Posts tagged Raymond Chandler

Tiger Mann on Women

“You seem to like long engagements, Tiger.” She wasn’t smiling now.

I said, “When it’s over. When we can walk and breathe without smelling death all the time or knowing the world is sitting on the lip of disaster. I don’t want you a widow before you’re married.”

“How do you know what I want, darling?”

“Oh, sure, you’ll take me now because you’re a broad and all broads want it now regardless of the consequences, but I’m not letting you stick your neck out in the middle of a mess like this. Crazy broad.”

“I despise that word.”

“You do? Well, you wear it well, baby. It’s a sign that you’re more than a woman. You’re a doll with everything going for her from a beautiful face to a wild body with a mind to match and I love you like hell. You have capabilities only I can appreciate and I want them all.”

[…]

“Do you always have to be like this?”

I paused in the middle of tucking my shirttail in. “You want me any other way?”

“Sometimes I think so.”

“Then screw you too, baby.”

Her face went flat, the pain of my words knocking the expression from it. “You didn’t have to say that.”

“No? Then keep out of my business. Otherwise you stop being a broad and become a dame. I’ll do what I want to do and sometimes what I have to do. One thing I won’t do is succumb to the sentimentality or the wishful thinking of a woman. When I’m working, stay off my back. You know my business so don’t try to steer me clear. The woman isn’t born and her mother’s already dead that can do that trick. I’ll run things my own way and if you don’t give me credit for being an old soldier type with twenty years over your fair head, then regroup your forces, kid, and find another guy who will bow and scrape and do it when you tell him to go potty. Clear?”

—Mickey Spillane in The By-Pass Control

I think the above illustrates the point in my reply to an ask from not long ago (also reproduced below by request). Granted, espionage master Tiger Mann is the protagonist of this Spillane volume, rather than PI Mike Hammer. But does anyone this Tiger says anything here that Hammer wouldn’t?

I can’t think of any corresponding passage in the works of Raymond Chandler, but please do let me know if there is one and I’ve missed it.

Anonymous asked: What do you think of the role of women in The Big Sleep? Do you think Marlowe’s Cynicism has anything to do with the way he views women?

This is an interesting question and once again confirms that I have (in the words of ordinarywonder) “the most well read, intelligent anons.”  I’m a bit mystified why anyone would ask such literate question anonymously, but I’m happy to answer all the same.

I think the role of women in Chandler’s novel’s is a product of cynicism rather than any prejudicial view of women.  Arguably that is not the case with all hardboiled fiction.  Spillane’s Mike Hammer takes some glee in the objectification of women.  And Travis McGee is a white knight who helps damsels in distress.  He not only vanquishes their tormentors, he can also cure all their hang-ups if they sleep with him.  

But I don’t find that in Chandler.  The women are pretty much like the men.  They all have an angle, and Marlowe’s unique virtue is that he is too stubborn to be a cog in anyone’s wheel.  He’s suspicious of everyone and resolutely self-contained.  

The women Marlowe comes across are unsavory, no doubt.  But are they all that different from the men?  In much of hardboiled crime fiction, I think so.  In Chandler’s case, I don’t think so.

I could be overlooking something, however.  Feel free to let me know what I missed.  And you might be interested in this profile of Chandler I wrote for Crime Fiction Lover last summer.

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Anonymous asked: What do you think of the role of women in The Big Sleep? Do you think Marlowe's Cynicism has anything to do with the way he views women?

This is an interesting question and once again confirms that I have (in the words of ordinarywonder) “the most well read, intelligent anons.”  I’m a bit mystified why anyone would ask such literate question anonymously, but I’m happy to answer all the same.

I think the role of women in Chandler’s novel’s is a product of cynicism rather than any prejudicial view of women.  Arguably that is not the case with all hardboiled fiction.  Spillane’s Mike Hammer takes some glee in the objectification of women.  And Travis McGee is a white knight who helps damsels in distress.  He not only vanquishes their tormentors, he can also cure all their hang-ups if they sleep with him.  

But I don’t find that in Chandler.  The women are pretty much like the men.  They all have an angle, and Marlowe’s unique virtue is that he is too stubborn to be a cog in anyone’s wheel.  He’s suspicious of everyone and resolutely self-contained.  

The women Marlowe comes across are unsavory, no doubt.  But are they all that different from the men?  In much of hardboiled crime fiction, I think so.  In Chandler’s case, I don’t think so.

I could be overlooking something, however.  Feel free to let me know what I missed.  And you might be interested in this profile of Chandler I wrote for Crime Fiction Lover last summer.

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thelamplightersserenade asked: Which Marlowe did you prefer? Bogart or Powell?

Bogart over Powell for me.  But as much as I love the Bogart hero, there is little in Bogie’s portrayal of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe to differentiate two very different characters.  My favorite Marlowe on screen is Powers Boothe from HBO’s Philip Marlowe, Private Eye.

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Per Futility Closet, a list of unused Raymond Chandler titles: The Man with the Shredded Ear All Guns Are Loaded The Man Who Loved the Rain The Corpse Came in Person The Porter Rose at Dawn We All Liked Al Too Late for Smiling They Only Murdered Him Once The Diary of a Loud Check Suit Stop Screaming — It’s Me Return from Ruin Between Two Liars The Lady with the Truck They Still Come Honest My Best to the Bride Law Is Where You Buy It Deceased When Last Seen The Black-Eyed Blonde

Per Futility Closet, a list of unused Raymond Chandler titles:

  • The Man with the Shredded Ear
  • All Guns Are Loaded
  • The Man Who Loved the Rain
  • The Corpse Came in Person
  • The Porter Rose at Dawn
  • We All Liked Al
  • Too Late for Smiling
  • They Only Murdered Him Once
  • The Diary of a Loud Check Suit
  • Stop Screaming — It’s Me
  • Return from Ruin
  • Between Two Liars
  • The Lady with the Truck
  • They Still Come Honest
  • My Best to the Bride
  • Law Is Where You Buy It
  • Deceased When Last Seen
  • The Black-Eyed Blonde

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I Hate Raymond Carver

I hate Raymond Carver.  Never read any of his books.  I’ve heard good things about them.  I should read them.  But I can’t.  I can’t because I hate Raymond Carver. I hate Raymond Carver because he’s a huge disappointment.  Whenever I look at any fiction listed by the author’s last name, I always start with C.  Where else would I start?  Down the list or across the stacks I go.  And then that bastard sneaks in.  The name Raymond catches my attention.  But I’m always disappointed to see it’s just Raymond Carver.

I catch my breath and keep going.  Sometimes the collection gets around to Chandler.  Sometimes it doesn’t.  I’m disappointed either way.  That’s why I hate Raymond Carver.

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knrwrites asked: Quick question. On one post you had mentioned hardboiled novels which made me think of eggs (i was hungry :-d) but it also made me wonder if there's a such thing as softboiled novel? If there is can you explain the difference?

Are there softboiled novels?  Certainly, but they are not referred to as such.  Hardboiled detectives were referred to as hardboiled because they were being contrasted with Golden Age crime fiction: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, etc.  In the classic locked-room mysteries, and subsequent cozies, mannerly sleuths solve elaborate crimes with equally elaborate ratiocination.

In his essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler argued that “[Dashiell] Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not with hand-wrought duelling pistols, curare, and tropical fish.”  Hardboiled detectives were gritty, morally ambivalent and (for the time, at least) sexually frank.  You certainly would not use this list of characteristics to describe Lord Peter Wimsey or Miss Marple.

These Golden Age mysteries were around long before hardboiled fiction makes an appearance, so they aren’t really described as softboiled.  I, however, am not above using softboiled as a disparaging term for crime fiction which strikes me as too gentle.

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The plot is reminiscent of The Big Sleep, and Duca is a Chandleresque figure: unafraid on mean streets, but not himself mean. If you’ve been following me on twitter, you may have seen my enthusiasm for A Private Venus. I think fans of hardboiled crime fiction, international crime fiction or both will certainly enjoy the new reprint of Giorgio Scerbanenco’s A Private Venus.  I not only reviewed the book for Crime Fiction Lover, I also enjoyed it thoroughly.  But don’t just take my word for it. Go read the review, then take my word for it.

The plot is reminiscent of The Big Sleep, and Duca is a Chandleresque figure: unafraid on mean streets, but not himself mean.

If you’ve been following me on twitter, you may have seen my enthusiasm for A Private Venus. I think fans of hardboiled crime fiction, international crime fiction or both will certainly enjoy the new reprint of Giorgio Scerbanenco’s A Private Venus.  I not only reviewed the book for Crime Fiction Lover, I also enjoyed it thoroughly. 

But don’t just take my word for it. Go read the review, then take my word for it.

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John Banville’s Terrible Idea to Write a New Novel on Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe

Someone once asked William Faulkner what he thought of the (almost uniformly wretched) film adaptations of his novels. He said he didn’t mind. The Hollywood money was good, and his books were still on the shelves, just as he wrote them.

So no real damage can be done to Raymond Chandler’s work no matter who proceeds with a new Marlowe novel. That doesn’t mean that all this endless sequelizing isn’t a shoddy idea—doomed from the outset, since any sequel is almost bound to be inferior to what inspired it, thus producing, at best, what the world needs least—another not-great book. Equally bad, the sequel racket encourages laziness among publishers. Instead of teasing out the number of 007 titles with inferior imitations, they could be spending that energy cultivating or at least searching for a great, undiscovered crime novelist or spy writer.

Say it ain’t so!  Yes, Irish scribe John Banville is writing a new Philip Marlowe novel.  For whatever cockamamie reason, the Chandler estate is sanctioning this.  Having Robert B. Parker finish Poodle Springs was one thing.  Perchance to Dream was unnecessary—decent, but bound to suffer when compared with Chandler’s novels. And, yes, the Fleming estate continues to commission James Bond continuation novels, some of which I have enjoyed.  But the Fleming estate has been sanctioning Bond continuations since 1968, only four years after the death of Ian Fleming.  For better or worse, the series has continued since then.  Why would the Chandler estate choose another author to write Philip Marlowe just now?

Still, I will probably read Banville’s novel (to be published under his crime fiction pen name, Benjamin Black).  And I bet that’s what the publishers and Chandler estate are banking on (in the most literal sense of the phrase).  I will be pleasantly surprised if the novel turns out well, but I will read it regardless.  If lots of other people do the same thing (I bet they will), Henry Holt and the Chandler estate will have profits that they otherwise would not have.  Even if the book stinks.

Chandler certainly had literary shortcomings, but it is far from clear that Banville can rectify these and maintain Chandler’s iconic hardboiled prose.  Malcolm Jones, in the link above, makes this case far better than I can.  

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Continuing with literature porn from the book sale, here are two hardboiled greats with similar last names.  Ross Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) is widely regarded as the third member of the hardboiled trinity, right alongside Hammett and Chandler.  I’m not so sure if he deserves such a lofty perch, but Macdonald is certainly one of the greats.  Here we have Lew Archer novels The Doomsters, The Galton Case and The Wycherly Woman.  Early Lew Archer short stories were collected as My Name is Archer.  And The Ferguson Affair is a rare non-Archer mystery from Macdonald. Ross Macdonald originally wrote under the name John Macdonald (and then John Ross Macdonald) so his writing would be considered on its own merits—and not because of his wife Margaret Millar’s popular mysteries.  Macdonald switched from John to Ross so as not to be confused with established pulp and hardboiled scribe John D. MacDonald. John D. MacDonald does not enjoy quite the critical esteem that Ross Macdonald does.  Nonetheless, his Travis McGee novels are genre classics.  Here we have The Deep Blue Good-by, The Scarlet Ruse, Cinnamon Skin and The Lonely Silver Rain.   John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald both wrote hardboiled fiction, but were very different otherwise.  Macdonald’s Freudian Archer is a far cry from the more heroic McGee.  But both are important in the development of hardboiled crime fiction.

Continuing with literature porn from the book sale, here are two hardboiled greats with similar last names.  Ross Macdonald (born Kenneth Millar) is widely regarded as the third member of the hardboiled trinity, right alongside Hammett and Chandler.  I’m not so sure if he deserves such a lofty perch, but Macdonald is certainly one of the greats.  Here we have Lew Archer novels The Doomsters, The Galton Case and The Wycherly Woman.  Early Lew Archer short stories were collected as My Name is Archer.  And The Ferguson Affair is a rare non-Archer mystery from Macdonald.

Ross Macdonald originally wrote under the name John Macdonald (and then John Ross Macdonald) so his writing would be considered on its own merits—and not because of his wife Margaret Millar’s popular mysteries.  Macdonald switched from John to Ross so as not to be confused with established pulp and hardboiled scribe John D. MacDonald.

John D. MacDonald does not enjoy quite the critical esteem that Ross Macdonald does.  Nonetheless, his Travis McGee novels are genre classics.  Here we have The Deep Blue Good-by, The Scarlet Ruse, Cinnamon Skin and The Lonely Silver Rain.  

John D. MacDonald and Ross Macdonald both wrote hardboiled fiction, but were very different otherwise.  Macdonald’s Freudian Archer is a far cry from the more heroic McGee.  But both are important in the development of hardboiled crime fiction.

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Happy 124th birthday to Raymond Chandler!  In honor of the hardboiled master scribe, enjoy these quotes—and feel free to add your own! “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.” “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.” “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.” “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.” “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.”

Happy 124th birthday to Raymond Chandler!  In honor of the hardboiled master scribe, enjoy these quotes—and feel free to add your own!

  • “He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”
  • “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
  • “I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
  • “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”
  • “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
  • “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”
  • “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
  • “Hammett gave murder back to the kind of people that commit it for reasons, not just to provide a corpse; and with the means at hand, not hand-wrought dueling pistols, curare and tropical fish.”

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