Watching the Detectives
I want to be Philip Marlowe. Or maybe Nick Charles. My favorite kinds of movies are film noir, particularly the hard-boiled detective genre. I love the interplay of shadows and light in black and white. I love the cynical worldview, the disdain for scruples, morals and basic decency. I love that the characters drink rye and gin, smoke Chesterfields, wear fedoras and ties, consult the phone directory for research and do any number of other terribly old-fashioned things. I love the women – tall, thin, legs for miles, usually dressed in black and up to no good.
But, mostly, I hero worship the gumshoe protagonists. The hard-boiled detective is the ultimate male fantasy. He is how we would all like to envision ourselves: suave, a sense of style, quick-witted and sarcastic, a healthy appetite for liquor that actually serves to sharpen his senses, seemingly irresistible to women, knows when he’s being played and always saves the day. Dashiell Hammett, the ultimate master of the genre, acknowledged this male fantasy aspect in the creation of one of his most famous characters, Sam Spade:
“Spade has no original. He is a dream man in the sense that he is what most of the private detectives I worked with would like to have been and in their cockier moments thought they approached. For your private detective does not, or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague, want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of himself in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client.”
The protagonist from Hammett’s early novels, the nameless Continental Op, was just such a Holmes-like solver of riddles. These – “The Dain Curse” and “Red Harvest” – are true mystery novels, emphasizing clues and plot twists over character, as the Continental Op has none. It was with Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” that the detective story developed true heroes. The detective hero in Hammett’s final novel, Nick Charles, has character in spades. Seen as a mash note to his lover Lillian Hellman, “The Thin Man” presents a male fantasy of a committed relationship: to a saucy heiress half his age, who mixes his drinks, massages his shoulders, countenances a fair amount of hanky panky with the novel’s femme fatales and helps him compile the clues to the mystery.
Raymond Chandler, the author who is credited as carrying Hammett’s hard-boiled mantle, did not improve upon his predecessor’s economy of words nor his gripping plots, as most of Chandler’s stories were obvious and perfunctory. But he did create the ultimate Hollywood detective: Philip Marlowe. With a back story that involves getting fired from the D.A.’s office for political reasons, Marlowe has charm of the renegade hero that Hollywood has been trying to imitate in action and adventure movies ever since. Always too quick to mouth off to cops and criminals, Marlowe frequently takes his punches and his nights in the clink. His bottle of whiskey is conveniently available to loosen up a suspect or an already loose woman. Usually hard up for cash, he nevertheless passes up opportunities to shake down his clients and often shields them from the wives, daughters and mistresses who are scandalizing them. Still, he’s no softie (“I don’t like your manner, Mr. Marlowe.” “That’s all right. I’m not selling it.”).
Playing Marlowe in the movies is a kind of drag. The early actors – Robert Montgomery, Dick Powell, George Montgomery and the best of the lot, Humphrey Bogart – played him as the traditional tough guy of noir stereotype. James Caan played an older, wearier Marlowe in “Poodle Springs.” Robert Mitchum brought his unique brand of cool to a British adaptation in the 1970’s, perhaps because the stiffness and properness of the 1940’s U.S.A. could only be recreated in the 1970’s by transporting the tale to England. Elliott Gould, also in the 70’s, played Marlowe as a man out of time in sunny L.A. That portrayal, in Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” is perhaps most intriguing for the purposes of this article. Following his iconoclastic “M*A*S*H*,” it was hoped that Altman would do for noir genre what he did for the war movie and make a kind of a “Trapper John, PI.” While Gould maintains his roguish charm, Altman maintains a certain reverence for the Marlowe archetype. He tips his hat to the nudists next door and refuses to loosen his tie even on the beach. All the characters around him tease him for his old-fashioned ways.
The film was not a success, although a recent revival at the Film Forum landed Elliott Gould on the cover of the Village Voice decades after his curious period as a smart-ass Jewish matinee heartthrob. Instead of a revival of noir, the 1970’s saw the rise of Dirty Harry and other vigilante heroes, who in turn gave rise to that loathsome archetype, the action hero. In place of black suits and fedoras, we get ripped t-shirts and bulging muscles. In place of flirtatious banter and crossed legs, we get an inarticulate bodybuilder gnawing on some starlet’s tits at around the 50 minute mark in a well-choreographed bedroom romp. In place of investigation and deduction, we get explosions and lots of them.
Why has the action hero replaced the hard-boiled detective as the male fantasy? I would chalk it up to sort of generalized anxiety that men feel about their role in society these days, except that the hard-boiled fantasy is also about being in control (of the situation, of life, of women). Maybe the difference between the two stock types is too little to fret over, and I’m just guilty once again of being nostalgic for a time before I was born.
Here’s To Dad
I mulled over an all-encompassing Theory of Everything as I was squeezing a lemon over my filet of flounder for dinner tonight. First I pondered why seafood and lemons go so well together. I figure it has something to do with sailors (I was in New Orleans during Fleet Week, so don’t blame that spectacle for inspiring my theory).
As every schoolboy learns, when sailors of yore discovered that the terrible illness they tended to develop after long months at sea – scurvy – was, essentially, Vitamin C deficiency, they took to sucking on lemons and limes. The Brits must have been early adapters of this health regimen, since we still slur them as “limeys.” I imagine it wasn’t long before some sailors got sick of that silly “pucker” face one makes when sucking a lemon and got the bright idea of squeezing the citrus fruit over the catch of the day. They must have taken this bright idea to shore, and the corporate Red Lobster chain was born!
That mystery solved, I got to wondering why I love seafood so much. For this, as most things, there’s a woman to thank. A number of years ago I began dating one of my favorite ex-girlfriends, a pesco-vegeterian who was on a curious shellfish kick, and ignited my own love affair with the creatures of the deep (Come to think of it, she also had a charmingly kooky tendency to suck on lemons and cackle that it was to “prevent scurvy”). Day after day, week after week, we gobbled up mussels, clams, lobsters and shrimps together. Naturally, as I taught myself to cook, these were my chosen quarry.
The more I think about it, though, she unlocked a hidden desire for the fishies that was planted there by my father. The enthusiasm that dear old Dad showed on those rare occasions when Ma (ever the paranoiac about food poisoning) would cook up some scallops or prawns clearly inspired some insatiable desire inside me. (I realize now that I am practically inspiring Ma, the eternal lurker, to register on this Blarg, or at least sign up for the Live Journal feed.)
So where did my Dad’s love of seafood come from? This, I am fairly confident, can be attributed to his foster Mom, much like my dependable tendency to shout out “Svigna!” when someone belches or farts in my proximity. Like every frugal eastern European immigrant, Grandma sought to enroll her kids in the Clean Plate Club. Grandma was a particularly effective brainwasher when it came to convincing her charges that the ugliest, nastiest bits of leftovers and gristle were, in fact, delicacies. Why, you should see my father drool over the turkey’s asshole at Thanksgiving!
So, of course it would follow that Dad considers the ugly creatures of the deep to be a rare treat, and that opinion has rubbed off on your narrator. Let this post serve as my Father’s Day tribute. Cheers, Dad, and thanks for all the fish.
The High Cost of Health Care (For Cats)
The high cost of health care is a problem for more than just us monkeys. The price of veterinary services has skyrocketed faster than inflation, too. I had the opportunity to buy pet insurance through my union, but declined. Pet insurance is for little old ladies who order chemo-therapy for their hobbled, mangy 19-year-old cats, isn’t?
Well, about two months ago, my cat, the duck, began a campaign of biological warfare in protest of my longer hours at work on a campaign in New Jersey (or so I thought). I took her to the vet. Urine tests were inconclusive, but antibiotics were prescribed anyway, in case it was a urinary tract infection. Oh, and duck needed booster vaccinations. It’s the law, the vet said. The bill was eighty bucks, but that didn’t seem too bad a price to pay to get my cat to stop peeing on every piece of furniture I owned.
The duck would foam at the mouth when the cold white goo was injected in her mouth, and she proceeded to go on a three day hunger strike. Back at the vet’s office, she was admitted for overnight observation and more tests, also inconclusive. This time the diagnosis was behavioral, and the doctor ordered anti-depressents, which included options for kitty Prozac and kitty lithium. “They’re actually the same as human Prozac and lithium,” the vet helpfully explained, in case I might want to dip into the supply myself after seeing the bill. Another ninety dollars.
This bought thirty days of relief. As soon as the medication was out of her system, though, she peed on my couch. This time I found blood in her urine. Back to the vet for another overnight stay, more tests and another hundred and something dollars in expenses. The tests, an X-Ray and MRI, found a stone in her bladder. Surgery would be required. That was estimated to cost seven hundred bucks.
Of course, there were options when I brought her back for the surgery. Laser surgery would reduce bleeding and improve recovery time. That would be another fifty dollars. An IV catheter was strongly recommended for older cats (Oh, yes. I forgot to mention. duck is an older cat. When we rescued her from the mean streets of Valley Stream, LI, she was estimated by that vet to be two years old. When I brought her in to the local clinic for the first time, the vet said, “If I was being charitable, I would say this cat is six years old. This is a middle-aged cat.”). The IV and fluids would cost another seventy bucks. What the hell. It’s kinda like throwing in options on a new car. You’re already paying so much, what does it matter now?
It’s a good thing I’m in line for a promotion at work. All the money will go directly to the duck. Back at home, the couch is covered in garbage bags because the stitches on her bladder will itch and irritate and may still cause “accidents” for the next ten days. She also needs to take antibiotics, which, helpfully, are pills this time. She gobbles them and her pink crazy pills like a good little pill popper. Her front left leg is shaved like a poodle, as is a good deal of belly, revealing a ridiculous fleshy paunch with a zipper of stitches in the center. She’s wearing a cone around her neck to keep her from chewing out the stitches. She looks more annoyed than usual, and her equilibrium is totally thrown off. She does a ridiculous high step so she can see her paws and be sure they’re walking in the right direction. She keep bumping and snagging on doorways, as she still slinks and rubs against them before entering a room.
With great timing, I’m finally being sent back to New Orleans on Monday. A sucker, er, sweet friend has volunteered to duck-sit and handle medical chores. I need to figure out a living situation for me and the duck if the promotion I get is a traveling organizer position with the national union. This has involved calling ex-girlfriends to see if they would be foster cat moms while I sell my apartment in order to trade up to a 2-bedroom with space for a cat-loving roommate.
Re-reading this article, it occurs to me that I have become the little old lady who orders chemo for her geriatric cat.
Look for My Union Label
I’ve finally rejoined the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1181), the freelancers union. I had been a member when I was the editor of the Five Borough Institute’s newsletter, mainly because we wanted to have a bug on the masthead. I let my membership lapse during my long stint of unemployment, even though I had begun to write regularly for this blarg.
I realize I should be paying lip service to this supposed new media revolution, but truthfully, it’s hard to think of myself as a “Writer” because of a silly blog. I want to be in print. I’ve made sporadic attempts at submitting op-eds to local newspapers. Unfortunately, most of the community weeklies don’t publish opinion pieces. Even the one paper where I was briefly hired and quickly “dooced” doesn’t want actual opinions in their op-eds. I’m hoping that my renewed NWU membership will spur me on to try more seriously to get in print, even if that pesky “full-time union organizer / part-time graduate student” thing gets in the way.