Natalya Gornopolskaya

Blog by Natalya Gornopolskaya
“Death and the Compass,” “The Detective Story”

This story was very action packed and thrilling. “Death and the Compass” to me was very reminiscent of the book”Angels and Demons”, in which one crime leads subsequently to another and forms a shapely pattern. In this story the pattern that was thought to be an equilateral triangle was actually a rhombus, and Erik Lonnrot was able to successfully piece together the puzzle. It turns out that the series of crimes were a trap designed to catch Lonnrot’s attention which they did, leading him to his ultimate demise. The scene just before Lonnrot gets shot, is electrifying, like something out of a movie. The bad guy Red Scharlach turns out to be the actual Ginsburg-Ginzburg and reveals every detail of his carefully executed plan just before taking the final step and firing his weapon. This story was fulfilled me in the way an action movie could. This shows me that Borges’s style of fiction is very flexible and entertaining.

“The Detective Story” lecture by Jorge Luis Borges was an in depth discussion on the origins and forthcomings of the detective genre. Borges describes the way Edgar Allen Poe created his poem “The Raven”. It seems as though he is undermining the works of Edgar Allen Poe altogether, even though he considers him the one who invented this style of writing. Borges even states that Poe’s body of work as whole was genius while most of his stories were flawed. What he really means is that Poe’s type of detective literature hasn’t stood the test of time. It is no longer thrilling and isn’t quite the achievement it used to be. Borges goes on to praise several authors who have written dynamic detective stories that he considers the best. Borges does however pay homage to Poe in respect to his position in starting it all. He then states that the “calm” origins of the detective genre have been forgotten everywhere but England. Nowadays people tend to lean toward the more thrilling and action packed detective stories, which really shows how greatly our times have changed.