SOURCE: “Realism, Rhetoric, and Reification: Or the Case of the Missing Detective in Our Mutual Friend,” in Modern Philology, Vol. 86, No. 1, August, 1988, pp. 34-45.

In the following essay, Solomon discusses the critical controversy surrounding two confusing plot lines within Our Mutual Friend: the one involving John Harmon's “death” and the one involving Noddy Boffin's feigned change of character.

But more extraordinary than any chapter is the preface, or postscript, or apology, for we don't know what to call it, which closes the work. It is divided into five sections, and each section contains a separate fallacy, except one, which contains two. In the first, Mr. Dickens lays down the proposition “that an artist (of whatever denomination) may, perhaps, be trusted to know what he is about in his vocation.” Mr. Dickens's later works are the best refutation of his own words.

[J. R. Wise, from a review of...