Content area
Full text
CANALYSIS Bruce Fink, The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal, London, Karnac, 2010; 292pp, hardback, £19.99
The protagonist of Bruce Fink's collection of 3 novellas, The Psychoanalytic Adventures of Inspector Canal published last year by Karnac Press, is not really a psychoanalyst (in spite of the anagram). At first, his intimate knowledge of psychoanalytic theory seems to be yet another manifestation of his extraordinary erudition that ranges from wines to music. But each story incorporates Canal's awareness of parapraxes, which not only contribute to die solution of the enigma but also bring psychoanalytic depth to the various characters who inhabit the stories, whether members of the investigating team or those investigated. Inspector Canal is a retired inspector of die French Secret Service and thus more, on the face of it, on the side of the detective dian the analyst. He lives in New York, resists the murderous speed-up of the modern world, and has the means to indulge his highly sophisticated life-style. Occasionally he is called in by baffled American cops to solve a particularly knotty case, in a relation reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dupin and the Prefect of Police.
Fink's book is witty and written with great charm and insight and with it die author is clearly also gesturing towards the well-known overlap between certain aspects of psychoanalysis and detective fiction. Tb begin with, detective fiction as a genre was inaugurated, it seems to be agreed, by Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, published in 1886, almost simultaneously, that is, with Breuer's analysis of Anna O and his observation of her symptoms as clues to be deciphered and interpreted. Lacan's seminar on Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Purloined Letter' would doubtless be a key point of reference for Fink. . . But there is also Freud himself. In his reminiscence of his analysis with Freud, die Wolf Man recounts:
Once we happened to speak of Conan Doyle and his creation Sherlock Holmes. I had thought Freud would have had no use for this kind of light reading matter and was surprised to find that he had read this author attentively. The fact that circumstantial evidence is used in psychoanalysis when reconstructing a childhood history may explain Freud's interest in this type of literature.1
Finally,...