Twophers: a Post of Surpassing Triviality

I'm sure that this makes no difference to anybody--and I'm sure any number of people have noticed it before--but I just picked up on a couple of amusing doubles in literature.

One, Borges and Bierce. You may remember the Borges story "The Secret Miracle," about the playwright who is granted the boon of imagining his play, complete down to the last detail, in the moments before the bullets from the firing squad crash into his brain. You are perhaps even more likely to remember Ambrose Bierce's "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," and is it not the same plot--soldier at the point of execution escapes, flees home and is reunited with his loving family--but then he feels the pain in the back of his neck and we know that he has been hanged.

Oh, wait. I see that Wiki picks up the parallel here--along with others entirely unknown to me. Hah!  Or rather, O snap!  Not easy to be original in the world any more, even when sussing out parallels.  But my second pairing may be more obscure.  It starts, you can hardly be surprised, with Proust in The Guermantes Way.  The subject is Rachel "when of the Lord," the prostitute and Jew--twice an outcast--who becomes an actress, then a courtesan, then a great lady.  Of her appearance in the theatre, we learn: 

Rachel had one of those faces that distance—and not necessarily that between the auditorium and the stage, the world itself in this respect being merely a larger theater—throws into sharp outline, and which, seen close up, crumble to dust.  

Proust, Marcel (2005-05-31). The Guermantes Way: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 3 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (Kindle Locations 2972-2974). Penguin Group US. Kindle Edition. 

Shrewd and subtle in its way, I suppose. But do you remember Raymond Chandler in The High Window:

 From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

I rest my case.   Hard to believe that Chandler was a Proust fan, but you never know, or at any rate, I never know.  Maybe it was Marlowe.

Chandler Again

The Mr. and Mrs. Buce readaloud club has finished its perusal of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep (yes, I know it is short, but we were distracted). On sober reflection, I'd reaffirm the point I suggested earlier: Chandler is surprisingly funny. In particular (and especially in the first half, before the plot gets into high gear), he is the all-time grand master of the semi-absurb throwaway simile:

• "...using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl uses her last good pair of stockings."

• " I seem to exist largely on heat, like a new-born spider."

• "Drawing one lip slowly across the other with a funereal absorption, like an undertaker dry-washing his hands."

That's in the first five pages. Later we get "as sore as an alderman with the mumps," "as limp as a fresh-killed rabbit," and "as nervous as dowagers who can't find the rest room."

This is all wonderful, but here's the thing: read it aloud and it is almost impossible to avoid mimicking Garrison Keillor doing Guy Noir. You know Guy, on the twelfth floor of the Acme Building, trying to find the answer to life's persistent questions? Guy is supposed to be a parody, and good fun it is, but a parody of what? My point is that Chandler seems to have mastered the art of subtle self-mockery, up to the edge of self-parody, at the start. And I think it is distinctive him: I don't remember any such subversisve comedy in Dashiell Hammett or James M. Cain.

We followed up our literary endeavor with a movie version--the original Howard Hawks retelling, from 1946. The snappy dialog is all there, though I don't hear the self-mockery--evidently we took it more seriously then. Note also: (1) Humphrey Bogart's range is remarkably narrow--there really are only one or two parts that he can play well; and (2) it's hard to think of any movie more firmly rooted in a particular place and time. David Thomson ranks it high on his list of all-time favorites, and I can see why.

Addendum: a propos of not very much, i'm impelled to note that there is one bit of narrative equipment at which Chandler is appallingly awful. I mean the mechanics of the human body. At one point, we have the lovely lady falling backwards into Marlowe's lap, and then (evidently without relocating) kissing him on the face. Later, we have Marlowe undertake a display of pistol marksmanship while his hands are cuffed behind him. I see that not even Hawks could stomach that one: he put the cuffs in front.

Reflexivity

Chez Buce is enjoying a readaloud of Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep. I defer comment until we finish, except for the brief observation that it is coffee-through-the-nostrils funny, and intentionally so. And this:

His voice was the elaborately casual voice of the tough guy in pictures. Pictures have made them all like that.

Ah, a favorite theme of mine: art imitates life imitates art. I remember being in Canterbury Cathedral a few years back for a Christmas music service. There was a canon (I guess) who looked for all the world like he stepped right out of Mawsterpiece Theatre. I had to wonder: was MT imitating the canon? Or did the canon get his job because he looked the part?

We've all heard about how mobsters study CD's of The Godfather or The Sopranos to get the right effect. I guess the only thing new is the insight that it's not new: evidently Chandler understood it in 1939.

Chandlerism

Two quotes from Raymond Chandler, culled from the The Write Stuff, BBC's literary quiz show.. First, Phillip Marlowe, in High Window:

From 30 feet away, she looked like a lotta class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.

And next, from a letter to his editor, on his cat:

At certain times she has a trick of holding one paw up loosely and lookng at it in a speculative manner. My wife thinks she's suggesting we get her a wristwatch.. She doesn't need one for any practical reason; she can tell time better than I do. But after all, you gotta have some jewelry.