"Would it be alright if I peeled an orange?" Because it is Raymond Chandler's birthday

Because it is Raymond Chandler's birthday and because "Would it be alright if I peeled an orange?" is the perfect response to OUR FUCKING EVIL GOVERNMENTS THAT WANT TO MAKE FUN ILLEGAL!

For those reasons, I post the start of his 1949 classic The Little Sister. For those reasons, and the fact I just stumbled on the text of the whole book online and can't be fucked writing a proper blog post despite the fact I haven't written anything for ages.

(In other news, do you know how many Muslims were responsible for the atrocity in Oslo??? NONE.

It took the media quite some time of reporting it was an Islamic fundamentalist attack before they were forced to report it wasn't.)

Chandler was a good drinker and a good writer, who summed up the art of writing a detective story: "When in doubt, have a man with a gun walk into the room."

He inspired me to write up me own hardboiled experience about attending a talk by a wiseguy on Latin America at Sydney Uni. It really happened, just like I said. I still have nightmares about that experience.

And so...



The Little Sister

The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlowe . . . Investigations." It is a reasonably shabby door at the end of a reasonably shabby corridor in the sort of building that was new about the year the all-tile bathroom became the basis of civilization.

The door is locked, but next to it is another door with the same legend which is not locked. Come on in-there's nobody in here but me and a big bluebottle fly. But not if you're from Manhattan, Kansas.

* * *

It was one of those clear, bright summer mornings we get in the early spring in California before the high fog sets in. The rains are over. The hills are still green and in the valley across the Hollywood hills you can see snow on the high mountains.

The fur stores are advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen-year-old virgins are doing a land-office business. And in Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees are beginning to bloom.

I had been stalking the bluebottle fly for five minutes, waiting for him to sit down. He didn't want to sit down. He just wanted to do wing-overs and sing the prologue to Pagliacci. I had the fly swatter poised in midair and I was all set.

There was a patch of bright sunlight on the corner of the desk and I knew that sooner or later that was where he was going to light. But when he did, I didn't even see him at first. The buzzing stopped and there he was. And then the phone rang.

I reached for it inch by inch with a slow and patient left hand. I lifted the phone slowly and spoke into it softly: "Hold the line a moment, please."

I laid the phone down gently on the brown blotter. He was still there, shining and blue-green and full of sin. I took a deep breath and swung. What was left of him sailed halfway across the room and dropped to the carpet.

I went over and picked him up by his good wing and dropped him into the wastebasket.

"Thanks for waiting," I said into the phone.

"Is this Mr. Marlowe, the detective?" It was a small, rather hurried, little-girlish voice. I said it was Mr. Marlowe, the detective. "How much do you charge for your services, Mr. Marlowe?"

"What was it you wanted done?"

The voice sharpened a little. "I can't very well tell you that over the phone. It's-it's very confidential. Before I'd waste time coming to your office I'd have to have some idea-"

"Forty bucks a day and expenses. Unless it's the kind of job that can be done for a flat fee."

"That's far too much," the little voice said. "Why, it might cost hundreds of dollars and I only get a small salary and-"

"Where are you now?"

"Why, I'm in a drugstore. It's right next to the building where your office is."

"You could have saved a nickel. The elevator's free."

"I-I beg your pardon?"

I said it all over again. "Come on up and let's have a look at you," I added. "If you're in my kind of trouble, I can give you a pretty good idea-"

"I have to know something about you," the small voice said very firmly. "This is a very delicate matter, very personal. I couldn't talk to just anybody."

"If it's that delicate," I said, "maybe you need a lady detective."

"Goodness, I didn't know there were any." Pause. "But I don't think a lady detective would do at all. You see, Orrin was living in a very tough neighborhood, Mr. Marlowe. At least I thought it was tough. The manager of the rooming house is a most unpleasant person. He smelled of liquor. Do you drink, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Well, now that you mention it-"

"I don't think I'd care to employ a detective that uses liquor in any form. I don't even approve of tobacco."

"Would it be all right if I peeled an orange?"

I caught the sharp intake of breath at the far end of the line. "You might at least talk like a gentleman," she said.

"Better try the University Club," I told her. "I heard they had a couple left over there, but I'm not sure they'll let you handle them." I hung up.

It was a step in the right direction, but it didn't go far enough. I ought to have locked the door and hid under the desk.




"This past spring was the first where I felt tired and realised I was growing old ... It's the middle of July now, and things are worse than they were in the spring. In the spring I wasn't holed up in some dingy hotel ducking the police." Robert Mitchum nailing Philip Marlowe in the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely.

Boxing Day

The sun in the room dies like a fly; slow and twitching.

And the nothing happens very slowly. And the clothes still in the washing machine dry at about the same pace. And apathy and melancholy fight an heroic battle-to-the-death for your attention.

And alcohol receptors want to be fed and all you've done so far is give the hangover a slight dent. And your stomach performs tricks and eats itself like some sort of canabilistic clown.

And, quite clearly, you've been reading too much Raymond Chandler and listening to too much Tom Waits, at the same fucking time. And so you're lost in Santa Monica while stuck in Summer Hill.

And the Australians are about 3 for 300 odd at the close of play. But they got Ponting on the drive, caught at second slip. They'll be happy about that.

Boxing Day. It's all fun and games till someone runs out of goon.

Reading Raymond Chandler then going to a lecture by a wiseguy

I have been reading Raymond Chandler, the genius hard-boiled detective novelist whose stories centre on hard-boiled, hard drinking P.I. Philip Marlowe.

Maybe this affected my mood as I went to a lecture at Sydney University on the evening of Tuesday, August 11 with some Latin American academic talking about the state of democracy in the region.

Maybe.

What I will say is every word below happened exactly as I describe it.

------

I walked through Victoria Park to make my way to the lecture. A ceaseless gaggle of Sydney University students passed by going the other way, fleeing their beloved campus for the day.

It isn’t that I don’t trust your average student at this illustrious institution, but I felt a hell of a lot better feeling the grip of my Colt .32.

It was only 5.30 in the evening but already the sun was making a hasty retreat. It was although it decided it had had enough of the day. I can’t say I blamed it.

I got to the rough area where the building was supposed to be. For a campus with so many buildings, they sure work hard to hide the one you want.

There was a security guard leaning against the wall of one of them, standing impassively smoking a cigarette. I approached and asked him if he knew where the New Law Building was.

He glanced at me impassively and blew some smoke. “What’s it worth to you?”

I resisted the urge to remove my Colt. 32 from its place where only dames that cause trouble and cops that do the same ever search. Instead, I said “Maybe I gotta fiver I’ve been itching to give away to charity.”

He looked at me impassively and blew some smoke. Then he pointed at a building right in front of us and said “There”.

I pealed off a note that he took impassively. “You want me to draw you a map?”

Walking off, I turned. “Nah, I wouldn’t want you to strain something.”

He shrugged impassively and blew some smoke.

I found the room I was looking for and soon wished I hadn’t.

The lecture was by some ageing intellectual wiseguy. Spent too long in the ivory towers of the world, to judge by the introduction he was given.

He was supposed to speak for half an hour. An hour into his dull and frankly counterrevolutionary spiel my Colt .32 started to itch.

I resisted the urge. Some things aren’t worth the trouble they bring.

But there is only so much guff about uppity populists upsetting democratic balances by changing constitutions to perpetuate themselves in power a guy can take. As he droned on I made my way past political science students staring at the old guy impassively and went outside. I lit a cigarette and stood there thinking some.

By the time I crushed the butt, I was thinking you can’t let some wiseguy spread his objectively counterrevolutionary and pro-imperialist garbage like that and just let him get away with it. I made my way back.

He was still talking to his endless supply of graphs proving every leftist government in the region put in power by mass movements of the impoverished who shed blood for the honour scoring the lowest on every indicator except the only ones that matters – poverty reduction and popular participation.

Those two didn’t make into his not brief presentation.

Finally, to the noticeable relief of the room, he ground to halt. I stood up the back and lit a cigarette.

The chair asked for questions. I obliged and raised my hand.

Cigarette dangling from my lips, I asked the ivory tower boy: “So what about inequality and the exclusion of the poor majorities? You think that might have something to do with all these constitutions that keep changing?”

He looked me straight in the eye with a cold hard stare that suggested maybe I didn’t want to be asking too many questions about the conditions of the oppressed. Then he started to waffle as only a lifetime academic a decade or two passed a dignified retirement can manage.

Finally the meeting had the mercy and common decency to end. I stood outside as Sydney Uni students impassively filed passed. I tried to hand out leaflets for a Latin America Solidarity Fiesta on that Saturday.

We had an agreement. I agreed to try and give the students leaflets, they agreed to refuse to take them.

The odd student broke ranks and took one. Sydney University students can be impertinent like that.

I got talking to a guy I know called Alejandro and even sold him a Green Left Weekly. He comes from a middle-class Venezuelan family and supports Chavez. This caused a split among his family and friends on account of some of them quite liking the corrupt, venal, coup-plotting fascists in the Venezuelan opposition.

Alejandro was in the minority. A minority of one.

We shared our mutual views of the presentation we had just witnessed. We mutually agree on exactly where the academic could shove his right-wing views on the “rule of law” and the “need for counter-balances” to stop the impoverished working people having too much say about their state of exploitation.

Then I lit a cigarette and made my way to the train station to catch my inevitably late-running train. I had other things on my mind.

I picked up a six pack on the way home. No Boags Draft. I was forced to drink Tasmania Bitter, cursing the injustices the world seemed intent of heaping on me.

Then I spent the night smoking my mind with cigarettes and songs that I was picking. Sorry, that's Johnny Cash.




"The beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad so I have one more for dessert". Neither Johnny Cash nor this song really relate in any way to the rest of the post.