Davis on Chandler

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 19, 2009, at 12:43 AM, John Carvill wrote:

> I share your love of Chandler, Robin, but I'm not sure I agree with
> some of your interpretations.
>
>> I'm reading "The Long Goodbye" now and realize that there's a  
>> shared element
>> in Inherent Vice, The Big Lebowski and Chandler's novel; The P.I.  
>> in each
>> case more or less stumbles into the dénouement of their respective  
>> tales.
>
> Common in Chandler. Common in noir. Mentioned it in my IV review for
> Bright Lights.

I've been reading Raymond Chandler over the last two/three weeks, in  
the wake of a couple of whacks at Inherent Vice. When I say that  
Philip Marlowe is a time traveller, I'm exaggerating, but only a little:

	The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high.
	Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of
	Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel
	showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to
	a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and
	convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet
	back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the
	ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I
	stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would
	sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't
	seem to be really trying.
	Raymond Chandler: "The Big Sleep"

There's always the theme of the Private Investigator as a  knight in  
tarnished armor in all of Chandler's novels and there's always  
attempts on Marlowe's behalf to do the honorable thing that fall flat  
because honor is no longer the coin of the realm he now lives in.  
Honor seems to mean more to Marlowe than anyone else in his stories.  
This reaches a peak in "The Long Goodbye" where Marlowe seems  
particularly out of sync, where his adversaries all appear more up-to- 
date. My reading of Chandler can't be that out of joint—Leigh Brackett  
saw fit to open up that aspect of the Long Goodbye when she wrote the  
screenplay for Altman's film. While the theme of mysteries being  
solved more by kismet than real work is found many times in Noir, The  
Long Goodbye, The Big Lebowski and Inherent Vice are all examples  
where that theme takes up greater space in those stories.