The Existential Detective: Embodied Cognition in Ross Macdonald's The Chill

Detective fiction is a genre centred around cognition, as evidenced by the abundance of criticism dedicated to Sherlock Holmes’ thinking process, yet there is a lack of similar research into the reasoning process employed by detectives in the American hardboiled tradition. I argue that Lew Archer – the detective-protagonist in Ross Macdonald's hardboiled novel The Chill – displays a way of thinking that is embodied rather than abstract or intellectual. I analyse his embodied cognition through the lens of Gilbert Ryle's theory of improvisation, the psychological concept of affordances, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception. Ultimately, I argue for a reconsideration of the hardboiled detective novel's historical significance. Rather than shift the genre away from psychology, these novels actually push the genre toward a more modern understanding of the mind.