Chandler comments

From The Rap Sheet. Thanks, Jeff

Anonymous said...

Chandler may have been a racist, I don’t know. But how anyone could suspect so based on what you cite here is beyond me. Chandler was writing realistically. What do you suppose a real-life character like Moose would say on Central Ave. in the 1940’s? “Golly gee, there sure are a lot of African-Americans around here.” ?? You think maybe Chandler should have rewritten Nulty’s dialogue so that it would be more politically correct?

I abhor racism. I’m just not ready to label someone as such based on a few lines from one of their novels. Perhaps many other mystery writers of the period wished they had Chandler’s courage to put real words into the mouths of their characters.

Also, as much as I love him, Bogart was miscast as Marlowe. He was perfect as Sam Spade, but to play Marlowe you need an undertone of innocence/ naiveté. Powell had it. Mitchum and Garner, too. Bogart was far too cynical.

9:00 AM

Blogger Chris said...

Those elements (and a couple others, like the dusky-lipped alcoholic Marlowe questions with a bottle of hooch) definitely made me squirm a bit reading FML, but for the life of me, I couldn't tease out whether the bias was Marlowe's, or Chandler's, or whether Chandler was merely trying to tell it plain. If I recall, not all black characters in the book are treated with disrespect -- but then, one could claim that's the old, "I'm not racist -- I have black friends!" move, so take it with a grain of salt.

I do think you've rushed to conclusions a bit, but there's no doubt that the book contains some thorny racial issues. Of course, Hammett's THE MALTESE FALCON portrayed Joel Cairo in a less-than-flattering light as well, so your assertion that Hammett's work was absent racial bias might be painting with a broad brush.

What I find interesting is the head-on way in which Chandler presented race in FML, particularly when race didn't play nearly as large a role as any of his other works. Whether that was because of a flare-up of personal bias, or a purposeful intent to take on issues of race, I couldn't say.

10:17 AM

Blogger dick adler said...

What Anonymous omits to mention is the language used by Nulty and the Chronicle newshawk.

10:38 AM
Anonymous said...

This is something i think about often when reading my old favorites. However, i once read that Chandler was criticized by his writer peers for being pro-Latino (and it seems they were saying he wasn't racist enough for their liking). I think the racism is readily apparent in James Cain, but in Chandler's work, I don't see it. An author isn't necessarily racist if he is capturing racist thoughts/belief of the area he is writing about. Los Angeles was and still is a very racist place. None of the hard boiled writers truly capture that though because it's not their world, they just walk into it sometimes.

10:49 AM