Popular Culture Review Vol. 1, December 1989 | Page 48

elegant.
In contrast, Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The
Long Goodbye works out o f a sleazy office but has a finer set of
values than his rich clients. Terry and Marlowe seemed to become
friends; they would meet for drinks. At the end Terry comes back
to Marlowe in a disguise as a Mexican, trying to pay his friend off
with money and apologize for making Marlowe like him and care,
when he w asn’t worth it:
“You bought a lot of me, Terry,” Marlowe tells him in disgust,
“for a smile and a nod and a wave of the hand and a few quiet drinks
in a quiet bar here and there. It was nice while it lasted. So long,
amigo. I won’t say goodbye. I said it to you when it meant
something. I said it when it was sad and lonely and final.”
Marlowe speaks from a set of personal values at that moment
o f epiphany. His values do not derive from social class distinctions;
they subvert them. We should note that Chandler’s is a tale of
buddies, a genre that has its roots in the old West. It is a tale of men,
between men, and essentially for men. Women readers who enjoy
it will have to read it somewhat detached from themselves—
’’reading like a man.” This all-male cast (writer, characters, readerrole) is an essential part of California literature.
Even more a man’s detective writer is Arthur Lyons’ The
Killing Floor. It begins: “Vernon stinks. It always stinks,” and
proceeds to its title setting, the killing floor o f a slaughter house.
But it is a California story: Jacob Asch, Lyons’ detective, seems to
eat little but salads.
Joseph Hansen, whose detective Brandstetter is middle aged
and gay, carries the male detective story further than Jacob Asch’s
salads. Ironically, Hansen’s gay-detective novels wrench the
reader less than most; Hansen does not require the reader to do
gymnastics to find a way into the story. Readers are not forced to
read like a gay male to empathize with the detective; Hansen’s

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