----- Original Message ----- From: "JIM DOHERTY" <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com>
>
> The paradigm was actually set years earlier in
the
> first Marlowe short story, "Finger Man,"
which
> predated ORCHIDS by several years. Maybe Chase
never
> read Chandlers short fiction. Who knows? On
the
> other hand, Chandler was often irritated by the
fact
> that the British regarded him as a serious,
important
> writer, while many Americans dismissed him as a
genre
> hack. Perhaps Chase WAS an early admirer.
To me, an inelegantly written, humorless, third person PI
novel (where the PI doesn't even appear until over halfway
through) is fundamentally alien to everything of Chandler's
I've ever read. Maybe I'm missing something.
> > And, Jim, lots of fictional private eyes
operate
> > outside American cities.
> > For a local example, Quintin Jardine's Oz
Blackstone
> > (when he's not in
> > Spain) and Paul Johnston's Quintilian Dalrymple
are
> > both based in Edinburgh.
>
> Lots more don't. The PI story HAS become
more
> international in recent years, but for many
years,
> particularly the years immediately post-Chandler,
it
> was almost exclusively the province of
American
> characters.
That's because it was almost exclusively the province of
American writers. If Chandler had never existed, I suspect
most PI novels would still have been set in the US. But we'll
never know.
> There are always exceptions, but the large number
of
> characters who fit the Marlowe paradigm in
every
> single respect, particularly after "A" movies based
on
> Chandler's novels began to be released in the
post-war
> era, is truly staggering. For many years the
Marlowe
> paradigm seemed almost as rigid a set of standards
as
> the rules governing the writing of
sonnetts.
Inarguably. Anything successful will have its imitators.
Which raises the question: how much of the Marlowe paradigm
is based on the Spade prototype, I wonder?
Al
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