Maud Casey: Mystery: On Unmaking and Being Undone (January 2016)

There’s a lot that needs making in fiction but creating space for mystery in fiction requires a certain amount of unmaking. Un doesn’t merely undo a word and turn it into its opposite; un is a release from, a freeing, a bringing out of, all of which are effects of mystery and part of its purpose. Through an examination of works by Henry James, Jane Bowles, and James Baldwin, Maud Casey’s lecture considers a few of the ways mystery, that essential literary quality, is conjured in fiction.