L1). The present study was designed to investigate the cognitive and linguistic factors that have an influence on reading comprehension in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers. The cognitive aspects of reading comprehension among L1 speakers and ESL speakers in the seventh grade were investigated. The performance of both groups was compared and the role of some relevant processes, including word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, working memory, and morphological and syntactic awareness were assessed. Within this sample, three groups were examined: (1) children with poor comprehension (PC) in the absence of word reading difficulties (2) children with poor word reading and poor comprehension (poor readers, PR) (3) and children with both good word reading and comprehension abilities (good comprehenders, GC). The results demonstrated that a variety of cognitive processes, such as working memory and phonological, syntactic, and morphological awareness are important for reading comprehension and compromised in poor comprehenders. The GC group performed better than the PC group on all of the cognitive measures, indicating that comprehension depends on a variety of phonological, memory and linguistic processes and that adequate word recognition skill are important for reading comprehension. The prevalence of the ESL and L1 students was similar across the three reading groups. The ESL and L1 students demonstrated similar performance, indicating that the skills underlying reading comprehension are similar in the ESL and L1 students. This study demonstrated that ESL students are capable of developing word reading and reading comprehension skills that are as strong as those of their L1 peers.

The present article discusses Orhan Pamuk’s novel My Name is Red as a highly complex, multi-layered “whodunit,” based on Tzvetan Todorov’s typology of detective fiction. The detective story in the novel relies heavily on ekphrasis (the oral description of an object, image, or artwork), which plays an important role in the elucidation of the murder, offering crucial clues in the story of the investigation. The old Ottoman art of miniature painting plays an important role in the solving of the murder case, alongside the numerous religious and cultural ramifications stemming from the East-West divide present throughout the novel, yet not easily decoded by the Western reader. Even though Pamuk’s novel has been previously described as a “murder mystery,” Todorov’s classification ensures the subtype of detective fiction the novel falls into can be more precisely defined. Additionally, the ingenious use of ekphrasis and the highlighting of essential conflicts within the Ottoman traditions of miniature paintings uncover new aspects of text-to-image “translations” which had been previously ignored by literary criticism.

Unlike the classical sources, nineteenth-century historians of religion characterized certain Hellenistic initiatory cults as "Mystery Religions." This was also the century in which the literary genre of mysteries (i.e., detective stories) developed (e.g., E. A. Poe). Was the nineteenth-century development of literary mysteries and the contemporaneous characterization of some Hellenistic initiatory practices by historians of religion also as "mysteries," especially, those characterized by R. Reitzenstein as "reading mysteries" (Lesemysterien), coincidental? I suggest that mystery novels may be read for insights into the historical and/or cultural landscape of Romanticism. These novels disclose a fascination with "mysteries," a "presentist" bias that influenced nineteenth-century characterizations of Hellenistic initiatory cults by historians of religion. In addition to a shared cultural influence, common neurocognitive features underlie both the act of reading itself, especially reading detective novels, and the Lesemysterium hypothesis.

People with aphasia (PWA) frequently experience difficulties in understanding longer written content such as paragraphs or books. Reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text-level reading comprehension deficits in PWA. Nevertheless, empirical evidence for their efficacy remains rare. The primary objective of this study was to analyse the efficacy of a strategy-based intervention on text-level reading comprehension in PWA. Secondary objectives were to compare the effects of two strategy-based intervention components and to explore potential moderator effects. A protocol was published prior to data acquisition. In a repeated measures trial, 26 German participants with chronic, post-stroke aphasia participated in a waiting period without aphasia treatment (control condition) followed by a strategy-based intervention called 'Strategiebasierte Textverständnis-Therapie bei Aphasie' (StraTexT, 14 face-to-face-sessions, twice per week, 60 min each). Two strategy combinations, Intervention Micro targeting microstructure and Intervention Macro targeting macrostructure, were applied to newspaper and magazine articles. Participants were randomly allocated to two parallel groups that received these strategy combinations in interchanged sequences. Assessments were implemented before and after each period as well as 3 and 6 months after the intervention. The primary outcome measure was text-level reading comprehension measured with the total score of a German version of the Test de Compréhension de Textes (TCT-D). Secondary outcome measures addressed the self-reported perception of reading abilities, reading activities and feelings about reading (German version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Reading in Aphasia CARA reading questionnaire) as well as selected cognitive functions. The per-protocol-analysis included data from 22 participants. We found significant small improvements up to 6 months post-intervention compared to pre-intervention in the TCT-D Total (d = 0.35-0.46) as well as medium to large improvements in the CARA questionnaire (d = 0.68-0.96). Up to 3 months after the intervention, treatment-induced improvements in the TCT-D Total were significantly larger than change without treatment during the control condition. There was no evidence of moderator effects. Furthermore, we found improvements in several cognitive functions. Reading strategies can lead to long-term improvements in text-level reading comprehension and in self-reported reading abilities, feelings about reading and reading activities in aphasia. In regular clinical settings, it seems reasonable to implement both Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro. It remains important to investigate participant characteristics that contribute to treatment success. What is already known on the subject Systematic reviews and multiple case studies suggest that reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text-level reading comprehension in aphasia. The efficacy of reading strategies has been demonstrated for different populations. However, to date no group study has evaluated the efficacy of reading strategies on text-level reading comprehension in people with aphasia. What this study adds This study provides the first group-level evidence about the efficacy of a systematic strategy-based intervention in 22 people with post-stroke chronic aphasia. During 14 treatment sessions, participants applied four reading strategies to newspaper and magazine articles within two intervention components called Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro (two strategies per intervention component). We found improvements in text-level reading comprehension for at least 3 months post-intervention, as well as effects on selected cognitive functions and self-reported reading abilities, thoughts and feelings about reading and the ability to engage in reading activities. What are the clinical implications of this work? The strategies and materials evaluated in this study could be used in clinical practice with people with aphasia. In order to replicate treatment effects in clinical practice, we suggest applying the strategy combination with the same protocol features (e.g., frequency, duration, homework, product orientation) as in this study, implementing Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro sequentially in either order. As treatment response was not equal in all individuals, it seems important to investigate individual features that contribute to treatment success.

In this study, pull-in and pull-out approaches to delivering reading services to elementary special education and remedial students were compared. Students' reading activities were observed using a revision of the Student-Level Observation of Beginning Reading (SOBR-R), and reading comprehension assessed using the Stanford Achievement Test. Students in pull-in programs did not differ from students in pull-out programs in gains in reading comprehension. Pull-in and pull-out approaches did not differ in total time devoted to reading instruction each week, but there were differences in time spent on non-reading activities. Time spent on reading and non-reading activities did not predict reading achievement. Data are also presented documenting how reading instruction time is spent in six different models of pull-in and pull-out, to illustrate the variability within each approach to service delivery. It is suggested that these differences in how teachers implement pull-in and pull-out need to be considered in ...

Impaired reading comprehension in schizophrenia: Evidence for underlying phonological processing deficits

English reading educators in English Foreign Language classroom in Indonesian are often mystified how to teach well reading comprehension to their students. This paper will propose about pedagogy of teaching reading comprehension in EFL classroom relating to the activities in reading instruction, comprehension skills focusing on primary and intermediate level ,and strategies in teaching reading comprehension in order to become their students as effective readers and to improve their students’ reading comprehension suitable with students’ English reading proficiency.Key words: reading comprehension, activities in reading, primary, intermediate level, strategies.

This study investigated the students’ perceptions in online learning toward reading comprehension at tenth grade of SMA Negeri 1 Kota Jambi. A quantitative research design was used in this study. The participants are 36 students from tenth grade MIPA 4 of SMA Negeri 1 Kota Jambi. The instruments used to collect the data were questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of 30 statements. Google Form was used to obtain the data and the result was used to analyze the data. As a result of the study, the researcher concluded that the benefits of online reading have had a substantial effect on the knowledge of students’ vocabulary, and the students have strongly focused on the educational evaluation they read during online learning. The data reported the highest percentage is 56% of the students strongly agreed that online media supported their activity in reading during online learning. However, the lowest percentage is 5% of the students disagreed that online media supported their activity in reading during online learning. The results show that the mean and standard deviation between students’ perceptions in online learning toward reading comprehension are 77.00 mean and 16,696 standard deviation, which is the standard deviation is higher than the mean. It shows that students' perceptions are considered positive because most of the students agree that online learning helped them to improve their reading comprehensions skills.Keywords: Students’ Perception, Online Learning, Reading Comprehension.

Reading comprehension is a complex cognitive task crucial to success in formal education and everyday life activities. Working memory (WM) and associated executive processes have been shown to be implicated in reading comprehension abilities. The aim of the present study was to assess the efficacy of a program for improving reading comprehension skills based on reading activities that require WM and associated executive processes. The study involved 48 third-graders (8–9 years old), who were assigned to three groups: a trained group that received training on reading comprehension and on the mechanisms related to this ability; an active control group that attended extra in-school activities designed to improve children’s reading comprehension; and a passive control group that only attended normal lessons. The training program consisted of ten sessions conducted in the classroom, focusing on WM and associated executive functions embedded in reading comprehension activities. The efficacy of the training was examined in terms of both specific improvements in reading comprehension and WM, and transfer effects to more ecological reading comprehension and nonverbal reasoning tasks. Long-term gains were also examined after 2 months. The results showed that the training was effective in directly improving the children’s reading comprehension and WM, with some maintenance effects too, while it elicited limited gains in the more ecological reading comprehension task, and no transfer effects on nonverbal reasoning. Overall, the present findings suggest that training involving the use of WM and its executive processes during reading comprehension activities is a promising approach to sustaining reading comprehension.

Reading is an important facet of the literacy enhancement of an individual. Studies in reading comprehension and the variables affecting it are considered important because society gives much importance to reading and demands higher literacy rates. While there is a plethora of research on reading motivation among learners, there is a scarcity of studies that deal with reading motivation among learners with physical disabilities. Hence, the present study aimed at investigating the link between the Filipino deaf learners’ reading motivation and reading activity and comprehension of English texts. The researchers used Parault and Williams’ (2010) Reading Activity Questionnaire and Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) as instruments to answer the research questions. The results of the study revealed that there is no significant relationship between reading motivation of deaf learners and their reading amount and text comprehension. Nonetheless, the study may have implications for the current deaf bilingual literacy curricula in local schools, particularly in addressing Filipino deaf bilinguals’ motivation for reading.

Prior research has focused on students’ affectional states during learning, recognizing that affect can elevate learning and cognitive development. This study hypothesized and investigated the bidirectionality or reciprocity of the relationships between students’ affects and performance in reading comprehension. Mixed methods were used in the study. 41 3rd grade (9-year-old) students went through mind mapping in reading intervention for one semester. Pre- and post-intervention surveys and post-interviews were conducted to investigate their affectional and self-efficacy levels in reading comprehension. Their mind maps were also collected to evaluate their performance in reading comprehension. The study results revealed that the use of mind mapping in reading activities led to a widespread sense of positive affect. Furthermore, positive affect was found to be influenced by reading comprehension, and reading comprehension could contribute to changes in affect by enhancing reading performance and increasing self-efficacy. This study elevates the understanding of the mind mapping in reading strategies, provides references for the affectional design of such activities, and derives design and enactment principles to transform mind mapping in reading activities.

The aim of this study is to investigate the comparison between the use of Directed Reading Activity (DRA) and Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DR-TA) methods on students’ reading comprehension. The research design was a quasi-experimental study by comparing two strategies of two experimental groups and one control group pretest - posttest design. It involved 94 participants that consisted of two experimental groups and one control group of the students of State Islamic Senior High School (MAN) Pekanbaru of Riau province. Three research questions and nine hypotheses were posed in this study in order to find out the significant difference between DRA and DR-TA methods on students’ reading comprehension. Pretest and posttest were administered in this study and independent sample t-test and paired sample t-test were used to analyze the data. The research finding showed that there was no significant difference of post-test mean scores between the experimental class 1 using DRA method and the experimental class 2 using DR-TA method on students’ reading comprehension. DRA method contributed the effect of improvement on students’ reading comprehension 76% while DR-TA contributed 72%, and on the other hand the control class contributed 49%. At last, it can make an inference that both DRA and DR-TA methods can be applied in teaching reading comprehension especially at State Islamic Senior High School Pekanbaru of Riau province, and generally in Senior high school level in Indonesia.