The Detective in the Maze of The New York Trilogy

• Main Authors: Sharon Hsiao-yin Huang, 黃筱茵
• Other Authors: Professor Chao-ming Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/93590361245635980657

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 英國語文學系 === 89 === Abstract Labelled as an anti-detective novel, The New York Trilogy defies the traditional detective process and instead renders the experience for man to distill and to locate meaning as an agonizing one. The protagonists in The Trilogy undertake the roles of the detective, hoping to reveal a sole truth behind the entangled situation. Yet they are not only frustrated in disclosing meaning, but thrown into extreme bafflement. Their identities fall apart, wriggling in the maze built by spiral words, crossed names and the ongoing efforts to define the relations. The protagonists find everything they used to hold as truth shudder. Language no longer stands for a limpid means to represent the real but rather shakes their beliefs. When they try to name and to draw their realm of autonomy over the flowing phenomena, they find naming a problematic strategy to define the world. Furthermore, as detective-readers who attempt to decode the text, the protagonists are desperate to comprehend their relations with the “writer” of their books, as the reader does in reading The Trilogy. This thesis attempts to probe into three prominent issues raised in The New York Trilogy: dubious representation, problematic naming strategy, and the peculiar bond between the reader and the writer. The doubtful representation in the novel will be examined under what Derrida suggests in “Differance”: Meaning can never be fully present, but remains in a state of differance. The protagonists in the three stories cannot disclose an overriding truth, but float in such a wave of doubts, uncertainties, and changing phenomena of the world. Also, the problematic strategy of naming will be compared with Borges’ suspicion towards naming. Under both cases, naming serves as an extreme yet slippery means for man to draw his territory. In addition, the relation between the reader and the writer in the novel is investigated. The detecting process in the novel embodies the pursuit of the reader out of the text. Thus reading and writing are delineated as an everlasting journey. When the detective and the criminal as well as the reader and the writer seem to be in contest for the power of explanation, the pairing relation actually forms a close tie: The detective cannot live without the criminal; the reader and the writer need the eyesight of each other to survive. The New York Trilogy is not a journey providing answers but a whirl to disrupt the truth. Declining any definite inspiration, it nevertheless obliquely affirms the value of reading and writing. After exhausting complexities of the cases, only the reader remains. And what is heard even after one closes the pages is the voice of the reader encircling within the space. And the voice keeps telling and telling until the story belongs to him. We as readers will keep narrating the story with our little voice.