The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story

by John T. Irwin

Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies from the Modern Language AssociationWinner of the Christian Gauss Award from the Phi Beta Kappa Society In The Mystery to a Solution , John Irwin brilliantly examines the deeper significance of the analytical detective genre which Poe created and the meaning of Borges' efforts to "double" the genre's origins one hundred years later. Combining history, literary history, and practical and speculative criticism, Irwin pursues the issues underlying the detective story into areas as various as the history of mathematics, classical mythology, the double-mirror structure of self-consciousness, the anthropology of Evans and Frazer, the structure of chess, the mind-body problem, the etymology of the word labyrinth , and dozens of other topics. Irwin mirrors the aesthetic impact of the genre by creating in his study the dynamics of a detective story—the uncovering of mysteries, the accumulation of evidence, the tracing of clues, and the final solution that ties it all together.

Genres: Detective, Criticism, Mystery

512 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1993

Reviews

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Irwin posits self-reflexiveness as a series that begins "n, n+1, (n+1)+1," and continues to infinity.

If you are thinking, that is thought, obviously. But if you are thinking about thinking (what you are doing now, perhaps), you have not just reached the second level, but a third. That is, there is a thought about thinking about thinking, and it just goes on and on from there-- the Russian doll par excellence.

Irwin's thesis is that Poe's "tales of ratiocination" are re-readable (unlike mysteries in which everything hinges on the solution of a crime and the reader's excitement at paralleling, perhaps overtaking, the detective in his/her pursuit of that solution) because they are, ultimately, about self-reflection, about thought, and that they continually reveal new facets with each reading. He argues that Borges's stories meant to "double" Poe's tales do in fact double those tales, by making this dimension explicit, and he does it all through really fantastic explications of some difficult concepts.

Unfortunately, he does lose himself occasionally in digression, particularly in the biographical sections of this book, which have a great deal less to do with the work of either Poe or Borges than his even own thesis claims. But he often approaches exactly that speed of thought that he is trying to explicate (that of Poe or Borges), and, as a kind of trebling of their work, this book is pretty amazing.

[Mariana Jimenez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish i'd written this goddamn

[Cymru Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the table of contents alone: Yeesh! Some of it — the Lacan and Derrida digressions — seemed like going off on a tangent for its own sake, but that's how I feel about those French dudes anyway. They never really illuminate anything, do they? On the other hand, the stuff here on Theseus and Oedipus was enormously enlightening; it offerred a summary of the two myths that to me is indispensible. To bring two writers like Poe and Borges together in such a way was really interesting, and I particulary liked the attention paid to Borges' "Death and the Compass", a story which fascinated me since I first read it as a young lad in college. At times this book is incomprehensible gibberish, but I'm very glad it exists.

[Marcastro · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best.