>> > Doesn't Marlowe at one point say something
like "He snarled and
>> > called me something nasty." Would that
sentence really have been
>> > better if Chandler had written: "He called
me a motherfucking
>> > asshole."
What this says to me is that Marlowe feels contempt for the
man's attitude and discounts his statement for that reason.
"He called me a motherfucking asshole" is specific enough to
imply that Marlowe had paid attention to the statement - it
meant something, or worried him. Good dialogue is constructed
to reveal things about the character who is speaking. It
gives him/her away. A word like "nigger" has very different
(full) meanings according to who is speaking and the
historical and cultural context, and it's all necessary to
the story -- or should be.
>When it comes to faux hardboiled or
pretentious
>hardboiled or humorless hardboiled, I'd rather read
Agatha Christie.
Yup!
Marianne
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