It's been awhile since I've read all of The Simple Art of
Murder (of course the delirious last two columns are framed
on my wall, encoded in my DNA, inform everything about me,
etc.) but it's my recollection that the essay happily and
praisingly places our Dash in opposition to the neurasthenic
mystery writers of the auld sod, folks whom Chandler felt
were tossing off tales of crime that amounted to little more
than drawing room farce. That said, the aforementioned
delirious last two columns kick-off with "But all this (and
Hammett too) is for me not quite enough." At which point, it
has always seemed to me, he appears to argue that what is
missing from Hammett is something, well, you know, holy. The
last line in the original Atlantic Monthly piece -- and in
the Saturday Review reprint, I think -- but not in any of the
collections in my own mad library is, after all, "such is my
faith."
(It's my faith too, natch; else I wouldn't be harping about
it here.)
Personally, I don't agree with MacShane or -- am I
misunderstanding this? -- you guys -- that Hammett's was the
lesser gift. Certainly, Hammett didn't have Chandler's knack
for comedic metaphor. (But who does? I noted that Roy Blount,
Jr. offered that mantle to a British car writer a couple of
months back. The example he gave -- something like "The 1981
DeLorean had an engine so weak it couldn't pull a hobo off
your sister" -- was pretty damn good, though.) But whatever
H-wood might've done to him, there's a less-than-'fragrant'
edge of authenticity in Hammett that no one -- not even
Chandler -- could miss.
Which brings me -- limpingly -- to the reverse engineering of
Roger Wade. For sure, the L.A. of the time was rife with
hard-drinking writers whom the movies were chewing up and
spitting out at an alarming rate. I don't think we've yet
mentioned William Faulkner. That boy could put it away and he
must've been on the scene, since didn't he write the Hawks
Big Sleep script?
But my point is that I'm betting any one of us on this list
could invent an entire drunk blocked writer with a habit this
very afternoon, based on, now wait for it, no one at all. And
is that not a just-as-viable solution to this case?
Just a thought.
Best,
Mandy
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Jan 2006 EST