ignatios on 2/9/2006 at 14:21

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In a sense I agree with you, but then again (as you observed) that's what makes him such a great character. He's tough as nails and doesn't take shit from anybody because he knows a genuine threat from a false one, and only really takes protective measures when he knows he needs them. Above all else he's an excellent judge of character, which when combined with a decent deductive mind makes you pretty on top of things. As the story was told in the past tense, it sounded like Marlowe "knew" but I don't think he really did. Consistently good guesses are as good as knowledge and I didn't really feel like Chandler was cheating much.

The break in the middle was a little abrupt for me too, but in a way it works in Chandler's favour. Marlowe is caught up in the events around him which happen the way they happen. That they didn't necessarily make for a good novel made it a more believable story and eventually more enjoyable for me in the end. He knew that he could have stepped out of the whole mess if he wanted to, but he "wasn't that smart" and wanted to flush out the bigger game.

This was my first noir novel, but the writing seemed really fresh and not at all stale or rolleyes like I'd expected it to. I suppose this is why Chandler is the master of the genre, but I thought it was worth reiterating.

Also worth reiterating is how interesting it is to see the prejudice in the book honestly rather than as some kind of retrospective look at the time. I didn't at all get the impression that Marlowe hated blacks, women, or homosexuals; he just kept his distance unless he had to. The dame-slapping took me aback a little, but he only really did it out of impatience (and usually when they weren't entirely capable of paying enough attention anyway). Not that it's excusable, but understandable for the time maybe? Anyway the point is that I thought I'd have been more bothered by it than I was.


Well hey, thanks for participating. I'm having a blast with the book club so far.

Also, unlike Grump666, I thought this was an excellent choice for the Book Club. Even if the discussion doesn't go very far, I've enjoyed it so far more than what we had around Life of Pi.

Paz on 4/9/2006 at 23:55

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Comedy "nymphomania isn't a mental disorder" option.


I don't know what she was supposed to have, really. At first I thought she was just emotionally warped due to a crap (non-existent?) upbringing. Craving attention, taking rejection badly (REALLY badly, as it turns out), putting on faux little-girl-lost acts ... but then at the end she kind of has a fit, which obviously points at something more medical. The fact that she sometimes FLIPS OUT AND KILLS PEOPLE suggests it could be quite a serious error in her brain.

Maybe it's a jumble of all that, I dunno.

Aerothorn on 5/9/2006 at 00:09

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I don't think it's any edition - I think that's the original writing. Keep in mind that this is the 30s - back then, 'fuck' was the equivalent of what 'nigger' is now, except maybe worse (since we're at least used to reading the latter in historical context - wheras people generally were not used to reading OR hearing the f-bomb). I think Chandler thought it would just shock the reader too much and distract them from the story. Either that, or the publisher wouldn't print it.

OnionBob on 6/9/2006 at 18:53

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Okay, I haven't finished the book cos I had to give it back to the library I have now left, but here's my feelings on what I read and some general points on the way that gender (particularly masculinity) works in the book. I think I've got a feel for that even though my reading was cut short. (this isn't intended to be a point at which to launch another argument over whether the book is 'useful' or whatever but rather to stimulate discussion which has admittedly been lacking so far).

On a general level, I fuckin really enjoyed it - like Paz said, the moment I started to read, I was putting on the noir voice in my head. But actually for a while it wasn't a Humphrey Bogart voice, but rather a DETECTIVE FRANK DREBIN, POLICE SQUAD! voice. ("cigarette?" "yes, I know").

In short it was a ton of fun. And while it was written as just a story, fortunately it's turned out not to be, by the way that it betrays a number of fascinating gender and culture issues, and particularly a defensiveness of male superiority. I was chattin to my Ph.D supervisor about it and she prodded my thought in certain directions that I've developed in terms of the way the book treats its characters.

Actually first of all, if you'll humour me for a moment, I was thinking from research I did a couple years back. You can see the same kind of thing - the defensiveness of normative class, in this case, rather than gender - in Cavalier Poetry. If you've ever read anything by the Cavalier poets, one of the most obvious things you'll notice (and especially when you connect the poetry to the massive changes that England was going through what with the Reformation and all) is that there's a desperate attempt at a re-enunciation of normative values. Ben Jonson single-handedly created a subgenre of poetry informally called "country house poetry" with "To Penshurst", which both celebrates a certain rustic lifestyle (that he would never actually live) and implies that this is "natural", unlike the threats of uprising that were growing all around at the time. The naturalisation is funny in places, breathtakingly so by our standards, I think Robert Herrick (i THINK) wrote some poem that described field workers as "Sons of Summer" as if they were little creatures that just emerged from their burrows to harvest the crops once a year. Oh, and to toast their Lords and masters, of course. But the thing is, to Herrick, they WERE Sons of Summer because to him, he only does see them at one time of the year, when he visits the country in the late summer when it's nice and he can enjoy the stuff they've worked all year for.

Anyway I'm getting off the point. The point is,all this poetry (written by royalists) was implicity intended to create a sense that the "natural" sense of continuity and order was something untouchable and would always assert itself against the forces of whatever was causing the unrest (in this case, Oliver Cromwell). The Cavalier poets (there's tons more examples of this stuff than the ones I've listed, I just didn't want to get sidetracked) desperately wanted to feel like the world was going to stay the same, and they produced reams of poetry about a beautiful rustic england that would never change, that defended itself automatically against attacks from the shifting of social forces that were rumbling away in the background. It pre-closes the questioning of normative class structure by providing "proof" that things Are How They Are, and they aren't going to change. The same kind of thing happens in TBS.

In The Big Sleep it's not as explicit, of course. But I think there's an ELEMENT of that in there. Marlowe is untouchable. He's a hardass motherfucker. He's moving through the chaotic world of scumbags and general threats (to masculinity) and proving every time that they're wrong and he's right. He's ordering the chaos around him with the power of his objective, enlightened mind; the kind of mind that only a man can have. He doesn't form relationships (except with the City, and with booze) because he knows that relationships (and indeed emotions) are feminine qualities, and femininity is a poison to a good, solid, bounded male subject. That doesn't stop every dame wanting him, though - they just can't control their bodies because their minds aren't rational enough to stop them. And when a dame gets out of control, when she "loses it" - because she's closer to nature, not as strong and bounded and rational as a man - you got to slap her around a bit right? Then the gay thing, he doesn't hate homosexuals but it's fair to say there's a chunk of homophobia even from him, which, as with all homophobia, implies a latent fascination with homosexuality (that's shakier though, and I won't spend ages arguing for that because there's not really that much mention of it overall).

In short, Marlowe represents everything that a man is supposed to be. And the women represent everything that a woman is not necessarily meant to be, but sadly the poor dears can't change it because it's inherently "who they are". The female characters, who are all femme fatales in this book pretty much (any character who is female and not a femme fatale is generally portrayed as very young or very old and so sexless), are interesting. There's a lot of writing on the femme fatale (mary ann doane has the most well-known stuff out there) so I'm retreading old ground but basically the femme fatale is massively powerful, clever and manipulative. She knows how to use what she's got to get what she wants (from men). This may be seen as empowering for women, but ultimately the problem is that all of her power comes down to sex. It's a base, natural power that women have because (again) they're seen as closer to nature, harder to tame, and impossible to work out because they don't have the capability for rational thought like men supposedly do (and this power of rational thought is seen to "transcend" nature). Chandler's femme fatales (and most others) use sex to get what they want throughout the story, and when it doesn't work, often become hysterical (leading to aforementioned slapping around).

The magnificent clean-cutness of the boundaries between stereotypes (even though they were defined by Chandler and as such weren't stereotypes of the time) and the ways in which "true" (male) rationality prevail shows the same kind of defensiveness of normative values as the Cavalier Poetry. The stability of gender roles in particular were under threat after the wiping out of a generation of men after the First World War that meant women (moreso in europe, of course, but attitudes travelled to the US even if the fatalities didn't) were in factories, taking male jobs, and suddenly finding themselves just as good at them. Homosexuality began to be significantly more visible particularly in the campness of Hollywood performance (although not acceptable for a long time still). The traditional boundaries of gender were under threat, in other words, and Marlowe and his femme fatales could represent an implicit desire to redraw those boundaries in permanent ink with normative performances of gender. Chandler might not have intended it
that way (in fact he almost certainly didn't) but it's a fairly interesting reading. Which was the point of this post, I guess.






:thumb:

Stitch on 6/9/2006 at 19:01

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Re: Onionbob

NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE IT

Interesting angle on the book, which works beautifully up until Harry and Silver-wig show up.