>Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 08:03:09 -0400
>From: Kevin Burton Smith <
kvnsmith@thrillingdetective.com>
>Subject: RARA-AVIS: Re: boy/girl/boy/girl &
Marlowe
>
>Some concrete examples of Marlowe's sexism and racism
would be
>greatly appreciated, at this point.
Hmm, well I didn't say anything about racism and I don't
recall that anyone on the list has. I do remember a few words
in "farewell my lovely" that would be considered racial slurs
today but I imagine were commonly used among whites at the
time, and I didn't get any sense of actual animosity toward
blacks.
I did call Marlowe homophobic - a word that annoys me but
nevertheless seems to fit his attitude toward gays. There's a
line in "The Big Sleep" about how a fairy can't throw a punch
and a lot of other insinuation about the sexual proclivities
of various characters. I don't think of Marlowe as
particularly sexist for his time period; I just don't get the
impression that he likes women very much. His reaction to
Carmen Sternwood is particularly what sticks with me - all
the talk about her evilness and corruption, manifest through
sexuality. Now Carmen's a nasty piece of work, you'll get no
argument from me there, but Marlowe's reaction to her from
the beginning seems disproportionate to anything bad that he
knows about her. This is all tied up in 50s attitudes about
"nymphomania" and I admit it is hard to sort out the fiction
from the reality here; from a contemporary psychological
understanding (and I'm just talking about conventional
wisdom, I make no claims to expertise) it's difficult not to
look at Carmen and wonder if she's a victim of incest or some
other form of sexual abuse. Of course, I don't think that
Chandler intended this; from his point of view, Carmen is
evil, the corruption of the flesh, etc. I am quite aware this
is an anachronistic attitude and said as much in my initial
post on the subject. Still, the only females I can recall
Marlowe really liking are
"Silver-Wig" - whose appearance is very brief and whose
virtue apparently consists of sacrificing herself on the
altar of Eddie Mars's honor - and that annoying Nancy
Drew-ish creature who shows up in "Lovely".
Marlowe's "look at all that evil and corruption and filth"
attitude toward the pornography dealer also seems relatively
prudish; not saying that he's right or wrong - once again
these dealers are obviously nasty pieces of work, though
Marlowe is a lot more worried about them victimizing Carmen's
father with blackmail than harming Carmen herself -it's
simply a different attitude than today when a hero's default
reaction is "anything between consenting adults is OK."
>Because to simply dismiss Marlowe as some moralizing,
racist sexist
>is to completely misread the character, to the extent
I have to
>wonder if some of you ever read Chandler's books, or
are relying on
>half-baked theories from people with their own
political agendas who
>haven't read the books either.
I've read "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell my Lovely." May have
read some others when I was younger ("The High Window" or
"Lady of the Lake"?) but don't remember them well enough to
have many comments about them. Actually, come to think of it
I don't remember "Lovely" that well either so I'm mostly
talking about "Sleep."
There's no question that I love Chandler's writing, I find
the archetypal Marlowe character fascinating, he just doesn't
seem like someone I would like as a friend. Not that all my
friends are nymphomaniacs and pornographers; I suppose
fundamentally, Marlowe seems to me to lack sympathy
- or at least, to spend it on odd subjects. In "Sleep," he
sympathizes with the General (a bad parent and a man who's
done some nasty things by his own admission) and Silver-Wig
(utterly self-effacing female; willing essentially to erase
her own existence for an utterly worthless man, then again to
risk her life to help Marlowe - well no wonder he likes
her).
I'm quite aware that Chandler/Marlowe was a product of his
time, but that doesn't prevent me from having an honest
emotional reaction to the characters either. My original
question was actually aimed at this difference - do today's
readers have a harder time taking a relentlessly moral
character than a more obviously flawed one? That seems to me
to be the case, right or wrong. For the most part, we really
don't *want* the knight that Chandler conceived his hero to
be. Neither Chandler nor Marlowe seems particularly
interested in seeing where the bad guys are coming from,
though that's what a lot of today's writers give us (and thus
presumably what we want?) Not that this blurring of the lines
between good and bad is new - Hammett did it, Chandler from
what I've seen didn't want to (though ironically some of
Marlowe's "good" attitudes of the time - antigay sentiment
for example - is precisely what marks him as partly "bad" to
a lot of contemporary readers).
Of course, today's writers are not immune from moralizing -
take Lehane on race in "A Drink Before the War" or for that
matter Lehane on gentrification in "Mystic River" (the latter
aspect integrated much better into story/character but
nonetheless there). Neither of these examples turned me off
from the characters themselves, though that's not to say
there aren't moralizing writers today who do turn me
off.
>And really, even by today's
>standards, while nobody would consider him a bleeding
heart, he still
>seems a far cry from the monster that some of you
seem to see him as.
I haven't read any posts here suggesting Marlowe was a
monster. I'd rather have him save my butt than Sam Spade, I'd
just rather have a drink with Spade afterwards.
. Or some of those neo-ultra-hard-boiled
>dick-waving extravaganzas trying to pass themselves
off as VERY
>IMPORTANT BOOKS.
Now I'm intrigued. Such as?
Carrie
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