Bill Bowers wrote:
> Not limited to Hammett specifically, but as a result
of my having read so
> much of the 30s/40s mystery canon in one fell swoop,
a query on what -- to
> me -- appeared to be particularly "wooden"
usage:
>
> Characters are (virtually) always referred to as
having "lighted a
cigarette".
>
> I, far too long an addict, always comes up short
when I encounter that:
I,
> instinctively, want to substitute what I would say:
That I (or he/she)
> would light, or had "lit" a cigarette.... Perhaps
it's only a result of
my
> having spent the majority of my "English" classes
reading, rather than
> diagramming -- but the older version just grates on
me....
>
Funny, this is the kind of thing that I like about the older
crime books, a sense that the elegance of the English
language still had some life in it back then, even for the
characters in the lower strata. And with Chandler, it is also
a little endearing, a bit of Dulwich glimpsed down a mean
street.
I would find it (mildly) distracting in a Crumley or a
Parker, but not in something from Chandler's era.
Jim Beaver
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