Davis on Chandler

[Robin Landseadel]

On Aug 19, 2009, at 6:03 AM, John Carvill wrote:

> What I'm disagreeing with is any attempt to claim Marlowe as an  
> actual olden days knight

I'm exaggerating for effect—something that Chandler was the  
grandmaster of—to make a point that Marlowe's code of honor seems out  
of another time. The Dude's & Doc's code of honor also comes from  
another time. It's a major theme in Chandler. I know you're  
comparatively sane, surely you can afford me some slack here. It's  
hard, after some 600 consecutive pages of these classic and sometimes  
mythic tales to fail to note these resonances.

On Aug 19, 2009, at 6:03 AM, John Carvill wrote:
>  If Marlowe does yearn for an older time - and he
> sometimes does, I agree - it's not that old a time he yearns for, it's
> a more recent past, which in itself is more apt when considering Doc  
> in IV.

Marlowe yearns for a code of honor that really only applies to antique  
fictions, a code of honor that never really pans out in the quotidian  
world. It's just as mythical as Lemuria.

On Aug 19, 2009, at 6:03 AM, John Carvill wrote:
> Leigh Brackett would know: she co-wrote the screenplay for The Big
> Sleep. But she - and Altman - imagined a 'Rip Van Marlowe', someone
> transported from the 40s to the 70s and thus out of synch. That;s a
> hell of a lot less out of synch than taking King Arthur and setting
> him down in 1940s L.A.!

Lancelot would be more like it, tales of the fall from grace and other  
hummable oldies.

Let me be Frank:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ju1q3a8A4s