Qui est Hans Maslick, l’obsession (parmi d’autres) de James Ellroy

James Ellroy est frapadingue. Quasiment au même niveau que Bret Easton Ellis et d'ailleurs il y a pas mal de similitudes entre leurs façons d'écrire.. en mode mitraillette automatique, dans certaines parties..

Dans son dernier livre, les Enchanteurs, (que vous pouvez acheter normalement, ou neuf et à prix fracassé sur le bon coin ou carrément télécharger gratuitement ) qui tourne autour de la mort de Marylin Monroe à travers le délirant Freddy O (aussi dingue quasiment que Patrick Bateman), James Ellroy parle encore de Hans Maslick, un policier allemand du temps des nazis qui aurait inventé la technique de la caméra humaine, une sorte "d'attitude" de l'enquêteur pour photographier une scène de crime..

Diable, une technique permettant de booster la mémoire photographique (eidétique si vous voulez brillez en société)..

En fait, Hans Maslick n'existe pas (mais il mériterait d'avoir sa page wikipedia non ?)

Sur https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332158652_The_Hybrid_Nature_of_Autobiography_James_Ellroy's_The_Hilliker_Curse_Rethought_as_a_Deleuzian_Rhizome

quelqu'un d'aussi FD que nous et Ellroy nous explique que:

He describes his extraordinary observation skill as be-coming the “Man Camera”. This is a term Ellroy coined for a special detection technique, where the mind (through the eye) becomes a camera, roving over and recording a (crime) scene, to be replayed over and over again.

The first mention of the technique itself (which is also very descriptive of Ellroy’s own approach to writing) appears in Silent Terror (1990) that was written as a fictional memoir of

a serial killer, who bears several traits of Ellroy as a teenager and young adult;54

here it is called “(screening) brain movies” (Ellroy, 1986, 20). However, the first

mention of the term “Man–Camera” appears in The Big Nowhere. The invention of

“Man–Camera” is attributed to Hans Maslick, a fictional character from The Big

Nowhere, supposedly a famous German criminologist, and it is described as an

investigative technique that “involved screening details from the perpetrator’s

point of view” (Ellroy, 1988,81). The brain (or better, the eye) operates like a

camera lens: it has the ability to zoom in and out, “freezing close-ups, selecting

background motifs” (ibid).

In The Hilliker Curse he uses other terms to describe the technique (which is here, of course, attributed to him), like “brain–screening” (Ellroy, 2010, 8). This skill is linked directly to the experiential aspect of autobiography: the re-living and reconstructing of experience. His “brain–screenings” attempt just that. One could liken Ellroy to a “far–seer”, a term that Deleuze and Guattari (1993, 202) use for rare individuals who have long-distance vision and have “telescopes” that “are complex and refined”. What they see is entirely different from what the others see. They see “a whole microsegmentarity, details of details, ‘a roller coaster of possibilities’, a whole rhizome” and are very susceptible to cracks and uniquely equipped to detect ruptures; and after “real ruptures” (1993, 279) one becomes clandestine, imperceptible; they trigger the becoming-imperceptible.

If becoming-imperceptible comes at the end of all the molecular becomings that

begin with becoming-woman, what does it actually mean? Becoming-impercep-

tible means many things. It is connected to the (asignifying) indiscernible and the

(asubjective) impersonal (Deleuze and Guattari, 1993, 279). The development of

Ellroy’s superb observational skills as well as his method of brain-screening leads

in his final stage not to greater discernibility or ultimate clarity, but to indiscern-

ibility, to asubjectiveness.

This is also reflected in the title of the first and the last part of The Hilliker Curse,

which is “Her”; the word also appears in capitalised form throughout the book

whenever Ellroy refers to his mother in the very specific way of revealing her as the

line of becoming, leading to indiscernibility. In the preface to the book he says: “My obsessive will is too stretched. Their story must eclipse Hers in volume and content. I must honor Them and distinguish each one from Her. […] They are all gone now. I am unbodied without them” (Ellroy, 2010, 114). This is a direct ex-pression of his need to change his rhizome, to make it change shape and quality, etc, etc..

Pourquoi avoir inventé ce Hans Maslick ?

Pourquoi en tant qu'Allemand ?

Pourquoi Hans ? Pourquoi Maslick ?

Dans "le Grand Nulle Part", James Ellroy invente même un traité de criminologie de " Vollmer, Thorwald, Maslick"..:

Personne pour le reluquer de travers
lorsqu’il prit ses manuels de criminologie : Vollmer,
Thorwald, Maslick – techniques de quadrillage des
lieux d’un crime, interprétation des éclaboussures de
sang, comment vous retourner une pièce de 7 mètres
sur 5 à la recherche de preuves en une heure tout rond.
Danny s’installa pour sa lecture, les pieds sur
le bureau, l’émetteur-récepteur poste-voitures en
vadrouille, au niveau sonore minimum. Hans Maslick
digressait sur la manière de relever des empreintes
digitales à partir de chairs grièvement brûlées ainsi
que sur les meilleurs composés chimiques pour éli-
miner les tissus croûtés sans roussir la peau sous la
surface du motif de l’empreinte. Maslick avait perfec-
tionné sa technique lors des suites d’un incendie de
prison à Düsseldorf en 1931. Il avait eu à sa disposi-
tion quantité de macchabées et de motifs d’empreintes
sur lesquels travailler ; à proximité se trouvait une
usine de produits chimiques, avec un jeune laborantin
ambitieux, impatient de lui venir en aide. Ensemble,
ils travaillèrent vitesse grand V : les solutions caus-
tiques brûlaient trop en profondeur, les mélanges
moins agressifs ne pénétraient pas les chairs cicatri-
cielles. Danny notait des symboles chimiques sur un
calepin au fur et à mesure de sa lecture ; il se voyait
très bien en assistant de Maslick, travaillant au coude
à coude avec le grand criminologiste qui l’embrassait

Dans une thèse intitulée "Crime, Space and Disorientation in the
Literature and Cinema of Los Angeles" John Pavey écrit:

"Ellroy appears to have invented ‘Hans Maslick’; certainly there are no notable
works of criminology attributed to anyone of that name. According to the limited
information provided in the novel, Maslick was an author of several works on
criminalistics who also developed some of his techniques ‘while undergoing analysis
with Sigmund Freud’ (p. 94). He may to some extent be an amalgamation of the
Austrian magistrate and criminologist Hans Gross (1847–1915) and his son, maverick Freudian psychoanalyst Otto Gross (1877–1920). Hans Gross was the author of Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik (Handbook for Examining Magistrates as a System of Criminalistics, 1891), a man described by Thorwald as ‘a pioneer of criminology who was destined to acquire extraordinary 275
influence’.173 If Hans Gross embodied late nineteenth-century juridical rationalism and
authority, his son was his opposite: a proponent of free love and female emancipation
who was an avowed anarchist and supplied cocaine to his psychiatric patients.174
Given the limited information Ellroy provides about ‘Hans Maslick’, any
allusion to Hans and Otto Gross is admittedly speculative; the correspondence between
the novel’s themes and the relationship between the Grosses is, nevertheless, striking.
Perverse and corrupt paternal relationships are central to the plot of The Big Nowhere.
The killer hunted by Upshaw, Coleman Masskie, is eventually revealed to be the
estranged illegitimate son of Reynolds Loftis, a Hollywood actor. Reintroduced to his adult son, Loftis had begun an incestuous relationship with Coleman that involved
having him undergo plastic surgery to more closely resemble his father. The murders perpetrated by Coleman are staged specifically to implicate Loftis in revenge for this abuse.

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Qui est Hans Maslick, l’obsession (parmi d’autres) de James Ellroy

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