Investigating America: Detective Fiction as Social
Criticism
Raymond Chandler famously remarked that he wanted to capture
"a world gone wrong" in his detective novels. This course
explores the implications of that remark by reading
twentieth-century detective fiction as a popular and
energetic form of social criticism. We will investigate the
origins of American hard-boiled detective fiction and discuss
the classic work of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.
Readings: The Maltese Falcon and "The Gutting of Coufignal,"
Hammett; The Big Sleep, Chandler.
Later we will examine the genre of the 1940s and '50s when
hard-boiled detective fiction turned its gaze from the cities
to the suburbs in the work of Ross Macdonald and became the
political province of fascists like Mike Hammer. We'll focus
our discussion on Macdonald's Black Money and Mickey
Spillane's I, the Jury.
Historically-speaking, for most of the twentieth century,
American hard-boiled detective fiction has been the territory
of straight white men. After the 1960s, however, women,
people of color, and gays and lesbians began entering into
the genre-not in their traditional roles as criminals and
deviates, but as the detectives themselves! We'll explore the
political and aesthetic consequences of this revolution in
hard-boiled detective fiction and discuss Cotton Comes to
Harlem by Chester Hines, Early Autumn by Robert B Parker, "A"
is for Alibi by Sue Grafton, and Death Trick by Richard
Stevenson.
Maureen Corrigan, teaches at Georgetown
University and is the book critic for the program, "Fresh
Air," on National Public Radio. She is a Mystery Page
columnist for, The Washington Post and also reviews books and
writes essays for The Nation, The New York Times, and
Newsday. In 1999, Corrigan won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for
Criticism (the highest award bestowed by The Mystery Writers
of America) for her work as Associate Editor and Contributor
to Mystery & Suspense Writers
(Scribners) a two volume collection of essays on every
mystery writer who matters. Corrigan is currently at work on
a literary autobiography to be published by Random
House.
At Georgetown, Corrigan teaches courses on, among other
subjects,
"Detective Fiction & Film Noir" (co-taught with Professor
Carol Kent),
"New York Stories The Literature of Urban American in the
Twentieth Century," and "Women's Autobiography." She has also
served as a Study Leader on a Smithsonian-sponsored "Mystery
Tour of Great Britain" and has lectured at the Smithsonian on
the tradition of women's detective fiction in a course
called, "Sleuthing Spinsters and Dangerous Dames."
8 sessions: Tuesday evenings, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., June 11
through July 30, 2002.
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