Chandler's Misogyny and The Little Sister

 A few weeks ago I noted Michael Connelly’s love of Chapter 13 of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister. I have no quarrel with Connelly’s admiration for that passage. Reading it made me remember it had been a long time since I read The Little Sister, so I gave it another go.

Times change, but that rarely puts me off a book. What we would call “historical fiction” if it were written today gives an opportunity to see how things used to be without modern points of view re-interpreting the times for better or worse.

We change. Books I loved twenty years ago don’t do it for me anymore. (See Spillane, Mickey.) I can still appreciate the artistry, but the enterprise as a whole no longer moves me.

There are also books I didn’t care for when I first read them; second readings showed how badly I misjudged them. James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss and Adrian McKinty’s Dead I Well May Be fall into this category. (In my defense, I read both for the first time during a month-long bout of mononucleosis I doubt I would have liked the movie L.A. Confidential during that month.)

Tangential to what’s above, I remembered an article in The Atlantic by Katy Waldman that discussed Chandler’s misogynistic tendencies; Megan Abbott followed up. At the time, my initial reaction was similar to Megan’s first impression. Also like Megan, I changed my mind. It just took me longer.

Full disclosure: I am not what anyone would consider woke. I say things that appall The Beloved Spouse™ on an almost daily basis. She knows they’re either for comic effect, because I’m trying out something for a character to say, or are strictly factual but insensitive. From what I’ve seen of the Warriors for Wokeness, these comments eliminate me right there, regardless of what actions I may or may not take.

That said, I was appalled by my recent reading of The Little Sister. Chandler wrote noir. Femme fatales are a staple of noir. I get that. It’s why he gets a pass for Helen Grayle in Farewell My Lovely. The problem with The Little Sister is that, while Dolores Gonzales may play that position, Chandler’s descriptions of the other primary women in the book are no more flattering.

Orfamay Quest, the little sister of the title, is a conniving sociopath who’d sell out her family for a few bucks. Gonzales is beyond slutty and either killed or fingered several people. Mavis Weld comes off best, and she’s a bitch for most of the book until he finds she at least has a bottom.

The lesser characters fare no better. There’s the orange-haired police stenographer and the woman in the city offices. Both are described in disparaging terms even though neither does anything damaging to Marlowe.

That got me to thinking about Chandler’s other novels. In The Big Sleep¸ Carmen Sternwood is a nut job and  Agnes Lozelle is a selfish harpy; Vivian Regan comes off best of the three and she spends most of the book sexually teasing Marloe to get him to do her bidding, though her motives are good. Eileen Wade in The Long Goodbye is a hot mess start to finish; the veneer of worthiness she’s given early on is due almost entirely to Marlowe’s sexual attraction. (It’s been forever since I read either The Lady in the Lake  or The High Window, so I’m leaving them aside for now.)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used women as bad guys. I even used one as a femme fatale. By and large, I think my female characters come off at least as well as the men. The only women in a Chandler novel I can think of who resembles a good person more than superficially is Anne Riordan in Farewell My Lovely.

Raymond Chandler’s books were among the primary reasons I got into writing seriously. I have no idea how many times I’ve read The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. I can point to two things that have lowered him in my esteem;

1.    I read The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words. Editor Barry Day uses Chandler’s letters to give a picture of the author, who never wrote a memoir. The image that emerges is that of a selfish prig who has serious problems with women. Anyone who knows the story of the relationship he had with his wife is already aware of this.

2.    I got into reading Dashiell Hammett and better appreciated the virtues of telling the goddamn story and getting out.

I’m not finished reading Chandler. I’m sure I’ll read the big three again, though he’s on an extended hiatus right now. It takes a lot to offend me when reading a book, but there were several places in The Little Sister where he had me thinking, “Okay, Ray, I get it. She’s a slut/bitch/cunt. Move on.” I’m sure that’s going to color my reading from now on, even when I’m not actively thinking it.

The short stories don’t have so much of this, nor of the other naval-gazing aspects of what it’s like to be a drugged Philip Marlowe, or his too often misanthropic observations. I have the complete collection. Maybe it’s time to give them another look.