Borges starts out by talking about how one reads detective stories.
To think is to generalize; we need the useful archetypes of Plato to be able to make any claim. So: why shouldn't we affirm that there are literary genres? I will add a personal observation: literary genres depend, perhaps, less on the texts themselves than on the manner in which they are read. The æsthetic fact requires a conjunction of reader and text; only then does it exist. It is absurd to suppose that a volume is anything more than a volume. It starts to exist when the reader opens the volume. Then the æsthetic phenomenon comes into existence, which could be imagined from the moment when the book was engendered.
And there is an actual type of reader, the reader of detective fiction. This reader -- this reader whom we encounter in every country of the world and who numbers in the millions -- was brought into being by Edgar Allen Poe. Let us suppose that this reader did not exist -- or let's suppose something perhaps more interesting, that we are dealing with a person far removed from ourselves. He could be a Persian, a Malay, a hayseed, a kid -- some person whom we tell that the Quixote is a detective novel; let us suppose that this hypothetical person has read detective novels, and he begins reading the Quixote. So how is he going to read it?
Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, not long ago there lived a gentleman... and already this reader is filled with suspicions, for the reader of detective novels is a skeptical reader, suspicious, particularly suspicious.
For example, when he reads: Somewhere in la Mancha..., of course he supposes that this did not take place in la Mancha. Then: ...whose name I do not care to remember..., -- why does Cervantes not care to remember? Without a doubt because Cervantes is the murder[er], is at fault. Then, ...not long ago...; it may be that what has already happened is not as terrifying as the future.
The first two paragraphs of this passage seem just fantastic to me (given that I didn't think there was any real need in the first place, to defend the legitimacy of talking about genre) -- the idea that literary genre is determined by an interaction between the reader and the text has a whole lot of room for interesting stuff to com out of it. The idea that Edgar Allen Poe created the reader of detective stories is a nice little nugget of thought. And the thought experiment of reading Don Quixote as a detective story is a great idea, of course bringing to mind Borges' story about Pierre Menard. But when he embarks on the experiment, he goes off on the wrong track.
The suspicions that Borges attributes to the reader of detective fiction are suspicions about the intent of the narrator, of the author of the Quixote. But the unreliable narrator does not belong to the detective story, and suspicion of him does not belong to the detective story reader; Laurence Sterne predates Poe by a hundred years, and he did not invent the unreliable narrator. (If memory serves, for that matter, the narrator of the actual Quixote is himself not particularly reliable.*) It's been a while since I read any genre detective stories, but the way I recall reading them is being suspicious of the characters and the ways they presented themselves; the narrator (speaking here of stories in the third person or narrated by the detective, and not considering the Raymond Chandler branch of the genre) did not lie, though he might fail to disclose valuable information or might himself be deceived.
So, there's my quibble with this lecture -- which I have not read in full yet. This reading a language I do not understand seems to really point me in the direction of reading closely, at least...
...Looking ahead, some really great stuff in the body of this lecture. Stay tuned, I'll try and write more this evening. Borges thinks the two authors "without whom literature would not be what it is today" are Poe and Whitman.
* I mean to say, it seems completely natural to wonder why Cervantes does not care to remember the place where his novel begins -- but it's not because I suspect Cervantes of being the guilty party, and I don't believe it's because I have read detective stories. I wonder if a 17th-Century reader would have this reaction -- it's hard for me to imagine any other way of reacting to that sentence.
posted evening of Thursday, February 26th, 2009
➳ More posts about Borges oral
➳ More posts about Jorge Luis Borges
➳ More posts about Readings
➳ More posts about Don Quixote
➳ More posts about Miguel de Cervantes
➳ More posts about Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote
Huh? So you're talking about genre, but only the parts of the genre that you're talking about, which you haven't read lately anyway, and anyway genre is determined by the reader not the narrator but the unreliable narrator "does not belong to the detective story, and suspicion of him does not belong to the detective story reader" unless it does in which case you're not talking about that part of the genre, like I already said, plus also, huh? You're not coherent, but I think you're being much too literal-minded. Are you saying that Don Q cannot be a detective story because it doesn't fit the genre, or are you saying a detective story reader cannot read Don Q because she won't be a detective story reader when she reads it, but another kind of reader? What are you trying to say?
posted morning of February 27th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
Well Don Quixote is not a detective story as I understand that genre, it was published before the genre even existed -- the only reason we're considering it as a detective story is because of the interesting thought experiment proposed by Borges -- I'm just saying I don't think suspicion of an unreliable narrator is what the reader of detective stories would bring to the Quixote. As for being literal minded, it seems to me like that is how Borges is asking me to read his proposed experiment -- it does not look like he is speaking in figurative terms. As for being incoherent, well, you're not the first to make that criticism...
posted morning of February 27th, 2009 by Jeremy
OK, let me help you. That phrase, "Cervantes is the murder," that's a metaphor, or do you not think so? Is that why it seems to you how Borges is asking you to read his proposed experiment literally? Because he uses a metaphor? Or are you receiving astral brainwave signals from Borges in the great beyond? If so, good for you, but could you ask him to send a few to me as well?
posted morning of February 28th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
Whatever dude. Ye it seems to me "Cervantes is the murderer" (and I apologize for the typo in the block quote above) is intended literally. But piss off if you're just interested in insulting me.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Jeremy
No, I'm interested in insulting litblogging as a whole, but if you learn a thing or two from a little dispute, you're not really losing out. So, OK, typo aside, you think "Cervantes is the murderer" is more literal than "Cervantes is the murder"? Who has he literally murdered exactly?
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
The thought experiment Borges is proposing is that we read Don Quixote as we would read a genre mystery novel. "The murderer" here means "the guilty party", the character who has committed the crime at the center of the mystery. He is saying (and this is the statement of his that I disagreed with) that the mystery reader's impulse will be to distrust the narrator, to consider him a suspect. I don't see how a metaphorical reading would work here.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Jeremy
That is a metaphorical reading my good man. It's the conflation of a reading style characteristic of another genre with a text that does not traditionally belong to that genre. That's what metaphor is, provoking comparison between two things that are not really, or only partially alike. In cognitive linguistics they put it even more clearly: metaphor is reading/interpreting one thing in terms of another. Borges initial point that genre is determined by the manner in which the text is read, and so (metaphorically, if you follow) when one reads DQ as a detective story, it is a detective story. But that's still a metaphor, you see. And in any case, gee whiz, the unreliable narrator is a staple of detective fiction, from Raymond Chandler, to Dashiell Hammett, to Agatha Christie, to Dorothy Sayers, to James Ellroy and Elmore Leonard, and let's not forget Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle. Hardly any important detective fiction-writers have failed to use unreliable narrators.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
OK, so say that -- you obviously know more about detective fiction than I -- but unreliable narrators have a long history before detective fiction. We don't need to read DQ as a detective story in order to question the reliability of the narrator.
posted afternoon of February 28th, 2009 by Jeremy
Huh? Nobody said there were no unreliable narrators before DQ, and nor did anybody say we need to read DQ as a detective story. Borges proposed it as an experiment, a hypothetical, remember?
posted evening of February 28th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
Right -- it seemed to me when Borges was conducting his experiment, he went in the wrong direction. I may well have been mistaken about that, given that unreliable narrators are a central element of detective fiction as you say. Since I read a lot of books with unreliable narration which are not detective fiction, my immediate response was to say, why is this reading essentially that of a reader of detective fiction -- but looking at the passage again with this information, I can see how that would be part of the hypothetical reader's experience.
posted evening of February 28th, 2009 by Jeremy
I agree, so who do we reckon is Cervantes' victim? Truth? Or maybe the narrator himself, Cid Hamet Ben-Whatsisname? Of course it might just be the Don himself. How about this suggestion: if we choose to read DQ as a detective narrative, do we then examine every aspect of narrative discourse as an effort to conceal or distract rather than reveal? And if so, what are the implications?
posted evening of February 28th, 2009 by Derek Catermole
