Robert Browning's Language by Donald S. Hair (review)

Abstract

MayhemandMurder:Narrative andMoralProblems in theDetective Story. By HETA PYRHONEN.Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press. I999. viii + 338 pp. $60;?45 (paperbound$24.95;?I6). This volume is a thoroughlyresearchedand carefullyarguedengagement with the genre of detective fiction. Heta Pyrhonen concentrates on the ways in which detective fiction stages a seriesof complex argumentsabout the process of reading, and on how thisnarratologicalaspectof the genre may map on to broaderquestions of guiltandresponsibility:'In thisbook, I takeasmy startingpoint the "fundamental formal rule" of detective fiction, that is, the structuringforce of the two (insteadof one) generic questions"Whodunit?"and "Whois guilty?"The questionthatI study is this: How do these two generic questions organize and pattern the detective narrative?'(p. 4). The concept of 'patterning'is indeed important to the book as a whole, not simply for the ways in which it illuminates the spatial geographies of differenttexts, but at a more significantmethodological level. The impulse behind the early chapters of this book is shaped by the formal strategies of structuralist criticism, and Pyrhonen provides extensive and detailed analytic accounts of the key oppositionalstructuresof her chosen texts. Pyrhonen ranges very widely across the canon of detective fiction in this study. Chapters are organized in terms of methodological questions, which are then explored through readings of classic and contemporarytexts. These include works by Poe, Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Chandler, Christie, and Spillane, but also by PatriciaCornwell,Michael Dibdin, Elizabeth George, and LaurieKing. This leads to some productivejuxtapositions, but does also at times amount to takingthe very coherence of the genre somewhat for granted. It might perhaps have been interestingto see more attention given to the difficultiesof reading texts from such differenthistoricalperiodsand culturaltraditionstogether. The second half of the book deals more particularlywith questions of guilt and responsibility,and alsowith the 'moralambiguity'generatedby the recognitionthat 'our choice of detective narratives as reading material thus signals our desire to spend time immersedin crime and its investigation'(p. 56). Pyrhonendevelops an interestingargument here about the 'ethos' of differentcharacterswithin detective fiction, which is understood as the ways in which both the detective and the reader evaluate the moral significance of their actions, and she constructs a fruitful opposition between irony and cynicism that draws intriguingly on Zizek's The Indivisible Remainder (London:Verso, I996). The book concludes with two chapters of detailed argument about the moral complexities of Christie and Chandler that certainly demonstrate the rigour and the care with which this study is executed. MayhemandMurder is ambitious in its scope and meticulous in its argument, and constitutesa detailed scholarlyengagement with the genre of detective fiction, and in particularwith the narratologicalissuesit stagesso effectively.There is certainly a significantrange of murders in this volume, but my final slight disappointment was that there is relativelylittle mayhem:the methodological and thematic choices made by the authormade this,finally,a ratherorderlybook. QUEENMARY,UNIVERSITY OFLONDON MORAGSHIACH RobertBrowning'sLanguage.By DONALDS. HAIR. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: Universityof Toronto Press. I999. ix + 326 pp. $55; f40. The reaction against the abstract, and absolutely conceived, categories of theory that has set in over the last few years has had the beneficial effect of concentrating MayhemandMurder:Narrative andMoralProblems in theDetective Story. By HETA PYRHONEN.Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: University of Toronto Press. I999. viii + 338 pp. $60;?45 (paperbound$24.95;?I6). This volume is a thoroughlyresearchedand carefullyarguedengagement with the genre of detective fiction. Heta Pyrhonen concentrates on the ways in which detective fiction stages a seriesof complex argumentsabout the process of reading, and on how thisnarratologicalaspectof the genre may map on to broaderquestions of guiltandresponsibility:'In thisbook, I takeasmy startingpoint the "fundamental formal rule" of detective fiction, that is, the structuringforce of the two (insteadof one) generic questions"Whodunit?"and "Whois guilty?"The questionthatI study is this: How do these two generic questions organize and pattern the detective narrative?'(p. 4). The concept of 'patterning'is indeed important to the book as a whole, not simply for the ways in which it illuminates the spatial geographies of differenttexts, but at a more significantmethodological level. The impulse behind the early chapters of this book is shaped by the formal strategies of structuralist criticism, and Pyrhonen provides extensive and detailed analytic accounts of the key oppositionalstructuresof her chosen...