SOURCE: "Who's not Singing in The Singing Detective," in "Some Things I Saw," in Salmagundi, No. 88/89, Fall/Winter, 1990/91, pp. 118-122.

In the following excerpt, Gordon opposes the "pervasive and seductive elements of adolescent male fantasy" that she suggests permeate the hard-boiled detective fiction that The Singing Detective is modeled after.

The dreaming boy alone in the lush tree. The crooner by himself before the microphone. The walking detective (hard boiled dick), solitary, gun in hand, his heels clicking along the rainy pavement. Is he by himself because he wants to be? Is the role of the isolate, in proximate relation to things longer than they are wide, the role he chose first for himself or is it the austere and wise second choice of the man who knows too much?

Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective is all about the stuff male dreams are made of: obviously, deliberately, self-consciously...