The Tell-Tale Bottle

"(...) uttered slowly, but clearly and impressively, the words — “Thou art the man!"

"Thou Art the Man" 

It must have been years since I last did a review of a non-fictional work...

Nazotoki Edgar Allan Poe ("Solving Edgar Allan Poe", 2025) is a book in publisher Shinchosha's Nazotoki... series on literary research. In this book, which carries the subtitle The Undiscovered Unsolved Murder Case, author Takeuchi Yasuhiro explores the work of Edgar Allan Poe, the father of the detective story, but not in the way you'd expect it to go. For no, his focus is not on the three Dupin stories, and The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the story widely considered the first modern detective story and the locked-room murder mystery, only plays a minor role in this book, as does The Purloined Letter, which is the better written detective story of the three stories. Takeuchi also isn't looking at Poe's work in the context of for example code-cracking (The Gold-Bug), nor is he interested in Poe as an influence on his followers in either the detective or horror genre. No, surprisingly, his focus is on the 1884 short story Thou Art the Man, which was published three years after The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but which is generally not regarded as well, as there are several issues that undermine the story as a logical and fair detective story... or is that really the case? In this book, Takeuchi takes another good look at Thou Art the Man to find a hidden murder mystery within the text...

As Thou Art the Man forms the focus of the book's main analysis, Nazotoki Edgar Allan Poe opens with a full Japanese translation of the story. From there, Takeuchi first gives a short analysis of the story as a mystery story, focusing on some of the odd choices Poe made when writing this story which undermine it as a logical detective story. However, by focusing on these apparent contradictions, Takeuchi slowly builds a theory in which he lays out that the story as presented to the reader, is in fact not the whole story: he presents a theory regarding a hidden, true culprit (different from the one presented in the story), and his theory helps solve what appeared to be faults or contradictions in the story if read as is. The way Takeuchi builds his theory is methodical and easy-to-follow, and while one can never actually prove whether "Edgar Allan Poe hid the real truth for us to find", the theory proposed by Takeuchi, and the arguments presented to support his accusation don't farfetched at all, and sure, I want to believe Takeuchi's version of the story as it gives Thou Art the Man a whole new dimension and it's all firmly based on the actual text! 

One of the arguments Takeuchi utilizes to strengthen his theory is the identification of a certain motif in the story, which, he argues, are also used in Poe's other (mystery) stories. This motif is for example also used in both The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter as per his analysis, but because the motif can be used in very diverse manners, it is not apparent right away Poe is using it across these stories. Some of the examples Takeuchi presents might not feel as strong as others, though that is something that is quite common in literature research. I do think the way he uses his identified motif as a way to support his Thou Art the Man theory works well.

The Thou Art the Man portion takes up about half of the book, after which Takeuchi proceeds to analyze the motif in other Poe stories, which aren't necessarily mystery stories actually. So while Takeuchi's brief look into the Dupin stories with his new motif-focused magnifying glass is expected, him using a motif derived from deducing a hidden truth within a detective story to analyze... A Tale of the Ragged Mountain is surprising. The Fall of the House of Usher also gets discussed, because this is a book on Poe, so of course it needs to be discussed. I do think the application of Takeuchi's motif on Usher results in a nice analysis of the tale, showing how Poe's thinking process might have gone as he wrote this story. 

As I don't want to give away Takeuchi's theory for Thou Art the Man away, and thus can't write in detail on the motif he identifies via that solution, I'm afraid this review remains rather vague. I can only say I quite enjoyed Takeuchi's adventure as a literature detective: his thorough analysis of the "testimony" (the Thou Art the Man text), focusing on the contradictions, the build-up of his solution: it all reads like a detective story, and one that's surprisingly accessible too thanks to his easy writing. And while this portion alone would've made for an interesting long essay, I did like how he managed to use his Thou Art the Man analysis to obtain a "magnifying glass" that allowed him to look into other Poe stories too. So if you're interested in Edgar Allan Poe's mystery fiction output and you're in the market for an easy-to-follow, yet surprisingly deep analysis of his work not from a historical POV, but a textual POV, Nazotoki Edgar Allan Poe is a book I can recommend.

Original Japanese title(s): 竹内康浩『謎ときエドガー・アラン・ポー』