Blood and Whiskey

I read three of Raymond Chandler's 'short' stories over the weekend. They are more properly novellas being between 50 and 70 pages each. He is a different bird to Hammett, though they inhabit the same cage. The emphasis to my mind is on the malleability of story. Solutions to the various crimes - murder, kidnapping, blackmail - are offered throughout the tales by many different characters, each account plausible until skewered by a new development. Indeed the first tale I read, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', cannot be said to have a definitive solution. This ambiguity of narrative is pure genius. However, sometimes ambiguity covers up the author's own confusion and when during the filming of Chandler's 'The Big Sleep', he was asked about the death of one of the characters (was it murder or suicide?), he himself could never give a satisfactory account.

By the way, Marlowe only turned up in the third tale, 'Finger Man', after two pretty strong predecessors, Mallory and Dalmas (each dealing with blackmail in Hollywood and linked to studio, Eclipse Films), dealt out the lead. And just how much whiskey can a detective drink and still detect? I thought Hammett's Ray and Nora Charles could drink, but Marlowe practically breathes the stuff!

The Chandler stories are in a volume of his collected stories, so it is a bit bulky to carry around. For that reason, I also started reading Cormac McCarthy's 'No Country for Old Men', also knowing that the Coen Brothers' screen adaptation is imminent. It is a while since I read 'Blood Meridian', or 'All the Pretty Horses', and I kind of wondered whether this would be the gentle (slightly uninteresting) style of 'Horses' or the amoral, cataclysmic violence of 'Meridian'. Within ten pages I had my answer. I was reeling from shock. This could be powerful (stomach churning) stuff if the Coen Brothers do it right. Anyhow Chandler's copious fights and gunplay seemed like Agatha Christie when I went back to him, though none the worst for that. I look forward to reading both books.