Golden Age(s)

"What then is time? St. Augustine famously wondered. If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know." This would apply just fine to Golden Age. At first sight it looks a perfectly clear, well-delineated concept; then one tries to define it and trouble begins, for whatever meaning you ascribe it just brings more questions.

If we go by the chronological definition, then we have to agree on when it began and when it ended, none of which is a wholly settled issue. We also have to account for all those authors who, while active and often at the height of their fame and powers during that period, did not fit the standard model - mind you, Georges Simenon, Edgar Wallace and Dashiell Hammett too were Golden-Agers. Not to mention those like Anthony Berkeley or Mary Fitt who progressively shifted away from traditional detective fiction over the years.

One might thus favor an aesthetical definition of Golden Age: a particular brand of mystery fiction, not bound by chronological restraints. But it isn't much more helpful, for it presupposes a consensus on the distinctive characteristics of the form and that consensus - to put it in euphemistic terms - doesn't yet exist. Also, many so-called Golden Age writers have little in common but this label. John Dickson Carr and, say, Cyril Hare may both have written detective novels but their approach, style, even ideology, were completely different, and Gladys Mitchell is definetely not like Agatha Christie.

A third solution is to regard Golden Age as both a period and a form - to define one is to define the other. Contradictions are still there, but at least they are manageable.

Having summed up the various positions, I will now give my two cents on the chronological issue. Most of the problems with it, I think, can be solved by acknowledging that Golden Age is made of different stratums rather than monolithic. One of the most impressive features of the period is how fast the genre evolved over a comparatively short lapse of time: only eighteen years separate Trent's Last Case from Malice Aforethought. Golden Age can roughly be divided into three periods:

Early Golden Age (1920/1926) is essentially a transition period continuing, deepening and cementing the changes underway in the years preceding WW1. Novels progressively replace short stories as the dominant medium, causing plots to become more complex and the genre to change its focus as whodunit takes a greater importance and surprise solutions become an end in themselves rather than just a showcase for the detective's logical skills. Rules start being laid out and theoricians make their appearance.

Middle Golden Age (1926/1939) is the era most of us have in mind when talking of Golden Age: flamboyant detectives, ornate plots, challenges to the reader and an almost total disregard for realism and verisimilitude; mystery as a sophisticated and highly codified genre whose main purpose is to fool and surprise the reader again and again while claiming to give him a chance to guess who, why and how. Of course things were not that simple or clear-cut, but for the essential it is true, and very few care for the mounting dissent from francs-tireurs like Anthony Berkeley or Richard Hull, or the hardboiled school in America.

Later Golden Age (1939/1950) sees authors becoming increasingly skeptical and critical of the genre, its rules and even its social foundations. Detectives and plots become more naturalistic and the general mood is darker or markedly parodic (Crispin, Innes) A good example of that new direction is Cyril Hare's An English Murder that, while scrupulously respecting the conventions of the genre, takes its values upside down. The American and British schools part way at the end of the decade as the former converts to softboiled and psychological suspense while the latter adopts the police procedural format.

I'll expand on these in future posts, so stay tuned... and feel free to comment. I like when readers tell me what they think.

Nice People

Philo Vance, Ogden Nash famously said, deserves a kick in the pance. That motion enjoyed large support over the years and it's easy to see why. An arrogant, pompous, self-centered snob with an oyster's sensibility and a quite personal sense of ethics, not to mention a seemingly endless erudition, there is no question Vance is an unpleasant fellow... just like most of his predecessors and contemporaries. Van Dine's work was essentially derivative and his sleuth is no exception. All of Philo's "negative" features were borrowed and aggrandized from more or less famous models; they were basic requirements for great detectives back then.

 

Modern readers expect their favorite sleuth to be a regular, fallible human beings whom they can "relate" with: Alan Banks or Kurt Wallander may not be the smartest investigators in the room, but their personalities and experiences are close enough to the reader's to allow him* to identify and bound with them. Their love affairs, health and/or family problems end being more crucial to the books than the cases they investigate, competently but not brilliantly. Such an idea would have left an Anna Katherine Green or a Conan Doyle scratching their heads in bewilderment. Detectives back in the formative years of the genre were rarely regular, virtually infallible except for some exceptions that confirmed the rule and the only feelings they were supposed to elicit were amazement and admiration, the "Watson" serving as a cheerleader. Fans worldwide who lamented Sherlock's temporary demise mourned the great detective - they didn't mourn the man.

 

Because being likeable wasn't yet part of the job, early detectives as a rule were not. Only Sgt. Cuff can be called a wholly sympathetic figure; the rest is divided between coldly manipulative professionals a la Lecoq/Gryce and Dupin-influenced eccentric amateurs with a ballooned ego. Fascinating characters for sure, but also quite frightening at times; the face of Justice, in these times, was not a friendly one.

 

Not that they cared much for ethical issues anyway. We are often told that detective fiction is about restoring order, but it hasn't always been so. Belle-Epoque sleuths' motivations were remarkably mundane: money, getting oneself or a loved one out of trouble, or the plain thrill of the game; also, they weren't above letting the criminal go free if they sympathized with his motives. But at least they remained on the right side. Well, most of them. Think of Romney Pringle or, more sinisterly, Horace Dorrington. But the most chillingly effective portrayal of the dark side of the Great Detective figure is to be found in Baronness Orczy's stories featuring Bill Owen, better-known as The Old Man in the Corner.

 

Owen, if you don't know him, is generally regarded as the very first armchair detective. He does all of his sleuthing from his chair at a teashop where he meets his reluctant watson, female journalist Polly Burton, and the only physical activity he is ever seen indulging in is tying and untying knots on a rope or any piece of string he can find. Alike most amateur detectives of his time and beyond, he is basically a "thinking machine" for whom crime solving is first a kind of an intellectual game, a duel of wits (the Old Man stories were among the first, if not the first, to include challenges to the reader) and he takes much pride in his ability to see what nobody saw and guess what nobody guessed. But, unlike his colleagues, he doesn't serve justice - be it formal or a more personal kind. To unravel the murderer's scheme is enough for him and he doesn't feel any need to call the police (which he loathes) to tell them about his findings. Murder to him is a fine art and he thus sides with the masters of the craft, now matter how nasty they are. As to victims, who cares? The Old Man, in short, is a nihilist; one of the stories suggest he might even be a murderer himself - unrepentant of course.

 

It's easy to regard such a character as either a novelty act or an aberration. Easy, but mistaken. What Orczy shows us, voluntarily or not, is that the line separating the ubermensch from the downright inhuman is a very, very fine one; many Great Detectives might as well have been Master Criminals. The key-difference between Holmes and Moriarty or Wolfe from Zek is not one of personality. It's one of polarity.

 

Jean Paul Török's "L'Enigme du Monte Verita" - Review by Henrique Valle

Jean-Paul Török (born 1936) is a French movie historian and critic, script writer, director and professor of narratology. Apparently, L'énigme du Monte Verita is his first novel. In the book's foreword, he professes to have written it with the purpose of «composing a detective story of the old kind» that, irrespective of plot, finished with the finishing sentence of John Dickson Carr's The burning court, which has fascinated him ever since he has read it for the first time. In fact, from plot structure and atmosphere to writing style, L'énigme du Monte Verita is one of the most perfect Carr pastiches ever penned. But to regard it as a mere pastiche would be unfair: this is also one of the most interesting detective novels of the last years.

It is 1938 and Europe is on the verge of war. Pierre Garnier, a brilliant young French academic and specialist of Edgar Allan Poe, and his wife Solange are in Switzerland to participate in an international symposium about the mystery novel. The symposium takes place in Ascona, a town located in the fringes of the Monte Verita (in Italian, Mountain of Truth) by the Lac Majeur. In the early 20th Century, a mystic that proclaimed to be the reincarnation of Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder of the Rosicrucian Order, lived in the mountains among his followers. Under siege by the hostile population and the police, the magus imitated the original Rosenkreutz locked himself in a grotto to meditate and pray to the telluric powers to show him a solution to the crisis. The grotto's entrance was then blocked with heavy rocks and there was no other way out. On the fourth day the populace went in – but there was nobody inside.

The whole plot develops under the spell of impossibility cast by this legend. During the symposium, a lecturer claims that impossible crimes do not occur in real life. Dr. Hoenig, a German psychiatrist and police consultant (and also a nasty Nazi) claims the opposite, and announces that he will prove it in the course of his lecture, even if it involves the exposure of some of the persons present. Afterwards, Dr. Hoenig tells Pierre Garnier that he has positive proof that his wife has been previously married to three other men, at least two of which had been murdered in seemingly impossible ways, implying that Simone is the murderess. Pierre is plunged into a whirlwind of doubts, fuelled by his wife's mysterious past. And then, before his lecture, dr. Hoenig is stabbed to death in a hermetically sealed room where nobody else was found, the murder having occurred in front of two witnesses who were watching by the window and who swear not to have seen the murderer go out. Nevertheless, when supposed to be dead, Dr. Hoenig is seen walking in the outside with a knife sticking out of his chest. The body finally appears inside the Rosenkreutz grotto – which only entrance was covered with solid iron bars.

The plot is typically Carrian, and in fact its main idea seems to have been derived from Till death do us part (1944, published as by Carter Dickson), in which a mysterious woman is also suspected of having murdered three hitherto unknown husbands. Carrian are also the main characters of Phillipe Garnier, a "sound bright lad" whose point of view is adapted by the narrator in most instances, and of Solange Garnier, a damned woman in the tradition of Carr's Lesley Grant (in the aforementioned Till death do us part), Fay Seton (He who whispers, 1946) and Marie Stevens (The burning court, 1937), as well as the atmosphere of constant tension suggested not only by the supernatural allusions but also by hints of inner psychological discomfort of the protagonists. This is all extremely well done and well told, with only a few noticeable signs of self-consciousness. Commissioner Brenner of the Swiss police and the acting deus ex machina, an impossible crime writer with some HM mannerisms and the unequivocal name of Andrew Carter Porges, are in charge of detection. The other characters are subservient to the plot but lively and interesting.

The book, however, has some letdowns, several minor and a major one. The minor ones are the occasional lack of accuracy (it is unforgivable to mention Sherlock Holmes address as "217B Baker Street"!), some anachronisms (for instance, it is highly unlikely that an academic symposium on the mystery novel, such as described in the book, would have been held as early as 1938) and, most of all, the constant academic repartee between the characters. This latter is always erudite and witty, mostly relevant to the plot and very seldom pompous – therefore, we are not in the presence of a pseudo-intellectual take on the detective novel. But this kind of Michael Innes' donnish silliness doesn't go very well with the sombre background. The major letdown lies in the alternative solutions, both of them far from original in the annals of mystery fiction, which any experienced reader of impossible crime mysteries will reach well before the end of the book (they are even more obvious if one considers the literary-theoretical subtext of the novel). Moreover, the solutions are not completely (even if they are mostly) fair-play. The winks at historical facts and characters (one of them is an obvious parody of Umberto Eco, and some other portraits can be spotted by an attentive and informed reader) are superfluous but unlikely to distract.

All in all, this is an interesting and elegantly written book that doesn't show it's frailties until the end, therefore making for a pleasurable and stimulating read. Despite of being a pastiche, and to some extent a satire, of mystery novels, it holds reasonably well as a detective story in its own right, unlike most of the similar attempts made by exiles from other quarters of literature. Furthermore, it's also very effective in sending a few shivers down the reader's spine along the way. This book also makes a strong case for those who think that the future of mystery fiction now, more than ever, lies outside the realm of the massified and standardized Anglo-American publishing markets.

Jean-Paul Török, L'énigme du Monte Verita (France Univers, 2007, 214 pp., 19€)

One Step

So the unimaginable finally happened: a thriller meant and marketed as such has found its way to the Booker Prize. Whether Smith wins or not, a precedent has been set, and crime fiction's piccolo mondo will never be the same again. But is it really cause to rejoice? Have the walls finally tumbled down, and should they?

If you are of the persuasion that genre fiction is a ghetto and being embraced by mainstream critics as a "great writer" is the Valhalla any self-respecting author should seek, then it's great news and there's more to come and already coming. With "crime writers" being increasingly taken seriously and mainstream luminaries crossing the Rubicon, hopes are that, as Sarah Weinman suggests, "the so-called genre wars are lurching toward, if not an end, then at least a tentative cease-fire", the very thought of which is probably having the unlamented Edmund Wilson doing triple axels in his grave.

However, if you are the kind that has no problem with being in a ghetto as long as you're the one holding the keys, then you might be more skeptical. Granted, the lines have blurred - but only on one side. The mainstream did not recede one inch, while mystery fiction has moved increasingly closer. We are still hearing and reading sornettes about "transcending the genre" every time a crime/mystery novel satisfies to orthodox criterias of good writing - and specialized critics are not the lesser offenders. It was hoped the genre would finally be accepted on its own terms; instead it has accepted those of the mainstream. Hardly reason for enthusiasm.

So, depending on your stance, the future of the genre may look bright or gloomy, a prospect of either long-awaited recognition or dissolution in the muddy waters of general fiction. Whatever may be, good reviews and even better sales make certain the move will continue for better or worse and Tom Rob Smith's Booker nomination is just one step in that direction. A giant one? Time will tell.

Quote of the Day

Frances Fyfield in the Sunday Times:

I hate novels being used as social criticism — it's like being whacked over the head. Ian Rankin does it a lot, which I think is a mistake. It's got to be a bit more elemental than that, otherwise your book's not got a very long shelf life. Better for that sort of perspective to emerge as a natural result of the story you're trying to tell.

Gotta read her books!

(via Sarah Weinman)

Birthday Gifts

It was Raymond Chandler's 120th birthday yesterday and the LATimes asked some influential mystery folks what gift they'd offer him.

 

I, too, have some presents for the father of Philip Marlowe - because he's worth it.

 

First, the complete works of one of his favorite authors. Should bring back fond memories of fruitful, if passionate, arguments.

 

Second, a dedicated photo of Alfred Hitchcock as a souvenir of their friendly, mutually-respecting collaboration on Strangers on a Train.

 

Third and final - I'm rather short of money and you shouldn't offer a dead centenarian too many gifts, that might spoil him - my own copy of The Simple Art of Murder, complete with my uncensored annotations.

 

Happy birthday, Raymond.

 

P.S.: This article is, of course, satirical and not to be taken seriously. Never would I give away my copy of TSAM - not for free.

And my annotations are quite polite, except for a tiny handful occupying roughly the three quarters of the volume. Otherwise it's pretty G-rated stuff.

When "I" Is Not Another

A large number of mystery novels are written in first person. This approach offers multiple advantages - and multiple drawbacks as well.

 

Leading among the former is an easier identification with the protagonist - he talks to us, we follow his actions and his thoughts, we see what he sees, we hear what he hears. It's no surprise, then, if the device is historically associated to forms of the genre that rely on strong emotional investment from the reader: suspense of course, but also hardboiled and noir. But, since the narrator is not omniscient and ultimately tells us only what he's willing to, first-person may also be a marvelous tool for mystification, as anyone who's read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd will be happy to confirm, and that's why detective novels and twist-in-the-tale stories made and still make a great use of it.

 

Still, the device has its problems or, as the French say, les défauts de ses qualités (the flaws of its virtues). First, it restrains the scope of the work on both a dramatical and psychological level. As I said above, the narrator is not omniscient. Being only human, he can't read other people's thoughts, make himself invisible or be in two places at the same time. This means we know characters and places only through his personal, subjective experience. If he leaves the room in the middle of a conversation, what was said afterwards will remain forever unknown to the reader, and if he stays we can't be sure people mean what they say. This wouldn't be much of a problem* if that ambiguity extended to the narrator, which alas is rarely the case. All too often he tells the reader in detail about himself, his past, present and future while other characters remain at best silhouettes, more or less well-sketched - making him the actual subject of the story he tells. Such a phenomenon is not uncommon in contemporary mystery fare, even that sticking to third-person mode.

 

Finally and in accordance with the rimbaldian title of this post, the narrator's "I" is often the author's, not only biographically and psychologically but stylistically as well. Narrators, despite being new to the job, know all of the tricks to grab the reader's interest and never let go. They can capture a landscape or a character in a few words and keep a fast pacing, with suspense and twists most efficiently dosed - so efficiently, indeed, that it's hard at times to believe you're reading a true story told by an amateur rather than, say, a piece of fiction by a seasoned pro. Even more remarkable is the continuity of style some authors maintain through different stories with - supposedly - different narrators. Mike, 31, a computer scientist in New York has thus the same "voice" as Roger, an alcoholic quinquagenarian Washington Post journalist whose writing style itself bears some resemblance to that of Sarah, a 40-year old Dallas housewife... all of the three having, of course, never met each other. Quite a feat, indeed!

 

True, characters are often so interchangeable that it's no surprise it goes the same for their voices - but the same phenomenon may be encountered in works by more ambitious writers, proving that style just like every other habit is second nature.

 

*Actually, it may even be beneficial.