surveys of American literature, there is still a sort of collective wink about it. At the
same time, scholars routinely compare their research to detective work: tracking
down leads, gathering evidence, interrogating a subject. (Furthermore, it must be
true that every professor in the United States has spent at least a little time in faculty
meetings musing about the plot of the academic mystery he or she will write – under
a pseudonym – some day.)
So far, I have been discussing matters that apply to detective fi ction in general; let
us now turn to the short story more specifi cally. Wells explains to her students that
all detective stories have a single plot – “ the problem and its solution ” – then likens
that plot to an accordion, which “ may be pulled out to an extraordinary length, or
compressed to a minimum. … The longer the story, the more numerous and bewil-
dering the conditions of the riddle and the windings of the maze, but all tend defi -
nitely to the one end, – the answer ” (279). The mechanisms of a detective narrative
are more apparent in a short story, since there is less upholstery for hiding the ropes
and pulleys. The shorter form also forces writers to make a more clear decision about
whether to focus on the puzzle or on character.
From the beginning, Poe had fi gured out that the way around this diffi cult choice
was the series. By writing multiple stories about the same detective, he was able to
make Dupin a vivid presence and he was able to build clever puzzles for him to solve.
Conan Doyle made the same choice after writing an initial novel - length Sherlock
Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet . (I include this Scottish writer in this discussion
because his work was so popular and infl uential in the United States.) Panek has traced
the publication history of the Sherlock Holmes series in American periodicals. Conan
Doyle ’ s work was picked up by S. S. McClure just as he conceived of syndication as
a way to package editorial material for newspapers all over the country, and as a result
the Sherlock Holmes stories had an enormous readership. Three subsequent series
were picked up by the squarely middle - class Harper ’ s Weekly , McClure ’ s Magazine , and
Collier ’ s Weekly . Collier ’s actually scooped the British Strand , and was the fi rst on either
side of the Atlantic to publish the stories that would become The Return of Sherlock
Holmes (Panek 31 – 2).
Periodicals of all kinds drove the popularity of detective stories and novels: nine-
teenth - century story papers and dime novels may have been seen as adolescent enter-
tainment, but “ pulp ” fi ction was an enduring tradition that produced the hard - boiled
434
Catherine Ross Nickerson
style.
“
Slicks
”
(glossy magazines like ones that ran the Holmes stories) regularly
brought short fi ction and serialized novels into the middle - class home. Ellery Queen ’ s
Mystery Magazine began publication in 1941, dedicating all its pages to crime writing,
and close to one hundred other (and more lurid) magazines like True Detective appeared
from the 1920s onward. But periodicals are ephemeral, and publishers saw the oppor-
tunity to commit detective stories into the more permanent form of books. One kind
of project is the collection (which we saw with the Holmes stories, and we see cur-
rently with James Lee Burke ’ s four collections of his Keller stories). Another is the
anthology; Julian Hawthorne edited one of the earliest series, a six - volume set of “ One
Hundred and One Tales of Mystery by Famous Authors of East and West ” in 1907.
Anthologies became increasingly important to fans of detective stories after the
middle of the twentieth century, when the market for periodical fi ction fell apart with
the advent of television.
Currently, the magazines that publish detective stories are so various that a fan
looking specifi cally for those stories would have real trouble fi nding them. Houghton
Miffl in, as part of “ The Best American Series ” collects stories from diverse sources
each year. The 2007 volume of the Best American Mystery Stories includes stories
that fi rst appeared in journals and magazines not closely associated with detective
fi ction: the Oxford Review , the Georgia Review , Shenandoah , and Prairie Schooner , Tin
House and the New Yorker . But more than half the stories came from commissioned
anthologies – that is to say, writers are asked to produce stories on a given theme,
often quite specialized. Mysterious Press, under Otto Penzler ’ s editorship, has created
anthologies of original mysteries about golf, basketball, horseracing, boxing, and
poker, just to name a few. In 2004, Akashic Press began a series of city - based, original
fi ction collections with Brooklyn Noir . Other cities and places in the Noir series include
Miami, Chicago, Detroit, the Twin Cities, London, Manhattan, Queens, and Wall
Street, with twenty more, mostly international, titles in the works. There are hundreds
of anthologies of short stories in print; while detective stories have shifted from the
periodicals to books from large and small presses, clearly the appetite for them has
not diminished.
We simply don ’ t get sick of them. You would think we would. In one hundred
and fi fty years, surely every variation on the “ infl exible form ” has been tried. Strong
writers take the elements of the formula and do fi nd ways to bend them in intelligent
ways. Sometimes the burning question is not who or what, but why. Sometimes the
missing letter is right in front of our nose, and sometimes that shotgun in the corner
is irrelevant. Sometimes the detective seems to be preternaturally intelligent, at other
times they seem like just slightly better versions – smarter, gutsier, able to take a
beating – of ourselves. Sometimes the ending leaves us thinking, even though the
case was solved. Ira Glass , master of the short form on radio, puts it this way:
every good story is a detective story, meaning every good story in any genre, raises some
big question at the beginning, some thing that we want to fi nd out. And then the process
of the story, the reason why we keep reading or watching is that we just want to know
The Detective Story
435
… we want the answer. Mysteries offer the satisfaction of this kind of story in the
purest possible way. The question couldn ’ t be clearer: there is a crime, who did it, and
by the end, all is revealed. We know the answer. Light is shed. So they are hard to
resist. ” ( This American Life )
Excitement and enlightenment is a lot to ask of ten or twenty pages of writing, but
detective stories deliver, over and over again.
References and Further Reading
Chandler , Raymond . The Simple Art of Murder .
Ogdon , Bethany . “ Why Teach Popular Culture? ”
New York : Houghton Miffl in , 1950 .
College English 63 . 4 ( 2001 ): 500 – 16 .
Glass , Ira . “ Introduction to Act 2, Episode 28 . ” 12
Panek , Leroy . The Origins of the American Detective
July 1996.
This American Life . http://www.
Story . Jefferson, NC : McFarland
, 2006 .
thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched
Paretsky , Sara . Women on the Case . New York :
=619
Delacorte , 1996 .
Hammett , Dashiell . Red Harvest. 1929 . New York :
Penzler , Otto , ed. The Black Lizard Big Book of
Random House , 1992 .
Pulps . New York : Random House , 2007 .
Hawthorne , Julian , ed. Library of the World ’ s Great-
Poe , Edgar Allan . The Murders in the Rue Morgue:
est Mystery and Detective Stories: American . Vol. 1 .
The Dupin Tales . New York : Modern Library ,
6 vols. New York : Review of Reviews , 1907 .
2006 .
Hiaasen , Carl , ed. The Best American Mystery Stories
Reed , David . The Popular Magazine in Britain and
2007 . New York : Houghton Miffl in , 2007 .
America . London : British Library , 1997 .
Hillerman , Tony , ed. The Best American Mystery Rollyson , Carl , ed. Critical Survey of Mystery and
Stories of the Century . Boston : Houghton Miffl in ,
Detective Fiction . Rev. edn. Pasadena, CA : Salem
2000 .
Press , 2008 .
Lehman , David . The Perfect Murder . New York :
Roth , Laurence . Inspecting Jews: American Jewish
Free Press , 1989 .
Detective Stories . New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers
MacDonald , Gina , and Andrew MacDonald .
University Press , 2004 .
Shaman or Sherlock? The Native American Detec-
Todorov , Tzvetan . The Poetics of Prose . Trans.
tive . Westport, CT : Greenwood , 2002 .
Richard Howard. Ithaca, NY : Cornell Univer-
MacDonald , Ross . On Crime Writing . Santa Barbara :
sity Press , 1977 .
Capra Press , 1973 .
Wells , Carolyn . Technique of the Mystery Story .
Mason , Bobbi Ann . “ Nancy Drew: The Once and
Springfi eld, MA : Home Correspondence School ,
Future Prom Queen . ” Feminism in Women ’ s Detec-
1913 .
tive Fiction . Ed. Glenwood Irons . Toronto : Uni-
Woods , Paula L. , ed. Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes:
versity of Toronto Press , 1995 . 74 – 93 .
Black Mystery, Crime, and Suspense Fiction of the
Most , Glenn , and William Stowe , eds. The Poetics
20th Century . Garden City, NY : Doubleday ,
of Murder: Detective Fiction and Literary Theory .
1995 .
New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich , 1983 .
28
The Asian American Short Story
Wenying Xu
The category of Asian American literature is not self - explanatory. Debates on what
kinds of writing and what authors should be named Asian American have raised
several important issues. The editors of the fi rst anthology of Asian American litera-
ture, Aiiieeeee! (Chin et al. 1974 ), defi ned Asian Americans as “ Filipino - , Chinese - ,
and Japanese - Americans, American born and raised, who got their China and Japan
from the radio, off the silver screen, from television, out of comic books ” (vii). This
defi nition, however, stands in contradiction with several authors included in this very
anthology, such as Carlos Bulosan, Louis Chu, and Oscar Penaranda, who were born
in Asia. Elaine Kim tried to rid the concept “ Asian Americans ” of American birth
while redefi ning Asian American literature as “ published creative writings in English
by Americans of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino descent ” (Kim xi). Her defi -
nition sparked further debate regarding the Asian American subject and media:
Should Asian American literature depict only the American experience? Could it be
written in other languages? For the fact remains that many Asian immigrant writers
have written about the “ old ” and “ new ” worlds in dual languages. In addition to these
perplexing issues, contentions also have centered on who represent Asian America and
what groups within it are underrepresented. For Asian America embodies a diverse
array of ethnicities, cultures, languages, and religions; as a matter of fact over sixty
different Asian groups exist today in the United States. It is not an exaggeration to
state that a Korean American is as different from a Filipino American as a French
person from a Mexican. Asian Americans have come from countries as incommensu-
rable as China and Iran, Vietnam and Indonesia, India and Japan. Given their different
colonial pasts, immigrants from Asia also speak from radically different memories and
sensibilities. It is fair to say that the concept of Asian American is one convenient to
the bureaucracy, media, and market for the purpose of racial characterization but
confi ning and irritating to those contained by it.
Until the mid
-
1990s, Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino American writers and
critics dominated Asian American literature and its studies, for they were the
The Asian American Story
437
most established groups in America at that time. In response to protests by the under-
represented groups, Position published a special issue in the fall of 1997 , edited by
Elaine Kim and Lisa Lowe. It calls for “ the creation and maintenance of solidarity
across racial and national boundaries ” (Kim and Lowe xii). This collection of essays
marked a shift from the dominance of a largely East Asian American literature to
a Pan Asian American literature, making space for a heterogeneous set of voices
of recent immigrants from South and Southeast Asia. The new direction of Asian
American literary studies does not only attempt to include all ethnicities within
Asian America but also to explode the national boundary to include diasporic writers
in the Pacifi c Rim.
Asian American literature, beginning as a protest against socioeconomic discrimi-
nation and marginalization, political alienation, and cultural stereotypes, often draws
its materials from the rich and troubled history that Asian Americans have lived –
their participation in the construction of the transcontinental railroad, in the building
of an economy in California, as well as their legalized exclusion and internment.
Cognizant of this history, Asian American literature explores some common questions
such as: What does it mean to be American? At what cost does one become an Ameri-
can? How does one recognize oneself as a racial minority? What does the hyphenated
identity mean? Questions of this sort determine the shared themes in Asian American
literature of ethnicity, Americanization, racialization, gender and class exploitation,
sexuality, generation gap, and the common misperception of Asian Americans as
permanent aliens. The best - known Asian American fi ction writers focus on the Ameri-
can experience, writers such as Frank Chin, Gish Jen, David Wong Louie, and Don
Lee, whose characters are mostly Americans of Asian descent embroiled in the pursuit
of self - understanding, dignity, and connection with other Americans. A signifi cant
number of writers, such as Raja Rao, Ha Jin, and Jos é Garcia Villa, however, fi nd the
old world more fascinating than the new. For them the English language and Ameri-
can individualism offer ways of organizing personal experiences into fi ction that are
not
available otherwise. There also are others who straddle the old and new worlds,
like Diana Chang, Alex Kuo, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Andrew Lam, creating literature
that portrays the double identity of Asian American, the diasporic identity among
Asia, America, and Asian America, and the constant feelings of displacement both in
the US and in one ’ s home of birth. Together, Asian American writers demonstrate
how heterogeneous Asian Americans are in identity, experience, and perspective.
Asian American literature is as diverse in style as any other literature. Unlike some
literary traditions, it is impossible for this literature to trace its infl uence to a few
major fi gures since its aesthetics and sensibilities come from multiple sources. In
addition to the infl uences of American and European literatures, ranging from realism
and naturalism to postmodernism, many Asian American writers have nourished their
imagination by absorbing the rich literary and oral traditions indigenous to their
ethnic cultures. Living between worlds offers them unique resources for the fusion of
literary horizons, voices, and strategies to produce a vibrant body of literature that
mesmerizes the reader with its unpredictable movements.
438
Wenying Xu
The Ancestors of the Asian American Short Story
At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was two Eurasian sisters who
gave birth to Asian American literature. Infl uenced by the then dominant mode of
realism, the Eaton sisters wrote realistic fi ction narrated from a limited point of view.
Edith Maude Eaton is considered the fi rst Asian American writer. She was born to a
Chinese mother and an English father at a time when interracial marriage was a taboo
in both cultures. Edith defi ed racism by changing her name to the Chinese Sui Sin
Far, meaning narcissus. That she chose the name to declare her allegiance to the
Chinese when she could easily have “ passed ” as Anglo American demonstrates her
commitment to giving voice to Chinese American experiences. Indignant about the
image of the Chinese in popular literature as unfeeling and custom - bound, Far was
determined to restore humanity to the Chinese. Her best - known story, “ The Story of
One White Woman Who Married a Chinese, ” describes Minnie Carson ’ s heartbreak
with a white contemptuous husband and her new - found happiness with a Chinese
A Companion to the American Short Story Page 94