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.