Some of youse critics say Chandler's best book about the city
was his first, Farewell, My Lovely, which was made into a
classic noir movie Murder My Sweet. The novel is based upon a
short story, "Try the Girl," that can be found in Chandler's
collection Killer in the Rain.
The novel begins in South Central Los Angeles, and the very
first sentence tells us we are at "one of those mixed blocks
over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all
Negro."
Although Philip Marlowe is the narrator, Moose Malloy is the
main character. For Malloy, just released from prison, blacks
are "smokes" and "dinges" and
"nigger," the saloon he and Marlowe enter is a "shine box,"
"a dinge joint." Moments after the dirty deed, he hardly
remembers murdering a black man here.
The LAPD cops are little different. Detective-lieutenant
Nulty attached to the 77th Street Division is glum. "'Another
shine killing,'" he calls it. He asks Marlowe, "'What was you
doing all the time . . . this Malloy was twisting the neck of
this smoke.'" Nulty is not seeking justice, of course. In
fact, he couldn't care less.
"One time there was five smokes carved Harlem sunsets on each
other down on East Eighty-four. One of them was cold already.
There was blood on the furniture, blood on the walls, blood
even on the ceiling. I go down and outside the house a guy
that works on the Chronicle, a newshawk, is coming off the
porch and says,
'Aw, hell, shines,' and gets in his heap and goes away. Don't
even go in the house."
When Marlowe does buy an evening edition, he realizes Nulty
"was right in one thing at least. The Montgomery killing
hadn't even made the want-ad section so far."
Throughout the novel Marlowe and Nulty will crack wise. When
Marlowe asks when "the inquest on the nigger" is coming up,
Nulty sneers, "Why bother?"
On another occasion Marlowe will say, "Well, all (Malloy) did
was kill a Negro . .
. I guess that's only a misdemeanor."
It's only after an old drunken white woman gets beaten and
strangled by Malloy does Marlowe say, "It's not just a shine
killing any more."
Blacks of course aren't the only victims of prejudice and
racial epithets. Marlowe himself speaks not just of
"coloreds," but also "pansies" and "Chinamen." Marlowe
states, "I saw a Jap gardener at work weeding a huge lawn" on
a rich white man's lawn. "He was pulling a piece of weed out
of the vast velvet expanse and sneering at it the way Jap
gardeners do."
When Marlowe hides out in a waterfront hotel, "I didn't have
any bags, so being a Mexican, (the bellhop) opened the door
from me and smiled politely just the same." Later, when he
sneaks aboard a gambling ship, "I smelled engine oil and saw
a wop in a purple shirt reading under a naked light bulb with
his grandfather's spectacles."
Marlowe even gets confused between Japanese and Chinese when
he talks about a cigarette case, "a trade article that might
have cost thirty-five to seventy-five cents in any Oriental
store, Hooey Phooey Sing--Long Sing Tung, that kind of place,
where a mild mannered Jap hisses at you, laughing heartily
when you say that the Moon of Arabia incense smells like the
girls in Frisco Sadie's back parlor."
Marlowe goes up against a self-proclaimed "Hollywood Indian"
villain who goes by the name Second Planting. This villain
speaks in guttural pig Latin, smells
"the earthy smell of primitive man, and not the slimy dirt of
cities," looks like a bum, wears clothes two sizes too small
for him, has "the short and apparent awkward legs of a
chimpanzee."
Marlowe is not alone in his racist speeches. An elderly white
woman has "a little colored boy that goes errands for me." A
beautiful young blonde sees a beer joint as "a very dingy
place."
Chandler's Los Angeles has changed, though, since then.
Hasn't it?
Best wishes
Frederick Zackel
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