SOURCE: Christianson, Scott R. “A Heap of Broken Images: Hardboiled Detective Fiction and the Discourse(s) of Modernity.” In The Cunning Craft: Original Essays on Detective Fiction and Contemporary Literary Theory, edited by Ronald G. Walker and June M. Frazer, pp. 135-48. Macomb, IL: Western Illinois University, 1990.

In the following essay, Christianson examines hard-boiled fiction in the context of modern literature. He argues that, like, for example, T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, hard-boiled fiction presents an “oppositional” stance toward the world, while at the same time upholding many of its values.

First of all, this paper will attempt to problematize the study of popular culture—more specifically popular literature, and in particular detective fiction, avoiding in the process the reductive methodology of adversarial approaches to “mass culture” (from both the right and the left) as well as the “euphoric celebration” (Polan 169) of popular literature to which writing about...