Re Graham Powell's question about characters in Ross
Macdonald's
"The Chill" being inspired by Chandler and his wife, it's
been a while since I read Tom Nolan's well-researched bio of
the author, but I don't recall that connection being
suggested. Though Macdonald certainly did not shy away from
using bits and pieces of real lives. At least one of his
acquaintances thought he, the acquaintance, was the source of
a character. Macdonald's wife, Margaret Millar, was the basis
for one of the backstories in "The Chill." The novel is also
chock full of literary allusions. From
"The Maltese Falcon," for example, we find a character named
Bridget Perrine and a version of the Flitcraft story.
On the subject of "The Chill," a movie version was planned
back in the Seventies -- another in the "Harper" series with
Paul Newman as the detective. Sam Peckinpah was mentioned as
director and Bette Davis was to co-star. Too bad that one
didn't make it to film.
Speaking of inspirations, there is a crimeless Chandler short
story, "A Couple of Writers," in which a once famous author,
a heavy boozer, is living with his currently successful
writer wife in a bucolic setting. It's an extremely
depressing tale with the blocked writer caught in a hopeless,
empty relationship and contemplating suicide. Not much doubt
about the sources there. And they aren't the Chandlers.
Dick Lochte
-- # Plain ASCII text only, please. Anything else won't show up. # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 23 Jan 2004 EST