My two cents (from my dissertation) on the stories that
Michael brings up... Please excuse the length.
Chandler's third story was "Finger Man," published in Black
Mask in October of 1934. The protagonist in the tale is
unnamed, though he was "identified" as Philip Marlowe in
1950's The Simple Art of Murder. Leaving the detective
nameless might reflect yet another literary debt to Dashiell
Hammett, who had already achieved great success with his own
unnamed detective (dubbed
"the Continental Op"). "Finger Man" is the first story that
Chandler said that he "felt at home with" (Selected Letters
187). The reason for this statement is not entirely clear.
Peter Wolfe says that though Chandler says he was "at home"
with the story, this "ease and confidence isn't felt by the
reader" (101). In particular, Wolfe faults the "overcrowding"
of the story with "mayhem and murder" at the expense of
character development (102). William Marling agrees, finding
the story itself rather unremarkable and faulting the lack of
"significant tensions and female characters" (Raymond
Chandler 53). In marked contrast to Wolfe and Marling, Tom
Hiney calls
"Finger Man" Chandler's "first memorable" story, praising
Chandler's improved pacing, characters, and imagery
(84).
Regardless of the relative literary worth of "Finger Man,"
the most significant change in Chandler's style that this
story marks seems to be the use of first-person narration, a
trademark of each of his novels. Traditional British-style
detective stories do not work well with first-person
narration by the detective (as the few examples by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes as narrator-rather than
Watson-painfully illustrate); Chandler's brand of hard-boiled
detective fiction, with its emphasis upon character and mood
over carefully crafted plot, fits the use of first person
ideally. The shift away from plot that largely distinguishes
hard-boiled detective fiction from that of the traditional
form is inherently modernist; Fredric Jameson, in "On Raymond
Chandler," called the first wave of modernism "a reaction
against narration, against plot" (66).
"Spanish Blood" (Black Mask, November 1935) represents a
significant move towards the Marlowe novels. In fact, much of
the finer thematic elements of The Big Sleep may in fact
originate in "Spanish Blood." Chandler considered this story
to be one of his best (Raymond Chandler Speaking 218).
Critical opinion of this story varies widely, with Marling
calling it "well constructed and paced" (Raymond Chandler 54)
and Wolfe dismissing it by faulting its "cheating" plot
(113). Such seemingly contradictory opinions aside, "Spanish
Blood" represents a milestone in Chandler's narrative
development. The hero is a police detective named Sam
Delaguerra. Though this story was indeed reprinted in several
of the short story collections, the name of the protagonist
was never changed. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there
are simply too many references to the hero's ethnicity. For
example, Delaguerra tells Commissioner Drew, "My blood is
Spanish, pure Spanish" (295). What distinguishes Delaguerra
from Chandler's earlier protagonists is that this is the
first of the cynical idealists. Delaguerra, as Marling
observes, is "a hero with a code" (Raymond Chandler 56).
Delaguerra's name means "of the war," and the war that he is
fighting is the struggle to maintain his code. Police
detective Pete Marcus states this view of Delaguerra
explicitly: "'Listen,' he said thickly, not looking up, 'this
is a job to me. That's all it is. A living. I don't have any
ideals about this police work like you have'" (293). No one
else in Delaguerra's world has these ideals; Delaguerra is a
Spanish hero in a culture that no longer understands such
heroism, perhaps making him a twentieth-century Don
Quixote
(and an obvious proto-Marlowe).
In "Spanish Blood," Delaguerra is investigating the murder of
an old friend, Donegan Marr. Complicating matters is the fact
that Delaguerra once loved Belle Marr, Donegan's wife (and
now widow). Delaguerra eventually realizes that Belle Marr
committed the crime, but that Donegan Marr's dying act was an
attempt to hide the fact that his own wife murdered him.
Respecting his friend's wishes, Delaguerra agrees to go along
with a cover up; Commissioner Drew tells Delaguerra, "For the
good of the department, man, and the city-and ourselves, it's
the only way to play it" (316). Delaguerra agrees-on the
condition that it gets played exactly the way that they have
agreed. It is significant that Chandler describes
Delaguerra's voice as
"dead" as he agrees to the cover up, perhaps implying that
something within Delaguerra has been killed. This prefigures
Marlowe's realization at the close of The Big Sleep when he
says, "Me, I was part of the nastiness now"
(764). As Marlowe does later, Delaguerra decides to make the
best of the fact that he is no longer a model of the code,
saying, "Got the badge back
[. . .]. "It's not quite as clean as it was. Clean as most, I
suppose. I'll try to keep it that way" (318). This might be
seen as a statement of redemption, at least in part;
Delaguerra, another pre-modern hero on a modernist quest for
truth, had been teetering dangerously on a postmodern
precipice, but he has regained his balance. Although Chandler
defines the hard-boiled hero (in "The Simple Art of Murder")
as a man who is "neither tarnished nor afraid" (992), it
seems that Delaguerra is, like Marlowe after him, a knight
with tarnished armor. As such, "Spanish Blood" is a major
turning point in the development of Chandler's chivalrous
hero.
Chandler returned to the character of Carmady and the use of
first-person narrative in "Goldfish" (Black Mask, June 1936).
Peter Wolfe, who calls this
"Chandler's best short work" (113), contends that it "fuses
morality and art more convincingly than does any other
Chandler title" (115). Chandler apparently agreed that
"Goldfish" had merit, because he writes in a 1939 notebook
entry that it might be worth using in a later novel (Raymond
Chandler Speaking 208), though he never followed through on
this impulse. The story's greatest strengths are
well-developed characters, a sound plot, and a strong sense
of place. The last of these traits is one of Chandler's
strengths throughout most of his fiction, but is a pleasant
surprise in this story due to the fact that the setting
ranges from California to Washington. Much of the story takes
place in Westport, a quaint little coastal town in northern
California that could hardly be more different than the usual
urban haunts of Chandler's heroes.
"Goldfish" contains one of Chandler's best-developed early
femmes fatales in the character of Carol Donovan, who will
eagerly kill to get what she wants. In this story, what she
wants are the incredibly valuable Leander pearls. One of
Donovan's coconspirators says of her, "She's too damn rough
[. . .]. I've seen hard women, but she's the bluing on the
armor plate" (488). This seems an odd metaphor. Bluing is a
process of heating metal to imbue a blue color and to inhibit
rust. The reference to armor plate might evoke images of
knighthood. In stark contrast to Donovan is, of course,
Carmady himself. Carmady joins the search for the pearls
largely to help his friend, Kathy Horne, a former policewoman
who lost her job when she married a "cheap little check
bouncer" (475). Carmady does find the Leander pearls; Wally
Sype, the man who stole them years earlier (and served a
prison term for the theft), has actually hidden them inside a
pair of Chinese Moor goldfish. After Sype's death, his wife
asks Carmady, "Do you remember the old Bible story of the
scapegoat?" (519). She says that she sees her husband in this
light, but the reader cannot help but think of Carmady as the
true focus of the allusion. This might reinforce the idea of
Chandler's protagonist, who in this story nearly lost his
life to help a friend, as a Christ-figure.
William Marling calls "Red Wind" (Dime Detective Magazine,
January 1938) a
"lesser effort, despite its reputation" (Raymond Chandler
65). Chandler himself, in contrast, told Hamish Hamilton in a
1948 letter that he considered the tale to be one of his best
(Raymond Chandler Speaking 218). Marling is perhaps a bit
harsh in his valuation; "Red Wind" is one of the most fully
developed of Chandler's short stories, with a complete
Chandler hero-a wisecracking, chess-playing,
simile-delivering, chivalrous private detective. Though most
of these elements are present in earlier stories, Peter Wolfe
points out that in "Red Wind" Chandler avoids "stock
characters and settings." This allows Chandler, Wolfe says,
to "write with verve, concentration and conviction" (104).
There are several noteworthy elements to be noted in "Red
Wind." The story concerns a confluence of Chandler's favorite
plot elements-blackmail, a necklace, and pearls. As the title
indicates, Chandler again utilizes weather as a motif. In
this case, the hot, dry Santa Ana winds that plague southern
California autumns are used to foreshadow violence and death.
Calling these winds "red" might evoke thoughts of blood,
passion, violence, and perhaps even communist influence. The
opening paragraph of the story, a description of the wind, is
surely one of the most striking and frequently quoted
passages from Chandler's fiction:
"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of
those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain
passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your
skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a
fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife
and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can
even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
(685)
The story does indeed open with John Dalmas sitting alone in
a cocktail lounge drinking a remarkably full glass of beer.
The only other people present are the young bartender and a
drunk throwing back glasses of straight rye whiskey. The
relative peace of a quiet drink is interrupted when a man
enters and asked if they have seen a tall, pretty brunette
with a
"print bolero jacket over a blue cr갥 silk dress" (687). It
becomes clear that Chandler is implying that this man,
initially identified as Waldo, is homosexual; Dalmas says
Waldo had a white handkerchief that "peeped coyly from his
pocket" (686) and a "tight voice [he] didn't like" (687). The
drunk at the bar, later identified as Al Tessilore,
recognizes Waldo and shoots him. In case the reader did not
pick up on the implication of homosexuality, Dalmas later
muses, "I was thinking that Waldo had described the girl's
clothes in a way the ordinary man wouldn't know how to
describe them. Printed bolero jacket over blue cr갥 silk
dress. I didn't even know what a bolero jacket was"
(692).
One element that is introduced in "Red Wind" is chess as an
interest for the protagonist. Chess as a device of plot,
setting, and theme is developed more fully in The Big Sleep,
published the following year, but in "Red Wind" chess does
play a key role. When Lola Barsaly (the woman in the blue cr갥
silk dress) enters Dalmas's apartment, the first thing she
notices is a chessboard with "a chess problem set out that
[Dalmas] couldn't solve"
(695). Al Tessilore arrives, intent upon killing Dalmas (who
was a witness to Waldo's murder). He also immediately notices
the chess set and assumes that a game in progress means
another person is in the apartment; Lola is indeed still
there, but she is hiding in another room. Dalmas tells
Tessilore, "It's a problem [. . .]. Not a game" (701). It is
not clear what it might mean that Dalmas views chess, with
its war between anachronistic kings, queens, knights, etc.,
as a problem, rather than a mere game. This may be a comment
on the nature of modern (or postmodern) life itself. Chandler
brings this implication to completion in The Big Sleep, but
perhaps he had not quite realized it here. The chessboard is
eventually knocked over when Dalmas subdues Tessilore; Andrew
Mathis suggests the image of scattered chessmen represents a
rejection of certain elements of knighthood, as if
"chivalric rules of combat no longer apply" (49). This may
be, as the only reason that Dalmas is able to defeat
Tessilore is because Lola distracted Tessilore; in other
words, the damsel in distress rescues the knight, an obvious
inversion of the traditional pattern of romance
narratives.
Dalmas is shown to be a brave and chivalrous hero. After he
witnesses Tessilore kill Waldo and flee, Dalmas runs after
him without thought of his own safety. Tessilore is already
driving away; Dalmas tells the reader, "I got its license the
way I got my first million" (688). His noble nature is
demonstrated through his relationship with Lola. After Lola
distracts Tessilore in Dalmas's apartment (allowing Dalmas to
disarm and subdue Tessilore), Dalmas tells Lola, "That buys
me," I said. Anything I have is yours - now and forever"
(705). Lola asks Dalmas to find a pearl necklace that Waldo
(whom she knows as Joseph) has stolen. The pearls were a gift
from a now-dead lover named Stan Phillips. Dalmas does find
the pearls, but they are high-quality fakes-Bohemian glass.
To prevent Lola from ever discovering this fact, Dalmas has
another set of fakes made up with the original (and
distinctive) clasp. Lola assumes that Waldo/Joseph sold the
originals. Dalmas then drives to the ocean and throws the
original pearls into the water. The only logical reason for
Dalmas to do all this is to protect Lola's memory of
Phillips; Marling criticizes this as "excess sentiment" that
"torpedoes the tale" (Raymond Chandler 66), but it does
establish Chandler's hero as a knight who will do whatever he
must to protect his lady fair.
One final element in "Red Wind" that demands attention;
Chandler's use of racial stereotype seems more sophisticated
in its rhetorical effect. The story is a mixture of various
ethnicities: Caucasian, Hispanic, and Russian. One might
expect a pulp story from the 1930s to conform to a largely
negative portrayal of ethnic Otherness, but that is not the
case here. In what I posit represents a pattern in Chandler's
novels, "Red Wind" is the first of his stories where he
manipulates cultural stereotype to alternately fulfill and
thwart his readers' expectations. Chandler creates almost a
caricature of the foreign Other in the character of Eug鮩e
Kolchenko. Kolchenko is the mistress of Lola Barsaly's
husband, who calls her a "white Russian [that he] met in
Shanghai" (724). Though she is Russian-which perhaps plays on
the readers' fears of communism-Kolchenko is herself a
menagerie of foreign markers. She wears "miniature temple
bells" as earrings
(719). Her home has a tiger skin, a few Navajo rugs, and a
few Turkish rugs on the floor. Other decorations include a
Chinese screen and a tall Chinese lantern. Finally, she
speaks in an absurd accent that sometimes sounds as German as
it does Russian, which is perhaps what prompts Dalmas to
say,
"Snap out of it, Nazimova" (720). Kolchenko delivers lines
such as "We-el, what ees it, little man? You want sometheeng?
You are lost from the bee-ootiful party across the street,
hein?" (719) and "Goddam, these hot wind make me dry like the
ashes of love" (725). Further complicating her apparent
ethnicity is that fact that "Hein?" is a French word meaning
"huh?"
.
In stark contrast to Eug鮩e Kolchenko's absurd parody of
foreignness is one of the two police detectives in the story,
Detective Ybarra. Ybarra is Mexican, while his partner
Copernik is Caucasian. Based on the other ethnic portrayals
in "Red Wind"-Miss Kolchenko and a dead Uruguayan hustler
named Leon Valesanos, for example-one might reasonably expect
Copernik to be the better of the two police detectives. By
the end of the story, though, it becomes clear that Copernik
is a stupid, brutal, unethical brute of a cop, while Ybarra
is thoughtful, intelligent, and trustworthy. Throughout the
story, Copernik calls Ybarra "guinea," a racial slur usually
directed at those of Italian descent; Copernik is, therefore,
too ignorant to be even a good racist. While Chandler may
simply be trying to surprise his readers by straying from
their expectations of racial stereotype, this sort of ethnic
portrayal lends credence to the idea that Chandler was not
the unapologetic racist that some have suggested.
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