The doomed detective : the contribution of the detective novel to postmodern American and Italian fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The doomed detective : the contribution of the detective novel to postmodern American and Italian fiction
(Literary structures)
Southern Illinois University Press, c1984
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Note
Bibliography: p. [171]-176
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
"Tani's dissertation is the most stun ningly original and intelligent I have encountered in 25years of teaching," wrote the late novelist John Gardner.
Tani's argument says that the "mys tery story as written by Hammett and others and touted by the French existen tialists led to a new kind of novel and the old-style mystery, as written by, for ex ample, Agatha Christie, seemed a liter ary dead end--a conservative if not reac tionary game. In recent years, Tani shows, the seeming dead end has led to the most important literary movement now visible: the ironic intellectual fic tion of people ranging from Borges and Barth to Calvino, and he proves that the spearhead of this movement is Italian fiction as influenced by American mys tery fiction. At first glance, the argu ment seems outrageous. The brilliance of Tani's thesis--besides the original outrageous idea--is that he solidly and systematically makes his case."
by "Nielsen BookData"