Is the fictional character Marlowe identified as a vet at any
point? I
don't remember a place; it probably would've been mentioned
in "The Long
Goodbye," where Terry's war experiences are so important in
what he is and
does. I ask the same question about Spade. As someone less
immersed than
many on the list, I really want to know.
IF NOT, what we are talking about is a shared vision,
something more
cultural (or from author to character, if you like). Long ago
(2 years?),
we had an interesting and inconclusive discussion of what
Chandler might
have gained from Hemingway--or vice versa. "Soldier's Home,"
which
locates the disillusionment more with "home" than the war
itself, and deals
with the inability to feel, the danger of feeling for someone
else (a
girl), sets up a kind of character who might turn into a
P.I.
So I'm not disagreeing with the thrust of the GI/PI argument;
just trying
to qualify it. By the time Chandler started writing, the
disillusionment
had become a cultural phenomenon, fueled by Remarque,
Hemingway, Sassoon,
Dos Passos and T.S. Eliot, among others.
And so, we're back to the exact composition of that first
kettle of water
that hard-boiled the eggs we love to read about. I would
suggest that
prohibition & gangsters after the Great War, and the
excesses of big
business (strikebreaking) and radical critiques of business
before WWI were
also ingredients.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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