Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism ed. by Patricia Merivale, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (review)

560 letters in canada 1999 interpretation that this body of work invites. (DOUGLAS RICHARDSON) Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, editors. Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from Poe to Postmodernism University of Pennsylvania Press. viii, 306. US $19.95 Detecting Texts is a collection of essays focusing on what the editors define as `metaphysical detective' fiction, which they describe as any `text that parodies or subverts traditional detective-story conventions B such as narrative closure and the detective's role as surrogate reader B with the intention, or at least the effect, of asking questions about mysteries of being and knowing which transcend the mere machinations of the mystery plot.' The collection includes essays on such authors as Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Auster, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, among others, and features writings by such scholars as Joel Black, Jeanne Ewart, John Irwin, Jeffrey Nealon, and Raylene Ramsay. The essays collected here, including Patricia Merivale's own contribution on Poe, apply postmodern theory to the texts in question and often provide intriguing and provocative analyses. Merivale, for example, argues that Paul Auster revisits Poe's work and performs as `a fugue on the collapsing of personalities into identities, of identities into a single uncertain, shifting identity base, and of that, in turn, into the game or play of the postmodern text, a process first adumbrated a century and a half ago in Poe's always-already postmodernist hermeneutic allegory of the inaccessibility of the dark secrets in our hearts.' Similarly, in relation to Robbe-Grillet's Les Gommes, Raylene Ramsey concludes her examination with the tantalizing claim, `beyond language and the metafictional violation or generation of language, there is a hidden monster to be sought behind the postmodernist investigator's ludic mask.' Notably, the essays collected in Detecting Texts are remarkably even in tone; to my mind there is not a weak piece in the volume. While some writings will appeal more than others, depending on the reader's interests, all the authors gathered here offer insightful examinations of the works under study. Although there is a tendency to rely heavily on Brian McHale's scholarship to the exclusion of other postmodern theorists (McHale is quoted on the back of the book), this is perhaps a minor quibble, given McHale's stature as a leading postmodernist. Perhaps more important, writers who are generally present in a volume on detective fiction are strikingly absent from Detecting Texts. The only`traditional' detective novelist discussed at some length here is Agatha Christie. However, Michel Sirvent's `Reader-Investigators in the postNouveau Roman,' rather summarily dismisses Christie, who, the author argues, is caught between `two contradictory tendencies': innovation and humanities 561 the laws of representation. Consequently, `if for Christie ``there is always a thought concerning the effect to be produced'' (Peeters, ``Tombeau'' 128), it does not mean that her stories actually enable the reader to carry on the investigation beyond their representational ending.' Certainly, many scholars of detective fiction would disagree with this offhand statement, which requires more evidence to substantiate its claim. Given the attention focused on Paul Auster (three essays in all), one does wonder why there is not more attention devoted to, say, thèmetaphysics' of detective novelists like Raymond Chandler. Clearly, readers who are looking for a work that concentrates on more conventional detective writers will not find them here. Detecting Texts is, nonetheless, a fine example of the ways in which a fusion of theory and close reading can engender an illuminating and engaging scholarly work. (PRISCILLA L. WALTON) Rémy Charest. Robert Lepage, Connecting Flights. Translated by Wanda Romer Taylor Knopf Canada 1998. xii, 196. $21.95 Rémy Charest announces in his introduction to this English edition of Robert Lepage, Quelques zones de liberté (1995), this is not a conventional interview book of questions and answers, but a fluid interactive work revolving around various encounters with one of the locomotives of Quebec experimental theatre, Robert Lepage, at diverse sites, and during the course of various projects. The discussion takes the form of short essays by Lepage on what he sees as the very heart of his field:`transformation and connections.' The foreword...