Chandler’s Cannibalism

Abstract

Thus contemplates Marlowe, on p. 206 of Farewell My Lovely (FML), during the moment of repose when he is lying in the dark, in a waterfront hotel, waiting for the right time to make his trip to the gambling ships just outside the three-mile limit, and there, with luck, to find the pieces missing from his puzzle. This characteristic soliloquy is in fact a roll-call of nearly every character of importance in the novel, and here, as so often elsewhere, the mental processes of Marlowe seem very close to those of his creator. For Chandler, too, had ‘thought of’ all these characters, and not simply once, but twice in the course of his literary career. First, when he had created them to carry on the action in stories written for Black Mask and Dime Detective Magazine in the mid-1930s and second when, only a few years later, he re-created them and the events with which they were associated, to provide the bulk of Farewell My Lovely.²

I thought of nasty old women beaten to death against the posts of their dirty beds. I thought of a man with bright blond hair who was afraid and didn’t quite know what he was afraid of…. I thought of beautiful rich women who could be had. I thought of nice slim curious girls who lived alone and could be had too, in a different way. I thought of cops, tough cops that could be greased and yet were not by any means all bad, like Hemingway. Fat prosperous cops with Chamber of Commerce voices, like Chief Wax. Slim, smart and deadly cops like Randall, who for all their smartness and deadliness were not free to do a clean job in a clean way. I thought of sour old goats like Nulty who had given up trying. I thought of Indians and psychics and dope doctors.¹