***Once Again Out In The Raymond Chandler Night- The Late Crime Novels 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Book Review

Raymond Chandler: Later Novels And Other Writings, Raymond Chandler, The Library Of America, New York, 1995 

I can remember a number of years ago trying, desperately trying, to find a copy of Raymond Chandler’s Lady In The Lake (Amazon did not have it) and having to go through many hoops to find a copy at an oasis bookstore when I was travelling out in high desert around Joshua Tree out in California. Normally I don’t feel compelled discuss my book-buying activities, and I hope nobody but bibliophile Larry McMurtry feels compelled to regale one and all with their truly tragic stories. He will draw a pass in these quarters, all others step back. However in reviewing the volume under discussion, the Library Of America’s compilation of Raymond Chandler’s late novels, including the aforementioned Lady In The Lake I have to pay homage to the work this publishing house has done both to make some hard to find works readily available in one location and to get some past writers of note their due. And in the category of the crime novel, and I would argue the novel in general, Raymond Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, turned the ho-hum detective story in a serious literary genre.    

Of course when speaking of Chandler’s reputation as a crime novelists one cannot do so unless one speaks of the seven novels (four of them complied here) of the Philip Marlowe, Private Detective series (operative, shamus, gumshoe, keyhole-peeper, private dick, or whatever you call guys working for too little dough and too many hits in your neighborhood) which anchors the work in this volume. (The other major piece, Chandler’s screenplay for the film adaptation of master crime novelist in his own right James M. Cain’s noir classic Double Indemnity is worth the price of admission itself.)

Marlowe, Marlowe tough, no-nonsense, driven by a fierce desire to see some rough- hewn justice in this wicked old world done, not afraid to chase a few windmills, a few dames, attached or otherwise, and take a few shots of bottom drawer whiskey, a  punch or two, even an occasional wayward slug for the good of the cause. Yes, that Marlowe who over his book-strewn career has seen it all, done it all out in the, what did one reviewer call them, oh yeah, the slumming sunny streets of Los Angeles back before the town became really crazy. When a man like Marlowe could work his work without the looneys, Okies, sodbuster and wannabe starlets and stringers pushing him out of the limelight.   

Oh yah, about Raymond Chandler, about the guy who wrote this series Marlowe stories. Like I said in earlier he, along with Brother Dashiell Hammett turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the day (the late 1920s-1930s-1940s) on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys.

[Hammett, for those who don’t know and should, the author of The Thin Man, and creator of The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade, maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Sam, who come to think of it like Marlowe, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, women wearing that damn perfume that stops a man, even a hard-boiled detective man cold, although not an assortment of Hollywood women who breezed by Marlowe but one up north in Frisco town.]

In Chandler’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe Marlowe’s environment much in the way a detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. Marlowe was able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped him from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. He also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over Marlowe’s eyes. Or noticing a frayed collar or a misshapen dress that indicated that a guy or gal was on cheap street and just maybe not on the level, maybe scratching like crazy for his or her coffee and cakes.

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, Hollywood starlet wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account night clerk or elevator man job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap jack offices in rundown building s on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down on your fragile head. (That spill your guts thing, by the way a trait that our Marlowe seems organically incapable of doing, except when it suited his purposes. No cop or gangster could force anything out of him, and they tried, believe me they tried. ) He had come from them, from the cops, from the D.A.s office in the old days, had worked with them on plenty of cases but generally he tried to treat them like one might a snake, not quite sure whether it is poisonous or not.

At the same time Chandler was a master of setting the details of the space Marlowe had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). He had a fix on the museum-like quality of the big houses, the places like General Sternwood’s in The Big Sleep or Mrs. Murdock’s in The High Window reflecting old wealth California. And he has a razor sharp sense of the arrivisite, the new blood all splash and glitter, all high-ceiling bungalow, swimming pools, and landscaped gardens.

But where Chandler made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, the mansions of old time Los Angeles Bunker Hill turned to rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny- ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary into Marlowe’s mouth. Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War II in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night (check The Long Goodbye Little Sister and Playback here for plenty of that). The rise of the corner boys hanging, just hanging, around blasted storefronts, a few breaking off into the cranked up hot rod hell’s highway night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun while taking over the vast crime markets. The wannabe starlets ready to settle for less than stardom for the right price. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. And above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended old Marlowe’s code of honor.

And of course over a series of books Chandler expanded the Marlowe character, expanded his range of emotions, detailed his growing world-weariness, his growing wariness, and his small compromises with that code of honor that he had honed back in the 1930s. Yes, Marlowe the loner, the avenging angel , the righter of wrongs, maybe little wrongs but wrongs in this wicked old world. The guy who sometimes had to dig deep in his office desk drawer to grab a shot or six of whiskey to help him think things through. Marlowe the guy of a thousand punches, the guy of a hundred knocks on the head, the guy who had taken a more than one slug for the cause, the guy who was every insurance company’s nightmare and a guy who could have used some serious Obamacare health insurance no questions asked . Yah, Marlowe.