There used to be a campaign in Britain to sell eggs, it had a slogan "Go to work on an egg". Now some of you like your eggs runny, and I am particularly fond of the yolky eggs that one can dip a soldier into (a soldier being a thin strip of toast with butter on it), but sometimes I'll have it hard-boiled. I guess if you were to sell the eggs today, you could have a mug shot of Nelson Algren, the quintessential hard-boiled writer from Chicago. Now Nelson was who the existentialists called in when there was a dispute over the meaning of life. Hard. Oh yes hard, but sweet on Simone de B. As you sit at your breakfast table taking in the latest news on the radio or tv or on the screen of your computer, you might take a break from the hard-core reality of a majorly fucked up world, and read some fiction. Nothing to take your mind off crime than reading crime fiction, or as they put it in the 1940's, a crime mystery. I have at my side "a genuine pock book mystery" by Raymond Chandler. It has a picture of a bald guy, and a hand lifting off a wig (toupee). Someone has kindly stuck what looks like a screwdriver (actually an icepick) into his neck. In the top left hand corner, the Pocketbook kangeroo, bless her heart seems all too cheerful about the guy's demise. For those of the 1970's, that red slip with a reference to Bay City tucked under the wig, might suggest the guy was killed for his lack of taste in youth bands. Since there is no tartan scarf in view, and the book was originally published in 1949, we can be assured that this cultural relativism can be put to rest immediately. As we breath a sigh of relief, we can move on to the title, "The Little SÃster". Is that some clue or what? Well maybe. Maybe not. The slip or receipt seems to be one. The wig/toupee another. For darn sake are they spoiling everything? Then just to make sure you haven't hatched out your own scenario, they give you a cast of characters. If you go through those alone you might hazard (I like this word) a guess at who or what did what. I like the little bios, for instance:
G.W. Hicks
A sensitive type who doesn't like to be seen without his toupee
Mr Flack
House detective at Hotel Van Nuys; his salary is small and his cupidity great..
The guys or gals writing this stuff really soaked up the hard-boiled style! But they are amateurs. Wait until the supremo starts . We start with the door of the private dick. This is a wonderful entry, full of Chandler's powers of description and laconicism.
The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black pain: "Philip Marlowe...Investigations." it is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization. The door is locked, but next to it is another door with the same legend which is not locked. Come on in- there's nobody in here, but me and a big bluebottle fly. But not if your're from Manhattan, Kansas. p. 1
Look how much Chandler packs into that paragraph. Firstly, he introduces the hero and his occupation, gives an idea of the layout and environs of the office, tells you something about the character's cynicism. Provides you with a brilliant metaphor of what the middle-class strive for - the American Dream ... "the all-tile bathroom". Establishes the style and tone. It is hard and informal. "in the sort of". Sets up an original duet with the hero and a bluebottle fly. Then anticipates what's going to happen next with that geographical oxymoron, "Manhattan, Kansas" What does Genette call this? Analeptic whatever. Now we are still on page one. In the next paragraph Chandler describes the season. Oh yes the season. It is not one of those laborious descriptions with layers upon layers of adjectives. It is cynical to hell:
It was one of those clear, bright summer mornings we get in the early spring in California before the high fog sets in. The rain are over. The hills are still green and in the valley across the Hollywood hills you can see snow on the high mountains.
Economical, terse, but you get the picture. Next he follows this up by hard-boilerizing (what a ridiculous neologism :-))
The fur stores are advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen-year-old virgins are doing a land-office business. And in Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees are beginning to bloom.
Look at how he plays with the constrast between the glamour of HOLLYWOOD and the sleaze associated with it. How he deftly moves from the call houses to the natural description of Californian spring. The purple-blue bloom of the jacaranda tells you this is a warm almost tropical place. So, after taking in the local exotica, Chandler gets straight down to business. Marlowe has to deal with that pesky "bugger" (as President Obama would call it) the bluebottle.
By the way, from my pov, I find the bluebottle and the greenbottle flies to be absolutely disgusting - give me a housefly or better still a greenfly any day. Back to the plot.
I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set. There was a patch of bright sunlight on the corner of the desk and I knew that sooner or later that was where he was going to light. But when he did, I,
end of page one.
He has you on the edge of your seat,what will happen next? And that brilliant cultural association - Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci (1892). Listen for yourself:
Sublime.
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