[Reader-list] 3rd posting on upanyason ka shahar

[kundankaushav]

This is my third posting on upanyason ka shahar: its images and economy.


This is my 3rd posting on upanyason ka shahar: its economy and its images.

The most compelling reason for paying attention to popular literature is its popularity. And the most popular among the popular literature remain those associated with crime and detection. Now the central question remains, why do great numbers of people choose to read the tales of crime and detection, if they read any book at all? And to find an answer we have to go beyond Edmund Wilson�s "who cares who killed Rodger Ackroyd?". His analysis is a determined effort to defend high literary art against the various forms of philistinism operative in his time. It�s almost carried even today. John G. Cawelti has summed up the reason for this rejection in his book "Adventure, Mystery and Romance". He writes of " their essential standardization and their primary relation to the needs of escape and relaxation." What critics generally find in detective fiction are predictable problems of no intrinsic interest, stereotyped characterizations, and undistinguished writing-in short, a literat!
ure for puzzle addicts and thrill seekers produced at best by "ingenious purveyors of commodities" (Dennis Poter, 1981). Whether the same reason and understandings are applied for Hindi popular fictions, more commonly called Hindi pocket books or Hindi upanyas, is not difficult to find out, they are not considered even worthy of being read.
Edmund Wilson and his argument would be dealt in length in the subsequent postings. However his views regarding these fictions become very clear when he finds that literature is on his side and with so many fine books to read, so much to be studied and known, there is no need to bore ourselves with these rubbish.
I am not writing this posting or subsequent postings to refute Mr. Wilson. His arguments are well taken care of. I am trying to find out how a popular literary genre caters to reader pleasure. Why, in other words, do a great many people escape into detective fiction reading as opposed, say, to other recreational activities such as making love, watching football, vacationing, buying clothes, listening to music, or simply walking the dog?
In this posting I will simply try to explore the so-called formulas, which are essential and indispensable for popular fictions. It is important to understand these formulas as it provides the entry point to the vast corpus of literature in English as well as in Hindi.
Before going into detail it is important to understand that popular fictions consist of specific categories such as mystery story, crime story, problem story, detective adventure story, police novel, thriller or spy thriller. Since I am concentrating on those upanyas that are related to crime and detection, I am obviously omitting those love stories and social novels, which too are the part of popular literature, both in Hindi as well as English. However there is a constant overlapping among different crime popular fictions and so there is a general tendency to call all these fictions either as detective fictions or simply as thrillers. "Detective novel" therefore implies the generic term for all novels whose principal action concerns the attempt by the specialist investigator to solve a crime and to bring a criminal to justice, whether the crime involved be a single murder or the endeavor to destroy a civilization.
The basic formula of "a Whodunit," is this: a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies.
The definition excludes:


Studies of murderers whose guilt is known. These are the borderline cases in which the murderer is known and there are no false suspects, but the proof is lacking, e.g. many of the stories of Amit Khan, Freeman wills crofts. 




Thrillers, spy stories, stories of master crooks, etc., when the identification of criminal is subordinate to defeat of his criminal designs. 




However in Indian context there is a new emerging trend in which the hero is the biggest criminal in India like Vimal of Surendra Mohan Pathak, and Devraj Chuhan and Mona Chaudhuri of Anil Mohan who are the most wanted for the police force of India but they are the real life heroes. This trend will be discussed in greater length in the subsequent postings. 




The interest in the thriller is ethical and eristic conflict between good and evil, between Us and Them. The interest in the study of a murderer is the observation, by the innocent many, of sufferings of the guilty one. The interest in the detective story is the dialectic of innocence and guilt.
W. H. Auden in his article "The Guilty Vicarage" tries to finds that as in the Aristotelian description of tragedy, there is Concealment (the innocent seem guilty and the guilty seem innocent) and Manifestation (the real guilt is brought to consciousness). 
He has also given a formula to help understand the entire structure detective stories:
a)Peaceful state before murder              b) False innocence
           |                                                                    |
False clues, secondary murder, etc.     Revelation of presence of guilt
       |                                                                     |
 Solution                                               False location of guilt
     |                                                                    |
Arrest of murder                                Location of real guilt
     |                                                                    |
Peaceful state after arrest                        Catharsis
                                                                      |
                                                            True innocence
The formula may be helpful in understanding the structures and contours of the classical detective stories but the same could be applied to dissect Hindi Jasusi upanyas or for that matter modern English detective story is slightly doubtful. Detective stories and the structures on which they should stand has undergone a tremendous change. Though there is a tendency among Hindi writers to copy the set formula while writing Jasusi stories but they in the process have created or used those patterns, which give a uniqueness to their stories. And these new patterns are neither invisible nor there is an attempt to disguise them. The languages, metaphors, characters, use of events and places are not only different from Premchands or Bhagwati charan Vermas they are also different from Christies and Doyles. These changes and differences would be discussed in the subsequent postings. 
The detective story (whodunit) has five elements � the milieu, the victim, the murderer, the suspects, and the detectives. 
The classical understanding of a detective story requires the milieu to be a closed society so that the possibility of an outsider murderer (and hence the society being total innocent) is excluded; and a closely related society so that its entire member are potentially suspect. The victim has to try to satisfy two contradictory requirements. He has to involve every one in suspicion, which requires that he be a bad character; and he has to make every one feel guilty, which requires that he be a good character. Murder is a negative creation, and every murderer is therefore the rebel who claims the right to be omnipotent. His pathos is his refusal to suffer. The problem for the writer is to conceal his demonic pride from the other character and from the reader, since, if a person has this pride, it tends to appear in every thing he says and does. To surprise the reader when the identity of the murderer is revealed, yet at the same time to convince him that everything he has previ!
ously been told about the murderer is consistent with his being a murderer, is the test of a good detective story. There must be enough suspects who should have or appear to have the motif to kill the victim. The detective would be either professional or amateur one who uses his skills and intellect to solve the case and identify the real criminal.
Now how our hindi upanyas differ from the above set pattern of the detective stories, how the elements of other genre of crime stories differ from the classical whodunit and how and why the art of suspense works would be dealt in next posting.
Kundan Kaushav. 


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