In Los Angeles, the influence of Hollywood and the film industry, combined with a non-stop barrage of media images, has blurred the line between the real and imaged. The literature reveals a city exploding with cultural, racial and social differences, making Los Angeles a confusing and alienating place. The literature of Los Angeles reflects the changing face of the city. Los Angeles was always a city with a promising future, economic booms and optimism seemed to suggest that here was a place where the American Dream really could come true. Thousands travelled west in search of sunshine, oranges and a life that formerly, they could only dream of having. Yet, the literature of Los Angeles has highlighted the city's actual history together with a realization of undercurrents of violence, prejudice, depression and shattered dreams. The past, present and future is used to reveal a city that is in stark opposition to the Los Angeles, waves of immigrants came to find. This thesis explores the idea of the dreamer coming west to Los Angeles within the literature and the variety of ways in the travellers' romantic notions of Los Angeles as a city of promise, is betrayed, leaving a desperate people in its wake. The literature shows that beneath the shiny surface of a city founded on sunshine and prosperity, corruption reached all levels of society and the 'mean streets' abound. Later, influenced by an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness caused by Post-war nuclear depression, McCarthyism, loss of identity, and living in a city fragmented by racial tension and an ever growing gap between the very rich and the very poor, the literature of Los Angeles reflects not only the fears of that city, but of American society as a whole. The collision of technology, rapid progression and population explosion turned Los Angeles into a disconnected city, where the real and imagined merge in a cityscape that demonstrates a conflicting combination of historical replication, original design and movie-set inspiration. Nothing is ever what it appears to be in Los Angeles.

雷蒙‧錢德勒為冷硬派偵探小說的開山始祖之一，其文學地位卻不限於通俗小說大家。 其簡潔有力的文學筆觸及對於現代美國社會的深刻批判，讓他名列當代美國代表作家之列。 在錢德勒的筆觸下，洛杉磯城被深切刻畫成重要性不亞於偵探的重要主角。 故此，我在本論文將探討錢德勒對於洛杉磯身為美國現代大城的空間呈現，試圖找出其再現對於美國城市文學與偵探小說的積極影響。 在第二至第四章的本文中，第二章處理私家偵探與其出沒的洛杉磯之間的關係。 我發現漫遊者的概念也可被應用在冷硬派私家偵探的明查暗訪，這兩者在顯示現代城市的現代性方面，都是代表性的謀介。 透過漫遊者偵探的私家之眼，真實與想像的洛杉磯同時歷歷在目，而勒婓伏爾與索雅的空間理論為理解錢德勒筆下洛杉磯真實與想像的城市空間再現的一大利器。 故此，第三章運用索雅的第三空間概念來探討錢德勒的空間再現，發現其筆下墮落之城的種種暗黑角落，都是第三空間的再現，因為它們都顯現一種被宰制的空間呈現，別同於洛杉磯被大力推銷為夢想之城的想像空間。 第四章處理另一個被忽視但重要的第三空間。 藉由私家偵探親身探索洛杉磯城中不同族群的空間，我發現這些空間也是另一種第三空間的呈現，因為這些空間亦屬於被宰制壓迫的空間，而錢德勒對於洛杉磯城的空間再現並未遺忘這些他者族群被壓迫的空間，故此更能證明錢德勒不愧為刻畫現代化美國社會的文學大師。 / Raymond Chandler is a prestigious detective-story writer and the founding father of the hard-boiled detective fiction school, but he is not limited to this sub-genre of the crime fiction. His laconic style and the socially critical depiction of Los Angeles elevates him as a great writer in literature, high-brow and low-brow. Los Angeles city in his depiction becomes another protagonist of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stories. In this thesis, I attempt to adopt a spatial reading of the Los Angeles city he depicts, so as to explore the meanings of the real and imagined spaces and their possibilities of resistance for future interpretations. Besides the first chapter as the introduction and the last chapter as the conclusion, in Chapter Two, I will first compare the private detective to the flâneur, thereby discovering the contribution of these figures to the discovery and representation of modernity in modern cities. Furthermore, I will utilize Lefebvre’s and Soja’s trialectics of spatiality to examine the real and imagined spaces in Chandler’s novels. By doing so, in Chapter Three I argue that Chandler’s vivid spatial representations of Los Angeles, especially the dark side of the city, are actually the real-and-imagined Thirdspace that represents the dominated spaces against the promotion of Los Angeles as a dream city. In Chapter Four, though Chandler’s spaces convincingly reflect the modernity of Los Angeles as a modern city, I further discover another possible site for the space of representation in his stories: the space of the racial Other. This discovery of another Thirdspace proves Chandler isn’t as much a racist as alleged, and it is the counter-space that provides the possibility of resistance for many future hard-boiled detective fiction writers of different ethnicities, and this can explain why Chandler’s hard-boiled detective has been massively appropriated.