Davis on Chandler

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I agree with you Mark that Davis' interpretation (which I haven't read) sounds heavy-handed and designed to provoke and is an unfair characterization of Chandler's work.  Still, it borders on something that Pynchon brings up in IV (and VL).  The advent of those cop shows (Adam-12, CHiPs, Mod Squad, etc.)designed to show young good-guy cops and snitches as a sop to and co-optation of the youth culture.  Young TV watchers were meant to (and presumably did) accept the protagonists at face value, without questioning their proto-fascist attitudes.  Later shows, starting with Hill Street Blues and perfected by The Wire, tried harder to give a three-dimensional picture of both sides of the fence.  It leaves an unsettling question:  who's using The Wire to manipulate us into thinking what?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>
>I'm sorry, but I am going to dispute Davis' interpretation....it is tendentious and, I think, often a misreading.  And it overgeneralizes and gets things wrong.
>
>Marlowe---a burgher?...C,mon. How does a working class guy who can barely earn a living, pay his rent, get that label? 
>
>I am reading Chandler and, so far, he is VERY CAREFUL not to generalize about any group...see his words on Mexicans in The Long Goodbye......
>Contrary to Davis' misreading, I think Chandler is simply saying that there are criminal elements in all kinds of people. For Chandler, it is
>a kind of inherent vice....IF he had used the same group from book to book, Davis, anyone, would have a case.  [although, yes, he might not think
>much of most women]
>
>What is 'fascist' paranoia? As distinguished from regular paranoia?
>The cops have what i might call 'fascist' paranoia---believing, pre-emptively, that they know the guilty and in The Long Goodbye (and others)
>that they know Marlowe is involved.
>
>A---And Davis last 'guilt by association' coupling of 'the genealogy'
>of Black Mask is simply the worst.....like calling anyone a horrible rascist because they know one......it is condemning Hammett and Chandler because the editor of Black Mask might have been a KKK sympathizer......
>like condemning Fitzgerald, Hemingway, any others, even Pynchon, i believe,
>because the Saturday Evening Post had Rockwell Kent artwork.....
>
>That racist writer who supposedly founded the 'tough guy' noir genre HAS NOT been credited with that and has not survived as a writer worth reading:
>Hammett, then Chandler created the archetypal tough guy noir novel.
>
>Hammett and Chandler first in Black Mask Magazine:
>"originally founded as a money-making venture to help support the higher-brow activities of H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, The Black Mask was a cheap periodical aimed at a predominantly working-class male audience."
>
>Marlowe has (most) cops against him more than he is like them. He is NOT like them 'cause he can see through the skrims of society and people. He is
>by every action, anti-fascist.  
>
>
>
>--- On Tue, 8/18/09, kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>> From: kelber at mindspring.com <kelber at mindspring.com>
>> Subject: Re: Davis on Chandler
>> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 11:36 AM
>> This is kind of an interesting take
>> on Marlowe that I hadn't seen before.  Noir detectives
>> are poised halfway between the cops and the underworld,
>> owing allegiance to neither, but having the sensibilities of
>> both.  With cop-like sensibilities, it's easy to see
>> how a noir-detective could be pushed into the spewing
>> racist-xenophobic mode.  Rorschach, in Watchmen, is a
>> prime example.
>> 
>> Its the essence of the noir hero that he seeks redemption
>> for something in his past.  In the promo video for IV,
>> Doc refers to setting up drug busts for the cops, etc. 
>> For someone like Doc, this would be a heavy load to
>> carry.  I didn't get a sense in the book about how
>> complicit he'd been with the cops in the past.  Can
>> anyone enlighten me?  
>> 
>> Laura
>> -----Original Message-----
>> >From: Heikki Raudaskoski <hraudask at sun3.oulu.fi>
>> 
>> >
>> >
>> >"Marlowe, the avenging burgher, totters precariously on
>> the
>> >precipice of fascist paranoia. Each successive Chandler
>> novel
>> >focuses on a new target of Marlowe's dislike: Blacks,
>> Asians,
>> >gays, 'greasers', and, always, women. In this regard it
>> is
>> >useful to recall the genealogy of the hardboiled
>> detective hero:
>> >the special 1923 issue of The Black Mask on the Ku Klux
>> Klan
>> >that introduced Carroll John Daly's nativist detective
>> 'Race
>> >Williams' as the prototype of tough guy crusaders
>> against
>> >(foreign-born) corruption." Mike Davis, _City of
>> Quartz_.
>> >Pimlico 1998. P. 91 n42.
>> >
>> >
>> >Nothing as refreshing as a swig of good old
>> self-righteous type
>> >leftist [or elsewhere, rightist] sensitivity every now
>> and then.
>> >
>> >
>> >Heikki
>> 
>>
>
>
>
>      
>