Raymond Chandler

The master of literary theory reinterprets the master of the detective novel. Raymond Chandler, a dazzling stylist and chronicler of American life, occupies a unique place in the history of literature with his work that combines the trash of pulp magazines with a distinct form of realistic prose. With "The Big Sleep," published in 1939, he significantly shaped the detective novel of the 20th century. The film adaptations of his work, including collaborations with Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity) and Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep), made it world-famous. Fredric Jameson offers an interpretation of Chandler's work that reconstructs the context in which it was written while also detective-like investigating the social space and totality it depicts. By playing with the language and conventions of the detective story, Chandler presents his ever-present setting of Los Angeles as both a microcosm of the United States and a prefiguration of its future: a megalopolis uniquely divided by an adverse environment into a multitude of distinct neighborhoods, local peculiarities, and private milieus. However, this work, fundamentally focused on urban and social spaces, is also directed towards a void, an absence well-known in the crime novel: death. Fredric Jameson's essay demonstrates how the genre of the crime novel becomes metaphysical in Chandler's hands, simultaneously offering a surprising perspective on society.