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THE_LONG_GOOSEBERRY
November 1, 2020
"The private detective of fiction is a fantastic
creation who acts and speaks like a real man. He can
be completely realistic in every sense but one, that
one sense being that in life as we know it such a man
would not be a private detective." -- Raymond Chandler
Upon re-reading Raymond Chandler's "The Long
Goodbye" for the first time in a long while...
Marlowe is a little slow to begin wondering
what's going on. Reasonably, there are
things that should seem suspicious to him This is a problem endemic to the
that he for no good reason simply doesn't mystery form-- the author is
think about. holding something back, and the
main character is assisting in
the misdirection.
The first person narrative
Chandler chose to work with
has it's virtues-- POV
As I've argued elsewhere, "author omniscient":
o is always a lie; it presents a world of
crystalline certainty covering more
viewpoints than a human being will ever
have.
o it often inadvertantly distances the
reader from the subject.
But first person has some traps
built into it: it tempts writers to
drone on wallowing in the
repetitious trivia of the human Though actual Chandler prose
interior monolog...- "I was would do more editorializing
thinking about phoning him but I about the abysmal state of
simply couldn't face that without humanity as evidenced by the
more coffee, and I wasted time lousiness of the coffee.
trying to decide between the lunch
counter and the instant in my desk, "The color was gray, like
but then the phone rang, so I..." dead human flesh. It
smelled like industrial
Unless you're actually *trying* to cleanser, and tasted as
write stream-of-consciousness, this stale as a writer's
kind of minutiae gets old fast. Best forced simile."
to take it easy on all of this--
Chandler isn't *too* bad about it,
but he's far from perfect.
Dashiel Hammett stayed away
from this-- in his major
works, he stuck to a limited
third person that follows
the main character but never
gets inside his head.
There's a more subtle issue that kicks in later:
suddenly this interior monolog goes away, we're no
longer told what Marlowe is thinking, so that the
amazing revelations he makes in dialog come as a
surprise to us.
The earlier form-- pioneered by Poe, and
perfected and popularized by Doyle--
handled this more elegantly with a view
point character seperate from the hero,
who remains ignorant of some details of
what his partner is thinking (and The excuses for
sometimes, doing). keeping the Watson in
the dark has varied:
The downside of the narrator/hero
split, however is you can end up Holmes couldn't resist
focusing your attention on the his impulse toward the
least interesting member of the dramatic.
partnership.
Wolfe was continually
There was a long period of trying to spite Goodwin
decline of this form, with because of some petty
increasingly prefunctory dispute.
"Watsons" gradually fading
into the background. Doc Savage was a strong
silent type that didn't
talk much.
Marlowe's continual refusal to accept
anyone's money for any reason is
completely ridiculous. He's a private
detective, working for a living-- that Marlowe's continual refusal
means you charge people when you do to take anyone's warnings
something for them, and don't turn your seriously is also strange.
nose up at bonuses. If you know some mid-level
gangster is gunning for you,
If you're worried about the ethics of you might not cut-and-run,
the situation-- Marlowe seems to worry but you would take a few
that a "bonus" might be some sort of precautions.
bribe from someone who believes
they're being subtly blackmailed-- Me I would:
then you need to make the scope of the
job clear, and get it in writing for o vary my schedule
the client to sign off on. Marlowe
seems alergic to written contracts, o use back doors and
which in itself should be a red flag side entrances
about the ethics of the situation.
o ask friends to watch
for oddities in the area
o when possible, work out
of the office, and stay
with friends
Consider Marlowe-- and Chandler himself--
as character studies: they're determined to o set up some basic
show you how well they're clued-in, they're warning "trip wires",
the guys who know it all-- but they're install alarms, etc
completely above any *pretension* so they
don't (usually) claim to be above it all,
they don't *claim* they know everything,
but they keep *talking* like they do.
Marlowe is in touch with the void,
he looks down on everything, RAYMONDS_PERCH
except for guys who compulsively
look down on everything.
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