[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
Re: RARA-AVIS: Red Wind: homoerotics & mastubatory
closure
Dear Prof. Eddie,
I really, really like your <take> on this. Just because a writer
doesn't acknowledge something in his writing doesn't mean it isn't
there. But we still need to be careful about interpreting his work in
1997 terms. For instance, has "a string of pearls" always had an
alternative masturbatory meaning? Or is this relatively recent (or more
recent than "Red Wind")? If so, was Chandler coining a phrase? Somehow
I don't think this is likely. Must have been in use at the time of his
writing it for him to use it in the masturbatory sense on purpose (or by
Freudian accident), doncha' think?
Jerry "I Will Spill No Seed Before Its Time" Silverman
e j m duggan wrote:
>
> It seems my reading of 'Red Wind' is 'reading too much' for some
> rara-avisers.
> It might be cosy to hang on to a romantic, reassuring notion of "the
> author's intentions", but that would
> suggest that "the author" is a single unified subject, capable of "knowing"
> and "intention".
>
> If, for example, a particular person --- a writer, say --- has particularly
> strong fears or feelings about
> a particular issue --- homosexuality, say --- that writer might consciously
> deny those fears/feelings
> and even try to keep them from surfacing in his everyday speech and writing
> (particularly in a culture that is homphobic). Unconsciously, he may even
> try to purge them from his thinking.
> Such efforts might be less than successful however.
>
> Freud has taught us that parapaxes (slips of the tongue: 'Freudian slips')
> can reveal otherwise hidden things. It is surely reasonable to be able to
> suggest in this context then that, based on the plentiful examples of
> homoerotic elements in Chandler's writing, *something* is working its way
> to the surface to find manifestation in Chandler's elaborate prose.
>
> Look, for example, at all the opportunities for heterosexual sex in the
> novels that Marlowe declines;
> and his neurotic reaction to the prospect of hetero-sex (he rips up his
> bed after finding Carmen there in _TBS_ ; he can't get away quickly enough
> from Anne Riordan in _F, M L_ ). Marlowe seems not only to be drawn into
> relationships with men (eg Lennox; Red; Moose) but describes those men in
> homoerotically charged terms (all that 'I looked into his eyes' ; 'he was
> worth looking at' and 'he had powerful thighs' stuff).
>
> Oh yes -- I know --- Marlowe is a man of honour. His honour is such that
> none of the available skirt is ever good enough, never what he wants.
> Whose he kidding? Himself? Us? Chandler?
> What is that hard, hot, sticky part of Red's anatomy that Marlowe holds in
> _Farewell, My Lovely_?
> Of course, it's just a hand ;-)
>
> Chandler may not have been consciously aware of the sexual gaminess of his
> writing or of Marlowe, but one doesn''t need to read *too deeply* to find
> it.
> Given all of the above, I'll stand by my reading of Dalmas symbolically
> tossing himself off and ejaculating into the ocean while thinking about a
> fantasy man at the end of 'Red Wind'.
>
> BTW, I teach a course in detective fiction, so I suppose that makes me a
> kind of 'Eng. Lit. Professor' of the nineties --- So where did I get my
> wacky ideas about reading that I pass on to students? From those safe old
> buffers, the Eng. Lit Professors of the 1960s.
>
> Eddie Duggan
>
> -
> # RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
> # to majordomo@icomm.ca
-
# RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
# to majordomo@icomm.ca
References:
[Archives] | [RARA-AVIS]