Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Sharing a Cold With Philip Marlowe


I seem to have picked up a cold somewhere between Milton Keynes and London. I am laid up in bed today and I've called in sick to work.

I felt a little weird yesterday morning, and increasingly so as the day wore on. My nose was running like crazy and I got woozy with fatigue. Weirdly, as much as my nose is running, it's also stuffed up and I feel like I have a head full of cement. I don't think I have a fever, but I am SO looking forward to resting.

I'm going to finish this Raymond Chandler book, which I'm still enjoying. I love his quippy writing style. It is very noir -- there's a layer of menace over everything, even the sunny days and the palm trees. There's a lot of drinking. I don't know how all of the characters aren't in liver failure.

Chandler described one unsightly-looking man as having a "face like a collapsed lung." I love that!

Philip Marlowe, his detective, is fond of laying out championship chess games and playing them through. Chandler called one, which famously ended in a draw, "as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency."

There's also, of course, plenty of mid-century misogyny, typified by passages like this:

"A girl in a white sharkskin suit and a luscious figure was climbing the ladder to the high board. I watched the band of white that showed between the tan of her thighs and the suit. I watched it carnally. Then she was out of sight, cut off by the deep overhang of the roof. A moment later I saw her flash down in a one and a half. Spray came high enough to catch the sun and make rainbows that were almost as pretty as the girl. Then she came up the ladder and unstrapped her white helmet and shook her bleach job loose. She wobbled her bottom over to a small white table and sat down beside a lumberjack in white drill pants and dark glasses and a tan so evenly dark he couldn't have been anything but the hired man around the pool. He reached over and patted her thigh. She opened a mouth like a firebucket and laughed. That terminated my interest in her. I couldn't hear the laugh but the hole in her face when she unzippered her teeth was all I needed."
It won't win any social justice awards, but it is entertaining writing, and pretty honest, I think. Many of us have had a similar experience -- seen someone attractive across a room or at a distance, only to think moments later, for whatever reason: "Oh. Maybe not."

I've noticed that my blog won't fully load onto my phone. Does anybody read my blog on a phone, and if so, can you see the whole thing? I only get partial pages. I can't tell if the culprit is my device or Blogger.

(Photo: Finchley Road, last week.)

25 comments:

  1. I am reading it on my phone and can see all of it perfectly. Perhaps you were reading it on web version. Hope your cold soon goes.

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  2. Smaller devices do smaller things...when writing a blog on my phone I can't add the subject tags on the side...and reading blogs, the format is slightly different.

    Your cold sounds like a rhinovirus (a good name!) a miserable thing, but hopefully it will depart soon...as 'tis said, " 3 days to develop, 3 days hanging around and 3 days to go". You are very sensible to stay home.

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  3. Times have changed but Chandler had a gift with words. I’m sure Philip Marlowe is not happy you’re sharing your cold. Hope you feel better soon. It’s being around all those kids all the time, isn’t it? I just checked your blog on my phone, using Chrome, and it’s perfect.

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  4. It is all there on my phone too.
    Hope that you are feeling better soon....it must be " man flu" rather than just a cold to put you in bed!!

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  5. Sorry to hear about the 'man flu'.
    That was such a good passage from the book.
    The quote about chess and advertising is brilliant.

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  6. I have a terrestrial or house phone and it does not have a screen on it so of course I am unable to read your blog on it. Doh! However, I can read it on our kettle.
    P.S. Sorry you're off to work with a cold today. Get well soon!

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  7. I love the collapsed lung quote.

    Feel better!

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  8. Hope you feel better! Sometimes I get tired of that style of writing because must there be a lengthy descriptor of EVERYTHING? When is the shooting going to start? Just kidding - I'm not QUITE that bloodthirsty.

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  9. That's a pretty darn unflattering description, isn't it?
    Get some rest. Feel better. Have you covid tested?

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  10. Lemsip was invented for you specifically! And chicken soup, the best of all healers.
    Description of pretty girl is so typical - heterosexual male - it's all about their perception isn't it. Rulers of the earth!
    Take more days off, you need the rest for sure! Rest like Olga!
    Be well soon, cement head!

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  11. Take care of yourself and get better soon.

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  12. I think that paragraph would have put me off the book and the writer. sorry to hear you are down with a cold. hopefully it will be short lived.

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  13. Feel better soon, altho, it is nice to have a sick day off for reading. :)

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  14. I do my blog reading and writing strictly by desktop and external monitor. I can't imagine doing either with my phone, especially since I get the smallest versions.

    I probably couldn't count on all my fingers and toes the times I have seen someone attractive from a distance only to be turned off when I got closer and more importantly, heard them speak.

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  15. I hope the cold departs soon. After a few words of that Chandler quotation I moved on. I don't need it. It reminded me of how many male writers in that genre are ugly to read.

    I do everything on my Android phone, no blogger problems, so maybe it's your cache holding things up?

    Is Olga taking on nursing duties?

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  16. The cold sounds miserable but the book does interest me--clever writing. The passage about the woman reminds me of Seinfeld. (if you're familiar with a couple of Jerry's dates--the big hands, the annoying laugh, etc.)

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  17. So sorry you're not feeling well, but sometimes the body said, rest me, and we have no choice but to oblige. Marlowe sounds like good company, though his description of that girl's laugh was a bit of horror, i recoiled as much as his character did. hope you feel better soon.

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  18. Oh, and I checked. Your blog loads fine on my iphone.

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  19. I am sorry you are not feeling your best. A day or two of rest, warmth and good old chicken soup should help resolve the cold. I refer to Spring colds as change of season colds. Think Spring as we are all looking forward to the new season.

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  20. I'm still on the fence as to whether I want to give a Marlowe crime story a shot. I guess there's no law saying I'd have to finish it if I didn't like it! He might get on my nerves!

    I'd take a Covid test just to rule that out.

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  21. A rapid recovery for you and I hope it doesn't turn into measles.

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  22. Colds are awful. For such a trivial virus, they make a person whimper. Hope it fades quickly.

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  23. Passages like that would put me off the rest of the book. I looked for a copy on ebay and decided to not buy one. I have so much unread on my kindle already.

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  24. Rachel: No, it was the mobile version, but apparently something about my cookies or cache was corrupting it.

    GZ: I can read blogs on a phone, sort of, but I can't even begin to write on one!

    Mitchell: Yes, the kids are a veritable cocktail of microorganisms.

    Frances: Ha! I'm not sure about the difference between a cold and "man flu," but whatever it is, I was happy to stay home!

    Andrew: Wasn't that advertising quote terrific? I laughed so hard.

    YP: Well, I hope you're seeing my entire blog on your kettle and not just the pictures featuring liquids!

    Bob: SO descriptive!

    Bug: Ha! But at least the descriptions are lively, or at least I find them so.

    Ms Moon: It's certainly objectifying. Yes, I tested negative!

    Linda Sue: I LOVE LEMSIP! I should buy stock in it.

    Sharon: Thank you!

    Ellen: It's definitely not for everybody! It's very old-fashioned, but I find it entertaining.

    Ellen D: It was so great to have that time!

    Ed: Yeah, speaking often kills it! I write on a laptop. I could never blog from a phone.

    Boud: I think it was indeed the cache. I emptied it and now it works fine.

    Margaret: Yes, I can see the similarity, though Seinfeld's objectification has a much lighter tone.

    37P: It WAS a horror, but the fact that it made you recoil is exactly what I like about it. It's a powerful description that leaves room in the imagination for visualization. And as I said, rightly or wrongly, it's an experience we've probably all had.

    Susan: I seem to always get a cold in the spring. It happens every year.

    Kelly: It DOES seem a bit heavy handed but I think that's because his writing has been so often parodied.

    Red: Ha! I hope not too! (I was vaccinated against measles as a kid so I hope that resistance is still there!)

    Allison: It is ridiculous how bad they make us feel, given their relative harmlessness.

    River: Yeah, you might not like it if you don't like that hard-bitten style of detective writing. As I said to Ellen above, it's very old-fashioned.

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  25. When my American Literature professor in college assigned us a Hemingway novel (and I can't remember now which one it was) he mentioned it would be "fun" for us to have a drink every time one of the characters in the novel did. We would have have spent a lot of time drunk...

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