Olfactory Ecologies: Investigating Oil’s Smelly Residues in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Abstract

Literary critics in the energy humanities rarely treat smell as a resource for analytical deliberation. But smells hide truths about the environmental risks we create and inhabit in our petroculture. By studying oil’s odors within Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, this essay asserts the importance of embracing “olfactory ecologies”: methods of using our noses to sense environmental dangers that are unseen or unnoticed. I argue that Chandler’s imperfect detective Philip Marlowe can help readers train their noses to detect how olfactory pollution induces physical and mental harm.