Review of Joyce Carol Oates's DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

This study examined the works including Haiku in literary works of mystery story which is causing a big boom now in Japan. The combination of mystery story and Haiku, which belong to prose and verse respectively may appear unfamiliar. However, the process of reasoning which is common in both genresdoes away with stereotypical thinking that this combination would not be possible. This study first collected the works which include Haiku in mystery story and compared the types. And by analyzing 『GOKUMONDO』 and 『A case of Haiku murder about female high school student』 which have season words as tricks of cases, this study examined how Haiku is used as a clue to cases. With the beginning of 『GOKUMONDO』after the war, Haiku of mystery story was published in book in 2001, which suggests that there are various types of works. In particular, `the season word trick` which utilizes characteristics of Haiku genre is a clue and it also serves as a unique trick only seen in mystery story of Japan. Mystery story in which season words play an important role shows possibility and function of new interpretation of Japanese traditional genre.

The element of mystery can be a naturally intriguing component of a mathematics lesson for middle school students. Mystery stories capture students“ interest and attention and contribute to developing critical-reading skills (Crouse and Bassett 1975; Curcio 1982; Scalzitti 1982). When presenting mystery stories within the context of a mathematics lesson, students often ask, “What does this have to do with mathematics?” Significant connections can be made between solving a mystery and solving a mathematics problem that supply a rationale for incorporating mystery stories in the mathematics class. In particular, similarities in the questions a problem solver asks when confronting a problem (Polya 1973) and the questions a detective asks in solving a mystery can be found in figure 1. After solving short mystery stories, students will see the connection between solving a mystery and solving a mathematics problem.

An important difference between historical-critical interpretations of the Bible and the church's traditional exegesis rests on the difference between their valuation of the role and importance of a text's reception. Traditional exegesis is quite willing to read earlier parts of the Bible in the light of later developments, while historical criticism is very reluctant to do anything of the kind. Historical criticism attempts to set texts in their own place and time. This chapter uses mystery stories as an analogy to illustrate how reading a story from its conclusion is not such a strange activity, and that traditional Christian exegesis reads the Bible very much in this way. It identifies a second narrative in mystery stories, invariably recited by the principal investigator in the last or nearly last chapter, which explains in considerable detail what was really occurring while the larger narrative was unfolding. The second narrative of the mystery novelist is the product of rational reflection on a wide range of evidence, a good deal of which was present in the beginning for anyone who had eyes to see it. The second narrative of the early Christian church was based primarily on later events—that is to say, on what early Christians thought had happened in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But once both second narratives are in place, it is impossible to understand earlier events apart from them. In the order of being, the second narrative comes last. In the order of knowing, it comes first. That is why both mystery stories and the biblical documents are best understood by reading the last chapter first.

This research discusses how the readers’ responses to plot twists in several Sherlock Holmes stories influence their reading interest and curiosity in other Sherlock Holmes stories and other mystery works. The aim is to find the relationship between knowledge of the plot and interest in reading Sherlock Holmes books among English Department students at Andalas University, 2022 generation. The results show that most respondents were familiar with plot twists and mystery stories. It proves that the students think plot twists in stories are trendy and can increase their interest in reading other mystery stories.

The psychiatric intake process is a form of negotiated interaction, where patient presentations are affected by referral source, the illness itself, and illness behavior. At the same time, staff understanding of patient presentations is affected by institutional structures of the clinic, desire to control the clinical interaction, and broad developments in the psychiatric fields (especially the dominance of biopsychiatry). Much of the interplay involves patients withholding or reinterpreting information, staff imputations about both the withheld and the proffered information, and the resultant bargaining over what is at stake. Patients may simply be telling a story, but therapists are listening to it as a mystery story. They thus look for cues as to how things are signified and intended, and clues as to how this material fits together as a mystery. This leads to excessive reliance on a question-and-answer mode of engaging, staff interpretation of patient behavior and motivation, and control by staff of information. For patients, too, the clinical intake is a mystery in terms of what is wrong with them, what will be done for them, and how to conduct themselves in the intake.

The theorizing of literary horror is characterized by constant change, and as it evolves it provides more insightful models of interpretation. As David Hartwell, one of the key theorists in the field, states in "The Dark Descent: The Evolution of Horror" (2001), horror has reached that point of development where we can finally appreciate its achievements. In literary criticism, scholarships devoted to the horror genre began to appear as early as the 1920s. Since then critical thought has been dealing with disagreements regarding its definition. In particular, the theory of horror operates such terms as "dark fantasy", "mystery story", "horror story", "gothic story", "story about the supernatural" and others, and they are often used as synonyms. Consequently, there is a need to clarify the definition of horror and its collocations, at least in those studies which have a theoretical component as a key one. While the definition of horror is still a matter of discussion, there is a consensus view on the genre’s key distinctive feature: creating a certain mood throughout the textual tissue. Particularly, a famous literary scholar John Cuddon claims that horror "shocks", "frightens", "induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing" (The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 2014). Douglas E. Winter concurs with this statement while affirming in his introduction to the anthology "Prime Evil" (1989) that horror is not only a genre but an emotion. Hence, it is critical to identify the ways in which the emotion of horror is constructed in composition, plot mechanics and characterization, as well as outline specific linguistic and stylistic features of horror texts. This paper deals with the theoretical aspects of horror as it aims to refine its attributive features within the interest of literary criticism. We analyzed a variety of definitions of horror across various disciplines, in diachrony and synchrony, and proposed a definition that can be appropriated in literary horror studies.

in a pioneering study of fiction of James McClure, Bert B. Lockwood, Jr. demonstrated how six mystery stories written between 1971 and 1980 were designed to expose microlegal system of South African society.' Lockwood concluded by defining twenty-one rules he saw governing racial relations of apartheid. On occasion of recent publication of The Artful Egg,2 seventh of McClure's police procedurals,3 I wish to consider how literary qualities of story shed new light on a few of these rules. My focal points will be rule number two, it is impermissible for whites to engage in sexual activities with nonwhites, and rule number twenty-one, the community should view Afrikaners as social inferiors, because these two rules are especially pertinent to this latest of McClure's mystery stories. (The term English-speaking should be understood to refer, not to all those who speak English, but to those whose ancestors were English-speaking, namely British.) Although all of McClure's fictional works are skillfully written and worthy of literary analysis, The Artful Egg differs from previous mystery stories in that main murder victim is a writer, and that a good deal of investigation involves a consideration of Hamlet. Indeed, most obvious innovation of this latest book is attention paid to problem of being a

The Harvard Vergil:Memoir of The Black Sheep Hans-Peter Stahl The influence the Harvard School has had on my scholarship? Among the questions you ask, this is a challenging one indeed, Professor Hejduk, and it comes at an (in)opportune time: I have recently published a monograph on the Aeneid (Stahl 2016, subtitled a Recovery Study), which along its way is widely critical of the Harvard School. The book is not written for short-distance readers who pick decontextualized passages, scenes, and "verbal echoes" for their "reading," but it pays attention to the artifice's long-distance organization (the existence of which it has lately been fashionable to deny, with "desiderated" results). So one might of course, with equal justification, ask your question also the other way around. The long-range answer there, I'm afraid, would probably be, to use a Harvard School code word, "disturbing." Considering the long gestation period of my book over many decades and the guiding track it lays on the Latin side of my scholarship, [End Page 108] it appears appropriate to fill in some pertinent autobiographical details with which its history is interwoven. Well, my first acquaintance with Harvard was a rather cheerful affair. I was fortunate in being awarded a Junior Fellowship at the Center for Hellenic Studies. When, in the fall of 1961, I arrived from Germany in Washington, D.C., I found that there was no Center for Hellenic Studies, at least not as a physical entity. Instead, there was an almost empty house on Whitehaven Street, N.W., whose owner, a Mr. Paul Mellon (said to be a sponsor), resided next door.1 There was no permanent director (Bernard Knox was taking a year off), but a young scholar (a Latinist, working on Vergil!), Michael C. J. Putnam, was filling the position in Knox's absence. And, there was only one single book in the house—a mystery story.2 However, when I mentioned my return ticket to Germany, the never-failing Michael quickly arranged for me a trip to Harvard and Elliot House, where I both could explain to John Finley my reservations about his prognosticating Thucydides (the enthusiastic young [New Deal?] democrat turning conservative with age), and in two weeks' time went through the Thucydidean holdings of Widener Library (my work had just reached the point where I needed a vast amount of secondary literature)—and cut a deal with the helpful but wary librarians: they would always send me the next package of literature before I had returned its predecessor. So I would always have a sufficient supply at hand in D.C. It worked out splendidly, and I could work through my bibliography faster than I had ever hoped. The cheerful Junior Fellows proved a more than lively group, especially when, under Michael's helpful instructions, playing croquet. The peacocks in the adjacent gardens of the British Embassy uttered loud screams whenever a mallet hit the ball. Soon there came a request from the Embassy, transmitted via the Mellon residence, please not to play [End Page 109] croquet during nighttime (under floodlights). Discussions were similarly vivid: I recall Anna Morpurgo's and Garry Wills's lively disagreements on Sophocles' Antigone; Kenneth Reckford and myself hotly discussing Euripides (we both intended writing a monograph on this author, but neither of us ever got around to it); and the ever-joking Doug Parker writing epitaphs on each Fellow (mine went somewhat like this: while walking on a glacier immersed in Classen-Steup, I stumbled into a ravine. It ended: "Maybe/I see/Hans-Peter/später"). Michael invited visitors for us, among them Wendell Clausen from Harvard, and, for me specifically, Adam Parry. The two of us discussed Thucydides. I do not remember whether we also touched upon Adam's "Two Voices" theory on the Aeneid. (Almost a decade later, upon reading my Thucydides, Adam would persuade me to join the Classics Department at Yale.) All the while, Michael Putnam was working on his Aeneid book. I myself had studied Vergil under a reinstated Nazi professor (by then a conservative democrat; his writings of the 1930s are largely suppressed in his Gesammelte Schriften); also, I had...

The Singular Affair of the Two Companions Cushing Strout (bio) Charles Rzepka and Lee Horsley, eds., A Companion to Crime Fiction. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 648 pages. $209.95. Mystery stories are often set in academic milieus, and professors not only read them but may even write them. The news is that they may now be on the professor's list of required reading for students. Two signs of this development are serious reference books about crime fiction: The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (1999) and Blackwell's A Companion to Crime Fiction (2010). The Oxford collection came first, followed by the Blackwell collection. They differ in format: the Oxford book is alphabetically organized, with asterisks used to indicate a cross-reference to another entry, while the Blackwell tome, heavy as a door-stopper, is topically organized, except for a section entitled "Artists at Work," which is in chronological order. Both books have many contributors. Their dust jackets are revealingly different. The Oxford Companion shows a corpse in black clothes lying flat on the floor of a well-stocked library. The Blackwell Companion shows a couple in a fast-moving convertible; the woman is driving and her male companion is firing a pistol at some persons ahead whose bullets have cracked the windshield of the couple's car. Present violence is the active experience of the couple in the car. Past violence in the refined and quiet setting of a library provokes the classic questions of Who, How, and Why. This is also the difference between the detective story and the private-eye story. Somewhere between these types, and drawing on both genres, is the spy story, with its investigative protagonist and credible political context. Detective stories have been for me a recreational pleasure and a change from my day job as an American intellectual historian. The connection between these interests was dramatized by Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time (1951) in which a hospitalized inspector enlists the help of a graduate student in critically examining the historical tradition that Richard iii murdered the princes in the Tower of London. Full disclosure: after I retired from teaching, I joined the conversation about mystery stories by writing the entry War in the Oxford book, commenting on a dozen stories linked to war and having a puzzle requiring an inquiry, both intellectual and dangerous. I hope to be fair-minded in this review, but it should be clear that, as the saying goes, I do have a dog in this hunt. The Blackwell introduction hails the moment when "the detective plot [End Page 668] made it so much more interesting to theorists of language, form, and representation—to narratologists, structuralists, and postmodernists—than crime fiction in general." In Blackwell there are pages on Derrida and Lacan; and while both the Oxford and Blackwell books recognize Poe as the inventor of the detective story, only in Blackwell is there an interest in crime narratives that "marginalize the figure of the detective or in which the investigative element disappears entirely." That may be true of the crime novel, as the entry sleuth in the Oxford book concedes, but for the detective novel "the presence of a sleuth as the central figure is obligatory." A Blackwell essay on Conan Doyle warns against the politically correct trend of seeing him as upholding "imperialist, parochial, and orthodox values"; he was "both a man of his age and a critic of his age, not to be casually stereotyped or labeled." Rosemary Herbert in her Oxford introduction explains that the collection is not only designed for solid scholarship but also to celebrate the playful in a literature that is meant to be entertaining. A good example of the playful is Dorothy L. Sayers's The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928) with its satirical premise about a member who, apparently sleeping for days in his chair under a newspaper, is actually dead. Playfulness is missing from the Blackwell essay on Sayers, because it is mainly biographical, and the commentator reads her backwards—in the sense of seeing her in light of the theological concerns she wrote about, only after she had stopped writing detective stories. This strategy...

Reviewed by: L.A. Private Eyes by Dahlia Schweitzer Matthew Sorrento Dahlia Schweitzer L.A. Private Eyes Rutgers University Press, 2019. 188 pages. $17.95 The loner-turned-criminal holds an important place in the noir tradition – think of Fred McMurray as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944). When such character types are central to a film, viewers get a sense of their psychology and unique perspective on crime, leading us to root for them and learn more about their motivations. But the private eye, in other noirs like The Big Sleep (1946), slowly unravels a criminal undertaking to reveal the truth. This "unofficial" avenger, who works separately from the police, the subject of distrust in many films noir, detects with more instinct and willpower than logic. Noir on page and screen has its share of New York stories and even some set in London (1950's Night and the City), Vienna (1949's The Third Man), and beyond the city. But Los Angeles, at the end of the American "frontier," has yielded the ideal environs for the private eye, in a bleak "desert" city with plenty of real-life crime as inspiration. With noir still a hotly debated genre, Dahlia Schweitzer takes a welcome approach in L.A. Private Eyes to a subset of the style. Some standout short monographs on the crime genre of late have looked at its subgenres: for example, Prison Movies by Kevin Kehrwald and Stings, Grifts, Hustles and the Long Con by Amy Sargeant. Scwheitzer's detailed look at this central figure of noir helps to clarify the investigator's point of view and its effects on the narrative. The concept of Los Angeles in the minds of readers and viewers stretches far beyond that of the actual place and its inhabitants. Through a century of popular culture, it has become a city of "memory" inspiring Vincent Brook to describe it as a land of "Smoke and Mirrors."17 As noted by Edward Dimendberg, the actual city consists of sprawling neighborhoods reflecting 20th-century growth more than city centers and neighborhood design. As the "the ultimate example of a city sans planner" that reflects chaos,18 it has served as an ultimate setting of mystery and corruption to be unlocked by its fictional gumshoes. Chapter One asserts appropriately that "noir was defined by Los Angeles, and Los Angeles was defined by noir" (13). In surveying the early-20th-century tensions of the city, the book addresses not just the famous murders, but ethnic and cultural conflicts like the "Zoo Suit Riots," a fight between 11 sailors and Mexican youths that resulted in 500 Latinos and blacks suspiciously arrested (17). In finishing Chapter One, which cites L.A. Confidential (1997) to reflect the early-century, the author comments on the important myth of reinvention sold by the city, which fueled much of its movie history. The notable fictional private eyes of Los Angeles (Philip Marlowe, Mike Hammer, among others) and their rough methods underscore the city's complexity and confusion. Chapter Two backtracks to cover the history of the detective story. The discussion, perhaps predictable for some, takes a suitable approach for an introductory text, and Schweitzer offers some important clarifications about the development of the hardboiled private detective versus the earlier "cozy" ones. Of importance is 1920s Black Mask writer-turned-novelist Carroll John Daly and his New York detective Race Williams, who predates Dashiell Hammett's Continental OP and coined several hard-boiled standards: "The police don't like me. The crooks don't like me. … My ethics are my own" (quoted from 1927's "The Snarl of the Beast," 36). These stories came naturally to the soundwaves and screens with "intentional synergy" between writers and related media forms (39). The author also notes how even criminal-centered classic Los Angeles noirs like Double Indemnity use a "suitable proxy" [End Page 31] (40) for the private eye, like Edward G. Robinson's Barton Keyes. Schweitzer notes Raymond Chandler's advice from "Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story" (published posthumously in 1976) to provide her own primer for mystery writers. Again, she teases out important points from familiar material: "the most effective way to...

Detective or mystery stories have always depended on linear storytelling. Can hypertext be nonlinear and still present a detective or mystery story? This paper analyzes how mystery stories work, examines one feasible structure for a hypertext mystery, and suggests hypertext opportunities for mystery writers. It concludes that the mystery reader’s expectations (rather than assumptions about hypertext) should determine structure.

Previous articleNext article No AccessAnimal SciencesInsect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World. Edited by Erich Hoyt and , Ted Schultz. Cambridge (Massachusetts): Harvard University Press. $18.95 (paper). viii + 360 p; ill.; index of authors and subject index. ISBN: 0–674–00952–5. [First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2002.] 1999.Albert D CarlsonAlbert D CarlsonEditor, The Quarterly Review of Biology Search for more articles by this author Editor, The Quarterly Review of BiologyPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 78, Number 2June 2003 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/377987 Views: 22Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

In Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952, Jorge Luis Borges affectionately mentions G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories and hints that along with Poe's they are influences on his own stories of mystery, crime, and detection. Borges' stories may be understood better by looking at Chesterton's priest, and at the way both authors experiment with conventions of the mystery genre to examine the supernatural and the nature of evil. Because of the enigmas and paradoxes of his character, the unprepossessing Father Brown, a small man with a dough-face and sea-flat eyes, has a distinct personality which especially appeals to Borges and affects his own detective fiction: the perfect figure for the butt of a joke, Borges sees, Father Brown is also the perfect figure for getting in the way and solving metaphysical jokes. Out of place in the physical world, Father Brown is always in the right place for the supernatural. His mind was all of a piece, and he was unconscious of many incongruities (The Crime of the Communist).' As a priest he is a believer in magic and mystery who consistently produces the most mundane and naturalistic solutions. He works by reason and faith both, and the two are never at odds owing to a middle sense, intuition, which keeps him from acting mistakenly even if truth is not revealed to his intellect: he has a mystic's cloud on him when evil is near. When he doubts, he doubts only because he is not certain whether a case calls for a policeman, a doctor, or a priest. But if Father Brown, as a professional celibate, has a sexlessness about him which puts him further outside the human ordinary (unresponsive to the power of sex, he is not corruptible like ordinary men), nevertheless he is thoroughly a gentleman. The traditionally distinguishing features of the gentleman-power, rationality, and responsibility-mingle in Father Brown with the spy's invisibility and unreality, although in the priest these last two are treated as virtues, not as defects of character. Invisibility comes from his being so unobtrusively in the middle of things (he is, after all, a good priest doing his job), and his unreality is a supremely other-worldly quality. Detachment is his superiority. It fits him for super-impressions and mystical illuminations as well as reasoned solutions. The priest's sense of environment and his comfortable fondness for obscure, unique oddities and trinkets make him a perfect Borgesian character. Mysteries of Good and Evil, God and Devil, Body and Soul, Reason and Faith, Innocence and Guilt, Truth and Falsehood, Appearance and Reality, Time and Eternity, come up continually in the fantastic Father Brown tales.

Collection of unusual, dramatic and revealing writings about insects ranging through history from biblical times to today. Each selection is introduced and annotated with anecdotes and information about the writer and subject of the piece.

Review: <i>Insect Appreciation</i>, by F. Tom Turpin; <i>Insect Lives: Stories of Mystery and Romance from a Hidden World</i>, by Erich Hoyt and Ted Schultz; and <i>Small Creatures and Ordinary Places: Essays on Nature</i>, by Allen M. Young