DECONSTRUCTING THE “DESERT OF FACTS” : DETECTION AND ANTIDETECTION IN COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER NANCY E. BJERRING F a n sh aw e C olleg e IVIichael Ondaatje’s Coming Through Slaughter is one of m' ny postmod ern texts that parody the world-view and narrative devices oi the detective story. In an early and important article entitled “The Detective and the Boundary: Some Notes on the Postmodern Literary Imagination,” William V. Spanos offers a convincing explanation for the appeal of the detective story genre for contemporary writers. Deriving much of his argument from Sartre and other existentialist theorists, he hypothesizes that postmodern writers subvert the “post-Renaissance humanistic structure of conscious ness” (170) in order to contest the authority of prescriptive systems of val idation, whether they be religious, aesthetic, or scientific. The scientific world-view comes in for particular scrutiny, since popularized versions of the values of science, such as the centrality of objectivity, rational analy sis, inductive reasoning, and so on, inform virtually all classical detective stories. In contrast, Spanos argues, the postmodern literary imagination at large insists on the m y s tery — the ominous and threatening uncanniness that resists naming — and that the paradigmatic literary archetype it has discovered is the an'' active story (and its antipsychoanalytical analogue), the formal purpc hich is to evoke the impulse to “detect” and/or to psychoanalyze i aer to violently frustrate it by refusing to solve the crime (or find th' ause of the neurosis). (171) In addition, Spanos points out, postmodernism also rejects “the rigidly causal plot of the well-made work of the humanistic tradition” (171) in order to deny the reader the comfort of “the eternal simultaneity of essen tial art” (177) or the “iconic poetic of transcendence” (181). Postmoderns, therefore, refuse to substitute what might be called the truth-claims of art for the truth-claims of science. Linda Hutcheon also acknowledges the importance to postmodern fiction of the structures of the detective story. Her Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox identifies this form as one of the “paradigms” of self reflexive metafiction, since postmodern texts often employ, for the purposes English Stu d ies in Ca n a d a , x v i, 3 , September 19 9 0 of parody, the sort of decoding intelligence detective fiction always em ploys, which weighs evidence in order to “discover meaning, unravel plots” (32). The parody emerges when the postmodern antidetective, emulating the classical detective in his or her analyses of causes and crimes, typi cally encounters frustration, self-delusion, and self-reproach, but ends up proliferating rather than conquering such confusion. Whereas the classical detective “solves” the mysteries of being, the postmodern antidetective bogs down, even wallows in the mystery. On the other hand, classical detective fiction itself frequently includes an analysis of the processes and pitfalls involved in the elucidation of some truth about a crime and its perpetrator. Many detective stories contain a running commentary on the action, usually provided by the extremely self-conscious detective him/herself— the poet/detective Dalgliesh, for ex ample, in the series of novels by P.D. James. A device that is even more relevant as an illustration of Hutcheon’s thesis about narcissistic narratives is the self-reflexive commentary provided by a fictional author of detective stories who is also a character in the detective novel — Harriet Vane, for in stance, in the Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L. Sayers. A character such as Harriet provides an apt model for emulation by the puzzled writer-sleuths or antidetectives in texts such as Pale Fire, Les faux monnayeurs, and Com ing Through Slaughter. In Gaudy Night, for example, Harriet considers the possibility of recharacterizing her fictional hero, Wilfrid, but fears that if she gives him “violent and lifelike feelings, he’ll throw the whole book out of bal ance” (291). Harriet is, of course, coming to grips with the same narrative problem as is her creator, whose own essay, also entitled “Gaudy Night,” ex amines Sayers’s qualms about humanizing her fictional hero, Lord Peter.1 Typically, the postmodern narrator-sleuth of Coming Through Slaughter conflates his fictional, biographical, and autobiographical impulses, includ ing with his creation and recreation...