Seems
this Moretti goon has been bumping off writers all over town. But
his beef isn’t with your average, everyday writer. He’s got a problem
with detective stories. In one long dark afternoon I seen them all
drop: Hammett, Chandler, Reggie Hill, Art Doyle, Eddie Poe. Even
that nice Christie dame took a tumble. It hadda stop somewhere.
I guess it was my unlucky day when Eco walked through my door. He
says, “You gotta help me, Sylvester. You gotta take out Moretti
before he gets to me.” Eco was spooked, real scared. I don’t know.
I knew that limey Doyle. Hell, I liked him. And the only people
I like are my friends Smith, Wesson, and Jim Beam. You know Jim.
He doesn’t talk too much. I
told Eco I’d have to think about it.
In the
essay ‘Clues’ in his 1980 book Signs Taken For Wonders, the Italian theorist Franco Moretti explores methods of analysing mass
culture through a deconstruction of detective fiction, a work that
eventually reveals that the genre is “anti-literary” (148). During
this process Moretti addresses, amongst other issues, the ideas
that mystery fiction “owes its success to the fact that it teaches
nothing” (138), and that it works from a “…literary structure that
is anything but experimental” (149). His essay, though “restless
and disharmonic” (134), is convincing as an argument against ‘classic’
detective fiction. However, the more recent impact of postmodernism
on the genre would seem to call into question certain of the ideas
offered in Moretti’s argument. For example, his continual reference
to ‘the’ criminal is challenged by a film such as The
Usual Suspects (dir. Singer: 1997), which disowns the conventional
demands of the detective thriller by refusing to offer any definite
closure on the narrative whatsoever. Similarly, Moretti’s derision
of the genre as little more than an appropriation of the short story
form is defied by the weaving, evolving plot lines of Paul Auster’s
New York Trilogy. Bearing this apparent growth of the style in mind,
this essay will apply Moretti’s arguments to Umberto Eco’s The
Name of the Rose in an effort
to prove that traditionally ‘low’ culture genres such as detective
fiction have been revived and reconciled to ‘high’ culture with
the advent of theoretically sophisticated novelists.
I
gotta say I thought twice before taking this job. It had trouble
written all over it. They say this Rose book is pretty good. I don’t
know much about that. I’m not the gardening type. I wasn’t exactly
happy about Eco’s motivation in the matter, neither. I heard he
only wrote it ‘cos he wanted to poison a monk…
Jesus!
What kind of sicko is this punk? Still, I guess he’s the guy shelling
out the greenbacks. I just do what I’m told. First thing I gotta
do is find out how Moretti killed those poor writer bums…
Moretti’s
argument in ‘Clues’ is rooted in the premise that detective fiction
can be interpreted on two levels of understanding. The first is “evident
and literal”, and the second a hidden set of “cultural rules that
form its deep structure” (149-50). These rules are largely concerned
with the detective as an economic guardian, whose role it is to protect
the bourgeois from the financial enterprise of either the aristocracy
or the working classes. In this way, detectives such as Sherlock
Holmes are the “doctors” of their societies (Signs, 135;145). Economic independence is a threat to social
unity, and the detective exists to prevent the ambitious individual
from achieving autonomy. It is these “deep” levels of analysis that
concern a defence of The Name of the Rose,
as they move beyond the deconstruction of individual plots to examine
generic aspects of detective fiction.
As
a preliminary, it is necessary to establish The Name of the Rose
as a text that falls into Moretti’s categorisation of
detective fiction: otherwise his arguments cannot apply to Eco’s
novel. For this reason, The Name of the Rose
must first be proven to be anti-literary according to Moretti’s
definition: it must be a
detective fiction. This is indeed the case, as the mysteries of
the plot – why, how, and whodunit – are resolved by revisiting the
scene of the crime and recreating the murders. Eco must therefore
“return to the beginning” (137), and is complicit in creating a situation where the reader is:
…allowed
to discover only what one would have found out anyway. To attempt
to ‘guess’ is […] to accept a situation in which the individual’s
brain might as well stop working. (Signs, 148)
Moretti’s
argument dismisses the rest of a narrative, no matter how sophisticated,
as a verbose attempt at attaining to the novel form. This is a troubling
concept considering The Name of the Rose
as a work that is so ostensibly literate and intelligent. In addition
to this deconstruction, ‘Clues’ reaches the conclusion that as a genre,
the murder mystery is anti-literary because it is:
…radically anti-novelistic:
the aim of the narration is no longer the character’s development
into autonomy, or a change from the initial situation, or the presentation
of plot as a conflict and an evolutionary, spiral image of a developing
world that it is difficult to draw to a close. (137)
This
lack of “plot as a conflict” is derived from the assignation of
a stereotype to each character, which in turn contributes to the
“deeper” system of cultural rules. Moretti argues that ‘conflict’
does not exist in the murder mystery because the form of the story
is ultimately little more than the delaying of an inevitable conclusion.
This premise simplifies the relationship between detective and criminal
to the point of a binary opposition, where the detective’s existence
is justified solely by the pursuit and eventual capture of the criminal.
It is through the breakdown of these opposed roles that William
and Jorge transcend this definition, and lift The Name of the
Rose into the category of a narrative novel. This breakdown strikes the reader
with Adso’s realisation that:
…at
this moment these two men, arrayed in mortal conflict, were admiring
each other, as if each had acted only to win the other’s applause.
(472)
The
opposition is broken down because Jorge is not a
criminal: in the 14th Century, his behaviour is that of
the truly pious Christian. The venerable monk has acted in defence
of an ideology for which he is prepared to sacrifice his life; he
has acted upon a method of interpretation of signifiers in exactly
the same way as William:
I became convinced
that a divine plan was directing these deaths, for which I was not
responsible. (470)
In many
ways, Jorge is himself a detective: William’s insistence on revealing
Aristotle’s Poetics to the
world, and the subsequent ideological weakening of the Christian
religion/society that will inevitably result, confer upon him the
role of Moretti’s ‘criminal’. This would make William “proceed as
if the murderer and I think alike” (418). Jorge acts as a detective
in preventing the accumulation of property, albeit intellectual
rather than monetary. Eco says:
Jorge
is not the villain, he is one of the heroes… He is expressing certain
attitudes of his time, but I don’t consider him a villain. It is
a confrontation between two worldviews, and a worldview is a system
of ideas.
The
ambiguity of interpretation is a vital aspect in a defence of The
Name of the Rose. Where Jorge regards the Seven Trumpets of St. John
as the manifestation of divine influence, William interprets the
same signs as coincidental. The existence of these ambiguities displays
a fundamental point of poststructuralism. If both interpretations
are valid, then neither ending can be confidently attributed to
the novel. This defiance runs counter to Moretti’s accusation that:
Detective
fiction’s ending is its end indeed: its solution in the true sense.
[…] it abolishes narration. (148)
By removing
the certainty and this “true” solution from the novel, Eco not only
allows, but demands a re-reading to ascertain not Moretti’s “deeper” meaning;
but more immediately the “superficial” meaning that is condemned
in ‘Clues’ as an insult to the intelligence of the reader: “(who,
in fact, ever ‘re-reads’ a detective story?)” (Signs, 150).
In reconsidering
the “anti-novelistic” premise of Moretti’s argument, I would also
argue that rather than displaying a lack of “the character’s development
into autonomy”, it is only through the course of the novel and specifically
his direct engagement with the detection process that Adso can dare
“for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological
conclusion” (493). His independence in theoretical thought is granted
to him only after gaining the ability to interpret: he pieces together
the complex signifiers of William’s argument, and uses these to
draw a logical, signified conclusion. Adso’s accidental discovery
of the peasant prostitute helps to unravel the mysteries of the
abbey, while the loss of his virginity simultaneously serves as
a metaphor for his emotional growth and intellectual maturation.
His autonomy also becomes literal as he is ultimately separated
from William. As the assistant/narrator, Adso is totally juxtaposed
with Moretti’s gently patronising contempt of “Watson, poor fool”
(Signs, 146).
Leaving
the “anti-novelistic” aspect aside, I would like to focus now on
another facet of Moretti’s argument: the individual as criminal.
‘Clues’ begins with the hypothesis that:
A
good rule in detective fiction is to have only one criminal. This
is not because guilt isolates, but, on the contrary, because isolation
breeds guilt. The criminal adheres to others only instrumentally;
for him association is merely the expedient that allows him to attain
his own interests. (134-5)
This
premise is more concisely defined as “Innocence is conformity; individuality,
guilt”. Such an assertion is derived from the growth of society
into an “organism or social body” (Signs, 135). By manifesting personal desires through socially
unacceptable actions, the individual becomes isolated from the coalescent
mass: an occurrence that subsequently must associate guilt with isolation:
The
idea that anything the individual desires to protect from the interference
of society – the liberal ‘freedom from’ – favours or even coincides
with crime is gradually insinuated, and is the source of the fascination
with ‘locked room mysteries’. The murderer and victim are inside,
society – innocent and weak – outside. (Signs, 136)
As we
have already seen, it is inaccurate to simplify the role of detective
or criminal in The Name of the Rose:
I would now like to challenge these generalisations of ‘individual’
and ‘society’. Moretti’s argument cites as examples the stories
of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, in which there tends
to be one criminal and one detective, who play out their respective
roles around a social “organic body”. However, Moretti’s argument
is seriously compromised by the society of the abbey. By his
own definition, an individual is a criminal: the abbey is populated
almost without exception by ‘criminals’; who must therefore be individuals.
If the social group is made entirely of these individuals, then
Moretti’s “organic society” dissolves and returns to the “‘contract’
between independent entities” (135). As proof of their criminality/ individuality, and in no particular
order: Malachi, Adelmo and Berengar are guilty of sodomy; Jorge
and Adelmo of suicide; Malachi is a murderer; Remegio is a heretical
Minorite; Salvatore is both Minorite and pimp; Aymaro is a wilful
trouble maker; Bernardo Guidoni is manipulative and cruel; William
is guilty of burglary and heresy; Adso breaks his vow of chastity.
All are guilty of deception. And without exception, the population
of the abbey is guilty of:
Uniqueness and
mystery: detective fiction treats every element of individual behaviour
that desires secrecy as an offence, even if there is no trace of
crime…(Signs, 135-6).
It is
the passions and individuality of all the
monks that initiate the proceedings: it is Berengar’s expression
of lust for Adelmo that generates the plot, rather than a murder/mystery/crime.
The society of the abbey is constructed entirely of ‘guilty’ individuals.
In this way, it is possible to challenge Moretti’s assertion that:
Detective
fiction, however, exists expressly to dispel the doubt that guilt
might be impersonal, and therefore collective and social. (135)
In The
Name of the Rose, guilt proves
to be entirely social precisely because every
individual is guilty. Indeed, the proliferation of ‘guilty’ parties
demands an alteration to Moretti’s premise, a turnaround to: ‘conformity
is guilt.’ It ceases to be true that the detective exists to reassure
a unified society about the threat posed to them by the individual,
but rather the case that the detective is abandoned by the society
for which he was once the champion. This is seen in The
Name of the Rose as Abo tells
William:
“Naturally,
it is not necessary for you to continue your investigations. Do
not disturb the monks further. You may go.”
It
was more than a dismissal, it was an expulsion. (449)
“…expulsion”:
the detective is rejected by society. Adso tells of: “the many acts
of pride that his intellectual vanity made him commit” (499). William’s
individuality and desire to solve the case
make him guilty of the desire for personal advancement exactly as
if he were the victim or criminal. This exile leaves William both
literally and metaphorically outside Moretti’s “locked room”, as
he is continually frustrated in his attempts to decode the secrets
of the hidden finis Africae. Tellingly, his eventual access owes more to the coincidence
of Adso’s bizarre dream than any genuine understanding of the code/world.
It is no longer the case that “Murderer and victim meet in the locked
room because fundamentally they are similar” (Signs, 136). If this is true, then the finis Africae
will necessarily be rather crowded by the conclusion of The
Name of the Rose.
Moretti
states that the “locked room” relationship excludes a “weak and
innocent” society, which remains ignorant and safe in conformity.
Yet as we have already seen, the society of the abbey is far from
weak and innocent. Blackmail, passion, and secrecy are rife: in
this society, it is William the detective who is innocent. This innocence would seem to inherently
demand that the process of detection is something beyond
the detective: in The
Name of the Rose this is indeed
the case, as “There was no plot,” William said, “and I discovered
it by mistake” (491).
And
this is my conclusion: the detective is dead. Contemporary detective
fiction has been reinvented by the complexities of contemporary
culture. In The Name of the Rose, the relationship between signifiers and signified
is so convoluted and fragmented that traditional ‘reading’ cannot
occur. The multiplicity of language and style that is present in
the abbey (and at the risk of generalisation, the very essence of
postmodernism) renders effective interpretation impossible, and
the detective is nothing if
not an interpreter. If he becomes
incapable of transforming mystery into fact, signifier into signified,
and suspect into criminal, then it is the detective who is the victim:
of a shifting and restless shared social language. There are no
common ‘truths’ to be understood, and as such, the detective is
obsolete; and he must return to the society whence he came. William’s
return to conformity is seen in his death “during the great plague
that ravaged Europe” (499), an event that removes utterly any vestige
of his uniqueness. There is no longer the possibility that the detective
“possesses the stable code, at the root of every mysterious message”
(Signs, 145), because
stable codes no longer exist. Postmodern culture – and theoretically
sophisticated postmodern novelists – deny the concept of a unified,
comprehensible social organism, and encourage the fragmentation
into frightened, homogenised individuality that is witnessed in
the abbey. Every lapse into definition and clarity is ultimately
merely further evidence of separation and ambiguity, as disparate
islands of reason drift further apart:
I
have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso; they are the only things
man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not
understand was the relation among signs. […] I behaved stubbornly,
pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that
there is no order in the universe. (492)
Well…
there is certainly no order in the convoluted universe of the postmodern
detective.
References
Auster,
Paul: The New York Trilogy;
Kent, Faber & Faber, 1992.
Beale,
Theodore: Umberto Eco Interview.
Recorded December 12th, 1996.
Cawelti,
John G: Detecting the Detective (critical approaches to detective
fiction); 06/22/1999. http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~jbl00001/English_109-23/mystery2.htm.
Dragomán,
György: Case Closed (Infinite listings generating infinite listings
generating infinite…).
Eco,
Umberto: The Name of the Rose;
Reading, Picador, 1984.
Moretti,
Franco: Signs taken for wonders;
Norfolk, Verso, 1983.
