Poor Aristotle. According
to Dorothy L Sayers, he was born at the wrong time, forced to make do
with the likes of Sophocles and Euripides while truly craving, as she
puts it, "a Good Detective Story." In "Aristotle on Detective Fiction," a
1935 Oxford lecture, Sayers takes a look at the philosopher's
definition of tragedy in the Poetics and decides it fits the modern detective story nicely. If Aristotle had been able to get a copy of Trent's Last Case, maybe he would have skipped all those performances of Oedipus Tyrannus and The Trojan Women.
It
doesn't do, of course, to challenge Dorothy Sayers on the nature of the
detective story. But her lecture seems more than a little tongue in
cheek, and her attempt to equate the detective story with tragedy falls
short. At its heart, the detective story is more comic than tragic. And
I'm willing to bet Sayers knew it.
She begins her
lecture by identifying similarities between detective stories and
tragedies. Aristotle says action is primary in tragedies, and that's
true of detective stories, too. Keeping a straight face, not
acknowledging she's made a tiny change in the original, Sayers quotes
the Poetics: "The first essential, the life and soul, so to
speak, of the detective story, is the Plot." Aristotle says tragic plots
must center on "serious" actions. That's another easy matchup, for
"murder," as Sayers observes, "is an action of a tolerably serious
nature." According to Aristotle, the action of a tragedy must be
"complete in itself," it must avoid the improbable and the coincidental,
and its "necessary parts" consist of Reversal of Fortune, Discovery,
and Suffering. Sayers has no trouble proving good detective stories
adhere to all these principles.
When
she comes to Aristotle's discussion of Character, however, Sayers has
to stretch things a bit. Referring to perhaps the most familiar passage
in the Poetics, Sayers cites Aristotle's contention that the
central figure in a tragedy should be, as she puts it, "an intermediate
kind of person--a decent man with a bad kink in him." Writers of
detective stories, Sayers says, agree: "For the more the villain
resembles an ordinary man, the more shall we feel pity and horror at his
crime and the greater will be our surprise at his detection."
True
enough. The problem is that when Aristotle calls for a character
brought low not by "vice or depravity" but by "some error or frailty,"
he's not describing the villain. To use phrases most of us probably
learned in high school, he's describing the "tragic hero" who has a
"tragic flaw." So the hero of a tragedy is like the villain of a
mystery--hardly proof that tragedy and mystery are essentially the same.
This
discrepancy points to the central problem with Sayers's argument, a
problem of which she was undoubtedly aware. The principal Reversal of
Fortune in a tragedy is from prosperity to adversity--but that's just
the first half of a detective story. To find a complete model for the
plot of the detective story, we must look not to tragedy but to comedy.
(Please note, by the way, that Sayers was talking specifically about
detective stories, not about mysteries in general. So am I. Thrillers,
noir stories, and other varieties of mysteries may not be comic in the
least--including some literary mysteries that borrow a few elements of
the detective story but really focus on proving life is wretched and
pointless, not on solving a crime.)
Unfortunately,
Aristotle doesn't provide a full definition of comedy. Scholars say he
did write a treatise on comedy, but it was lost over the centuries. The
everyday definition of comedy as "something funny" won't cut it. The Divine Comedy
isn't a lot of laughs, but who would dare to say Dante mistitled his
masterpiece? Turning again to high-school formulas, we can say the
essential characteristic of comedy is the happy ending. As the standard
shorthand definition has it, tragedies end with funerals, comedies with
weddings.
For a more extended definition of comedy, we can look to Northrup Frye's now-classic Anatomy of Criticism
(1957). Comedy, Frye says, typically has a three-part structure: It
begins with order, dissolves into disorder, and ends with order
restored, often at a higher level. Simultaneously, comedy moves "from
illusion to reality." Using a comparison that seems especially apt for
detective stories, Frye says the action in comedy "is not unlike the
action of a lawsuit, in which plaintiff and defendant construct
different versions of the same situation, one finally being judged as
real and the other as illusory." Along the way, complications arise, but
they get resolved through "scenes of discovery and reconciliation."
Often, toward the end, comedies include what Frye terms a "point of
ritual death," a moment when the protagonist faces terrible danger. But
then, "by a twist in the plot," the comic spirit triumphs. Following a
"ritual of expulsion which gets rid of some irreconcilable character,"
things get better for everyone else.
How well does the
detective story fit this comic pattern? Pretty darn well. (Frye himself
mentions "the amateur detective of modern fiction" as one variation of a
classic comic character.) The detective story usually starts with
order, or apparent order--the deceptively harmonious English village,
the superficially happy family, the workplace where everyone seems to
get along. Then a crime--usually murder--plunges everything into
disorder. Complications ensue, conflicts escalate, the wrong people get
suspected, dangers threaten to engulf the innocent, the guilty evade
punishment, and illusion eclipses reality. But the detective starts to
set things right during "scenes of discovery and reconciliation." Often
after surviving a "point of ritual death" (which he or she may shrug off
as a "close call"), the detective identifies the guilty and clears the
innocent. The villain is rendered powerless through a "ritual of
expulsion"--arrest, violent death, suicide, or, sometimes, escape. Order
is restored, and a happy ending is achieved "by a twist in the plot."
To find a specific example, we can turn to Sayers's own detective stories. Gaudy Night
makes an especially tempting choice. In the opening chapters, order
prevails at quiet Shrewsbury College, and also in the lives of Lord
Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. He proposes at set intervals, and she
finds tactful ways to say no. The serenity on campus, however, is more
apparent than real. Beneath the surface, tensions and secrets churn.
Then
a series of mysterious events shatters the tranquility, and Harriet and
Lord Peter get drawn into the chaos. Incidents become increasingly
frightening, tensions soar as suspicion shifts from don to don and from
student to student, and truth seems hopelessly elusive. Harriet
undergoes a "point of ritual death" when she encounters the malefactor
in a dark passageway. But "scenes of discovery and reconciliation"
follow as Lord Peter unveils the truth, as relationships strained by
suspicion heal. Illusions are dispelled, realities recognized. A "ritual
of expulsion"--a gentle one this time--removes the person who caused
the disorder. And, in the true, full spirit of comedy, the detective
story ends with order restored at a higher level, with the promise of a
wedding.
How
many detective stories end with weddings, or with promises of weddings,
as lovers kept apart by danger and suspicion unite in the final
chapter? A number of Agatha Christie's works come to mind, along with
legions of recent ones that bring together a police officer (usually
male) and an amateur sleuth (usually female). Of course, if the author
is writing a series and wants to stretch out the sexual tension, the
wedding may be delayed--Sayers herself pioneered this technique. Still,
the wedding beckons from novel to novel, enticing us with the prospect
of an even happier ending after a dozen or so murders have been solved.
Romance isn't a necessary element, either in comedies or in detective
stories. But it crops up frequently, for it's compatible with the
fundamentally optimistic spirit of both.
Humor, too, is
compatible with an optimistic spirit, and it's nearly as common in
detective stories as in comedies, from Sherlock Holmes's droll asides
straight through to Stephanie Plum's one-liners. To some, it may seem
tasteless to crack jokes while there's a corpse in the room. On the
whole, though, humor seems consistent with the tough-minded attitude of
both comedies and detective stories. Neither hides from life's
problems--there could be no story without them--but neither responds
with weeping or wringing hands. In both genres, protagonists respond to
problems by looking for solutions, sustained by their conviction that
problems can in fact be solved. The humor reminds both protagonists and
readers that, even in the wake of deaths and other disasters, life isn't
utterly bleak. Things can still turn out well.
Some
might say the comparison with comedy works only if we stick to what is
sometimes called the traditional detective story. Yes, Dupin restores
order and preserves the reputation of an exalted personage by finding
the purloined letter, and Holmes saves an innocent bride-to-be by
solving the mystery of the speckled band. But what of darker detective
stories? If we stray too far from the English countryside and venture
down the mean streets of the hard-boiled P.I. or big-city cop, what
traces of comedy will we find? We'll find wisecracks, sure--but they'll
be bitter wisecracks, reflecting the world-weary attitudes of the
protagonists. In these stories, little order seems to exist in the first
place. So how can it be restored? How can an optimistic view of life be
affirmed?
The Maltese Falcon looks like a
detective story that could hardly be less comic. The mysterious black
figurine turns out to be a fake, Sam Spade hands the woman he might love
over to the police, and he doesn't even get to keep the lousy thousand
bucks he's extracted as his fee. It's not a jolly way to end.
Even
so, in some sense, order is restored. Spade has uncovered the truth.
He's made sure the innocent remain free and the guilty get punished. He
has acted. As he says, "When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to
do something about it." Spade has done something.
Maybe,
ultimately, that's the defining characteristic of comedy, and of the
detective story. Protagonists do something, and endings are happier as a
result--maybe not blissfully happy, but more just, more truthful,
better. In detective stories, and in comedies, protagonists don't feel
so overwhelmed by the unfairness of the universe that they sink into
passivity and despair.
Maybe that's the real thesis of
"Aristotle on Detective Fiction." In some ways, Sayers's playful
comparison of tragedies and detective stories seems unconvincing.
Probably, though, her real purpose isn't to argue that the detective
story is tragedy rather than comedy. Probably, her purpose is to enlist
Aristotle as an ally against what she describes as "that school of
thought for which the best kind of play or story is that in which
nothing particular happens from beginning to end." That school of
thought remains powerful today, praising literary fiction in which
helpless, hopeless characters meander morosely through a miserable,
meaningless morass, unable to act decisively. Sayers takes a stand for
action, for saying the things human beings do make a difference, for
saying we are not just victims. Both comedy and the detective story
could not agree more.
Showing posts with label Maltese Falcon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maltese Falcon. Show all posts
09 July 2016
10 June 2016
The Complete Continental Op: An Interview with Dashiell Hammett's Granddaughter, Julie M. Rivett
by Art Taylor
Dashiell Hammett created several of the best-known, most iconic
characters in crime fiction: Sam Spade in The
Maltese Falcon, Ned Beaumont in The
Glass Key, and Nick and Nora Charles in The
Thin Man. But many of his short stories (mostly published in Black Mask) and his first two novels—Red Harvest and The Dain Curse—focused on another character: the Continental Op, an
unnamed detective with the Continental Detective Agency. The character and the
agency were both drawn from Hammett’s own career with the Pinkerton’s, and
Nathan Ward’s recent book The Lost
Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett has successfully argued that Hammett’s
Pinkerton training informed not only the character and conflicts of these
stories but also the style: “His Continental Op stories clearly evolved from
the form of these Pinkerton reports,” Ward writes, citing those reports
particularly for their “habits of observation, the light touch and nonjudgement
while writing studiously about lowlifes.”
On Tuesday, June 14, Open Road Media and MysteriousPress.com will release eight e-books toward
what will eventually become the complete Collected Case Files of the Continental Op, edited and presented by Hammett’s
biographer Richard Layman and his granddaughter Julie M. Rivett. As Rivett
notes in her foreword, the series marks “the first electronic publication of
Dashiell Hammett’s collected Continental Op stories to be licensed either by
Hammett or his estate—and the first English-language collection of any kind to
include all twenty-eight of the Op’s standalone stories.” Additionally, the
complete series will include the never-before-published “Three Dimes,” a
fragment of an Op story from the Hammett archive.
Rivett and Layman have worked together on many projects,
including The Hunter and Other
Stories, Return of the Thin Man, The
Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett: 1921-1960, and Dashiell Hammett: A Daughter Remembers. Rivett speaks widely
about her grandfather’s work and legacy, and I’m honored to welcome her to
SleuthSayers to discuss this landmark project.
ART TAYLOR: Hammett’s
characters Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles have surely entered the wider
cultural consciousness more completely, but the Continental Op might arguably
be the more seminal character in terms of the development of the genre. What do
the Op and his stories offer crime fiction readers that The Maltese Falcon, for example, doesn’t?
JULIE M. RIVETT: The Op is important and, yes,
seminal. Ellery Queen said he could have
been Sam Spade’s older brother, equally hardbitten, but with perhaps less
spectacular presentation. The Op’s narratives are workmanlike, realistic, and
procedurally detailed. His plainspoken wit is at least as dry as Spade’s. It’s
a shame he’s not memorialized in film the way that Sam and Nick and Nora are. I
think that’s the main reason the Op is less well known to contemporary readers.
One of other the big differences between the
Op and Spade, Nick, and Ned Beaumont is that he’s a company man, on the payroll
for the Continental Detective Agency, modeled on Pinkerton’s National Detective
Agency, where my grandfather worked for some five years, off and on. Spade and
Nick Charles are independent sleuths. Ned Beaumont functions as a detective,
but in fact he’s a political operator inadvertently entangled in a murder.
Professional standpoint makes a difference in how each one perceives his professional
obligations. The Op is the only one who has to answer to a boss, the Old Man. He fudges his reports at times to cover up
some less than conventional tactics, but, still, he’s loyal to the Agency and he
loves his job. Or he is his job. That
idea of profession as identity runs all through my grandfather’s work. The Op
tales offer an extended narration of workaday professionalism in action.
Several collections in
recent years have featured Continental Op stories, notably 1999’s Nightmare Town and then more extensively
the Library of America’s Crime Stories
& Other Writings in 2001, but this is the first time all of the
standalone Op stories have been gathered together in series form. What might
readers learn about the Op or about Hammett—and what did you yourself take away—from
reading these complete case files, finally gathered in chronological order?
Any careful reader will see the progression
in Hammett’s work. The stories grow longer and more fluid, the Op more
emotionally vulnerable, the resolutions keyed more to justice than law. There’s
evidence of both character and story development. Rick does a good job in his
introductions of describing shifts in the degrees of violence that take place
under Hammett’s three editors at Black
Mask—very little under George W. Sutton, with scanty gunplay; much more
under Philip C. Cody, the Op tempted to go blood simple; and ample
well-developed action under Joseph Thompson Shaw, purposeful as well as
thrilling.
I’m drawn to that biographical potential of
the collection, of course. The complete run of stories offers a fascinating
opportunity to contextualize the Op’s narratives within Hammett’s real life
story. My grandfather starts with a novice’s attention his editors’ demands—thrilled
to be published, but also intent on keeping food on the family table. He hits
his stride with some great stories, but then there’s a break, when he walks
away in anger, deciding to give up on fiction. Then he’s back, with stories
more confident, complicated, and ambitious. He’d realized his talents and was ready
(with Joseph Shaw’s support) to challenge pulp- and crime-fiction norms. And
then the sea change in February of 1930—the final Op story published in Black Mask, the same month that The Maltese Falcon was released by in
hardback by Knopf. With that, my grandfather was done with the Op and off to
explore other possibilities.
A few of the Op
stories have been elusive except in much older editions—“It” and “Death and
Company,” specifically. Why have those not been republished more recently, and
do you anticipate they will be among the standout gems here for readers who are
already fans?
The Op’s publishing history is complex—even
frustrating. I don’t know why those two stories have been overlooked for so
long. There is a gruesome tinge to each, but nothing sufficient to repel
Hammett readers. I certainly can’t explain Lillian Hellman’s choices while she
controlled the estate or the decisions made by her former trustees after her
death. I do know that contracts let
under their tenure made the publication of Complete
Case Files extraordinarily difficult. It seemed ridiculous to me that the
Op’s tales couldn’t be collected altogether! Rick and I are both current trustees
for Hammett’s literary property trust (under Hellman’s will, no less) and even
with that, it was a struggle to assemble all the pieces. We’re hugely pleased
and proud of that we were, finally, able to bring together the Op’s complete
short-story canon.
“It” and “Death and Company” were last
available, alongside many other Op stories, in paperbacks edited by Ellery
Queen between the early 1940s and early ’50s [the cover to one of those paperbacks can be seen at left]—but you note that the stories in
those editions were presented in “sometimes liberally re-edited form.” [Editorial note: Don
Herron at “Up and Down These Mean Streets” has been less diplomatic, using the word “butchered,” and Terry Zobeck has meticulously charted the editorial changes to “Death and Company” here.] In the newly collected case files, do you and Layman restore these and other stories to their original form?
Yes, absolutely! Rick and I worked from copies
of the original publications for each story—26 in Black Mask, and one each in True
Detective Stories and Mystery Stories
magazines. Our only changes are corrections to obvious typos—which were more
common than you might imagine, especially in the earlier editions of Black Mask. The proofreading was
grueling. But we wanted to stick as close to Hammett’s originals as possible
and when in doubt, we left questionable text unaltered. Unlike Ellery Queen,
our first principle was “do no harm.”
Does each of the
eight volumes feature its own individual introductions by you and Richard
Layman?
Here’s how the organization works. Two or
three stories are clustered into each volume. Then the volumes are collected
into three sections: the Early, Middle, and Later Years. Rick wrote introductions for each of the
three sections based on Hammett’s experiences under his three editors at Black Mask, George W. Sutton, Philip
Cody, and Joseph Thompson Shaw. A Sutton, Cody, or Shaw introduction opens each
volume, as appropriate. My foreword traces the publishing and cultural history
of the Op from creation through this most recent publication. Every volume opens with the same foreword. A
separate headnote introduces the never-before-published Op fragment, “Three
Dimes.”
Rick and I have worked together since 1999
and this is our fifth published collaboration. We’ve learned to divvy up the editorial
tasks. Each book has had its own rewards and challenges. In this case, in
addition to constraints imposed by previous contracts, we’re negotiating the
relatively new world of e-publication. It’s
complicated. For now, we’re releasing eight volumes, which include 23 stories.
We hope to release the remaining handful and the fragment later this year.
“Three Dimes” promised to be a real highlight of the
collection here. What more can you tell us about it?
The fragment comes from Hammett’s archive at
the University of Texas at Austin. It is unique—a 1,367-word partial draft, in
the classic Op style, that leaves us wondering what would have happened next
and why the story was set aside unfinished. My grandfather, who saved very
little, saved this, along with chapter and character notes, which will be
included. I think that rare glimpse of Hammett’s process is going to be a real
thrill for fans. Watch for it!
Find out more about the Complete Continental Op here at Open Road Media.
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