{"id":10279,"date":"2023-02-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10279"},"modified":"2023-03-16T07:47:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T11:47:43","slug":"philip-marlowes-leap-into-serious-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10279","title":{"rendered":"Philip Marlowe’s Big Leap"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cPhilip Marlowe has taken his place among characters of American myth, with Natty Bumppo, Captain Ahab, Huckleberry Finn, and Thomas Sutpen,\u201d Apparently myth-deprived, I had to look up Sutpen\u2014protagonist of William Faulkner\u2019s Absalom, Absalom!<\/em> But you knew that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marlowe was elevated to this status by Nasrullah Mambrol in a fascinating essay in Literary Theory and Criticism<\/a> I\u2019d missed until now. Time helps. It\u2019s been sixty-five years since publication of Chandler\u2019s last Marlowe novel, Playback<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mambrol says Chandler believed detective fiction was a heroic form modern readers could believe in. Modern writers, too, since they continue to follow in his footsteps with greater or lesser success. In last year\u2019s The Goodbye Coast<\/em> (my review<\/a>), author Joe Ide erases any doubt about whom he\u2019s emulating by naming his protagonist Philip Marlowe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Establishing a realistic hero in modern times wasn\u2019t an easy decision. The American frontier had disappeared, removing the possibility of stories about the self-reliant loner pitted against the hostile forces of man, beast, and terrain. (I\u2019m ignoring the nomadic Jack Reacher here.) Chandler\u2019s heroes instead inhabit what he termed \u201cthe mean streets,\u201d whether they emerge from a back alley or run past gilded mansions. Says Mambrol, he\u2019s \u201cmore interested in exploring cruelty and viciousness among the very rich than among the people of the streets.\u201d This to me also has many more dramatic possibilities. Characters at the very bottom of the social ladder rarely have much agency. It\u2019s the people higher up in society who do have choices and who make bad ones that interest me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chandler believed strongly in the possibilities of redemption, though many of his contemporaries were shunning that aspect of heroic tradition. Except, Chandler believed, Hemingway. When a character in Farewell, My Lovely<\/em>, asks Marlowe who Hemingway is, he says \u201cA guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marlowe\u2019s instinct is to help society\u2019s victims. This makes him both interesting and vulnerable, and he shields himself with a tough-guy persona, but it\u2019s a pose, in which he wisecracks his way through tricky situations. You\u2019ll recognize his protective impulse in the symbolism deployed in The Big Sleep<\/em>, where a stained glass panel shows a knight in armor rescuing a lady.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all the forces rending the social fabric and leaving gaping holes for corruption to slip through, Marlowe lives and works by one principle: loyalty, especially client loyalty. In the age of chivalry, people believed in rigid established standards of behavior. In modern times\u2014and one might say, increasingly so\u2014there is no common understanding of \u201cgood behavior,\u201d which is why Marlowe developed his own guiding principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this much longer and fascinating essay, Mambrol credits Chandler, particularly The Long Goodbye,<\/em> with marking the transition of the detective novel into \u201cthe realm of serious fiction.\u201d Any crime novels you\u2019ve read lately that make that leap?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPhilip Marlowe has taken his place among characters of American myth, with Natty Bumppo, Captain Ahab, Huckleberry Finn, and Thomas Sutpen,\u201d Apparently myth-deprived, I had to look up Sutpen\u2014protagonist of William Faulkner\u2019s Absalom, Absalom! But you knew that. Marlowe was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels mark a shift from the detective novel as pure entertainment into the more ambitious--and long-lasting--realm of serious fiction.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,1288,54,104],"tags":[2059,306],"class_list":["post-10279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-culture","category-detective","category-the-morgue","tag-philip-marlowe","tag-raymond-chandler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2FN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10279"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10281,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10279\/revisions\/10281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}