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RARA-AVIS: Hammett or Hemingway



Jiro: Thanks a lot for the information about the Hammett/Hemingway
connection. There has been so much written about Hemingway (too much,
I'm sure; as a book reviewer of a new piece of Hemingway criticism
said some time ago, "Don't read this book, read Hemingway instead"),
that surely his biographers will discuss Hammett's influence.
Hemingway experts out there have anything to add?

>Yes, Philip Marlow keeps calling one of the Bay City cop Hemingway in
>FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (Chaps. 23-24).  You have to read these chapters to
>understand why.  Very interesting to know how Chandler thought of
>Hemingway.

Last night I got out some of my old paperbacks and found the Hemingway
section in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, that Jiro has mentioned. It is well worth
checking out. Marlowe keeps calling a tough cop "Hemingway." The cop
finally asks him who this Hemingway guy is, anyway. Marlowe responds
in Chap 24:

"A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you
believe it must be good."
(nyone care to speculate about what this means?)
I mentioned yesterday that this section of FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1940)
is a revised piece of an earlier short story, "Bay City Blues,"
which was published in DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE in the mid-1930s.
In this case, the Hemingway angle doesn't come up, and the tough
cop is named De Spain (and he may be the toughest cop in fiction,
quite possibly even more so than some of James Ellroy's creations).
Chandler specialized in cannibalizing his own short fiction for use
in writing his novels. His biographer, Frank MacShane, discusses
this technique in depth (though it has been years since I read
his THE LIFE OF RAYMOND CHANDLER, published in 1976).
   Richard King, who would like to join the Hard-Boilers
in conversation over some of Jiro's bourbon some day.

rking@vunet.vinu.edu
http://rking.vinu.edu

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