--- In
rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Bill Crider"
<bcrider@h...> wrote:
> Hey, Michael. My favorite paragraph in Macdonald's
work is the last one in
> THE DOOMSTERS. Maybe not the best. Just my
favorite.
>
> Bill Crider
Hey, Bill. I can't seem to find my copy of The Doomsters
anywhere (although I'm literally surrounded by old
paperbacks). Could you transcribe the paragraph in question?
I remember it vaguely, or the last page, anyway. The only
quotation I have from it is the one I used in my
article:
*************
"I don't hate you, Mildred. On the contrary."
I was an ex-cop and the words came hard. I had to say them,
though, if I didn't want to be stuck for the rest of my life
with the old black-and-white picture, the idea that there wer
just good people and bad people, and everytyhing would be
hunky-dory if the good people locked up the bad ones or wiped
them out with small personalized nuclear weapons.
*************
I know this is *not* the paragraph in question; still, it
shows clearly some of what I mean about RM. The voice wants
desperately to be hard-boiled but instead is quite preachy.
Your detective should not be telling you these things -- the
*action* and *dialogue* in the story should illustrate them
and make them readily apparent. "Hunky-dory" hurts my ears,
though I see it's being used a bit ironically here (mocking
an imagined voice); and the final exaggeration is not funny
(though when Michael Nesmith does a skit called "Neighborhood
Nuclear Superority" in the vastly underrated "Elephant
Parts," somehow the concept is hilarious). I just find the
weary avuncular figure of Archer very tiresome. BUT ... Hey,
I found _The Moving Target_: hang on, I'll try to find a
passage I like... OK, this isn't bad:
****** I followed her into the hallway. It was thick with
darkness and her two odors, musk and alcohol, half animal and
half human. I felt slippery waxed floor under my feet and
wondered if she'd fall. She moved in her own house with the
blind accuracy of a sleepwalker. I felt my way after her into
a room to the left, where she switched on a lamp.
****** I like how the paragraph goes from light to dark to
light; I like the phrase "her two odors"
'cause its odd and it makes a nice counterpart to "darkness";
I like how hyper-aware he is of her -- conveys his
fascination *and* uneasiness; and the "blind accuracy of a
sleepwalker" line is pitch-perfect -- it even sounds
good.
There's an obsession w/ breasts in this book -- I've marked
many, many times (so maybe it's *my* obsession...?) where
Archer notices and remarks on women's breasts in this book,
many of the times quite ... unflatteringly. In fact, there
are some passages of outright hostility toward women in this
book ("It seemed to me then that evil was a female quality, a
poison that women secreted and transmitted to men like
disease"). I find this odd, given Archer's alleged
"compassion," and the fact that Marlowe is usually the one
singled out as misogynist (by Mike Davis if I remember
correctly, among others). There's also lots of mean stuff
about the "dried up" bodies of old ladies in RM's _The
Chill_, I remember. So ... maybe Archer had his own, I don't
know, prejudices? bitternesses? Which I don't mind at all. I
only wish they were more apparent (and interesting) in the
later novels
(60s-70s). More questionable behavior, less preaching, that's
what I say.
I'll look for the Doomsters.
Michael
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