A few thoughts on Chandler's burgher

[Robin Landseadel]

I don't understand the problem of calling a perfectly preterite and  
stylized character such as Philip Marlowe a product of his times—hell,  
he's like a freakin' Coke bottle, fer chrisakes. John Carville has  
already stated that he hero-worships the Bogie version of Marlowe— 
which always was more about the elevation of the screen image of  
Humphry Bogart into iconic status than the concerns of Raymond  
Chandler, novelist. In some ways Elliot Gould's Marlowe is as valid as  
Bogart's—in "The Long Goodbye" [book & movie] Marlowe is punch-drunk  
and sometimes really drunk-drunk. Alcohol is the lead character in the  
story and in Altman's movie the story's emotional center of gravity  
slides over to Roger Wade, where it belongs.

The citation of Philip Marlowe in Gravity's Rainbow is in the context  
of all those modernist myths that lost their superpowers just as—"THE  
BOMB ! ! !"—subsumed them in its majestic and awful roar. They are all  
now preterite, of the past and no longer applicable. Sir Denis Nayland  
Smith will arrive, my God, too late, as will Superman, Submariner,  
Plasticman, the Lone Ranger . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RenHNO19XKs

& Pointsman, who's still all tied up with fighting the last war.*

That screaming that just came across the sky, that sound of a scale  
and amplitude previously unmeasured, that heavenwide blast of light  
has lodged itself permanently in all of our brains. It's that hunk of  
the gnostic nightmare we now all share. No wonder the music got so  
much louder—it had to in order to drown out our collective memory of  
that scream. The old Superheros no longer work, the old dispensations  
no longer apply. Doc kinda figured that one out too, not that he likes  
what's happening but it's still what's happening, man.

* GR, V751, B877, P766, praise be to Thoth for Steven Weisenburger.