War Noir: Raymond Chandler and the Hard-Boiled Detective as Veteran in American Fiction by Sarah Trott

Author:Sarah Trott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

TRACING MARLOWE’S LINEAGE

When tracing Marlowe’s lineage it is interesting to note that although the detectives in Chandler’s short stories project some of his own posttraumatic symptoms, his characters are not only connected to war by their behavior or psychology. The connection to war is far more explicit and can be traced through the development of the detectives themselves. As well as being recognized by their symptoms, it is also feasible to link the names Chandler gave certain detectives and correlate these names with Chandler’s own experiences and influences. His various detectives—Mallory, Malvern, and Marlowe—each has specific connections to Chandler’s background, to war, and to the notion of chivalry.

Philip Marlowe’s character is the synthesis of a chivalric lineage that began with Chandler’s first detective, Mallory. In Chandler’s first two stories he gave his detective this name probably in veneration of Sir Thomas Malory and honoring his tales of Le Morte d’Arthur. His detective is epitomized by his romantic attitudes and chivalric codes that seem to flow directly from the tales of King Arthur and his gallant Knights of the Round Table. The knights’ virtues are a fair summation of the moral code that Chandler gave to his fictional detectives. Chandler had studied Shakespeare, Addison, and Milton at Dulwich, and had a deep appreciation of English literature, which MacShane argues, “helped mold his own character” (Life 9) and which he would later bestow on his detective creations. Chandler cherished the education he had received at Dulwich, particularly in the classics, and this helps explain why his detective has been perceived as a modern-day knight. The knight’s code is one of fearlessness and honor through self-sacrifice, and it would have been natural that in a number of the stories and novels Chandler’s detectives would be powerfully drawn to the knightly symbols they encounter during their investigations. These scenes conjure up the pageantry of medieval quests of courage and heroism, which are regularly included in Chandler’s short stories and later transposed directly into his novels. In the short story “The Curtain,” for example, detective Carmady notices “several suits of time-darkened armour on pedestals of dark wood. High over the huge marble fireplace hung two bullet-torn—or moth eaten—cavalry pennants crossed in a glass case, and below them the painted likeness of a thin, spry-looking man with a black beard and moustachios and full regimentals of about the time of the Mexican War” (qtd. in Killer in the Rain 110). In another example, from The Big Sleep, while calling at General Sternwood’s mansion Marlowe notices “a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair” (9). In keeping with the chivalric side of his character, Marlowe exclaims: “The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there

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