Oedipa as Detective

[MASCARO at humnet.ucla.edu]

Very good passage to quote, Don.  My only point, which I apparently deserve slow 
crucifixion for, is that CL 49 isn't a pastriche or a parody of detective novels.  That it 
evokes, draws on, reminds us of, etc. etc. all seem  perfectly reasonable.  I don't think this 
is mindless semantic hairsplitting either.   Where else should words matter if not on this 
list?  Further, the detective genre is, IMO, a strong form in able hands.  It's had a great 
influence on literature ever since dear Edgar spawned Dupin--the real first detective 
story--decades ahead of that fellow on Baker street.  Seems perfectly reasonable that CL49 
should account in some way for its relationship to the genre, given its use of the 
*mystery* angle.  I think the passage you quote hints at the points of intersection as well 
as those of divergence.
>
>
>I've lost track of who has been claiming or not that COL49 is (choose your
>term) a parody/pastiche/homage/whatever of a detective story, but (at the
>risk of sounding so old-fashioned) here is the Text Itself:
>
>". . . Where was the Odeipa who'd driven so bravely up here from San Narciso?
>That optimistic baby had come on so like the private eye in any long-ago
>radio drama, believing all you needed was grit, resourcefulness, exemption from 
>hidebound cops' rules, to solve any great mystery.
>	"But the private eye sooner or later has to get beat up on.  This
>night's profusion of post horns, this malignant deliberate replication, was
>their way of beating up.  They knew her pressure points, and the ganglia of
>her optimism, and one by one, pinch by precision pinch, they were
> immobilizing her."
>
>	(COL49, Bantam ed., pp. 91-92)
>
>
>Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
>