IVIV Chandler

[John Carvill]

> That settles it.  Toby Widdecombe's powers of persuasion are irresistible.
> I'm changing my mind about Marlowe immediately.  Hell, I bet he would have
> voted for Barack Obama.  And I guess Marlowe does treat the gay folk he
> encounters like first class citizens, after all.  I was so wrong! LOL!  I
> should have been reading Toby, not Chandler.  I think I'm going to start
> hanging out in cop and PI bars, too, since they're all so sensitive and
> respectful of other people, and always avoiding violence and bullying and
> all.
>
> Glad we cleared that one up.

Oh Doug, for fuck sake. Don't be so childish. That Toby W book was the
first promising search result I found, 'sall. I dunno if his book is
any good or not, and I sure wasn't saying, oh look, here;s someone who
says Marlowe was no racist, so that's that. But whoever he is he has
written a book on Chandler and has obviously studied the matter. He
may be wrong, but he's at least informed on the matter, unlike you.

> And I guess Marlowe does treat the gay folk he
> encounters like first class citizens, after all.

Yeah, you 'guess'. You're not basing this on the text(s), just a
feeling you have that Marlowe is a 'brute'. Marlowe is always on the
side of the downtrodden and defeated. He'd a been a prime candidate
for The Counterforce. Hell, when Pynchon wants to express the fat that
all is lost and nobody can help, at teh end of GR, he has Philip
Marlowe suffering a migraine, reaching for his whiskey bottle, and
feeling homesick for the lasce balconies of the Bradbury building.
Hardly a brute.

For the last time, Doug, Marlowe doesn't hang aroudn with cops, he is
not generally on friendly terms with them. They usually pull him in
for questioning and rough him up and get in the way and acn't be arsed
to solve crimes, whereas Marlowe *does* care, and abjhors murder and
seeks to do justice for victims. And even the few cops he does
occassionally fraternise with, who he's stayed friends with since his
days in the District Attorney's office, still treat him with suspicion
and come knocking on his door at 2am in the morning wanting to shake
him down.

Go read 'Farewell, My Lovely', there you can see plenty of racism, but
you can also see it's not Marlowe who's teh racist, and in fact, the
endemic racism is one of the factors which serves to alienate Marlowe
from society.

Please calm down and be reasonable, Doug. Why would i defend a racist brute?

Cheers
J