IVIV Chandler

[kelber at mindspring.com]

What makes Marlowe and Sam Spade (channeled by Humphrey Bogart) work is that they're rough around the edges (maybe, in Marlowe's case, to the point of brutishness), but underneath is the moral core, the heart of gold.  Hidden away like that, it's a lot more endearing than if they wore it on their shirt sleeve, playing the indignant (and inherently boring) good-guy/hero.  Pynchon gets it kind of wrong with Doc, who seems pretty laid back and affable on the outside, robbing us of the fun discovery that there's a moral core hidden away.  Bigfoot makes a better hero in that regard.  Speaking for womankind, we're attracted to the bad boys because we want to ferret out the good hidden within.  

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com>
 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.
>