The Birdcage Archives

Thursday 2 August 2012

The Locked Room

Hello Gentle Reader

The locked room mystery is part of the collective elements that make up the wide array of detective fiction. The locked room mystery itself is usually the concept of a crime – usually impossible to commit, or rather that it appears that the crime under the circumstances was impossible to commit. The crime scene itself, usually involves a space in which the suspect or the murder could not have entered or left – just like a locked room. Of course this is all at first encounters. Eventually the protagonist or the detective, fueled by rational thought and a need to figure out how this uniquely dangerous puzzle and crime had been committed, is pushed to solving the crime. Debunking the concept that the murder or crime, in itself was impossible to commit. The most modern example of the concept of the locked room mystery would perhaps be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The story itself begins with the premise of the double murder of mother and daughter. The mother’s throat badly slit that her head is barely attached to the rest of the body, while her daughter was strangled and her now lifeless corpse stuffed up a chimney. However what becomes interesting is that the murder was committed, on the fourth floor, in an inaccessible room – which had been locked from the inside. Already the reader knows that the impossible then has been committed. A murder had taken place, in an inaccessible area because the door was locked from the inside. Not to mention that the witnesses themselves prove both contradictory and rather unhelpful. However the detective of the fiction starts pointing out that the murder had been committed, and what ensures is perhaps one of those absurd moments of the short story itself. The detective Dupin, discovers a hair not human in the least bit, and concludes that the witnesses heard a strange language – but in fact was not any human language. Dupin then places an advertisement in the newspaper about the possibility of a missing “ourang-outang,” when a sailor responds Duplin reveals how the murder had happened. The ape had escaped the ward and custody of the sailor, with his straight razor, climbed up the lightning rod that lead into the first believed inaccessible quarters of the scene of the murder. There the ape tried to shave the poor woman as it had learned by imitating the sailor. However in the end, the animal slit the woman’s throat. In a fury it strangled the daughter and out of fear of the sailors whip, it stuffed the body into the chimney. The sailor aware of both deeds panicked and fled the scene. This is considered the first modern example of the detective story, and therefore is the first example of the locked room mystery.

Many such novels have followed in its footsteps. Wilkie Collins novels “The Moonstone,” and “The Woman in White,” the first being considered the first detective novel. However Israel Zangwill’s seminal work “The Big Bow Mystery,” which showed and has become the hallmark of any detective fiction – misdirection. The red herring itself has been used in all detective fiction since its creation. The concept of misdirecting the reader, into another frame of thought or string them along to believe that another character or suspect is far guiltier then, they really are, allowing for the real perpetrator to sneak away or to incidentally expose him or herself, to which they make out a long speech or monologue or the detective/protagonist does; explaining everything in the dramatic climax. The reason for the murder, the motive, and how the act of murder itself was committed. Just like Duplin explained in the rational, way that the orangutan had committed the murders, and the placement of the body in the chimney and the slit throat of the other victim were all but mere accidents, and based off of instinctual behaviour. In the end it all comes up in a neatly tied parcel; but the real game is trying to figure it out yourself.

All three novels of “The New York Trilogy,” by Paul Auster, have a certain dealings with identity. All of the characters, from “City of Glass,” to “Ghosts,” and now to “The Locked Room,” have dealt with identity. The characters give up everything. Their homes, their possessions, their very lives. They then enter a state of nothingness. There the protagonists either reconnect with the rest of the world, or they fail to do so, and disappear for good, their existence and identity lost forever.

At the beginning of this novel the reader learns that the narrator’s best friend Fanshawe has gone missing. After Fanshawe goes missing even he starts thinking that he would be better being himself, then he himself was. Which is why he left the instructions for his wife, to inform him of his decision to let his childhood friend, his manuscripts, and to have him publish them. Which happens, and of course the books turn out to be a success in their own rights. Which than leads to some readers to think, that the narrator himself wrote Fanshawe’s books, and that Fanshawe himself was never real in the first place. This itself, then leads me as a reader of “The Locked Room,” makes me wonder if these theories and rumours themselves are true and that maybe they are right that the main character is Fanshawe. The moment the main character of “The Locked Room,” begins his reminisce of his missing and presumed dead friend Fanshawe, it becomes clear that the narrator of this novel, is not entirely comfortable with his own identity or his own body, and that he himself would rather be Fanshawe. Of course everyone at one point in time of their life – or still does; would rather have certain traits of another, but still while reading the past two novels, of two characters who have very subjective and very questionable problems with identity, I could not help but feel like I was spotting a problem early on.

The evidence was starting to pile up against the narrator. He previously had written novel(s) and they were unsuccessful. However he has garnered some success with some articles he has written. So why not create a new character a pseudonym that eventually takes on a life of its own, and then kill it off or make it go missing, discover the manuscripts to poems, plays and novels, and then make the money off of the success of them.

At times the thought reminded me of the success of some writers like Roberto BolaƱo, who died at the age of fifty from liver failure. Part of his early death and the novels that he was able to produce in that time period the most recent “The Third Reich,” have lead him to become some literary legend. Another noted writer and artist would be the less known and reclusive man Henry Darger, whose single spaced fantasy novel, is one of the longest piece of works ever written, with fifteen thousand, one-hundred and forty five pages of material. So the thought that the narrator created some alter ego, to gain success for writing some novels, and then forcing his wife, into falling in pursuit with this as well, and letting her believe that he needs to do this and she is not to interrupt this experiment – felt like something that Paul Auster himself and his characters and novel would be capable of.

“Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling…..We imagine the real story inside the words, and to do this we substitute ourselves for the person in the story, pretending that we can understand him because we understand ourselves. This is a deception.”

The novel itself the last of this trilogy on the surface is a realist plot. Where “Ghosts,” (my favourite) was allegorical, and “City of Glass,” felt like a case study into the abyss of insanity. Where as “The Locked Room,” is more realist in plot, but it still gives one the feeling that they are a tea bag and that author is slowly dunking one into the abyss and nothingness of insanity and the unclear motives of the characters themselves. In the end with my expectations, for what I was going to read had been subverted, by the author and his playful of making me guess the actions of the characters themselves.

In the end it felt good to get the trilogy done, and I was impressed in the end with what Paul Auster had written. At times the prose felt flat, and simply not very deep in what they were discussing or writing about – as if there was not enough psychological depth placed into the characters themselves, and that at times their actions, and their movements felt more like a description of a child playing with dolls, and moving the dolls up and down the streets or up and down the hallways of a doll house. Yet the metafictional playfulness and postmodern writing techniques in the end were playful and fun, and showed the possibility of what fiction can do.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary