Hard-boiled Ecologies: Ross Macdonald's Environmental Crime Fiction. Issue 1 (2nd January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ashman, Nathan
• Is Part Of: Green letters. Volume 22:Issue 1(2018)
• Page Start: 43
• Page End: 54
• Publication Date: 2018-01-02
• Subjects: Ross Macdonald -- hardboiled -- pastoral -- crime -- ecology -- American; Ecocriticism -- Europe -- Periodicals; Ecocriticism; Europe; Periodicals; 809.933553
• DOI: 10.1080/14688417.2018.1431139
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-8417

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Although Ross Macdonald's position in the annals of great American hardboiled crime writers is unquestioned, what often been overlooked in the study of his works are the underlying environmental preoccupations that frequently serve as the background to, or context for, crime. This context of ecological violence is forcefully manifested in two of Macdonald's later Archer novels The Underground Man (1971) and Sleeping Beauty (1973). This essay scrutinizes the environmental imperatives of Macdonald's work, arguing that the damage and destruction inflicted upon the environment in these two texts becomes symbiotically connected to the broader, morally fraught social milieu of the city.