Raymond Chandler, Misogynist?

Megan Abbott started a bit of a sensation recently by writing in Slate about the perils of appreciating Raymond Chandler in the era of #MeToo. Abbott was prompted by an article Katy Waldman penned for The New Yorker back in April that took Whit Reynolds’s challenge to her Twitter followers to “describe yourself like a male author would” and ran with it. There is no longer any controversy that all dead cis white male authors were misogynists. It is only a question of how misogynistic.

I’m a crime guy and Abbott focused on Waldman’s comments about Chandler so that’s where I’m going to focus, the primary position of this article being: Enough, already. Chandler was a lot of things. An alcoholic, absolutely. A dismal failure in everything he tried to do except writing. The more I learn about him the more I am convinced he was a first-rate asshole. Misogynist? I’m not so sure.

There are essentially five women in Chandler’s work: three individuals, the victims, and the harlots. The individuals are worth looking into more for what they say about Philip Marlowe than about Chandler. Vivian Regan in The Big Sleep is a worthy adversary. The sexual tension between them was well utilized in the original film adaptation by bringing Bogart and Bacall together. Vivian is smart, knows what she wants, and is willing to take action to get it. She’d fit into a 21th Century story quite well.

Ann Riordan of Farewell, My Lovely is the best person of all the women Marlowe meets, but she’s also the best person he meets, period. He, of course, wants nothing to do with her. Many have tried to explain this, but I’m an Occam’s Razor guy and look for the simplest reason that makes sense: He likes her, he appreciates her, and he knows he’s no good for her. Much is made of Marlowe’s knight errancy (yes, I made that up; get over it) but rarely is it shown better than here.

And then there’s Eileen Wade of The Long Goodbye. Marlowe might have done his best for her, at least until he found out she was imperfect, after which he did his worst. Chandler’s long “taxonomy” of blondes Waldman decries does less to disparage the demographic than to show Eileen’s perfection. Discovering the clay between her toes is more than Marlowe can bear.

What Chandler really describes in Marlowe is a man with a complicated, unsuccessful, and likely scarred relationship to women. Someone on Facebook—I truly wish I remember who, and I apologize for my failure—mentioned he had the idea Marlowe had been badly hurt by a woman as a young man and never really got over it. That makes as much sense as anything, especially when considered in the context of his treatment of Lola Barsaly in “Red Wind,” for whom he takes to no small amount of trouble and some expense so she won’t find out the dead man she still loves was “just another four-flusher.” Marlowe doesn’t always treat women the way they’d like to be treated, or the way we might like to see them treated, but he’s not a misogynist.

Why are we even talking about this? There are two related points that neither Waldman nor Abbott make that could be all we need to know. First is that Chandler was writing to make a buck. He’d failed at everything and turned to writing for Black Mask because he’d read some stories and figured he could do at least that well and get paid in the bargain. He changed the genre forever, but let’s not forget why he wrote in the first place: for sales. He typed his manuscripts up on half sheets of paper so there would never be more than that much space between engaging similes, not because he was making symbolic references.

Which brings us to the second point: he was writing what readers expected of the genre at the time. Yes, he elevated the language, but he wrote to sell to audiences he shared with writers long forgotten. The conventions of the day included a casual societal misogyny and racism that would be unacceptable today. It’s always risky, and presumptuous, to judge those of the past by the standards of the present, and this is no exception.

And what if one dives deeper than I have here and decides Marlowe was a misogynist? That doesn’t mean Chandler was. He was a drunk and an arrogant asshole, but I’ve seen nothing that shows a pattern of poor behavior toward women. We all write characters who do not share our virtues, and we all do it for our own reasons. Reading too much into the author based on his fiction is risky business I doubt too many would want to have applied to us.

And even then, so what? Are there not enough misogynists (racists, homophobes, whatever) in the word right now, today, for us to take issue with? Whether Chandler or Mailer or Updike had issues with women is water under the bridge. Some seem to enjoy taking down people who can no longer be hurt, maybe because they also can’t defend themselves. Would our time not be more constructively spent taking action about those who are causing damage today?

November's Best Reads

Lots of good stuff read since last time, and more news on the way, but work still needs to be done. So, without further ad, my favorite November reads:

Every Bitter Thing, Leighton Gage. Leighton Gage’ death a couple of years ago was a great loss. His series featuring Chief Inspector Mario Silva of the Brazilian federal police has many of the best elements of Ed McBain’s 87^th Precinct, writ large across a nation. The rapport—not always without edge—between his cadre of cops is spot on, and the political reactions to the cases ring true. This is the first in the too-short series I’m re-reading from the start. After refreshing my memory here, I can’t wait to get to the next. If you haven’t read any of these books, you’re missing out. First rate stuff, right down the line.

The Drop, Dennis Lehane. Read this in two days during free time at NoirCon, which gives you an idea of how I blew through it. True, it’s not a long book, but it’s damn near perfect. Lehane is a master at making narrative flow like dialog, while writing dialog George V. Higgins would be proud of. Appropriately funny in spots, dark in spots, and with a twist that made me want to see the movie even more. Highest marks.

Cottonwood, Scott Phillips. Phillips never disappoints. Asking which of his books is my favorite will return a different answer, depending on whether I’ve most recently read: The Ice Harvest, The Walkaway, or Cottonwood. Right now it’s Cottonwood. I toy with the idea of writing a Western someday. If I do, this is exactly the tone I want to take. Scott can start lining up his legal team now. (The book appears to be out of print. Amazon has several links. The one provided is not a recommendation, just the first one listed.)

Queenpin, Megan Abbott. Great period read. It’s easy to see how this put her on the map. Her females are as tough as any man without being caricatures and their predicaments are realistic, as are the resolutions. Reminded me of The Grifters in the mentor-protégé relationship, though is derivative in no way. Sets up well for a sequel, if she ever chooses to. The period patter was a bit much, at times.

Black Rock, John McFetridge. I read a pre-release e-book and had trouble getting it onto my Kindle; the formatting didn’t come out right. I read it again in paper to have a little more of a pure reading experience and liked it even more. Kindles are great, but they can get between the author and reader in ways books do not, and this is a book you want nothing to be in the way of. (That’s called license, when a writer makes up grammar on the fly like I just did. Look it up.) McFetridge never received the public acclaim his Toronto series deserved. Let’s hope Constable Eddie Dougherty does, and that he doesn’t have to get old and cranky to do so.

Sucker Punch, Ray Banks. Working my way through the entire Cal Innes series, happened to read this one on the plane to Bouchercon, completely unaware Innes spends most of this story in LA making a mess of chaperoning a young boxer. Banks is as pitch-perfect a writer as I can name. Uses no more words than necessary, but no fewer, and exactly the right ones. His plots are as complex as they need to be, and his characters are alive the instant you first meet them. Grade A stuff.

Kill Clock, Allan Guthrie. An author/agent/editor/publisher polymath of a writer, Guthrie knows how to leverage the flexibility available in e-books to write stories only as long as they need to be. Pearce is the perfect anti-hero here, not looking for shit, but not going to put up with any, either. When he finds himself in a bad situation he had nothing to do with—and wants nothing to do with even more—he’s more than capable of bringing it to a head on his own. Guthrie doesn’t back away from his ending, which some won’t like, but is exactly what the story needed. The wry little coda at the end is a nice touch.

Breaking Point, Gerard Brennan. Another novella. Brennan, along with Guthrie and Banks, may have the best understanding of the benefits of the form. A sequel to The Point, Breaking Point picks up the story with some scores settled, but some still outstanding. Brian Morgan only wanted to buy some grass, but his dealer’s unrealistic ambitions suck him in a classic “wrong place/wrong time” scenario. Brennan isn’t as dark or hard edged as Guthrie, but his anti-hero is someone you can root for, while Kill Clock’s Pearce is someone who causes you to fear for the other guys.

TheLincoln Lawyer, Michael Connelly. I read for style as much as for anything else. This is why best-sellers rarely appeal to me: too bland. I live for books where I can read a particularly nice bit to The Beloved Spouse, or pause and sit back with the ultimate compliment: I wish I’d written that. Connelly rarely does that, so it’s a tribute to how well his plots and characters are drawn that his books envelope me as they do. His research is so well done, I use his books as research for my own. And I can’t put them down. I didn’t think I’d like the premise for The Lincoln Lawyer, but found it in a discount bin for six bucks. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down.

Misogynistic, or Picky?

Egomaniac that I am, I publish an annual list of what I thought were the best books I read each year, as if anyone else gives a shit. In 2012 the list contained no female authors. This was a genuine surprise to me when pointed out—I honest to God hadn’t noticed—but it got me to thinking. Since then I have made a conscious effort to read more female writers, and to add female characters to my writing.

My 2013 list contained only two females, both in the Honorable Mention list. (Laura Lippman and Zoe Sharp.) None made the Top Ten.

This prompted some examination. Why don’t I read more female authors, and why don’t I enjoy them more when I do? As the father of a daughter, I felt a need to see if there was something more afoot. I doubt my conclusions will satisfy many, but what good is a writer without an occasional well-intentioned controversy?

I looked for a common denominator in the writing that might put me off. This is dangerous business, as that implies all women write more or less the same way, which is no truer that saying all men do. I needed to organize my thoughts around writing, not gender, to see if there were common elements in the books I either didn’t like as much as I’d hoped, regardless of the author’s plumbing. I found three things:

1. So long as the story is plausible and doesn’t require me to rupture myself suspending disbelief, I’m interested more in the manner of the telling than I am in what’s told. In short, I read for style. Most of the female authors to whom I’ve been exposed are storytellers more than stylists, with a couple of notable exceptions. (Megan Abbott, Christa Faust.)

2. Women tend to be more descriptive than men. Lots more adjectives. I don’t care that it was a pale blue house with a white door and cedar shake shingles unless it’s important for some reason. I don’t care that a person set down his Louis Vuitton garment bag, shrugged up the sleeve of his Caraceni suit, and looked at his Piaget watch unless it tells me something about him, and it’s something worth remembering, which means I don’t have to hear about it every time. That reason doesn’t have to be readily evident, but there needs to be one. That’s a matter of personal taste. It doesn’t make me right, but it does affect my reading enjoyment.

3. Forgive me for saying this, but a lot of female authors drop in too many scenes that seem to have been written for Lifetime TV movies. I don’t watch TV movies. As above, that doesn’t make me right, but it does affect my choices.

Who do I read and enjoy? Megan Abbott. (Though I’ll admit Dare Me put me off. Maybe because I used to be a public school teacher or because my daughter is not that far removed from high school, but every character I remember was detestable, and I just stopped caring about them. In fairness, Bury Me Deep is as good as it gets.) Christa Faust. Laura Lippman’s standalones (Tess Monahan I can live without). Sandra Parshall. S.J. Rozan. Zoe Sharp.

Help me out. With the above caveats in mind, who am I missing?

February's Best Reads

Olympic hockey cut into my February reading time, but what I read was first rate.

Let It Ride, by John McFetridge – The third installment of McFetridge’s saga of bikers who don’t ride much since they’re too busy taking over the Canadian drug trade has some characters from the previous two books (Dirty Sweet and Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.), but there’s no need to have read the first two before starting here. (Except that you haven’t read the first two, which is your loss.) McFetridge combines the best elements of Elmore Leonard and George V. Higgins into a unique style, writing what is truly a novel about crime. Lots of plotlines, lots of characters, this book is about shifting relationships and alliances with hard-edged dialog and well-drawn characters. Not for casual readers; Let It Ride demands your attention, then rewards it. (Released in Canada as Swap.)

Bury Me Deep, by Megan Abbott – Sometimes it takes me a while to catch on. I’ve been tripping over Megan Abbott’s name for over two years now, finally got around to reading her when my wife bought me a copy for my birthday. Fantastic writing. The neo-Thirties style took me a few pages to get used to, but once I caught the rhythm Abbott pulled me in a little deeper with each page. This is the book that proves you don’t have to start with a body on Page One and a shoot-out on Page Four. Abbott understands tension and suspense, making you wait until you can’t stand it anymore, and is still able to pull off the climax in an unexpected way. The rare book that lives up to all that’s been said about it.