Eddie Duggan said.. >In >Marlowe, there is a tendency to de-sexualise or avoid sexualised encounters >with female characters To the extent that when I read the passage where Marlowe and Mrs. Barsaly are in the car and he "turned a little and took hold of her," I re-read it to fill in what happened. Only when she "rubbed the back of her glove against her mouth" does the reader infer what transpired. Chandler in his writing style often skips over passages of intimacy and says that he is not much interested in his character's private life. In the "Simple Art of Murder" he notes that his hero "is nether a eunuch nor a satyr." Patrick Golden ++ pgolden@leo.vsla.edu Program Services Manager Williamsburg Regional Library, Virginia ++ http://www.wrl.org - # RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" # to majordomo@icomm.ca