On the poetry of the chimneys: thoughts on crime fiction, world literature and other human hieroglyphs in three atempts

Abstract

This article takes three tries on understanding why crime fiction is such a global phenomena and what it has to say about world literature. In first place, we’ll approach the question as it was formulated by G. K. Chesterton in 1902, i. e., why detective stories are so popular. He has two arguments: the genre’s ability to talk about the present and the way it guarantees the well being of the society. A second try rounds about crime fiction’s structure, as formulated by Roger Caillois and Tzvetan Todorov. Ultimately, the massification of crime fiction is explained by its behavior as a genre, after Jacques Derrida and Anvitta Ronell’s studies. In conclusion, crime fiction, as a genre, has a economy similar to world literature, as it repeats itself through space and time, and, by this proliferation, acquires marks, anomalies. World literature is also a proliferation that has its untranslatable marks.