A few thoughts on Chandler's burgher

[Paul Nightingale]

I am coming to the end of my Chandler reread, one inspired by IV and Robin's
quotations, and find the books as interesting as ever. But Davis is correct:
the genre is reactionary and, before a word has been written, the figure of
Marlowe has been organised as a vigilante. Texts and character might, in the
event, be more than that, of course; which is what makes them interesting.
Apart from anything else Marlowe is a snob; he is desperate to be more than
a hired gun who is forever outside, in exile. Consider the chess games that
allow Marlowe, and his author, to advertise intellectual pretensions: this
is Marlowe rejecting a world that has rejected him. Consider also the
novels' uneasy relationship with popular culture: attacks on advertising and
the mass media could have been written by Leavis or Adorno. And all this in
novels produced for a mass readership.

1. Perhaps most interesting is the way the novels develop; there isn't a
Marlowe ur-text to be recycled time and again. There are of course common
themes to be reworked (not least, the frequent appearance of two sisters who
might or might not be alike). Early-Marlowe includes The Big Sleep (1939),
Farewell My Lovely (1940), The High Window (1942) and The Lady In The Lake
(1943). Late-Marlowe includes The Little Sister (1949) and The Long Goodbye
(1953); with Playback (1958) a coda of sorts to LG. Early-Marlowe can be
bought/hired (time is money, 25 dollars a day plus expenses) but female
characters have no interest for him. In both LS and LG late-Marlowe is
reluctant to accept payment, but is far more receptive to women. In LS he
accepts a derisory token payment and then returns it; in LG he points out
(boasts?) that he had to spend his own money to find out what has happened.
LG also features, in Potter, a patriarch who can punch his weight; this is
in stark contrast to the feeble patriarchs of BS, FL and LL (and, in
absentia, HW), men who can be held responsible for the transgressions of
women they fail to control.

2. Of interest perhaps to readers of IV: early-Marlowe narratives are
tightly structured, the action covering a few days. A hundred pages go by
and it's still the same day. In late-Marlowe the narratives meander, LG
covering months with little sense of urgency. IV covers about a month at a
leisurely pace. Early-Marlowe is asked to intervene in history; the
significant action is already in the past, characters frozen in time.
Insofar as the novels feature an ongoing plot, Marlowe functions as a
catalyst: consider his relationship with women, most obviously Carmen in BS.
Late-Marlowe is himself transformed by the action he is caught up in. Doc
Sportello might be said to resemble late-Marlowe, who has become quite a
social beast by the time of LG.

3. It seems that Chandler's Hollywood experience separates the two sets of
novels: as a screenwriter and as an author who stands aside to watch others
rewrite him. A theme of the novels throughout is censorship, the way in
which a story will be edited for public consumption if not suppressed
altogether; and the irony cannot have been lost on Chandler himself when he
saw adaptations of BS and FL. A trivial example: the word "prostitute" at
the start of BS doesn't make it into the film version. A more significant
example from the same novel: the relationship between Geiger and Carol
Lundgren. Marlowe's beating of Lundgren might be considered homophobic; but
at least the character and the relationship are allowed to exist in the
novel, if only to be sneered at. By the end of Chandler's FL, Velma has
become a somewhat tragic figure, exemplifying the simple fact that, in a
patriarchal society, women do what they can to get by. To my mind
Hollywood's Velma is far less interesting. Similarly, Chandler's FL opens in
a black bar to emphasise aspects of social change in the time Moose Malloy
has been away. But Hollywood's FL suppresses this demographic feature. Here,
we might wish to make something of IV's opening chapter, in particular the
discussion of social change/racism/apartheid that follows Tariq's arrival,
14-17.