WHENEVER you contemplate detective fiction authors and their productions, you probably wouldn't think of . . .
"Henry James: Master Detective."
By V. J. McGill (1897-1997; JSTOR HERE).
First appearance: The Bookman, November 1930.
Article (6 pages).
Online at UNZ (HERE).
THIS article appeared at a time when S.S. Van Dine's Philo Vance was at the apex of his popularity, which should explain the author's references to him. Whether or not McGill successfully proves his thesis, his perceptions of the detective story of the time might
still be of interest. Here is how he begins:
"THE CHARM of the detective story is unlike that of any other literature. The spell of mystery and the gradual unwinding of the fatal solution binds us as does no other form. It humors innocently our morbid curiosity about corpses and secret crimes. It appeals uniquely to our love of an intellectual game. It enforces a feverish attention, and there are few who can resist it. We are like those who linger horribly about the morgue or a scene of crime to probe the pale and startling secrets of the dead. We are also like weird chess players, who, with suspects and evidence for pieces, play pawn against pawn to save knights, and knights against bishops to save queens. It is a game, but there is nothing so real.
"The style of the detective story also accounts for much of its popularity. It is natural and convincing, blending the matter-of-fact with the mysteriously horrible, the solidity of reality with the charm of romance, and thus attracts many readers for whom other kinds of fiction have little appeal. It was one of our leading physiologists who first suggested to me the real reason for this uncommon popularity. "Other forms of literature," he complained, "are hard for me to believe and fail to hold my interest when I do believe them. The heroes of most plays," he didn't mind saying, "are simply stupid. The perplexities in which they find themselves are not dilemmas except for ignorant persons, and could be easily solved by a little enlightenment or scientific ingenuity." Why Oedipus should have thought that blinding himself was the best solution of his difficulties, or Werther, suicide, the eminent scientist I speak of could not see. There were other alternatives, he maintained, and more helpful ones. To believe in such characters was to take a view of the intelligence of mankind which was very painful to him. In detective stories, on the other hand, he found much of the common sense and resourcefulness to which he was accustomed in his own laboratory. At this point, he waved his hand at his thousand rats and his elaborate apparatus. It was natural that he should feel drawn to the baffling realities and clear-cut solutions of this scientific type of fiction.
"The scientific procedure of the usual detective story is what J. S. Mill has called The Method of Residues—a very famous method employed in notable cases such as the discovery of Neptune, and always involved in any extensive work in science. Take a typical case. A murder is committed while only six persons are in the house. One after another is exculpated, and so removed, leaving the remaining man as the likely murderer. Having fixed upon him as the only one who could be guilty, it is usually quite easy to prove the case against him. The distinctive feature of the detective story is seen precisely here. As the hero investigates the crime and reconstructs the conduct or motivation of the criminal, every reasonable alternative must be considered. On the assumption that Mr. X. committed murder, what were his possible motives? Assuming that these were his motives, given the scene of the murder, the habits of the murdered man, what were the inevitable steps of Mr. X.? The detective must face the complicated facts and show that, everything considered, Mr. X. could only have acted in one particular way and that no one else could possibly have acted this way. In a perfect detective story the conduct of the subtle criminal could be deduced by the even subtler detective with the greatest rigor, and every act would follow inevitably from the premises.
"It is obvious, of course, that this deductive precision is never reached, and seldom even approached, by other types of literature. In Madame Bovary, to take fictional explanation at its highest point, a great deal is accounted for. But when the poor woman ends a suicide, it is clear that there were other alternatives; nor could this event be deduced from the previous facts. In view of these other alternatives, the suicide was simply an accident. Such accidents occur frequently in the finest literature and are permitted. They are scarcely a defect in drama or the novel, but they mar the detective story. This follows, indeed, from its very nature. If, according to the detective's final theory, Mr. X. may have left his fingerprints on the gun after, just as easily as before, the murder, then the theory is a bad one. Not only that; it is a serious offence to leave loopholes in the argument or implicate a man on faulty evidence. The detective-story writer cannot afford, any more than a jury, to hang the wrong man. His audience is quick to take offence. An oversight in such a story is almost a hanging matter. Thus, the detective story, through its affiliation with actual criminal procedure, is held to a much higher standard of scientific rigor in explanation than is required of any other literature. Not even the naturalistic novel, with all its deterministic laws, proposes or carries out such finished explanations.
"The detective story is, in fact, a kind of science. The author requires a knowledge of human nature and circumstance sufficient for the detection of the criminal. On the basis of certain deductions he must persuade us that Mr. X. is guilty and, like the court, he must take responsibility for the hanging. For this reason, he is obliged to employ every bit of knowledge which might bear upon the case, whether drawn from history, law, medicine, or psychology; nor can he afford to neglect such sciences as archeology and linguistics. There is no science nor circumstance which might not be relevant. Thus, as science advances, the detective-story writer must follow closely, and make learned researches, it may be, to prove his point. Numbers of modern writers in this field, it will be noted, are men of scientific training. Yet, in the very neatness of the detective story, there is a hint of mechanism and broken bells. Fingerprints, telltale dust, a picture ajar, a deep-niched pipe, may serve as evidence and convict the criminal. They do not satisfy our curiosity. In a court room, a man's false teeth or the dust on the shoes he borrowed from a friend may have a startling effect, may serve as links in the detective's proof. They do not answer to our deeper interest. What went on in the mind of the criminal? What were his secret thoughts in those illicit hours of strange excitement? This is our real curiosity, which neither legal proof, nor the circumstantial evidence of detective stories, can ever satisfy.
"Of all detective-story writers, it is Van Dine who has done most to gratify our psychological interest. Yet even here we are largely disappointed. Too often the psychological theories are introduced with only a general relevance and no specific application. Certain general principles of human nature may give Philo Vance the clues which point the way to a solution. For the proof itself he must depend upon circumstantial evidence, upon a piece of string or a phonograph record. Of the inner life of the criminal and his victim we gather meanwhile only a skeleton, and only an inkling of their weird rich moments.
"These psychological detective stories are fine enough in a nervous, superficial way. For the real thing we must turn to an author who is never mentioned in this connection—to Henry James. In his tales and novels we shall find our fill of subtle mysteries and fine-spun solutions, all enacted intricately in the minds of incredibly clever people. The detective here will simply burn with curiosity."
A couple of years earlier, however, Van Dine, of course, had already laid out the "rules" (in 1928), the 16th of which is:
"A detective novel should contain no long descriptive passages, no literary dallying with side-issues, no subtly worked-out character analyses, no 'atmospheric' preoccupations. Such matters have no vital place in a record of crime and deduction. They hold up the action and introduce issues irrelevant to the main purpose, which is to state a problem, analyze it, and bring it to a successful conclusion. To be sure, there must be a sufficient descriptiveness and character delineation to give the novel verisimilitude." (See Open Culture HERE.)
From this point McGill launches into a detailed analysis of his thesis: that Henry James's writings correspond to detective fiction in their quest to probe and ultimately explain the mysteries of human behavior in all its permutations, to illuminate the characters' "inner lives" far more deeply. Since it's obvious that McGill is a behavioral scientist, he naturally assumes that human actions are the product of purely physical forces and not metaphysical ones and are therefore explicable in purely materialistic terms; in other words, "the devil made me do it" or original sin are automatically ruled out. As a result, it's no surprise when he reiterates the common complaint of many critics that detective story writers don't go far enough with characterization. It's here that we'll leave it to you to decide whether he succeeds with his thesis.
Referenced above and resources:
- "Oedipus": Wikipedia (HERE).
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- "or Werther": Wikipedia (HERE).
- "the discovery of Neptune": Wikipedia (HERE).
- Madame Bovary: Wikipedia (HERE).
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- "the naturalistic novel": Wikipedia (HERE).
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| Mr. Naturalistic Novel himself, Émile Zola |
- A substantial Wikipedia page about Henry James (1843-1916) is (HERE). Hollywood has been adapting his work for years, starting in 1933, with no fewer than 159 credits on IMDb (HERE).
Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.
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