Juri wrote:
>I've never done that, since I haven't been interested
in the books so much as
>to have read the later novels. I think it's fine if
Parker and Spenser have
>moved beyond Chandler. Chandler is great, but like
you say 1949 is over.
>(Chandler didn't publish anything in 1949, am I
right?)
_The Little Sister_ was first published in the UK in 1949,
the year the first freeway opened (in California) I believe.
Marlowe doesn't actually travel on a freeway (called a
'super-highway') until _Playback_, so it took Chandler a few
years to realise 1949 was over, but he did. Actually, Marlowe
describes the freeway as a place where he has time to think -
a common description of the difference between modern and
postmodern travel
(see Thomas Pynchon's _The Crying of Lot 49_ for a good
example) - so Chandler also glimpsed the way things were
going: the descriptions of Esmeralda/La Jolla in that novel
are a further lament for a lost, pre-consumer capitalist
past.
Sorry about the rambling - it's a pet subject of mine.
Cheers Chris
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