Carl Blechen, “Building The Devil’s Bridge” via Wikimedia Commons
I met the Devil in Seattle, driving home from a concert. This was in 1995. Or maybe 1996. The concert was definitely either Portishead at Moe’s, The Pharcyde at The Showbox, The Grateful Dead at Memorial Stadium, or perhaps another concert entirely — a forgotten concert at a forgotten venue by a forgotten band. It’s not important. What is important is this: one minute I was driving home from the concert with my girlfriend, and the next thing I knew the Devil was in the car asking for a ride to his apartment, which was all the way over by Northgate Mall.
“I used to have nice house in Broadview,” the Devil said. “But my wife got it in the divorce.”
You’d think the Devil would be a sharp dresser who luxuriated in the animal splendor of his eternal youth, but he was actually a balding schlub in baggy jeans, rotten Reeboks, and a Seattle Mariners t-shirt. Come to think of it, he looked a little like the strike-out prone, would-be slugger Steve “Bones” Balboni, who played one middling season for the Mariners in 1988.
“You two should come over and party,” the Devil said, his eyes on my girlfriend. “She’s too good for you, by the way. Way too good. But you two should come over anyway.”
“We have plans,” said my girlfriend.
“Well, I have everything,” said the Devil. “Everyone parties where I live and we have a hot tub.”
“Some other time,” I said.
“It’s only a matter of time before she leaves you,” said the Devil, finally looking at me. “She’s gonna leave you, and she’s gonna break your heart.”
“Maybe,” I said. I probably should have stood up for myself more, but I was scared.
As it turned out, the Devil just up and got out of the car when we hit a red light at Pike and Summit. Really, it was a non-event. Maybe the Devil was too down on his luck to call upon the awesome power of his supernatural gifts. Maybe he was just tired. Maybe, of course, he wasn’t really the Devil at all.
But sometimes I wonder what became of the guy who spent five minutes in my car. What put him there? Was he an embodiment of pure evil? Was he just lost? Does it really matter? I also wonder about more trivial questions: Was there really a hot tub at the apartment complex by Northgate Mall? If so, was it full of recently divorced men? Was the HOA functional enough to keep the hot tub operating?
Truth be told, it’s mysteries like these, not the eternal verities, I’m most likely to think about in the middle of the night.
If you must know, the girl did leave me.
One of my favorite writers, Roberto Bolaño, was once asked by the journalist Monica Maristain, in an interview for the Mexican edition of Playboy, what it was he would have done had he not been a writer. Bolaño said, without equivocation, he would have been a homicide detective:
I’d have been someone who could come back to the scene of the crime alone, by night and not be afraid of ghosts…perhaps then I might really have become crazy, but being a detective, that could easily be resolved with a bullet to the mouth.
One must never take Bolaño interviews too seriously — we all know they would have kicked him off any actual police force in a matter of days — but I do sometimes wonder about his interest in detectives, his epic celebrations of the trivial, his devotion to the mysteries of minor ghosts, and his self-appointed role as the patron saint of the abject and forgotten.
I also wonder, generally, about the romanticization of detectives in western culture — the line that runs from Vidocq to Holmes to Deckard to Greggs and beyond.
In a New Yorker article in 1944, Edmund Wilson puzzled over the booming popularity of the detective novel between the wars. His theory:
The world during those years was ridden by an all-pervasive feeling of guilt and by a fear of impending disaster which it seemed hopeless to try to avert because it never seemed conclusively possible to pin down the responsibility. Who had committed the original crime and who was going to commit the next one?—that murder which always, in the novels, occurs at an unexpected moment, when the investigation is well under way… Everybody is suspected in turn, and the streets are full of lurking agents whose allegiances we cannot know. Nobody seems guiltless, nobody seems safe; and then, suddenly, the murderer is spotted, and—relief!—he is not, after all, a person like you or me. He is a villain—known to the trade as George Gruesome—and he has been caught by an infallible Power, the supercilious and omniscient detective, who knows exactly how to fix the guilt.1
A compelling argument, but what about now? In the midst of complex and overlapping crises, do detectives still satisfy us with our ability to fix the guilt.
A few years after I met the Devil, I was in the brutalist cell of an office belonging to a writing mentor at The University of Washington. “What are you working on?” he asked me.
“I’m thinking about a detective story,” I said. “But the detective never solves anything because there aren’t any mysteries left to solve.”
He looked at me for a beat. “David,” he said. “That’s exactly what my novella was about.”
I read the novella. It was a bit of a slog, but it was a lot better than my short story, if only because he finished it. Who wants detectives who never find the truth? Maybe this was Bolaño’s great trick: mining this sad and unlikely vein, somehow, and making you feel like you have to keep reading.
Another story: this one about a design research conference attended by my friend and former colleague Julka. Apparently, there was a Q&A and one of the conference attendees had the temerity to stand up and say, “Let’s face it. There are no more unmet needs.”
Well, yes, design researchers. Also, we might point out this is really, as they say, more of a comment than a question. But I do tell this story and think about it all the time — this koan bestowed upon me by a stranger. It emerges from the depths of memory every time I see the phrase actionable insights applied to insights that are neither insightful nor actionable.
If, to crib from philosopher Byung-Chul Han, information is everywhere and truth is nowhere, you’d think detectives would be having a moment. But we’ve seen no great surge of the genre. No real inventions. Knives Out is a lot of fun, but it’s a nostalgic confection. I’ve unquestionably enjoyed True Detective and Mare of Easttown and a lot of the nordic detective novels, but it feels like they all solve the kinds of cases that would have been solved, per Wilson, between the wars. The right answer would probably be something by Mariana Enriquez, where the detectives aren’t actually detectives. More likely, the need is being met elsewhere. The question is, where?
I see it on my social feeds, in the ads and washboard abs that play in the pre-roll clips on youtube; in the regiments and diets and, God help us, morning routines. The new detective is strictly monitoring their biometrics and has reduced their measured age by 5-6 years. They have a flexible schedule that enables both travel and plenty of time to unplug. They have a pool with cabana chairs, an impeccable moral compass, and carefully considered personal values. They probably even organize and label kitchen utensils and toys in plastic storage bins. Who cares if they run a multi-level-marketing company that might be a pyramid scheme?
In searching for a connection between these disparate strands, we might point out, with the greatest affection, that both Vidocq and Bolaño were virtuosos of bullshit.
Maybe the greatest trick the Devil ever played was to make you think you could leverage your influence for asymmetrical profit with your soul in tact. The new detectives — who also may be devils — are hunting, not for reassuring truths, but for reassuring successes. Their paths, to paraphrase from Matthew 7:13, are wide and easy.
Well, maybe not that easy, but surely easier than the alternative, which promises neither success, nor liberation, nor even, really, truth. It’s a path that offers only contemplation without expectation — a small road and narrow gate, indeed.
This week’s recommendations:
Reading:
In the Distance, by Hernan Diaz (Thanks, Jonathan!)
Listening:
Last and First Men, by Jóhann Jóhannsson and Yair Elazar Glotman
Music credits for article audio:
Opening Theme: “Friendly Evil Gangsta Synth Hip Hop” by mesostic via Wikimedia Commons
Closing Theme: “Hopes” by Kevin MacLeod, via Wikimedia Commons
Edmund Wilson. The New Yorker. “Why do people read detective stories?” October 6, 1944
Might you consider recording yourself reading these. I'd listen to that.