True Detection by Gary J. Shipley


True Detection
Title : True Detection
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : -
Language : English
Format Type : Kindle Edition
Number of Pages : 272
Publication : First published August 17, 2014

A collection of philosophical and critical essays on the television series True Detective.

"Traditionally, the detective genre deals with the problem of epistemology – how to know something that one doesn't know. There are some things we cannot know, and some things we should not know. Sometimes clues just give way to more clues, and epistemic tedium rules the day. These essays reveal knowledge becoming an enigma to itself, revealing the brilliant futility of the epistemological project." – Eugene Thacker, author of In The Dust of This Planet

"The television event of the year - I would say many years - is without doubt True Detective. One deserving of forensic, unflinching, and unrelenting philosophical treatment." – Simon Critchley

"The most intelligent series in TV history has opened strange crypts for explorers. This excellent essay collection reveals just how far the dark tunnels lead. Let it coax you from the comforts of death and fear, into detection of the guttering nightmare that is life, coldly seen." – Nick Land

CONTENTS

I. Black Stars
Gary J. Shipley – Monster at the Pessimism’s Locked Rooms and Impossible Crimes
Edia Connole – Contemplating the Cohle and Divine Gloom
Nicola Masciandaro – I Am Not Supposed To Be Birth and Mystical Detection

II. Separate From Itself
Fintan Neylan – The Labour of the Detecting Expiration’s Artifice
Paul J. Ennis – The Atmospherics of Consciousness
Ben Woodard – Nothing Grows in the Right Scaling the Life of the Negative

III. There Was A Videotape
Niall McCann – True Detective, Jean-Luc Godard and Our Image ‘This May Well be Heaven, this Hell Smells the Same’
Daniel Fitzpatrick – ‘True Dick’ . . . The Accelerated Acceptance and Premature Canonisation of True Detective

IV. It’s Just One Story
Scott Wilson – The Nonsense of Truth Between Science and the Real
Erin K. Stapleton – The Corpse is the The Body of Dora Kelly Lange in True Detective
Caoimhe Doyle & Katherine Foyle – The Flat Devil Mapping Quantum Narratives in True Detective
Daniel Colucciello Barber – Affect Has No Story

V. And Closure–No, No, No
Dominic Fox – koyntly bigyled
Charlie Blake, Daniel Colucciello Barber, Edia Connole, Paul J. Ennis, Gary J. Shipley – Bird Trap
Edge to Edge
Caoimhe Doyle & Katherine Foyle – The Chole Story


True Detection Reviews


  • Michael Greer

    After beginning with a few nods to Poe and A. Christie, the author begins the hard work of tracing the genealogy of the hard-boiled detective. On page 37 of my edition, the following words will help the beginning reader:

    "In this reading (those who acknowledge Raymond Chandler incorporates myth and legend into his work)...classical katabasis merged with the grail quest to produce the knightly attitude that would become the principle characteristic of the hard-boiled detective."

    On the author's reading, the quest is its own purpose. To be in pursuit is the fundamental condition of the knight-errant. Unlike those who labor or those who serve a well delineated social function, the knight-errant seeks adventures. They are, so to speak, his calling. And it is an occupation for males.

  • Martin Dylan

    The words are so rich, like maple sap dripping off the page. Its a massage, workout, and a seduction for your brain all at once.

  • Uxküll

    This is a collection of essays primarily engaged in a direct style with the first season of the HBO series "True Detective". A must read for anyone hungering after philosophical elucidations on what is surely one of the greatest Television series in its genre if not the medium as a whole. Most of the essays speak directly to the source material and illuminates or problematizes it in some fascinating manner.

    The most thought-provoking essays for myself were: Gary J. Shipley's "Monster at the End", Nicola Masciandaro's "I am not supposed to be here", Ben Woodard's "Nothing grows in the right direction", Scott Wilson's "The Nonsense of Detection", and last but certainly not least Erin K. Stapleton's "The Corpse is the Territory".