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

John T. Irwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 18, 1996

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.

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 )

John Irwin has written another wonderful book.

(J. Hillis Miller )

A masterful blend of literary criticism, philosophy, game theory, classical learning, the history of science, and the occult.

(Eric J. Sundquist )

Review

"John Irwin has written another wonderful book." -- J. Hillis Miller

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 18, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801854660
• ISBN-13: 978-0801854668
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #701,447 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stimulating, despite insufficient editing of lecture texts., March 2, 1997

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.