Diary of a Quirkyalone
Dec. 15th, 2004 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel13 Sep 2004
The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels - Raymond Chandler - Penguin Classics 2001
* * * *
I'm not sure that it was exactly wise of Penguin to put three novels back to back like this - Chandler was not one for varying his locations or plotlines significantly and they are all quite similar. Reading the three stories together does give one a chance, however, to appreciate what a fascinatingly odd and enigmatic character Philip Marlowe is.
A series has recently started on television featuring a single mother with three children who is also a detective. This is typical of the trend in contemporary crime fiction for giving investigators an elaborate network of family and friends to provide a soap operatic element to continuing series (see, for example, the Lyndsey Davis novels previously reviewed). Even when the investigator is a relative loner (like Inspector Rebus), they usually have a backstory which explains why they are the way that they are.
Not Philip Marlowe. He is an out-and-out loner - no close friends, no wife or girlfriend, no family. This is not surprising when one considers that every conversation in which he engages turns into a verbal battle which he tries to win with one-liners and put-downs. Having Marlowe as a friend would be hard work - even if one could stand his rudeness, he does not appear to have any interests outside his work, which means he would probably clam up if you tried to change the topic to anything other than his job (which of course, he can't talk about either). Women would, I think, be put off by his aggressive manner and conversation, even if they did find him good looking. I know he frequently ends up in a passionate embrace with the young, blonde female character in the story, but I generally find their willing acquiescence unconvincing, to such an extent that I wonder whether we have an unreliable narrator. Here's an idea for a short story: an encounter with Marlowe told from a female point of view. I rather suspect that the terms "creep" and "sexual predator" would be involved.
Even more remarkably, Marlowe reveals almost nothing of his personal history. The one fact about his past that I managed to glean from the three novels is that he grew up in a small town, but this only raises more questions. When did he come to LA? Why? How did he end up as a consulting detective? Since Chandler does not tell us (at least in these books), one is free to speculate. I would guess that at one time he was a cop - he seems to have a number of acquaintances on the force and one can easily see how his attitude would not have endeared him to his superiors. I would also guess that he was an only child and that both his parents are dead (through natural causes, not crime - no twisted revenge motives here).
Perhaps the oddest thing about Marlowe, though, is how normal and well-adjusted he is for one who has so little in the way of meaningful human contact. According to pop psychology, this lack should make Marlowe deeply unhappy and maladjusted, but he doesn't seem to be. True, he does drink a lot, but not to the point where it functionally impairs him. And, true, he has his black moods (particularly in the Little Sister - there's the wonderfully melancholy chapter with the refrain "you're not human tonight, Marlowe", written, I suspect, as Chandler's own depression was starting to take hold). But he keeps his sense of humour, he manages - just about - to be civil to his higher status clients, and he does his job very effectively. Despite his personal shortcomings, depressed he is not.
What he is, I think, is a quirkyalone. For those who haven't encountered the term, a quirkyalone is someone who is deeply single, an eccentric rebel who resists the blandishments of a society that tells you that coupledom and families are good and being alone is not (and yes, I am one). It's associated with an extreme form of romanticism where waiting hopefully is regarded as better than a series of unsatisfactory relationships - this is probably not quite right for Marlowe, but everything else seems to fit.
As crime novels, I find the Philip Marlowe stories so-so. I have no great enthusiasm for their LA setting, the characters are generally unsympathetic and their motivations are so contorted that it's really impossible to guess whodunnit. But as a diary of a quirkyalone - a hymn to the solitary life - they are truly remarkable. I don't recall reading anything which is quite so rigorous in its eschewal of the personal relationships or backstory data dumps of conventional fiction. An impressive achievement.
The Lady in the Lake and Other Novels - Raymond Chandler - Penguin Classics 2001
* * * *
I'm not sure that it was exactly wise of Penguin to put three novels back to back like this - Chandler was not one for varying his locations or plotlines significantly and they are all quite similar. Reading the three stories together does give one a chance, however, to appreciate what a fascinatingly odd and enigmatic character Philip Marlowe is.
A series has recently started on television featuring a single mother with three children who is also a detective. This is typical of the trend in contemporary crime fiction for giving investigators an elaborate network of family and friends to provide a soap operatic element to continuing series (see, for example, the Lyndsey Davis novels previously reviewed). Even when the investigator is a relative loner (like Inspector Rebus), they usually have a backstory which explains why they are the way that they are.
Not Philip Marlowe. He is an out-and-out loner - no close friends, no wife or girlfriend, no family. This is not surprising when one considers that every conversation in which he engages turns into a verbal battle which he tries to win with one-liners and put-downs. Having Marlowe as a friend would be hard work - even if one could stand his rudeness, he does not appear to have any interests outside his work, which means he would probably clam up if you tried to change the topic to anything other than his job (which of course, he can't talk about either). Women would, I think, be put off by his aggressive manner and conversation, even if they did find him good looking. I know he frequently ends up in a passionate embrace with the young, blonde female character in the story, but I generally find their willing acquiescence unconvincing, to such an extent that I wonder whether we have an unreliable narrator. Here's an idea for a short story: an encounter with Marlowe told from a female point of view. I rather suspect that the terms "creep" and "sexual predator" would be involved.
Even more remarkably, Marlowe reveals almost nothing of his personal history. The one fact about his past that I managed to glean from the three novels is that he grew up in a small town, but this only raises more questions. When did he come to LA? Why? How did he end up as a consulting detective? Since Chandler does not tell us (at least in these books), one is free to speculate. I would guess that at one time he was a cop - he seems to have a number of acquaintances on the force and one can easily see how his attitude would not have endeared him to his superiors. I would also guess that he was an only child and that both his parents are dead (through natural causes, not crime - no twisted revenge motives here).
Perhaps the oddest thing about Marlowe, though, is how normal and well-adjusted he is for one who has so little in the way of meaningful human contact. According to pop psychology, this lack should make Marlowe deeply unhappy and maladjusted, but he doesn't seem to be. True, he does drink a lot, but not to the point where it functionally impairs him. And, true, he has his black moods (particularly in the Little Sister - there's the wonderfully melancholy chapter with the refrain "you're not human tonight, Marlowe", written, I suspect, as Chandler's own depression was starting to take hold). But he keeps his sense of humour, he manages - just about - to be civil to his higher status clients, and he does his job very effectively. Despite his personal shortcomings, depressed he is not.
What he is, I think, is a quirkyalone. For those who haven't encountered the term, a quirkyalone is someone who is deeply single, an eccentric rebel who resists the blandishments of a society that tells you that coupledom and families are good and being alone is not (and yes, I am one). It's associated with an extreme form of romanticism where waiting hopefully is regarded as better than a series of unsatisfactory relationships - this is probably not quite right for Marlowe, but everything else seems to fit.
As crime novels, I find the Philip Marlowe stories so-so. I have no great enthusiasm for their LA setting, the characters are generally unsympathetic and their motivations are so contorted that it's really impossible to guess whodunnit. But as a diary of a quirkyalone - a hymn to the solitary life - they are truly remarkable. I don't recall reading anything which is quite so rigorous in its eschewal of the personal relationships or backstory data dumps of conventional fiction. An impressive achievement.
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Date: 2004-12-16 09:57 am (UTC)