Mississippi Noir- William Faulkner's Sanctuary

BOOK REVIEW

Sanctuary, William Faulkner, Vintage Books, New York, 1931

I have read my fair share of Faulkner although I am hardly a devotee. My main positive reference to him is concerning his role in the screenwriting of one of my favorite films- "To Have or To Have Not" with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I have also, obliquely, run into his work as it relates to who should and who should not be in the modern American literary canon. Usually the criticism centers on his racism and sexism, and occasionally his alcoholism. Of course, if political correctness were the main criterion for good hard writing then we would mainly not be reading anything more provocative or edifying than the daily newspaper, if that.

So much for that though. Faulkner is hardly known as a master of the noir or 'potboiler' but here the genius of his sparse, functional writing (a trait that he shares with the Hemingway of "The Killers" and the key crime novelists of the 1930’s Hammett, think "The Red Harvest", and Chandler, think "The Big Sleep") gives him entree into that literary genre. And he makes the most of it.

The plot revolves around a grotesque cast of characters who are riding out the Jazz Age in the backwaters of Mississippi and its Mecca in Memphis. Take one protected young college student, Temple Drake, looking to get her 'kicks'. Put her with a shabbily gentile frat boy looking for his kicks. Put them on the back roads of Prohibition America and trouble is all you can expect. Add in a bootlegger or two, a stone-crazy killer named Popeye with a little sexual problem and you are on your way.

That way is a little bumpy as Faulkner mixed up the plot, the motives of the characters and an unsure idea of what justice, Southern style, should look like in this situation in the eyes of his main positive character, Horace, the lawyer trying to do the right thing in a dead wrong situation which moreover is stacked against him. As always with Faulkner follow the dialogue, that will get you through even if you have to do some re-reading (as I have had to do). Interestingly, for a writer as steeped in Southern mores, Jim Crow and very vivid descriptions of the ways of the South in the post-Civil War era as Faulkner was there is very little of race in this one. The justice meted out here tells us one thing- it is best to be a judge’s daughter or a Daughter of the Confederacy if you want a little of that precious commodity. All others watch out. Kudos to Faulkner, whether he wrote this for the cash or not, for taking on some very taboo subjects back in 1931 Mississippi. Does anyone really want to deny him his place in the American literary canon? Based on this effort I think not.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Stuff Of Dreams- Humphrey Bogart’s “The Maltese Falcon”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir classic, The Maltese Falcon.

DVD Review

The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorrie, based on the crime novel by Dashiell Hammett, directed by John Huston, Warner Brothers, 1941

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me their plot lines stand on their own merits, although I will make some comment here. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from the early 1940s, The Maltese Falcon, offer parts of both.

Generously offer parts of both here as an exemplar of the genre with one of the classic detectives of the age, Sam Spade. The plot line works because it is a prima facie, hard-boiled example of the lengths that humankind will go in pursuit of “the stuff of dreams.” As for femme fatale energy, although my personal 1940s favorite is Rita Hayworth, it is provide by the fetchingly wicked Mary Astor. Yes, I can see where old Sam Spade will jump through a few hoops, hell, many hoops, to get next to that one once she starts making her moves. Watch out Sam.

Although every serious crime noir aficionado should know the plot to this one by heart I will give a short summary for those three people in the classic crime noir world who have not seen (or read) this one-yet. It is, frankly, about a bird, and not just any bird but a historically significant gem –ladened statue of a one, and one moreover that will bring a good price on the black market where such things are traded as a matter of course. That is where the “stuff of dreams” gets everyone evolved in trouble. Who has it (or doesn’t have it), for how long, and what they will do in order to get it (and keep it) provides the driving force of this film as it did with classic noir detective writer Dashiell Hammett when he wrote it. The film is fairly true to the spirit of the novel, including much of the dialogue. Of course, along the way certain alliances are made (and unmade) as Sam Spade tries to maneuver among the parties interested in the object, including the aforementioned Mary Astor, a band of high- end brigands led by Sidney Greenstreet, and maybe others who have fallen by the wayside in pursuit.

Dashiell Hammett was known, correctly known, along with Raymond Chandler, for taking the crime detective out of the police procedural/ society amateur detective milieu and permitting their detectives to take a few punches, give a few punches, flirt with the femme fatales, and use the sparse language of the streets to bring some rough justice to this sorry old world. Sam Spade here takes more than his fair share of hits in order to make sense out of the mess that Ms. Astor brings to his door (and initially his partner, the late Miles Archer). And that is the rub. The various characters here are willing, more than willing, to murder and maim to get the damn bird and so Sam has to, on more occasions that he probably wished, weigh what to do about it. See that is where the femme fatale to muddy the waters part comes in, that damn perfume and that dangerous sassy manner that will drive a man, even a rough justice seeking man a little too close to the edge. But in the end the code of honor, or just an idea of it, drives Sam away from the perfume and back on the straight and narrow. Later when he thinks about that perfume he still will be wondering if he did the thing the right way. Ya, dames will do that to you, tough detectives or just regular joes. I know I was ready to throw my lot in with her, share of the bird or not.

Note: This will not be the last time that Humphrey Bogart played the classic noir detective. Or work with Lorrie and Greenstreet. He got his shots at playing Phillip Marlow in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. In a sense Bogart as an actor, a strange sense since he was not “beautiful,” defined that kind of detective- the “tilting at windmills” guy not too fragile to take a punch, give a dame the once over, and bring a little of that “rough justice” to the world, especially a world where the stuff of dreams went awry more often than not.

*Detective Novelist Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe Meets Leon Trotsky- “On The Quest For The New Socialist Persona”-An Encore

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Raymond Chandler's The High Window.

Book Review

The High Window, Raymond Chandler, Random House, New York, 1992

The last time that I mentioned the work of ace detective writer Raymond Chandler was as a foil in what turned out to be a polemic over vices and virtues of Chandler’s main detective character, Phillip Marlowe. That concerned a response to a comment I had made in reviewing Chandler’s last Marlowe novel, Playback. Although I thought that Chandler (and Marlowe) had finally run out of steam in the long running series by the time of that book's publication I noted that overall there were some attributes that I found admirable in that hard-boiled detective. A reader, a self-described socialist-feminist admirer of Leon Trotsky, took exception to my characterizations. Since the story line as it unfolds in the book under review, 1942’s The High Window also highlight those attributes(except he does not take any knocks on the head for the good of the cause) I have decided to repost sections of that commentary. I have a link to a Wikipedia entry for The High Window above for those who want the story-line :

“In a recent posting I reviewed detective novelist supreme Raymond Chandler’s late work (1958), “Playback”, the last in his series of Philip Marlowe stories. (See archives, September 20, 2009.) In that review I mentioned (as I have in several previous reviews of other books in Chandler’s Marlowe series) a number of positive attributes about Marlowe that I found appealing. For starters: his sense of personal honor in a modern world (the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s) that laughed at such old-fashioned notions; his gritty intrepidness in search of ‘rough’ justice in a messy world; his amazing, almost superhuman, ability to take a punch or seven for the good of the cause; and, his at least minimally class conscious and sometimes barely hidden contempt for the traditional social hierarchy and its police authority. In response, I received an e-mail from a reader, an ardent socialist-feminist and fellow admirer of Leon Trotsky, who took me to task for my characterizations and argued that I had it all wrong both as to Marlowe’s virtues and to his so-called (her description) anti-authoritarian posture.

In passing, the reader deeply discounted those attributes where I put a plus, deplored even the idea of the possibility that a future socialist society would have room for such attributes as mentioned above and that Marlowe’s attitude toward women was ‘primitive’ (her description). While one would be hard pressed, very hard-pressed, to include Marlowe, with his very quaint but macho attitude toward women reflecting the mores of an earlier age, as a champion of women’s emancipation and he became over time a little shopworn in his sense of honor, common sense, ability to take a punch and lay off the booze the reader missed the point of my critique. Or rather she is much too dogmatic in her sense of “political correctness” as it applies to the literary front. Thus this little commentary is intended not so much to clear the air as to posit several ideas for future discussion.

I hate to invoke the name of Leon Trotsky, the intrepid Russian revolutionary, hard-working Soviet official, well-regarded political pamphleteer, and astute literary critic into this discussion but in that last role I think he had some useful things to say. Without a doubt Trotsky could have made his mark solely on the basis of his literary criticism, witness his Marxist masterpieces “Literature and Revolution” and “Literature and Art”. What makes Trotsky’s literary analysis so compelling is not whether he is right or wrong about the merits of any particular writer. In fact, many times, as in the case of the French writer Celine and some of the Russian poets, he was, I think, wrong. But rather, that he approached literary criticism from a materialist basis rooted in what history, and that essentially meant capitalist history, has given us when he analyzed characters, the plausibility of various plots and the lessons to be drawn about “human nature” put forth by any given writer.

This is no mere genuflection on my part to a revolutionary leader whose work I hold in high regard but a recognition that capitalism has given us some much distorted concepts of what human nature is, or can be, all about. That is the core of the genius of Trotsky’s sharp pen and wit. That is why he is still very readable, for the most part, today. Unless it is question of political import, like the struggle inside Russia in the early 1920’s over the preferential establishment of a school of “proletarian culture” supported by the Soviet state that was bandies about by likes of fellow Bolsheviks Bukarin and Zinoviev, Trotsky did not spend much time diagramming any but the most general outline of the contours of what the future socialist society, its habits, manners and morals would look like. He did, and this is central in this discussion, spend a great deal of time on what capitalism had and would bequeath a socialist state. Including both its vices and virtues.

Not to belabor a point this is the link between Leon Trotsky and one fictional Philip Marlowe. Trotsky accepted that personal honor had a place as a societal goal and as a matter of social hygiene. The parameters of that sense of honor naturally would be different under a social regime that was based on use value rather than the struggle for profit margins. Certainly Trotsky’s biography, particularly that last period in the 1930’s when he appeared to be "tilting at windmills", demonstrates that he had a high moral code that drove him. Certainly the word intrepid is not out of place here, as well. Other words that can describe his personality-hardworking, hard-driving, a little bit gruff, but in search of some kind of justice. Those, my friend are the links that are the basic premise of a socialist society as it evolves out of capitalist society. As well as individual initiative, a sense of fairness, and well-placed scorn for established authority and the time-worn clichés about the limits of human nature.

Do I draw the links here too closely? Perhaps. Although Marlowe has his own version of "tilling at windmills" in search of some kind of rough justice and vindication for all those knocks on the head one cannot deny that he does not challenge bourgeois society except in the most oblique way. He will not rail against General Sternwood’s oil derricks. He will not lead a crusade against the old order in his search for the elusive Velma. He is, if anything, very Victorian in his attitude toward women, good or bad. (Chandler’s Marlowe and Trotsky are both men of another era in their personal attitudes toward women, although Trotsky was light-years ahead on the political front). Nor is Marlowe the prototype for the “new socialist man”. But he remains a very appealing fictional character nevertheless. Who is your favorite fictional character, detective or otherwise? Let the discussion continue. ’’

*Murder, My Sweet Or Is It Murder My Sweet- "Dial M For Murder"-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "Dial M For Murder".

DVD Review

Dial M For Murder, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, starring Ray Milland and Grace Kelly, 1956.

At one time the great mystery movie director, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, was one of my favorite directors. Not that I was ever a big fan of the whodunit, “puzzle it out”, Agatha Christie-influenced part of the genre that he tended to use in his film work. I was always more of a Raymond Chandler/ Phillip Marlowe swaggering detective “chasing after windmills” mystery guy. But visually, most of Alfred Hitchcock’s work always left me gasping for breath until the end, even in those productions like the one under review here, “Dial M For Murder", where the murder plot is laid out for you in advance and all you have to do is figure the key to the slip up that will bring the villain low.

The villain in this case is ne’er do well, man about town Ray, Milland who finds out, mistakenly, that his meal ticket trophy wife, Grace Kelly, is in love with another man. Well, to keep the gravy train going the suave Mr. Milland will do anything, literally anything, to keep his status intact. Naturally he decides, smart guy that he is, to commit the perfect murder, the murder of said beautiful wife. And the plot moves on from there, I need not tell more.

Except this. Why on this good, green earth would anyone other a stone crazy, craven maniac want to touch even one hair on the lovely Grace Kelly’s head? Whatever benighted justice falls on the head of this villainous sort is too good for them. And that is what this film really boils done to (other that the ordinary, every day propositions that “crime does not pay” and that there are no “perfect” crimes) for me. Now in this film Grace Kelly is not as fetching as in other Hitchcock vehicles like “Rear Window” and “To Catch A Thief” but I will not quibble over her stage presence on this one. I would just note here, as I have in reviewing other works in which Ms. Kelly starred, that according to the gossip her real life husband, Prince Rainer, a man not given to open displays of sentiment, wept openly at her death. And now I know why.
.

***Writer's Corner- The Making Of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe-The Collected Stories

***Writer's Corner- The Making Of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe-The Collected Stories

Book Review

Collected Stories, Raymond Chandler, Everyman’s Library, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2002

A couple of years ago when reviewing a 1940s film version of the Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, re-titled Murder My Sweet, starring Dick Powell I mentioned that I had found an old dog-eared edition of Raymond Chandler’s other writings (other than the Marlowe seven novel series) and that I wondered if there was more. Well, there was and there is, and here it is in over 1200 pages of pure Chandler from when he was a pup (an older pup since he did not start writing until later in life)up to and including some things that turned out to be sketches for the Marlowe series.

As is the nature of such all-inclusive volumes the material is uneven. Some stories are forgettable, or mere fluff. Others, as I have mentioned seem eerily very familiar except for the names of the detective and some of the characters. This book is made up of several stories from a period when Chandler was just developing his prototypical hard-boiled detective that evolved into Phillip Marlowe. The composites eventually make up The Long Goodbye, Lady in the Lake  and The Big Sleep. Fascinating in their own right but also as harbingers of things to come.

The major drawback here is not the value of the work but the ungainliness of the one volume at 1200 pages. If you are a beach chair reader, this thing will cave in your chest. On the other hand this is a treasure trove of the work of one of the second- level masters in the American literary pantheon. Enough said. Read on.

*Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe- An Encore- "The High Window"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Raymond Chandler's The High Window.

Book Review

The High Window, Raymond Chandler, Random House, New York, 1992

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective, forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets, is right at home here in his search, at the request of a dipsy dowager looking for solutions on the cheap and with no questions asked , for the inevitable “missing” (person or thing, fill in the blank). In this case a missing thing, a coin, a rare gold doubloon that has been stolen by, she claims, her no good gold-digging, newly-minted daughter-in-law. Along the way to the “truth” old Phillip finds more "conveniently" dead bodies, which may or may not connect in with the case, more kooks and more smarmy police officers than one can shake a stick at. The only things missing in this one are that whiff of perfume from some remote icy dame that has Phillip in a dither and ready to "chase after windmills" for and he takes no saps to the head. He will thus live to fight another day. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the killers of the various dead bodies.

Have no fear, however, the intrepid Marlowe will figure it out in the end and some kind of 'rough' justice will prevail. At this point in the Chandler Marlowe series our shamus has been around the block more than a few times but he still is punching away at the 'bad guys' and the absurdity of the modern world. How does this one compare with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for General Sternwood's Rusty Regan (and that whiff of perfume mentioned above from the dizzy Sternwood daughters) in The Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in some shady places in pursuit of Moose's Velma (and her whiff od perfume too, come to think of it) in Farewell, My Lovely any day. There no one to really root for here (except, a little, the much put upon dowager's secretary/ “wounded sparrow”, Merle). Nevertheless, as always with Chandler, you get high literature in a plebeian package.

*It's The Jade, Stupid!-Raymond Chandler's" Farewell, My Lovely

Click On Title To Link To Raymond Chandler Web page.

DVD REVIEW

Murder My Sweet, Dick Powell, 1943

Not all of the classic detective novelist Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowes are born equal. The definitive screen role is that of Humphrey Bogart in the Big Sleep. Dick Powell, however, here keeps pretty good company with his interpretation of Marlowe as the world-weary private detective who sees things through to the end, especially when he screws up an assignment. It's professional ethics, you know. That characteristic helped define the noir detective. Here Powell adds a little off-hand humor and self-deprecation to the role as he fight for his concept of rough `justice'. But mainly he is intrepid and that carries him a long way in the role. And surprisingly, unlike in the book that the film is based on, he gets the "nice" girl in the end. Who would have thought.

Apparently not all classic Raymond Chandler novels are born equal either. The film here takes bits and pieces from various shorter stories written by Chandler earlier in his career as he was defining the Marlowe model to make the plot line run here. If you want to see a truer take on the original novel Farewell, My Lovely that this film is based on then you should see the remake from the 1980's starring Robert Mitchum.

In Murder, My Sweet the story line runs more around the question of some jade lost by or stolen from a wealthy younger woman with a aging husband, a familar plot, although not always with aging husbands, who actions are central to a murder that occurs along the way. She, as is the order of things in noir films, is a mantrap and classic femme fatale who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants. And will succeed to a point. But do not forget that Marlowe has his own sense of honor so do not cross that line, or else. See both films and judge for yourself.

***Detective Novelist Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe Meets Leon Trotsky- “On The Quest For The New Socialist Persona”

Click On Title To Link To Leon Trotsky's "Literature And Revolution" Webpage.

Commentary

In a recent posting I reviewed detective novelist supreme Raymond Chandler’s late work (1958), “Playback”, the last in his series of Philip Marlowe stories. (See archives, September 20, 2009.) In that review I mentioned (as I have in several previous reviews of other books in Chandler’s Marlowe series) a number of positive attributes about Marlowe that I found appealing. For starters: his sense of personal honor in a modern world (the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s) that laughed at such old-fashioned notions; his gritty intrepidness in search of ‘rough’ justice in a messy world; his amazing, almost superhuman, ability to take a punch or seven for the good of the cause; and, his minimally class conscious and sometimes barely hidden contempt for the traditional social hierarchy and its police authority. In response, I received an e-mail from a reader, an ardent socialist-feminist fellow admirer of Leon Trotsky, who took me to task for my characterizations and argued that I had it all wrong both as to Marlowe’s virtues and to his so-called (her description) anti-authoritarian posture.

In passing, the reader deeply discounted those attributes where I put a plus, deplored even the idea of the possibility that a future socialist society would have room for such attributes as mentioned above and that Marlowe’s attitude toward women was ‘primitive’ (her description). While one would be hard pressed, very hard-pressed, to include Marlowe, with his very quaint but macho attitude toward women reflecting the mores of an earlier age, as a champion of women’s emancipation and he became over time a little shopworn in his sense of honor, common sense, ability to take a punch and lay off the booze the reader missed the point of my critique. Or rather she is much too dogmatic in her sense of “political correctness” as it applies to the literary front. Thus this little commentary is intended not so much to clear the air as to posit several ideas for future discussion.

I hate to invoke the name of Leon Trotsky, the intrepid Russian revolutionary, hard-working Soviet official, well-regarded political pamphleteer, and astute literary critic into this discussion but in that last role I think he had some useful things to say. Without a doubt Trotsky could have made his mark solely on the basis of his literary criticism, witness his Marxist masterpieces “Literature and Revolution” and “Literature and Art”. What makes Trotsky’s literary analysis so compelling is not whether he is right or wrong about the merits of any particular writer. In fact, many times, as in the case of the French writer Celine and some of the Russian poets, he was, I think, wrong. But rather, that he approached literary criticism from a materialist basis rooted in what history, and that essentially meant capitalist history, when he analyzed characters, the plausibility of various plots and the lessons to be drawn about “human nature” put forth by any given writer.

This is no mere genuflection on my part to a revolutionary leader whose work I hold in high regard but a recognition that capitalism has given us some much distorted concepts of what human nature is, or can be, all about. That is the core of the genius of Trotsky’s sharp pen and wit. That is why he is still very readable, for the most part, today. Unless it is question of political import, like the struggle inside Russia in the early 1920’s over the preferential establishment of a school of “proletarian culture” supported by the Soviet state that was bandies about by likes of fellow Bolsheviks Bukarin and Zinoviev, Trotsky did not spend much time diagramming any but the most general outline of the contours of what the future socialist society, its habits, manners and morals would look like. He did, and this is central in this discussion, spend a great deal of time on what capitalism had and would bequeath a socialist state. Including both vices and virtues.

Not to belabor a point this is the link between Leon Trotsky and one fictional Philip Marlowe. Trotsky accepted that personal honor had a place as a societal goal and as a matter of social hygiene. The parameters of that sense of honor naturally would be different under a social regime that was based on use value rather than the struggle for profit margins. Certainly Trotsky’s biography, particularly that last period in the 1930’s when he appeared to be tilting at windmills, demonstrates that he had a high moral code that drove him. Certainly the word intrepid is not out of place here, as well. Hardworking, hard-driving, a little bit gruff, but in search of some kind of justice. Those, my friend are the links that are the basic premise of a socialist society as it evolves out of capitalist society. As well as individual initiative, a sense of fairness, and well-placed scorn for established authority and the time-worn clichés about the limits of human nature.

Do I draw the links here too closely? Perhaps. Although Marlowe has his own version of ‘tilling at windmills’ in search of some kind of rough justice and vindication for all those knocks on the head one cannot deny that he does not challenge bourgeois society except in the most oblique way. He will not rail against General Sternwood’s oil derricks. He will not lead a crusade against the old order in his search for the elusive Velma. He is if anything very Victorian in his attitude toward women, good or bad. (Chandler’s Marlowe and Trotsky are both men of another era in their personal attitudes toward women, although Trotsky was light-years ahead on the political front). Nor is Marlowe the prototype for the ‘new socialist man’. But he remains a very appealing fictional character nevertheless. Who is your favorite fictional character, detective or otherwise? Let the discussion continue.

*Not All Phillip Marlowes Are Created Equal- Raymond Chandler's "Playback"

Click on Title To Link To Raymond Chandler Web page.

Book Review

Playback, Raymond Chandler, Vintage Press, New York, 1988

I have mentioned, in passing, in previous reviews (see archives) that not all of the classic detective novelist Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowes are born equal. The definitive screen role, probably the way Chandler’s Marlowe is most widely known, of course, is that of Humphrey Bogart in the "Big Sleep". Others like Dick Powell and, later in the 1970’s, Elliott Gould kept Bogie in pretty good company with their interpretations of Marlowe as the world-weary private detective who sees things through to the end, especially when he screws up an assignment. It's professional ethics, you know. But mainly Marlowe is intrepid and that carries him a long way. That characteristic helped define the noir detective. From that perspective, Robert Mitchum and James Garner were less successful in their respective interpretations on that very point.

That said, apparently, not all classic Raymond Chandler novels are born equal either. This late, perhaps, final Phillip Marlowe adventure (published in 1958) seems to have run out of steam both as to the Marlowe character and to plot. One would have thought Phillip Marlowe, forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets, would be right at home in his search, at the request of a local lawyer, for the inevitable `missing woman' ("dame", "frill", "frail" for the non-politically correct types) who is “on the lam”. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the above-mentioned "dame" and the motives for her movements.

As always, have no fear, the intrepid Marlowe will figure it out in the end and some kind of 'rough' justice will prevail. At this point in the Phillip Marlowe series, however, our shamus has been around the block more than a few times but he still is punching away at the 'bad guys' and the absurdity of the modern world. But here, in the 1950’s Southern California milieu that is very quickly losing any of its pioneer spirit and has gone ‘soft’, Marlowe seems out of place. His world has lost its bearings and the strength has been sapped out of such virtues as personal honor, individual effort and chasing after windmills. Hell, old Marlowe goes to bed with the lady client (a no-no in the old days), is considerate and respectful of the police (a definite no-no for any self-respecting private eye) and, at the end, is wistfully thinking about an old love that has reentered the picture. Phillip, where did you go wrong?

How does this one compare with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for General Sternwood's Rusty Regan in "The Big Sleep" or the run down stucco flats in some shady places in pursuit of Moose's Velma in "Farewell, My Lovely" any day. Nevertheless, as always with Chandler, you get high literature (including, as always, some choice metaphors) in a plebeian package. Phillip Marlowe, RIP.

*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- "Black Dahlia' -A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "Black Dahlia".

DVD Review

Black Dalhia, Josh Harnett, Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johansson, directed by Brian DePalma, 2006

Take Raymond Chandler's noir "slumming streets" of 1940s Los Angeles, a few tough cops who may, or may not, be "on the take", more "dishy" dames than you can take a stick at all trying to make their way to Hollywood's big time, big screen any way they can. Throw in money, sexual desire, sexual perversion, some stolen scenes from other noir films and you have "Black Dahlia". No, not Chandler's "Blue Dahlia" there is too much visual, up-front violence, too little worthy dialogue, and too little character development for that but all the other elements are there to produce a somewhat entertaining mystery that will keep you guessing a little, if you can keep your eyes off those "dishy" dames, Hilary Swank and Scarlett Johansson, (or, depending on your preference, those "dishy" guys, Josh Harnett and Aaron Eckhart ). That in the end is probably the reason to see this thing. It does have that great `40s background music to set the mood, though. You know, if you are a noir fan what I mean.

*In The Time Of The "Fixer"- Dashiell Hammet's "The Glass Key"

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the American detective story writer extraordinaire, Dashiell Hammet.

DVD/BOOK REVIEW

The Glass Key, Dashiell Hammett, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1932

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles (and sidekick society wife, Nora), Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective.

In The Glass Key Hammett takes a little different run at that same idea. The protagonist this time is not the usual detective but an old fashioned political "fixer". No, not the "spin doctor" or "flak" of modern media-driven politics but the older handler of the retail politics that counted in the local urban scene with the added factor of a little off hand, old fashioned mob influence. Nevertheless, the "fixer" Ned Beaumont has all the resourcefulness, toughness, loyalty, and hard-boiled common sense that we have come to expect of Hammett's 'real' detectives.

The plot revolves around the familiar problem of electoral politics-getting elected. In this case getting a Senator with a beautiful daughter, Janet, and an errant son, Taylor, reelected. Add in some political factions, also mob-dominated, a fair share of corrupt officials, an off-hand murder and other crimes and misdemeanors and you would hardly know we are not dealing with a `normal' Hammett novel. Further add in a slowly evolving romance between Ned and the afore-mentioned Senator's daughter who is also the object of his political boss's affections and you have quite a mix. Frankly, I prefer Hammett's detectives but any time you can get your hands on one of his books do so.

In the film version of the novel that follows the script of the book pretty closely the part of Ned is played by a young Alan Ladd. The Senator's daughter, Janet, is played by Veronica Lake. Naturally in the film the romantic tension is given more play than in the book. Some of the scenes between them, especially that classic silky hair over one eye Lake look when she is being coy, are worth the price of admission. Brian Donlevy as Ned's political boss also has his moments. Nice.

*******

Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammett’s political sympathies (or rather more to the point, organization connections) were in the period of his great detection-writing period, the early 1930s, although one can speculate they were at least progressive. I should note for those who are only familiar with the detective novels and crime short stories that Hammett was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn the other cheek on your neighbor, see reds under every bed, your mommie is a commie turn her in, prison house, American night of the red scare, Cold War, post World War II period (and earlier as well, during the Popular Front all the way with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Joe Stalin, our father can do no wrong, Moscow Trials liquidate the Old Bolsheviks, the makers of the revolution, time but this post-war period is what concerns me here).

This was period when anything to the left of Herbert Hoover, including probably red tablecloths on restaurant tables, was suspect. This is also the period of the unlamented Joe McCarthy, the equally unlamented Richard Nixon, the deep, fatal, anti-communist purges in the labor unions from which we still suffer today (and anti-red purges in many other political and cultural institutions as well), and of the time of “the naming of names.” The high watermark time of the “fink” and of the “blacklist.” I have vilified, rightly so, no, righteously so, the likes of movie director Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata, On The Waterfront) for their “stool pigeon” scab actions before the "committees".

Kazan was, unfortunately, not alone in that dark, witch-hunt, keep your eyes down, keep walking straight ahead with blinkers on, tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for holding their ground under intense pressure and under penalty of paying the ultimate price, their lives, for their steadfastness. For defending the Soviet Union, not in our Trotskyist way, but in their own honorable way, and didn’t complain about it when they were called on it, unjustly, by the American imperial state.

Dashiell Hammett was called, tooth brush in hand, before the “red scare” committees and just said no. Hats off. Now there is no need to get mushy about it, and one should not forget that in the end Hammett’s Stalinist politics (and vilification of leftist political opponents like our Trotskyist forbears) made us not less political opponents, but isn’t there something in old Hammett’s actions, that sense of “tilting to the windmills,” that leads right back to Sam Spade. Yes, I thought you would think so.

*The Stuff Of Dreams- Dashiell Hammet's "The Maltese Falcon"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American detective fiction writer Dashiell Hammett.

Book Review

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammet, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective.

Hammett and Chandler also speak to a different, more macho if you will, but also a more world-wary and world-weary style of detection than today’s hyper-extended and techno-detail-oriented detectives who rely on computers and gadgetry more than guts. Still, with few exceptions, it is hard now to find a better proto-type for the kind of detective that writers of detective fiction wished they had, in their long, smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked, staring at that blank white page, writer nights (and we will not even speak of the days), dreamed up than Sam Spade. Nor a better, sparse, functional language-filled story line than old Dashiell Hammett thought up.

A little summary of the plot line is in order. It’s the bird, stupid. Get it. Except this is a gem of bird, a stuff of dreams, stuff of wild, exotic, face the gates of hell for, bird that has more than one crew of thieves, well-groomed, well-spoken thieves, and in their way polite unless a crippled newsy or two get in their way, but thieves nevertheless looking to get their hands on the damn thing, and wealth, Great Depression get out from under wealth. Hey, anytime get out from under wealth. In any case you need a scorecard to sort out who, and who is not, on the level at any particular time, except maybe the kid hired gunsel who keeps shadowing old brother Spade.

Naturally, in a noir detective story, and Hammett is nothing if not a noir writer from word one, there has to be a femme fatale dame with a checkered, if vaguely sketched past, and a dubious present, a very dubious present. But she, Brigid O’ Shaughnessy, in this one, has that look, you know that look, that women’s look, that look that will set the boys walking, no racing, to run into walls, to take more than their fair of hits on the head, to go full tilt at those damn windmills, gladly. Enter ever so jaded Sam Spade (and partner, Miles Archer, but he is just in it for the sappy dupe-guy dressing). Sam has all the characteristics that mark a noir detective-tough, resourceful, undaunted, and incorruptible with a sense of honor to friend and foe alike that sets him apart from earlier detectives. And still he, been around the block many times and more, Sam Spade, is smitten when the femme fatale goes into her, well, femme fatale, act. Go figure. But those other traits will be hard-hearted Ms.Femme Fatale’s undoing in the end, as her version of the stuff of dreams goes awry. There, I have set up the mood for you. But this is one you should read and savor so I will leave it at that. If you want a well-thought out story that is also well-written from a member of the second echelon of the American literary pantheon, this one is for you.

Note: It is not altogether clear to me what Hammet’s political sympathies (or rather more to the point, organization connections) were in the period of his great detection-writing period, the early 1930s, although one can speculate they were at least progressive. I should note for those who are only familiar with the detective novels and crime short stories that Hammet was a make-no-bones-about-it supporter of the Communist Party during the hard, don’t turn that eye from your neighbor, see reds under every bed, your mommie is a commie turn her in, prison house, American night of the red scare, Cold War, post World War II period (and earlier as well, during the Popular Front all the way with FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt), Joe Stalin, our father can do no wrong, Moscow Trials liquidate the Old Bolsheviks, the makers of the revolution, time but this post-war period is what concerns me here).

This was period when anything to the left of Herbert Hoover, including probably red tablecloths on restaurant tables, was suspect. This is also the period of the unlamented Joe McCarthy, the equally unlamented Richard Nixon, the deep, fatal, anti-communist purges in the labor unions from which we still suffer today (and anti-red purges in many other political and cultural institutions as well), and of the time of “the naming of names.” The high watermark time of the “fink” and of the “blacklist.” I have vilified, rightly so, no, righteously so, the likes of movie director Elia Kazan (Viva Zapata, On The Waterfront) for their “stool pigeon” scab actions before the "committees".

Kazan was, unfortunately, not alone in that dark, witch-hunt, keep your eyes down, keep walking straight ahead with blinkers on, tell them what they want to know although they already know it, night. I have also heaped tons of well-deserved praise on the heroic Rosenbergs, Julius and Ethel, for holding their ground under intense pressure and under penalty of paying the ultimate price, their lives, for their steadfastness. For defending the Soviet Union, not in our Trotskyist way, but in their own honorable way, and didn’t complain about it when they were called on it, unjustly, by the American imperial state.

Dashiell Hammett was called, tooth brush in hand, before the “red scare” committees and just said no. Hats off. Now there is no need to get mushy about it, and one should not forget that in the end Hammett’s Stalinist politics (and vilification of leftist political opponents like our Trotskyist forbears) made us not less political opponents, but isn’t there something in old Hammett’s actions, that sense of “tilting to the windmills,” that leads right back to Sam Spade. Yes, I thought you would think so.

*Writer’s Corner- Dashiell Hammett’s "Women In The Dark"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American detective novelist Dashiell Hammett.

Book Review

Woman In The Dark, Dashiell Hammett, Introduction by Robert B. Parker, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1988

Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles, Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective. However, on the way to creating these literary works of art Hammett did journeyman's work at the detective genre in various pulp detective magazines and in serial form in popular magazines. The latter is how the short novel under review, Woman In The Dark, began its life.

The late Robert B. Parker, a very fine detective story writer in his own right, noted in the introduction to this work that this plot line, and its twists and turns, represented a very strong example of Hammett’s sense of the randomness of human existence. But also the drive for some regularity, some place to hang one’s hat, as well. Even down at the edges of society, the places where no one really wants to be, the place of kept women, cons, and ex-cons and of those who have the resources to make such dwellers their playthings. The plot line centers on a hardened, take no bull, been around the block, femme fatale, certainly not your typical damsel in distress, who is fed up with the antics of the rich guy who “rescued” her, for a time, the antics of the rich guy who doesn’t like to take no for an answer, especially when he has bought and paid for the merchandise (the femme fatale in this case), and a hard-nosed, hard-luck ex-con (a non-detective for once, if you can believe that) who simply will not go back to prison but who is not adverse to a little romance. And is willing to give, and take, a hard punch, if necessary.

Naturally, as is almost always the case with Hammett, the story line is driven, Hemingway-style, by sparse, functional language. However, for my money, there is just not enough of it to grip the imagination. Other than as an example, arguably a failed example, of Hammett trying to put steamy love interest and hard-boiled guys together on short notice, this novelistic effort could have stayed back in the pulp archives. Or waited to be anthologized, as it was, in the Dashiell Hammett volumes of the Library Of America series. For the real Hammett read The Thin Man or The Maltese Falcon, those two efforts, my friends, are why Hammett is in the American literary pantheon.

*Writer's Corner- Raymond Chandler's "Little Sister"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Anglo-American detective novelist Raymond Chandler.

Book Review

Little Sister, Raymond Chandler, 1958

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled, fundamentally honest private detective forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets is a bit off course here in his search for the inevitable exotic/diabolical `missing woman' (`dame' for the non-politically correct types) in trouble in the Hollywood film glitter mill. Old Marlowe is going uptown here, or so he is led to believe. But it seems to me that it is more than the geography that off Marlowe's beaten path here. I love Chandler as a great writer with a good ear for the West Coast American scene in the 1940's but hasn't Marlowe followed that woman, or her "sister", before in a previous novel? Except that she wasn't an actress, or had some little devilish sister from Kansas. You get my drift. Old Chandler's Marlowe is starting to run out of steam in the theme department. By the way, beware of those Kansas women; they are hell on your average California rough-and-tumble shamus.

Sure there is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists but Marlowe needs to think about that rest home for worn-out indigent gumshoes (since he never made enough money). He has taken one too many hits on the head for the latest worthy cause. Give me those background oil derricks that sound like money churning out the wealth while looking for General Sternwood's Rusty Regan in The Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in pursue of Moose's Velma in Farewell, My Lovely any day. However, even on his uppers, as always with Chandler you get high literature in a plebeian package. Read on.

The Slumming Streets Of 1950s L.A.- Joseph Ellroy’s “L.A. Confidential”

Click on the headline to link to an interview article on crime novelist
Joseph Ellroy

Book Review

L.A. Confidential, Joseph Ellroy, The Mysterious Press, New York, 1990

Crime writer Raymond Chandler, and his detective creation Phillip Marlowe, owned the slumming streets of 1940’s Los Angeles and in the process set the standard by which to judge modern crime novels (along with the work of Dashiell Hammet, of course). However, as time moves on, others have set themselves up to take the challenge posed by these forbears. The author of the book under review, Joseph Ellroy, has thrown down the gauntlet with a series of Los Angeles –based crime novels. Although I believe that Raymond chandler is still king of the mound out in those wavy brownish-yellow western hills and shorelines Ellroy is pushing him, and pushing him hard.

On other occasions I have noted that I am an aficionado of crime book and film noir, although that designation has previously been somewhat limited to the 1940s-1950s period mentioned above, the golden age of black and white film and grainy, sparse language detective novels. I, frankly, was not that familiar with Mr. Ellroy’s work, although I had seen the film adaptation of L.A. Confidential several years ago and had heard about the Black Dahlia case, the basis for another book in the L.A. series. Perhaps, strangely, I took up his works after reading a review of his memoir in The New York Review of Books out of curiosity, if nothing else. Thus this is the first book that I have actually read of the several that he has produced thus far. As I intend to read others this review will act to fill in a little why, as I stated above, I believe that Raymond Chandler is still king of the L.A. seamy-side night.

Chandler’s 1930s-1940s L.A. was still a rather sprawling, sleepy town, an old West town just becoming a magnet for, well, for everyone and with every kind of dream, and dream thwarted, imaginably. Ellroy has moved up to set him material in the 1950s when, in the aftermath of the great post-World War II expansion, the place was the stuff of dreams, the stuff to cash in on. And that is a basic premise behind the plot here, as well as the usual human motives that drive crime novels in general. The plot centers on L.A.'s finest, represented by three distinctly different types of cops, uncovering (and occasionally covering up) present crimes, in their also very distinct ways- you know the usual murder, mayhem, pornography, drugs, prostitution but also, of necessity coming up against an age-old crime from the 1930s. Thus an on the face of it inexplicable mass murder at a diner pinned on three black men turns out to be a five hundred page look, and a revised look at an older crime. And in the process it dives into human greed, police corruption, political appetites, vengeance, sadism, and just plain perversity. At five hundred pages it may be a bit too long to carry the plot but Mr. Ellroy has put a few nice twists in to keep us guessing for a while, always an important test for a crime novel.

No question that Mr. Ellroy has professional police language, motivation, angst down pretty well and can tell a story. My problem off of reading this first book is that using the three professional city cops (Bud, Edward, Jack) approach to the plot doesn’t have the same feel as getting inside private investigator Phillip Marlowe’s motivation for his keeping on tilting at windmills even after taking his usual several beatings in his search for justice. None of the characters here “spoke” to me in that sense. Maybe L.A. crime is just too big a story to be amenable to what comes down to a police procedural. More later.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-“The Dark Corner”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir, The Dark Corner.

DVD Review

The Dark Corner, Clifton Webb, Lucille Ball, William Bendix, Mark Stevens, directed by Henry Hathaway, 1946

As I have mentioned before at the start of other reviews in this crime noir genre I am an aficionado, especially of those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background and shadowy moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh ya, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, The Dark Corner, is under that former category.

And here is why. The dialogue, even though the film itself was under the direction of Henry Hathaway a more than competent noir director, if not of the first order, is, well, way too smaltzy for a good crime noir. First off the love interest between the framed-up detective, Brad Galt (played by Mark Stevens), and his girl Friday secretary (played by Lucille Ball) is played up front and without subtly and lacks the dramatic cat and mouse build-up of classic noirs. In any case whatever Ms. Ball’s later recognized talents as a screw-ball comic, and they were considerable, here as a lower-class "good girl" with all the right morals, all the right world-wiseness for her joe, and all the right instincts to stand by her man set my teeth on edge. That lack of tension between two such leading characters spills over into the rest of the doings. This one does not even have the cutesy “Oh, you devil Sam” of Sam Spade and his girl Friday secretary, Gladys, in The Maltese Falcon.

A little summary of the plot line is in order to demonstrate that lack of tension. Said detective is being framed again in New York (and had already been framed before, although not in New York but San Francisco) by, he believes, his SF ex-detective agency partner. That, however, is merely a blind ruse used by a certain high-powered high society art dealer (played, naturally, by Clifton Webb, a central casting fit for such a role if there every were one), an art dealer with a young wife. After all the other misdirection this one was telegraphed the minute that we see the “divine” pair together, and that fact is cemented when we see said ex-partner and lovely trophy wife ready to take off right under the nose of Mr. High Society. But a high society art dealer, with a young wife or not, does not get where he is without a strong possessive desire and so the frame is on and our detective is made to fit the frame, and fit it very easily until our real culprit is discovered and dealt with. And dealt with forthrightly, as all overwrought, possessive older husbands are dealt with in noir. By the pent-up hatred of that trophy wife, after she finds out that dear hubby has killed her man. You don’t need to know much more to know what that will mean, or that the framed guy and his good girl Friday will eventually walk down the aisle together. Doesn’t this sound a little too familiar? Like, maybe a low-rent Laura in spots? Hmm.

Note: Clifton Webb, as mentioned above, seems to have been a gold-plated central casting stereotype for the repressed, possessive, and, well, psychopathic high-powered high society swell with an eye (or maybe two eyes) for lovely young women. As seen here, and more famously, in the classic crime noir, Laura. Apparently Mr. Webb never learned that those 1940s lovelies may be wily enough to latch on to a rich man for fame and fortune but are a little headstrong about being roped in, roped in completely by, well, an old lecher, high class or not. It doesn’t take a Mayfair swell to know this is not a country for old men. Any young joe could have told him that.