 Philip MarloweCreated by Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and left the room."-- from Farewell, My Lovely
 What more can I say about PHILIP MARLOWE? Three Gun Mack may have been the first, Race Williamsintroduced the PI to the world and The Continental Op andSam Spade may have staked out the ambiguous moral code that would fuel the genre for years, but it was Raymond Chandler's Marlowe that would define for all time who, what, where and why a private eye here. Traces of Marlowe run fromPaul Pine to Jim Rockford to Ms. Tree to Lew Archer toSpenser. It's all here, from the loneliness, the quick, sarcastic cynical jibes masking a battered romantic, the love/hate relationship with the cops, the corruption that exists in all levels of society. It's all here. Philip Marlowe, for better or worse, is the archetypical private eye. By the time he wrote his famous essay, The Simple Art of Murder, even Chandler realized it.. Philip Marlowe was born in Santa Rosa, California, in "that time out of time that allowed him to be 33 in 1933, 42 in 1953, and 43 1/2 in 1958", according to Bill Henkin. He runs a single man operation out of the Cahuenga Building in Los Angeles. Tall, and big enough to take care of himself, he likes liquor, women, reading, chess and working alone, and is educated enough that he boasts he can speak English "if he's required to." He used to work for the district attorney, but was fired for insubordination, thus starting a cliche that still hasn't run out of steam. How many ex-cops are there out there that seem to have become private eyes? . Chandler first worked out the character of Marlowe in several short stories in Black Mask, featuring a variety of private eyes under different names. Among these pre-heroes were John Dalmas, Carmady, Ted Carmady and Mallory. . Marlowe has been adapted for film, television, radio, comics and audiotapes by all kinds of writers, sometimes quite successfully, particularly in film and radio, and sometimes rather disappointingly (television). . As the centennial of his birth approached, there was renewed interest in Chandler and a demand for new product, so Marlowe started to appear in new novels and short stories written by other writers, again with mixed results. In 1987, Hiber Conteris wrote an original Marlowe novel, Ten Percent of Life, where Marlowe returns to hunt the killer of Chandler's literary agent. Unique, to say the least. The following year, Knopf published Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe-A Centennial Celebration, a collection of Marlowe short stories by most of the top names in detective fiction. Stories ranged from merely good to astounding, as various contemporary writers brought their own strengths to bear on ol' Phil. The glaring exemption from the list of author's was Robert B. Parker, at the time the most successful of all private detective fiction writers, whose Spenser was at times so closely modelled on Marlowe as to be a parody. The reason was soon forthcoming. Parker had been at work completing Chandler's final Marlowe novel, Poodle Springs, wherein Marlowe and Linda get married (Chandler had often mentioned how difficult he had found it to write about Marlowe in a relationship). Given Spenser's relationship with Susan, the choice of Parker seemed not only right, but natural. The response to the book was decidedly mixed. Purists and other writer's in the genre screamed. Parker's own success with Spenser (including a truly mediocre, pretentious television show), and his perceived smugness probably contributed to the negative reaction. There was a lot of talk about audacity, and "how dare he?" Still, someone must have liked it. It was soon announced that Parker would write a second Marlowe novel, an all-original novel that acted as a sequel to The Big Sleep. When Perchance to Dream appearred in 1991, the grunts of protest rose to howls of anguish from certain quarters. It's interesting to note all of this was directed at Parker and none at two dozen or so other writers in A Centennial Celebration who had attempted exactly the same thing Parker had, albeit in short story form. THE EVIDENCE
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Most of Chandler's short stories featured earlier prototypes for Marlowe, who went by such monickers as Mallory, Ted Carmady, or John Dalmas , when they had any name at all. When they were later collected in volumes and reprinted, the names were mostly changed to Marlowe, however. So, here's what are generally available as Marlowe short stories these days, although only the last, "Marlowe Takes on the Syndicate"(AKA"Wrong Pidgeon" or "The Pencil"), was actually written as a Marlowe story..
 ... ... COLLECTIONS, OMNIBUS EDITIONS
MARLOWE IN FILM MARLOWE ON RADIO MARLOWE ON TELEVISION MARLOWE IN GRAPHIC NOVELS and OTHER MEDIA MARLOWE ON THE WEB Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. |
quarta-feira, 7 de março de 2012
Philip Marlowe Created by Raymond Chandler
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