It's possible to say that Chandler's stories seem believable
today because
the world they depict seems like some exotic golden age these
days. A
fantasy world that might actually have existed. Hell, we're
talking about
LA after all . . . it's still some sort of fantasy
world.
I'd say it's possible for the quixotic PI to be believable in
our own time
because -- if you watch the (often sensationalized) news and
read about the
unbelievable stuff that happens every day -- you can argue
that we
apparently live in a very similar or frighteningly more
bizarre fantasy
world ourselves. Road rage and commuter shooters, drug gang
wars, husbands
and wives contracting hits on their spouses or neighbors or
their
children's rivals, murder-suicides, terrorist bombings . . .
the world may
be, in some metaphoric sense, a smaller place, but it's
jam-packed with
craziness. And the PI's place in literature has always been
to bring order
out of chaos. That's what readers still are looking for -- a
folk tale in
which every thing is turned aright at the end. -- Duane
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