वक्षस्थलावरील रक्तमणी....जीए एक उत्तम रहस्यकथाकार...Murder Is Serious Business

Tom Wolfe:
“I’ve begun working on a writers’ Hippocratic oath. “The first line of the doctors’ Hippocratic oath is ‘First, do no harm.’ And I think for the writers it would be: ‘First, entertain.’ Entertain is a very simple word. I looked it up in the dictionary. Entertainment enables people to pass the time pleasantly. And any writing—I don’t care if it’s poetry or what—should first entertain. It’s a very recent thing that there’s a premium put on making writing so difficult that only a charmed aristocracy is capable of understanding it.”
 
 John Gray, 'The stark moral world of Georges Simenon', February 2016:

"....Some of the best examples of what is commonly described as crime fiction – the novels of Patricia Highsmith, for instance – are studies in character which show why the protagonists act as they do by probing their states of mind. In Simenon, human beings are the sum of their impulses and behaviours; there is no enduring self behind the façade of habit. No one authors their own life; the belief that they are responsible for their actions is an illusion.

“My very first Maigrets,” Simenon writes, “were imbued with the sense, which has always been with me, of man’s irresponsibility. This is never stated openly in my writings. But Maigret’s attitude to the criminal makes it quite clear.” Simenon would have dismissed any suggestion that his romans durs were novels of ideas. He believed that ideas count for very little in human life. But the idea – or fact, as he would have called it – of human irresponsibility is at the centre of nearly everything he wrote.
That is one reason why Simenon’s work does not belong in the genre of crime fiction. In the romans durs, criminal acts are important only in signifying a final break with society. Even in the Maigrets, the question is not why a crime was committed, but how the person who committed the crime departed from a settled routine of living, and the detective resolves the conundrum by imaginatively entering into the life of the suspect. Identifying the criminal is rarely the principal focus of the story,..."

David Aberbach, TLS Times Literary Supplement,  May 1 2018:
"...Das Kapital, too, can be read as a crime novel: the factory is a crime scene, the victims are the workers; the hunt is on to catch the “criminals”, the capitalist exploiters...."

हेन्री सटन (Henry Sutton ) यांचा गार्डियन, एप्रिल १५ २०१८ चा लेख वाचला.

"...Crime fiction in its broadest sense has always been hugely influential, particularly among so-called “literary” writers. William Faulkner compared Georges Simenon to Chekhov. WH Auden adored Christie and Sayers. André Gide was an admirer of Patricia Highsmith, Albert Camus based The Stranger on The Postman Always Rings Twice, while Eleanor Catton drew on Cain’s Double Indemnity for her Man Booker prize-winning The Luminaries. Martin Amis’s novella Night Train is a homage to Elmore Leonard.

John Banville (another Man Booker winner), who writes crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black, has said that the “modernist experiment is over”, and the literary novel is “in the doldrums”, whereas crime fiction reasserts the traditional literary values of “plot, character and dialogue”. Banville’s reception among the crime-writing fraternity got off to a difficult start when he suggested at a festival that he wrote his crime fiction quickly, and his literary fiction slowly, inadvertently implying that it was easier....
... Neither landmark books, nor their many imitators, are what you’d call comforting. One of their main appeals is the fact that they make you feel uncomfortable; that they invade your headspace, adding drama, fear and anxiety. They sweep you away from the everyday. They heighten your senses, and they surprise...."

आणि हे सगळं वाचून मला वाटले, जी. ए. कुलकर्णी किती उच्च दर्जाचे रहस्यकथाकार सुद्धा  होते.  जीएंचे आवडते लेखक ग्रॅहम ग्रीन यांनी उत्तम दर्जाच्या  रहस्यकथा (उदा: ब्रायटन रॉक) लिहल्या आहेत. ह्या ब्लॉगवरील 'आरशातील उत्पात आणि कल्लोळ !....G A Kulkarni and Orson Welles' ही एप्रिल ९ २०१८ची, जीएंच्या कथेची  एका महान Noir सिनेमा (The Lady from Shanghai, 1947) बरोबर भेट घडवणारी पोस्ट हा योगायोग नव्हता.

अजून फक्त दोन-तीन  उदाहरणे घेतो:

स्वामी (पिंगळवेळ): संपूर्ण कथा रहस्यावर आधारित.. कोण 'तो', कोण महंत, कसला मठ, काय होणार मठात, पूर्वीच्या स्वामींचे सापळे सापडणे , अफू मिळणे, एक चिट्ठी मिळणे ... कुठं चुकलेल्या बसने सुरवात, आणि कुठे शेवट!.... कल्पना करा 'त्या'ची mising person म्हणून त्याला माहित नसलेल्या कोणी FIR पण केली असेल ... एखाद्या उत्तम रहस्यकथे सारखी कथा वाहती ...आणि हे सगळ सांगताना मानवी जीवनाबद्दल तत्वज्ञान, कम्युनिसम व्यवस्थेचे , वैष्णव मठ व्यवस्थेचे रूपक (allegory) वगैरे... 

विदूषक (काजळमाया) : विजयराजचा शिरच्छेद, चंचला, 'प्रिय व्यक्तीच्या रक्ताने लांछित',  धृवशीला , डोंब, धर्मगुरू, "....तिच्या वक्षस्थलावर जणू वासना तप्त झाल्याप्रमाणे भासणार रक्तमणी होता...." ... ही कथा सुद्धा एखाद्या उत्तम रहस्यकथे सारखी वाहते ... किंबहुना ती रहस्यकथाच आहे.... 

लक्ष्मी  (पिंगळावेळ) : शेवटच्या पानापर्यंत एका गरीब कुटुंबाची 'सरळ' कथा पण शेवटच्या पानावर मला नारायण धारपांची आठवण प्रत्येकवेळा करून देते म्हणजे तीची गणना भयकथा, गूढकथा करायला हरकत नाही... 

आणखी एक विचार.... काजळमाया, १९७२ मधील 'प्रदक्षिणा' सारखी कथा पहा... त्यात दादासाहेबांचा अनैसर्गिक मृत्यू घाला... बाकी कथा आहे तशी.. झाले Domestic Noir तयार .... "In a nutshell, Domestic Noir takes place primarily in homes and workplaces, concerns itself largely (but not exclusively) with the female experience, is based around relationships and takes as its base a broadly feminist view that the domestic sphere is a challenging and sometimes dangerous prospect for its inhabitants. That’s pretty much all of my work described there." 

किंबहुना मृत्यू न बदलता सुद्धा ते डोमेस्टिक नॉर मध्ये बसेल ... "'The Family...is a cauldron for crime, bringing with it abductions, incarcerations, issues with infertility, infidelity and missing children. The home is rife with buried family secrets that come back to haunt us. This subgenre plays on the idea that the home is the safest place to be – OR IS IT..?
 

दि माल्टीज फाल्कन (The Maltese Falcon), 1930 हे एक जगप्रसिद्ध पुस्तक आहे. जीएंनी ते पुस्तक आणि त्यावर आधारित १९४१चा जॉन ह्यूस्टन यांचा सिनेमा बहुतेक बघितला असणार. 

विदूषक कथेचे दुसरे नाव काय ठेवता आले असते हे मी कल्पिले आणि त्याचे मुखपृष्ठ  माल्टीज फाल्कन सारखे तयार केले...

कुपया लक्षात घ्या हा माझा कल्पनाविलास आहे आणि त्यात मी जीएंच्या आणखी एका सर्जनशील  पैलूला सलाम करतो आहे. 

 

 सौजन्य : माल्टीज फाल्कनचे मुखपृष्ठ कलावंत 

हे जरी सगळे कल्पनारंजन असले तरी , प्रत्यक्षात असे कव्हर झाले असते तरी त्यात कमीपणा वाटायचे कारण नाही कारण डोस्तयोवेस्की यांची पुस्तके सुद्धा pulp मुखपृष्ठात प्रसिद्ध झाली आहेत

 सौजन्य : मुखपृष्ठ कलावंत