Jean-Patrick Manchette, Anti-journalist

This article examines how Jean-Patrick Manchette, a writer credited with reinventing and politicizing crime fiction in 1970s France, engaged with newspaper culture and popular journalism in his crime fiction. Journalism is a crucial primary source for Manchette’s crime writing and a recurrent object of attention in his novels. Rejecting common realist rhetorics grounding crime fiction’s claims to social or political relevance, Manchette develops strategies of allegorical figuration and abstract critique, and also, in his more pessimistic moods, conceptualizes the crime novel itself as a document of uncivilization or a petit fait vrai.