The world of Private Investigator Philip Marlowe is a long way from our usual book of choice, we are all agreed on that. But interestingly enough, the majority of us found reading a selection of Chandler crime novels quite a nostalgic and enjoyable exercise.
Most of the positive comments centred around the clever use of language … short, punchy wise-cracking similes, and Marlowe’s own unembellished narrative managed to bring out the atmosphere of the place and time perfectly.
Out-dated and totally sexist in their manner, these books still held some sentiment with many of us. It took us back to the days of Dick Tracy and Phantom comics, black and white movies. A time when bad language was considered bad form and sexual innuendo more powerful than the act itself!
Yes, we all agree that novel writing has changed since the 1940s and that it would be hard to find an appreciative audience for PI Marlowe today. But that said, he was a man of his time and put in his own words, “a good guy in a bad job”, who went out every day in service of ‘evil in the streets’. Corny? Yes, but fun none-the-less.
Our learned lesson for this month may well be that … as readers, we need not always take ourselves too seriously. ( )