| The Pledge by Friedrich Dürrenmatt |
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At the debut of his first play, It Is Written,
fights broke out in the audience—a response
that Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) no
doubt saw as a sign of
the public's successful
engagement with his
drama. Dürrenmatt’s
concept of epic theater
eschewed the passive
audience seeking diver-
sion and entertainment—
so fisticuffs may well
have been preferable
to polite applause. "My grandfather was
once sent to prison for ten days because of a
poem he wrote," Friedrich Dürrenmatt once
noted. "I haven't been honored in that way
yet." His most famous works, The Visit
(1956) and The Physicists (1961), combined
tragic and comic elements that resonated
with modern audiences, and established these
plays among the most frequently performed—
and emulated—dramas of its day.
Dürrenmatt was equally at home in more
populist genres, authoring detective stories
and radio plays, yet invariably twisting the
familiar formulas to allow him to deal with
his recurring themes of guilt, responsibility
and the grotesqueries of human affairs. "A
story is not finished," he once explained,
"until it took the worst turn."
fights broke out in the audience—a response
that Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990) no
doubt saw as a sign of
the public's successful
engagement with his
drama. Dürrenmatt’s
concept of epic theater
eschewed the passive
audience seeking diver-
sion and entertainment—
so fisticuffs may well
have been preferable
to polite applause. "My grandfather was
once sent to prison for ten days because of a
poem he wrote," Friedrich Dürrenmatt once
noted. "I haven't been honored in that way
yet." His most famous works, The Visit
(1956) and The Physicists (1961), combined
tragic and comic elements that resonated
with modern audiences, and established these
plays among the most frequently performed—
and emulated—dramas of its day.
Dürrenmatt was equally at home in more
populist genres, authoring detective stories
and radio plays, yet invariably twisting the
familiar formulas to allow him to deal with
his recurring themes of guilt, responsibility
and the grotesqueries of human affairs. "A
story is not finished," he once explained,
"until it took the worst turn."
| ROGUES GALLERY: FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT |
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
Among the more sardonic twists of the post-
modern mystery is a new character type, the failed
detective. The best known realization of this
concept comes from Roman Polanski’s 1974 film
Chinatown, which brilliantly evoked the classic noir
mysteries of the past, while undermining almost
every one of their familiar premises and clichés.
Here, the mystery genre, which
came to birth as a celebration
of ratiocination and the capacity
of human reason to solve and
resolve, achieves the exact op-
posite effect, testifying to our
incapacities, limitations and
errors.
In the cinematic world, earlier film-
makers—almost all of them, like
Polanski, non-Americans deeply impacted by events of
World War II—had deliberately overturned various
conventions of the classic detective movie. Vittorio De
Sica's deeply moving 1948 film The Bicycle Thief presents
a crime not only resistant to justice and resolution, but
in which the victim is ultimately punished far more than
the perpetrator. Two years later, Akira Kurosawa,
showed in his equally unnerving film Rashomon, how
even the first hand testimony that seemingly tells who
committed a murder can be hopelessly subjective, with
the truth eluding the most vigilant seeker. Jean-Luc
Godard's Alphaville (1965), while stepping back from the
failed detective meme, nonetheless twists the
conventions of the genre into radical new shapes, both
parodying and deconstructing elements borrowed from
the classic American noir mysteries.
The detective stories of Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-
1990) reflect a similar perspective, one that both imitates
and rejects the accepted formulas. These books are
rarely read nowadays, and this author is far better known
for his dramatic works, in particular The Visit (1956) and
The Physicists (1961). Yet Dürrenmatt's 1958 novel The
Pledge ranks among the finest literary realizations of the
tragedy of the failed detective. The book also served as
inspiration for a high-profile 2001 film, starring Jack
Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn.
In Dürrenmatt's novel, the Swiss police inspector
Matthäi has accepted an attractive offer to serve as
official adviser to a foreign government’s constabulary,
but on his last day before leaving, he takes on a final
case that proves to be his undoing. A young girl has
been murdered, and Matthäi makes a pledge to the
victim's mother that he will find the person responsible
for the crime. A peddler who discovered the body is
assumed by the villagers to be the perpetrator, and he
confesses after an intense interrogation—and then hangs
himself. But Matthäi is convinced that another
individual must be responsible, both for this murder and
other similar crimes from previous years.
In his obsession to solve the mystery, the inspector lets
his own life unravel. He rejects the career-advancing
foreign appointment—literally turning around from the
plane right before boarding—in order to pursue the
murder investigation and deliver on his pledge. Because
of his obsession, fixating on an officially "closed case,"
Matthäi also loses the respect of his former colleagues
on the police force, who refuse to accept him bank into
their ranks. He is now a lone citizen, but continues to
hunt relentlessly for the murderer he is convinced must
still be on the loose.
Drawing on the most meager clues, Matthäi identifies a
major roadway he believes to be the thoroughfare
traveled by the perpetrator in the course of committing
his crimes. The former policeman purchases a gas
station on this road, using it as base from which he
continues his investigation. Here Matthäi also shares
the bed of a woman with criminal associations of her
own, and the reader eventually comes to understand
that Matthäi is using her daughter as "bait" to lure the
serial killer into a situation where he can be
apprehended. He is seemingly oblivious to the murky
ethics of his situation, and the wrongness of putting one
girl at risk in order to avenge another; but by this time,
our failed detective is so caught up in his mission that
all other concerns fall by the wayside.
Dürrenmatt provides a sardonic ending to this story.
Not just content to allow his readers to witness the
decline and fall of a once great inspector, he is now also
intent on adding an absurdist twist that further disrupts
the conventions of the genre. And if the reader had
any doubts where our author stands, Dürrenmatt inserts
this entire narrative into a framing story that
incorporates a critique of the detective genre as a
whole. The end result is an almost quintessential post-
modern mystery, one that deserves to stand alongside
the finer works of Paul Auster and Umberto Eco.
In truth, the surprising denouement presents something
even more unsettling than a criminal who evades justice.
Dürrenmatt puts other things on trial here—not just
human reason and our problem-solving capacity, but
also personal ambitions and ethical considerations. By
showing their incapacity, he arrives at an endpoint more
disturbing than any mere unsolved crime might possess.
Ted Gioia's latest book is The Birth (and Death) of
the Cool.
Among the more sardonic twists of the post-
modern mystery is a new character type, the failed
detective. The best known realization of this
concept comes from Roman Polanski’s 1974 film
Chinatown, which brilliantly evoked the classic noir
mysteries of the past, while undermining almost
every one of their familiar premises and clichés.
Here, the mystery genre, which
came to birth as a celebration
of ratiocination and the capacity
of human reason to solve and
resolve, achieves the exact op-
posite effect, testifying to our
incapacities, limitations and
errors.
In the cinematic world, earlier film-
makers—almost all of them, like
Polanski, non-Americans deeply impacted by events of
World War II—had deliberately overturned various
conventions of the classic detective movie. Vittorio De
Sica's deeply moving 1948 film The Bicycle Thief presents
a crime not only resistant to justice and resolution, but
in which the victim is ultimately punished far more than
the perpetrator. Two years later, Akira Kurosawa,
showed in his equally unnerving film Rashomon, how
even the first hand testimony that seemingly tells who
committed a murder can be hopelessly subjective, with
the truth eluding the most vigilant seeker. Jean-Luc
Godard's Alphaville (1965), while stepping back from the
failed detective meme, nonetheless twists the
conventions of the genre into radical new shapes, both
parodying and deconstructing elements borrowed from
the classic American noir mysteries.
The detective stories of Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-
1990) reflect a similar perspective, one that both imitates
and rejects the accepted formulas. These books are
rarely read nowadays, and this author is far better known
for his dramatic works, in particular The Visit (1956) and
The Physicists (1961). Yet Dürrenmatt's 1958 novel The
Pledge ranks among the finest literary realizations of the
tragedy of the failed detective. The book also served as
inspiration for a high-profile 2001 film, starring Jack
Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn.
In Dürrenmatt's novel, the Swiss police inspector
Matthäi has accepted an attractive offer to serve as
official adviser to a foreign government’s constabulary,
but on his last day before leaving, he takes on a final
case that proves to be his undoing. A young girl has
been murdered, and Matthäi makes a pledge to the
victim's mother that he will find the person responsible
for the crime. A peddler who discovered the body is
assumed by the villagers to be the perpetrator, and he
confesses after an intense interrogation—and then hangs
himself. But Matthäi is convinced that another
individual must be responsible, both for this murder and
other similar crimes from previous years.
In his obsession to solve the mystery, the inspector lets
his own life unravel. He rejects the career-advancing
foreign appointment—literally turning around from the
plane right before boarding—in order to pursue the
murder investigation and deliver on his pledge. Because
of his obsession, fixating on an officially "closed case,"
Matthäi also loses the respect of his former colleagues
on the police force, who refuse to accept him bank into
their ranks. He is now a lone citizen, but continues to
hunt relentlessly for the murderer he is convinced must
still be on the loose.
Drawing on the most meager clues, Matthäi identifies a
major roadway he believes to be the thoroughfare
traveled by the perpetrator in the course of committing
his crimes. The former policeman purchases a gas
station on this road, using it as base from which he
continues his investigation. Here Matthäi also shares
the bed of a woman with criminal associations of her
own, and the reader eventually comes to understand
that Matthäi is using her daughter as "bait" to lure the
serial killer into a situation where he can be
apprehended. He is seemingly oblivious to the murky
ethics of his situation, and the wrongness of putting one
girl at risk in order to avenge another; but by this time,
our failed detective is so caught up in his mission that
all other concerns fall by the wayside.
Dürrenmatt provides a sardonic ending to this story.
Not just content to allow his readers to witness the
decline and fall of a once great inspector, he is now also
intent on adding an absurdist twist that further disrupts
the conventions of the genre. And if the reader had
any doubts where our author stands, Dürrenmatt inserts
this entire narrative into a framing story that
incorporates a critique of the detective genre as a
whole. The end result is an almost quintessential post-
modern mystery, one that deserves to stand alongside
the finer works of Paul Auster and Umberto Eco.
In truth, the surprising denouement presents something
even more unsettling than a criminal who evades justice.
Dürrenmatt puts other things on trial here—not just
human reason and our problem-solving capacity, but
also personal ambitions and ethical considerations. By
showing their incapacity, he arrives at an endpoint more
disturbing than any mere unsolved crime might possess.
Ted Gioia's latest book is The Birth (and Death) of
the Cool.
| New Angles on an Old Genre |
| Postmodern Mystery |
| Postmodern Mystery is a web site devoted to experimental, unconventional and postmodern approaches to stories of mystery and suspense |
| Click on image to purchase |
Further Clues:
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Web Page at the University of
Chicago Press
Interview with Friedrich Dürrenmatt by Violet Ketels
Review of Sean Penn's film version of The Pledge by
Roger Ebert
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Web Page at the University of
Chicago Press
Interview with Friedrich Dürrenmatt by Violet Ketels
Review of Sean Penn's film version of The Pledge by
Roger Ebert
| Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tedgioia |
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Great Books Guide
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Ted Gioia's homepage
Ted Gioia (on Twitter)
American Fiction Notes
The Art of Reading
The Big Read
Blographia Literaria
Books, Inq.
Bookslut
Booksquare
A Commonplace Blog
Conversational Reading
Crimespree Magazine
Critical Mass
Dana Gioia
The Elegant Variation
Fictionaut
In Search of the Classic Mystery
Joseph Peschel
Light Reading
The Literary Saloon
Los Angeles Review of Books
Maud Newton
The Millions
The Misread City
Mystery Fanfare
The Neglected Books Page
Nota Bene Books
Open Letters Monthly
Readerville
The Reading Experience
Reviews and Responses
Tipping My Fedora
Waggish