The existential argument to embrace the absurd is made in Albert Camus' essay The Myth of Sisyphus (read an excerpt here.) In L’Etranger (The Stranger) Camus embraces noir to illustrate the absurdity of human existence in a universe that does not care and is not altered by the actions of individuals, and more specifically, the absurdity of a justice system that condemns a man to death more for failing to express emotion at his own mother’s funeral than for killing a man in self defence, though there is no indication that the protagonist Meursault is defending himself when he shoots an Arab on an Algiers beach.

Existentialism has long found voice and developed ideas through noir fiction. James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice characterizes a drifter as estranged from society and his own emotions (except, perhaps, lust) as Camus' Meursault. Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me describes a man driven mad by concepts of social norms. Does existential theory in noir begin with Dashiel Hammett's pragmatic The Maltese Falcon?