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.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"This is a fine book... Irwin has travelled far and profitably, indeed, into the history of chess, into geometry and algebra, into mythology, into alchemy, into the culture of labyrinths, and more besides." -- John Sturrock, Times Literary Supplement
"[Irwin] has probed the labyrinthine depths principally of Poe and Borges, using the analytic tools of Jung, Lacan, and Derrida, and a score of other psychological interpreters of fiction... The result is dazzling." -- America
"[A] learned, capacious, and ultimately amazing book." -- Virginia Quarterly Review
Review
"John Irwin has written another wonderful book." -- J. Hillis Miller
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Stimulating, despite insufficient editing of lecture texts.,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective Story (Paperback)
Irwin's award winning book is a stimulating application of
now traditional 'new' literary criticism/analysis and more recent and
trendy (read: quasi-post-modern) devices.
The result is a frequently absorbing
study of the labyrinthine minds of Poe and Borges,
as seen principally through their related six detective
pieces.
Unfortunately the sutures as well as the strivings-for-effect from Irwin's foundational
lectures stand too proud, making for greater appeal to academics
than to even highly motivated general readers.
Irwin's work would find and deserve more cover-to-cover
readers, rather than citation researchers, if a
second edition were edited for repetitiveness and
prolixity.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
LET ME START WITH A simple-minded question: How does one write analytic detective fiction as high art when the genre's central narrative mechanism seems to discourage the unlimited rereading associated with serious writing? Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
analytic detective story, analytic detective genre, geographic directionality, mirror fold, nebular cosmogony, mental duel, royal boudoir, sedulous ape, first detective story, word labyrinth, subsequent citations, purloined letter, mere mathematician, double axe, numerical structure, marine affairs, forking paths, red king, square folded, analytical language Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Rue Morgue, Ibn Hakkan, The Garden of Forking Paths, Stephen Albert, West Point, Pierre Menard, Don Quixote, Red Chamber, Buenos Aires, Louis Philippe, Sir Thomas Browne, Charles Dupin, Looking-glass House, Analytical Society, Autobiographical Essay, Tai An, The Circular Ruins, William Wilson, Adam Kadmon, Auguste Dupin, Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Herbert Ashe, Ibn Ilakkan, Mary Rogers, Military Academy New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
LET ME START WITH A simple-minded question: How does one write analytic detective fiction as high art when the genre's central narrative mechanism seems to discourage the unlimited rereading associated with serious writing? Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
analytic detective story, analytic detective genre, geographic directionality, mirror fold, nebular cosmogony, mental duel, royal boudoir, sedulous ape, first detective story, word labyrinth, subsequent citations, purloined letter, mere mathematician, double axe, numerical structure, marine affairs, forking paths, red king, square folded, analytical language Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Rue Morgue, Ibn Hakkan, The Garden of Forking Paths, Stephen Albert, West Point, Pierre Menard, Don Quixote, Red Chamber, Buenos Aires, Louis Philippe, Sir Thomas Browne, Charles Dupin, Looking-glass House, Analytical Society, Autobiographical Essay, Tai An, The Circular Ruins, William Wilson, Adam Kadmon, Auguste Dupin, Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, Herbert Ashe, Ibn Ilakkan, Mary Rogers, Military Academy New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 86
books:
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27
books
cite this book:
See all 27 books citing this book
- The Purloined Letter (Creative's Classics) by Edgar Allan Poe on 49 pages
- The Black Cat and Other Stories (Penguin Readers, Level 3) by Edgar Allen Poe on 37 pages
- Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe on 37 pages
- The Murders in the Rue Morgue (Konemann Classics) by Edgar Allan Poe on 37 pages
- Through The Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll on 10 pages
See all 86 books this book cites
- Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism by Patricia Merivale on 9 pages
- Enigmas and Riddles in Literature by Eleanor Cook on 5 pages
- A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (Historical Guides to American Authors) by J. Gerald Kennedy on 4 pages
- A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe (Historical Guides to American Authors) by J. Gerald Kennedy on 4 pages
- Cuba and the Tempest: Literature and Cinema in the Time of Diaspora (Envisioning Cuba) by Gonzalez Eduardo in Front Matter, page 111, and Back Matter
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