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March 2012 | Pi Newspaper focus@pimedia.org.uk


Philip Marlowe: a tough egg to crack Fay Donovan explores Raymond Chandler’s “hardboiled” detective fiction


IN THE mid-1920s a typically


American style of crime writing emerged that came to be known as “hardboiled” fiction. This literary fashion was later to be taken up and refined by Raymond Chandler. However, Chandler’s motives for beginning a writing career were not to place his artistic stamp upon this realm of crime fiction – which he indeed did – but rather to improve his dismal financial circumstances in the light of the Great Depression. From such mercantile


beginnings was created the now distinctive yet still titillating world where violence and sex are rife and the law both scarce and incompetent. At the centre of this world Chandler placed what was not so fondly referred to in his novels as the “dick”, or private investigator, Philip Marlowe. Marlowe became a main


feature in Chandler’s novels as his character continued to be at hand to hire and solve the conundrums of others whilst remaining a mystery himself. Although the sleazy hotel rooms,


smoky cocktail bars and lascivious women, usually always in possession of a gun, fit the “hardboiled” category, Philip Marlowe’s character is unique. Apart from his inveterate love of Camel cigarettes, one of the main noticeable traits of Marlowe’s character is his abundant supply of quick-witted retorts that he seems unable to restrain, whether or not to his detriment. Even when facing a gun Marlowe remains undeterred in having his say with indifferent and often comic aplomb. Far from suffering the public


ignominy of being left speechless following a particularly cutting remark, Marlowe is blessed with the eternal answer. It is an admirable virtue that many do not possess. Amongst this dismal crowd are such prominent figures as Diderot and Rousseau, the former coining the term l’espirit de l’escalier to accommodate the affliction. It is a beautifully illustrative phrase which captures the scene in which the bouts of speechlessness would often, for Diderot, occur. Upon leaving a dinner party after being verbally attacked and found wanting, Diderot would find himself having reached the bottom of the staircase with the perfect answer only too late; hence, l’espirit de l’escalier. However, for private detective


Philip Marlowe this is rarely the case. Through the beneficial position afforded only to an author of any kind, Chandler is able to exercise


‘You lay off my toupee, if


you know what’s good for you,’ he shouted. ‘I wasn’t going to eat it,’ I said,


‘I’m not that hungry.’ He took a step towards me, and


dropped his right shoulder. A scowl of fury dropped his lip almost as far. ‘Don’t hit me. I’m insured,’ I


told him.” Gratifyingly enough it is the


aforementioned toupee which is to later head the intrigue throughout the rest of the novel (pun very much intended). Throughout the series, told from


the perspective of Philip Marlowe, both the dialogue, as well as his internal line of conscience, offer more to your typical investigative novel. Chandler is careful to ensure that Marlowe is distanced from the more official police intstituion, in order to create an attractively roguish yet sensitive and romantically pensive character. When roles are reversed and Marlowe finds himself under the interrogation of the local law he is unyielding in his resolve to protect his clients interests at all costs; he is a rare man of principle and honour placed amongst the members of a corrupt society. The distinct exchanges between


characters offer a range of tones from the profound to the comic and metaphysical to the poetical. Even the chauffeur in Chandler’s seventh Marlowe novel The Long Goodbye is learned in the verses of T.S.Eliot: “I went out and Amos had the


Caddy their waiting. He drove me back to Hollywood. I offered him a buck but he wouldn’t take it. I offered him the poems of T.S.Eliot. He said he already had them.” Chandler’s dialogue adds


what Diderot, and the rest of us, sadly cannot: the ultimate and divine control of both sides of a conversation. The various interrogations, which naturally feature throughout the investigative series, are used by Chandler as an opportunity to display his character’s social prowess in handling the reticent suspects. Far from following the banal procedure of the constabulary, Marlowe’s investigative tactics become an exhibition of wit and ingenuity,


which add another dimension to the archetypal shady private detective. In Chandler’s fifth Philip


Marlowe series, The Little Sister, the private detective is charged with the mission of finding a young lady’s lost brother, Orrin P. Quest, who has presumably become a victim of the “gin and bad air” of those on Idaho Street peddling in marijuana: “‘My name’s Marlowe,’ I said.


‘Philip Marlowe.’ ‘You know something,’ Hicks


said politely, ‘you’re a goddamn liar.’ I laughed in his face. ‘You ain’t getting no place with


that breezy manner, bub. What’s your connexion?’ I got my wallet out and handed


him one of my business cards. He read it thoughtfully and tapped the edge against his porcelain crown. ‘He coulda went somewhere


without telling me,’ he mused. ‘Your grammar,’ I said, ‘is


almost as loose as your toupee.’


a sophistication and intellectual angle to his writing which reflects the curious and intricate plots that make up his narrative. Marlowe’s quick, witty and occasionally caustic tongue offers humour and insight to accompany his startling perception. His “lonely as lighthouses” persona creates a memorable, loveable, and most importantly, human character with which all can, to an extent, relate.


Marlowe’s observations are


rarely wrong, except, however, in his judgement of himself. He states: “when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in business, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life”. In this respect, he is very much mistaken – to Chandler’s innumerable readers, Philip Marlowe is one of a kind.


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