'Destiny'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
How is this not a truth universally acknowledged?
Because lots of people don't know that? I mean, why should he? Isn't it fair to pick up a book by a renowned but not all that presently trendy author and expect a plot to hang together? Or are people that expert in Chandler before they read him for the first time?
Well, he's been watching noirs for a while, and he is himself a writer and editor who reads a lot, including reading writers writing about other writers, so... yeah, I am mildly surprised that he didn't know the basic geography before plunging in.
I'm not faulting him, exactly -- it's a genre, not mainstream general interest, with its own separate rules and conventions. I'm more amused than anything else (except at the Chandler-bashers, who can go soak their heads), because once you do dig into the genre at all it's such an unremarkable given.
JZ, I love that story about how when they were filming the Big Sleep they couldn't figure out who had killed the driver (I think that is who it was) so they called Chandler, who also had no idea.
Well, he drank. I also don't think the rules mattered a whole hell of a lot. My grandfather used to drink and call for the cancellation of Alfred Hitchcock presents every Sunday. My grandpa's main problem may have been lack of internet. That said, I prefer "The Long Goodbye" to "The Big Sleep." By Chandler standards, it's very cohesive. Hammett lovers dig him, and we pinko communists do have to stick up for each other, but I have to say I like Marlowe better than Sam Spade.
My grandpa's main problem may have been lack of internet.
My grandpa was involved in local politics, and also drank mind-boggling amounts of whiskey. And he would get on the phone, all drunk out of his mind, and call up his politician buddies.
He would have been a terror if he had the internet.
JZ, I love that story about how when they were filming the Big Sleep
Two of the "they" being William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett.
Two of the "they" being William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett.
Yes, I forgot about that part.
You beat me to it, David. I see it as a lot more Brackett than Faulkner. Screenwriting doesn't really suit a man who can write a three-page sentence.
Yes, I forgot about that part.
That's the most interesting part! I'm a big Leigh Brackett fan.
I see it as a lot more Brackett than Faulkner. Screenwriting doesn't really suit a man who can write a three-page sentence.
I reckon he could crank out a wrestling scenario for a Wallace Beery B-picture if called upon.
But yeah, that kind of pulp is right in Leigh's wheelhouse.