Davis on Chandler

[Mark Kohut]

I might have a different unserstanding of 'fascist within' than you do....

--- On Tue, 8/18/09, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: Davis on Chandler
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org, "Robin Landseadel" <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 9:57 PM
> 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.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
>       
> 
>