Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Robert Murray Davis: Multiple Voices in The Death of Bernadette Lefthand

to encouraging Anderson's drinking, and finally to physical violence out of jealousy and desire for Bernadette. He plants the evidence that leads to Anderson's arrest and, when confronted with photographic evidence of the crime he supposedly committed while drunk, his suicide. And Nelson's logic is formally impeccable: Bernadette Lefthand falls in the mystery genre; it doesn't have the proper elements of the mystery genre; therefore it is not quite successful. The reasoning is not fallacious; the problem lies in the major premise. Querry has used elements of the mystery novel, but he has used far more ambitious formal means in order to create a complex picture of life in the modern Southwest. The difference between Querry and Hillerman is obvious if one looks past the superficial similarities. Despite the exotic setting, Hillerman's books are classic examples of the mystery genre, detective novels in every sense of the word. He uses the standard limited third person point of view, with the investigator as focus of narration and major center of interest. And his books are constructed in the traditional way: disruption of social balance by a crime; search for a solution (dependent on evidence about motive, method, and opportunity); discovery of the guilty party; and restoration, however tentative and uneasy, of order in the society and in the mind of the detective, who has to understand the motive as well as the method and opportunity. Hillerman's Navajo detectives, educated in white universities, are useful not just to solve crimes but to present to the reader a world-view which they both share and analyze and a setting to whose beauty they are acutely sensitive. Bernadette Lefthand turns the traditional mystery form inside out. It has no detective, no investigation, no discovery, except by the reader, and. most important, no restoration of order, social or psychological. The reader is given motive and opportunity, but the method (actually two quite different methods), is not finally decidable. Unlike Hillerman, Querry employs not one consciousness but five different narrative voices which deny coherence to the plot and harmony to the world created in the novel. The narrative voices interweave with, supplement, and sometimes contradict each other, but in general terms they range from wholly 58