Re: RARA-AVIS: Re: Spenser

From: Jess Nevins ( jjnevins@ix.netcom.com)
Date: 15 Dec 2000


William Denton wrote:

> On 15 December 2000, James Rogers wrote:
>
> : However the girl does appear in two of the completed novels so it
> : seems fair to include the relationship.
>
> On a related note, in the Fleming/Chandler discussion, Chandler says he's
> got his hero in a bit of a pickle because he's going to get married.
> Fleming asks if that means he's going to have to kill off the wife (which
> Fleming had already done by then to his hero's wife). Chandler said no,
> no, he couldn't do that. If he'd kept on writing, Linda (is it
> Linda?) would have been an important, continuing character.

If.

The point is, though, that Parker did what none of the Chandler wanna-bes did and what Chandler himself didn't do; he went ahead and gave Parker an ongoing relationship, one that wasn't destined to end in one book and which was as real as Parker could make it, involving a non-stereotyped (initially) female character. There may have been precursors to Spenser, but it's Spenser himself that the Parker wanna-bes are copying. It's Parker, not the precursors, who's been influential on the field.

jess

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