Errors about Detective Stories
By G.K. Chesterton
Illustrated London News August 28, 1920
It is a well-known fact that people who have never
succeeded in anything end by writing books about how to succeed; and I do not
see why the principle should not be applied to success in the writing of
detective tales as well as in lower and less glorious walks of life.
Before offering any criticism in the matter of
mystery stories, I think it only fair to confess that I have myself written
some of the worst mystery stories in the world. But, if I have achieved the
lowest results, I might very well claim to have had the loftiest motive, for I
acted on the divine principle of the Golden Rule. I did unto others as I would
they would do unto me. I provided them with more stories about crime, in the
faint hope that they in turn might provide me with more stories about crime. I
cast my mystery on the waters, so to speak, hoping it might return to me after
many days, with a totally different title and a much better tale. In the
detective novel the division of labour is sharply drawn between the reader and
the novelist. Perhaps it may be pointedly answered that the heavier part of the
labour falls on the reader. Perhaps it is true, especially in those melancholy
examples to which I have darkly referred. But, anyhow, such a division does
exist in the very nature of the detective story. If you write it you cannot
read it. If you want to read it you must not be so ill-advised as to write it.
It is obvious that I cannot be
thunderstruck at the end with a revelation which I
have planned from the very beginning; nor can I be bewildered and inquisitive
about the concealment of something which I am myself labouring to conceal. I
cannot myself stagger with astonishment on learning that the Bishop has been a
brigand, if I have myself elaborately disguised the brigand as a Bishop. The
poet can sing his song, but the sensational writer cannot be shocked at his
shocker.
Nevertheless, I am moved to dogmatise about
detective stories, partly because I see everywhere the advertisements of the
dramatic version of one of the best of detective stories, "The Yellow
Room," and partly because I have just read again that excellent French
story in its original form. I have not seen the play itself, but I hear it is a
great
success, though it by no means follows, from the
nature of the problem, that a good mystery story will make a good play. Indeed,
the two things in the abstract are almost antagonistic. The two methods of
concealment are exactly contrary, for the drama depends on what was called the
Greek irony - that is, on the knowledge of the audience, and not ignorance of
the audience. In the detective story it is the hero (or villain) who knows, and
the outsider who is deceived. In the drama it is the outsider (or spectator)
who knows, and the hero who is deceived. The one keeps a secret from the
actors, and the other from the audience. Nevertheless, the thing has been done
successfully in one or two cases, and very probably in this case also. But the
re-reading of the story itself, as well as of any amount of inferior stories of
the same kind, has moved me to throw out some general suggestions about the
true principles of this popular form of art. I do not mean to speak in any
superior fashion of the inferior stories. I am very fond of trash; I have read
a great deal of it - I have also written a great deal of it. But even in this
department there is trash and trash; and we might be more easily amused if our
idlest entertainers understood how to amuse us. And there are certain fallacies
about the nature of the true mystery story which I perceive to be common among
the writers as well as the readers of it. But I should like it to be understood
that it is in the comparatively proud and honourable character of a reader of
such stories, and not in the lower and more servile capacity of a writer of
them, that I venture to indicate such errors.
First of all, there is evidently a very general
idea that the object of the detective novelist is to baffle the reader. Now,
nothing is easier than baffling the reader, in the sense of disappointing the
reader. There are many successful and widely advertised stories of which the
principle simply Consists in thwarting information by means of incident. The
Bulgarian governess is just about to mention her real reason for concealing
herself with a loaded rifle inside the grand piano, when a yellow Chinamall
leaps through the window and cuts off her head with a yataghan; [A yataghan is
a Turkish scimitar with a double curved blade.] and this trivial interruption
is allowed to defer the elucidation of the whole story. Now, it is quite a
simple matter to fill several volumes with adventures of this thrilling kind,
without permitting the reader to advance a step in the direction of discovery.
This is illegitimate, on the fundamental principles of this form of fiction. It
is not merely that it is not artistic, or that it is not logical. It is that it
is not really exciting. People cannot be excited except about something; and at
this stage of ignorance the reader has nothing to be excited about. People are
thrilled by knowing something, and on this principle they know nothing. The
true object of an intelligent detective story is not to baffle the reader, but
to enlighten the reader; but to enlighten him in such a manner that each
successive portion of the truth comes as a surprise. In this, as in much nobler
types of mystery, the object of the true mystic is not merely to mystify, but
to illuminate. The object is not darkness, but light; but light in the form of
lightning.
Then there is the common error of making all the
human characters sticks, or stock figures - not so much because the novelist is
not intelligent enough to describe real characters as because he really thinks
real characterization wasted on an unreal type of literature. In other words,
he does the one thing which is destructive in every department of existence -
he despises the work he is doing. But the method is fatal to his mechanical
object, even considered as a mechanical object. We cannot even be adequately
thrilled by a whole secret society of assassins who have sworn to effect the
death of a bore who is obviously better dead. And even in order that the
novelist should kill people, it is first necessary that he should make them
live. As a matter of fact, we may very well add the general principle that the
most intense interest of a good mystery story does not consist in incident at
all. The Sherlock Holmes stories are very good working models of a workmanlike
type of popular mystery. And the point of such a story is very seldom the story
at all. The best part of it is the comedy of the conversations between Holmes
and Watson; and that for the sound psychological reason that they are
characters always, even when they are not actors at all.
But if I venture on this rebuke to the popular
novelist, I must balance it by a similar and yet more solemn rebuke to the
psychological novelist. The sensational story-teller does indeed create
uninteresting characters, and then try to make them interesting by killing them.
But the intellectual novelist yet more sadly wastes his talents, for he creates
interesting characters, and then does not kill them. What I complain of in the
advanced and analytical artist in fiction is that he describes some subtle
character, full of modern moods and doubts; that he expends all his imagination
on realising every fine shade of the sentiment and philosophy of the sceptic or
the free lover. And then, when the hero in question is at last alive and ready
to be murdered, when he is in every detail of his character demanding and
requiring, and, as it were, crying aloud to be murdered, the novelist does not
murder him after all. This is a serious waste of a fine opportunity, and I hope
in future to see the error rectified.
http://chesterton.org/gkc/murderer/errors.htm