Tag Archives: Raymond Chandler

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Destiny

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DESTINYged

Coen, Ethan (in “Gates of Eden”; Harper Perennial; Reprint edition, 2008, ISBN 9780061684883)

Ethan Coen’s Destiny makes a glorious spectacle of the modern male. It holds him up, with all his incertitude and humanity, against the older notion of manful men who have stood in battle, consume bourbon with their steaks and know how to throw a punch. In Coen’s protagonist Joey Carmody, like “The Dude” Jeffery Lebowski before him, the reader observes a modern man like himself (or some man she knows) trapped in an older story, fumbling around in Phil Marlow’s footsteps with his modern enlightenment and uncertainty. Continue reading

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Three Tone Tan

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THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER

Chandler, Raymond (Houghton Mifflin, 1950, ISBN 0394757653)

In his remarkable essay, The Simple Art of Murder, Chandler points out that, in the real world, using elaborate means to commit a murder, disguise one or to fabricate an alibi will only serve to incriminate the perpetrator. It gives a methodical police force too much to work with. Instead (if I comprehend Chandler’s meaning), just bludgeon the victim with some commonplace object found near the scene of the crime and when the police ask for your alibi, tell them to go fuck themselves. Continue reading