Davis on Chandler

[Mark Kohut]

Well, i was right in the rest of my cirtique of Davis...and, still
half-right, maybe, here...you know Chandler better'n I do.......

 hung-over and sometimes mean, yes, and a what, cynic?,dark realist? who sees thru everyone and everything.............

--- On Tue, 8/18/09, Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: Robin Landseadel <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: Davis on Chandler
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 7:32 PM
> On Aug 18, 2009, at 9:27 AM, Mark
> Kohut wrote:
> 
> > 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.
> 
> Nice try, but next time it's double security for you.
> Plenty of that "fascist within" in Marlowe:
> 
>     "I used to like this town," 1 said, just
> to be saying something and
>     not to be thinking too hard. "A long
> time ago. There were trees
>     along Wilshire Boulevard. Beverly Hills
> was a country town.
>     Westwood was bare hills and lots offenng
> at eleven hundred
>     dollars and no takers. Hollywood was a
> bunch of frame houses.
>     on the interurban line. Los Angeles was
> just a big dry sunny
>     place with ugly homes and no style, but
> goodhearted and
>     peaceful. It had the climate they just
> yap about now. People
>     used to sleep out on porches. Little
> groups who thought they
>     were intellectual used to call it the
> Athens of America. It wasn't
>     that, but it wasn't a neon-lighted slum
> either."
> 
>     We crossed La Cienega and went into the
> curve of the Strip.
>     The Dancers was a blaze of light. The
> terrace was packed. The
>     parking lot was like ants on a piece of
> overripe fruit.
> 
>     "Now we get characters like this
> Steelgrave owning restaurants.
>     We get guys like that fat boy that
> bawled me out back there.
>     We've got the big money, the sharp
> shooters, the percentage
>     workers, the fast-dollar boys, the
> hoodlums out of New York and
>     Chicago and Detroitand Cleveland. We've
> got the flash
>     restaurants and night clubs they run,
> and the hotels and
>     apartment houses they own, and the
> grifters and con men and
>     female bandits that live in them. The
> luxury trades, the pansy
>     decorators, the Lesbian dress designers,
> the riffraff of a big
>     hard-boiled city with no more
> personality than a paper cup. Out
>     in the fancy suburbs dear old Dad is
> reading the sports page in
>     front of a picture window, with his
> shoes off, thinking he is high
>     class because he has a three-car garage.
> Mom is in front of her
>     princess dresser trying to paint the
> suitcases out from under her
>     eyes. And Junior is clamped onto the
> telephone calling up a
>     succession of high school girls that
> talk pigeon English and
>     carry contraceptives in their make-up
> kit."
>     Raymond Chandler, "The Little Sister"
> 
> It's still "safe" to be sexist, a-hedonic and homophobic in
> L.A., circa 1949. Let's face it, Marlowe's punch-drunk,
> hung-over and downright mean. But he does get all the best
> lines.
> 
> 
>