"He wanted to fight. He shot at me like a plane from a catapult, reaching for my knees in a diving tackle. I sidestepped and reached for his neck and took it into chancery. He scraped the dirt hard and got his feet under him enough to use his hands on me where it hurt. I twisted him around and heaved him a little higher. I took hold of my right wrist with my left hand and turned my right hipbone into him and for a moment it was a balance of weights. We seemed to hang there in the misty moonlight, two grotesque creatures whose feet scraped on the road and whose breath panted with effort."
I had long avoided Chandler, mostly because I've never understood the appeal of the tough-guy writer, a uniquely American figure who, from Ernest Hemingway to James Frey, shoots out ink as if it were a measure of his virility. And to be sure, Chandler's world-weary detective, Philip Marlowe, is full of wry machismo and hard-boiled verve. You know the type: impervious to womanly seductions, calm in the face of danger, and ready at all times to deliver a deadpan quip.
But that prose! The phrase "a balance of weights" is an apt description of his style, with each sentence in perfect poise. The series of "ands," often used by writers to lend a kind of biblical weight and rhythm to their prose (Cormac McCarthy, another tough guy, being the most egregious offender), here passes by almost unnoticed, and lends the passage a hard, smooth sheen, as if it were a frozen lake across which the reader skates effortlessly. I also like the camera-like quality of it: the intense close-up of wrist and hand that eventually gives way to the striking silhouette of two men wrestling in the moonlight.
The plot is as good as it is irrelevant. The staples of detective fiction are all there: blackmail, kidnapping, murder, etc. The best type of book to have on a long plane ride or a hungover Sunday.
No comments:
Post a Comment