Al,
Re your message below:
> Inarguably. Anything successful will have
its
> imitators. Which raises the
> question: how much of the Marlowe paradigm is
based
> on the Spade prototype,
> I wonder?
While Chandler was undoubtedly influenced by Hammett, Spade
was
a) NOT an ex-cop, but an ex-operative of a large detective
agency in Seattle.
b) NOT a first-person narrator.
and
c) Not the proprietor of a one-man agency (though obviously
he became one by default with Miles Archer's murder).
It could be argued that Chandler took ingredients from a
number of Hammett characters and combined them into a single
recipe. Hence, Spade and Alec Rush are not first-person
narrators, but the Op and Nick Charles are. The Op and Spade
are not operating a one-man agency and neither of them are
ex-cops, but Rush is both a one-man show and a former
policeman. Rush is older than the paradigm, but Spade (a bit
over 30) and the Op (35 in his earliest appearances) are just
the right age. All of them operate out of one-man
agencies.
Whether this was deliberate or subliminal on Chandler's part
is another story.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________________________ Do you
Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 15 Dec 2002 EST