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RARA-AVIS: Opening Lines (fwd)



Eddie Duggan sent this around before the archiving started, so I'm
sending it out again in order that a copy will be stored for posterity.

-- 
William Denton : buff@vex.net     <-- Please note new address.
Toronto, Canada                   <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/         Caveat lector.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 5 Jan 1997 15:18:19 -0500
From: E J M Duggan <106156.565@compuserve.com>
Reply-To: rara-avis@icomm.ca
To: rara-avis LIST <rara-avis@icomm.ca>
Subject: RARA-AVIS: Opening Lines

The 'Welcome to the List' blurb said

>> It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the
>> sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the
>> foothills.  I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie
>> and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue
>> clocks on them.  I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care
>> who knew it.  I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought
to
>> be.  I was calling on four million dollars.
        - opening lines to _The Big Sleep_, by Raymond Chandler

OK, so if we're trynig to define 'hard-boiled' --- and I can't think of a
better way to kick-off this list---let's look at Chandler's opening passage
(I know _TBS_ isn't generally deemed RC's 'best' as a novel, but despite
all the shortcomings that derive from boilerplating three or four short
stories into a novel, it does, at the risk of evoking bishops and
actresses, have a *pretty snappy* opening passage).

The time of day: Chandler's dick is not an early riser (it's OK, sit down
Herr Freud, I know what I'm saying), no 9:00 - 5:00 world this, Marlowe was
probably sleeping off a bottle that went inside or upside his head ;-)

'The sun not shining' undercuts itself with the unexpected 'not' of the
description. This undercutting is repeated in the more developed
description of the narrator, beginning with dress (BTW, just what shade is
*powder blue*?  Is it like, light, amphetamine blue, the colour of snooker
chalk?  Or doe Marlowe's powder come in a deeper shade, more akin to IBM?)
and building toward 'neat, clean, shaved and sober', each descriptive term
building upon the previous, conventionally, these are *not* the terms
narrators describe themselves in: narrators are always 'neat' and 'clean',
it goes without saying (can you imagine Virginia Woolf telling us this!?!)
as should the 'shaved --- _pace_ VW ;-) --- and of course the 'sober':
surely 'sober' is only worthy of inclusion because it is notable, as are
the other adjectives.  So we have a rather striking picture --- a
self-image, for it is generated by the narratror himself --- building up of
a narrator who is *not usually* 'neat, clean, shaved and sober': if he were
he would hardly be telling us.  Moreover, the as-yet-nameless first-person
narrator, who also describes himself as a private detective is telling us
something about himself with the tag 'and I didn't care who knew it': His
general outlook, or state of mind, is neatly condensed into this single
sentence.

There is a cynism apparent in the metaphoric final sentence: 'I was calling
on four million dollars.'   Not a name, or a place, but a value, in terms
of wealth, capital accumulation.  The unshaven drunk, bit-of-a-bum PI is
moving out of his social and economic league, and we can probably guess
from this opening passage that class, or perhaps wealth, conflict will
provide one of the key features of this narrative.

We could probably generalise from here to say that this feature is
characteristic of the hard-boiled style.

One other noticable feature of this passage is the recurring 'I'; Private
Eye or private 'I'?  There may be a self-centred, self-obsessed trait
apparent in the author/narrator/style/genre that is clearly evident in the
subjective nature of the concentration of the narrative on the 'I.  This
narrator is perhaps over-emphasising the self in an attempt to fix what may
be in doubt: his own sense of self, and the his identity, that is,
self-as-subject, the unified, centred subject that is the fulcrum of the
narrative, and who will, we may suggest, come increasingly under pressure
--- in terms of unity, of for example, identity or of sexuality,  as the
narrative continues.

OK, so here we have what may be a couple of the defining characteristics of
'hard boiled' writing.
But is Chandler for real?  He's writing what, a generation after Hammett,
Daly and the other early proponents of the style which developed in the
pages of _The Black Mask_ ?  Hasn't Chandler *read* this stuff?  So how
much of what he writes, through the drunken, snobbish haze that is so
apparent in his correspondence (see Chandler's letters, _Raymond Chandler
Speaking_ Gardiner & Walker eds) to acquaintances and publishers, is 'real'
and how much is a *parody* of the material Chandler effects to despise?

We can't really answer such a question, but we can identify it as something
to be borne in mind as the discussion develops.  

A couple of Hammett's opening lines might be worth brief consideration:

'It was a wandering daughter job.' ('Fly Paper', 1929)

Samuel Spade said, "My name is Ronald Ames." ('They Can Only Hang You
Once', 1932)

The cynicism of hard-boiled is here, and of course there is humour (which
is evident also in the Chandler passage) but the terseness of Hammett's
phrasing has an effect that is entirely absent, I would suggest, from
Chandler's overblown prose.

A comaprison of first-person narrative in Chandler and Hammet would stand
further exploration, but for my money, Hammett 'walked the walk' and
'talked the talk' of the 'hard boiled' dick, it was only *writing* that
caused him problems from about the early-mid 1930s.  Chandler on the other
hand, had quite different set of baggage to declare, with a variety of
unfulfilled aspirations: a wife old enough to be his mother, a drink
problem that got him fired from a 'respectable' job, and literary
aspirations that weren't satisfied or helped by the chip he kept on his
shoulder.

We might see that later, so called 'neo-boiled' writing, or hard-boiled
writing which foregrounds a woman's or a feminist point of view develops
further the parodic aspect that must surely come when one *writes after* a
style has been set for so long that it is deifficult (as with Chandler) to
see just where the genre ends and the parodies begin.

Just my two cent's worth, 

Eddie Duggan








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