Re: mild drug SPOILER Re: other stoned detectives? Re: finished IV…

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 11, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Carvill John wrote:

> 2. Comparisons with Marlowe/Chandler are many and will doubtless be  
> explored in depth, something I look forward to. Someone mentioned  
> that, although Marlowe would be as likely to be caught crying over a  
> dame as smoking a joint, he does enjoy a whiskey or three. I think  
> the phrase used was 'five sheets to the wind'. But in actual fact,  
> again going from (older) memory, although Marlowe always seemed to  
> be accessing that 'bottle of pretty good rye', he never seemed to be  
> debilitated by drink, so far as I can recall. (Cue deluge of posts  
> quoting passages of Marlovian drunkenness...)

You're right—something that is part of the continuity in such  
characters as Philip Marlowe through James Bond and into the present  
is the Hard Boiled Dick/P.I./Spy's ability to hold a drink. But some  
of Marlowe's finest aria's are remarks extempore whilst in a  
hallucinated state of mind—a state of mind brought on, more often than  
not, by the sorts of chemical indignities to consciousness that the  
CIA later developed and dispersed into the general environment.

  	" . . .I think the phrase used was 'five sheets to the wind'. "

Borrowed from Tom Waits, as I recall.