Maureen’s Comments (group member since Mar 02, 2009)

Maureen’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

you know, i just remembered a lot of the ones i liked were set in rome or greece, and actually i even remember more than one about the mavroleon (black lion) family. hot cretan men with green eyes and dark hair. :P

Adrian wrote: "I'm prejudiced against these formulaic romance abominations, but there was a mirthful afternoon in my high school years when my English teacher drove a half-dozen of us students to a large used boo..."

i was nervous to see what you'd have written here adrian, and of course, that was ridiculous, because once again i am charmed. i think your teacher was wonderful. and i see no fault in not enjoying a good laugh at silly iterations of the romance genre. and i'd love to read the taming of the nurse. in fact, i don't really see a problem with you not enjoying them, or being prejudiced against them. i hope you know i'm not trying to defend romance as literature by any stretch. i'm just saying it fills a need, and i'm not surprised that there are THAT many people who read them. different strokes for different folks. all right: that pun was rude and fully intended. :P

Shel wrote: "I agree that anything sex-positive is great. I mean anything, in this weird-ass society.

But what I take issue with probably sounds like an old feminist mantra - the circumstances in which all thi..."

i guess that's where our points of entry differ. i am by no means a good feminist. :) my feeling is that these books reflected what the readership would relate to, and continues to do that. in many ways, there was freedom to harlequin romances: women could read them on the subway or by the pool, they could read them in front of their husbands and their in-laws, and strangers, and nobody baulked. take a man and his playboy and put him in those self-same scenarios and he would be scolded. i knew women who had bookshelves of them on display. we all know what's in these puppies -- to me, it's wonderful that there was at least one place where women weren't denied sexuality.

but then again, i can't say i'm actually familiar with the feminist argument against them either. could you elaborate?

i haven't read one in years, unless you count heartland which i think i mentioned above. i pull it out every couple of years. it's pretty beaten up.

actually that's the only thing i have against harlequin really. all those poor trees. :)

frightened... and charmed? :P

um shel. you have to at least try them and tell me how they are. do not walk by bacon goodness. if you must, eat a chocolate bar as you eat them. :)

and jen. you behave or i'll slather you in baconnaise. :) truly god has smiled upon me this day. :P

this is very cool shel. if i can get my act together, i'll join in. :)

romance novels. well, i imagine the reason there are so many is that people, especially women, really do read that many. and you can buy them on a subscription basis, and harlequin still has an active subscription pool so you get them regularly, four every month, or at least that is what it used to be.

i have to say, they are the same as soap operas. and that's okay. it's escapist entertainment. it's harry potter. it's twilight. it's gladiators in the arena. women slathered themselves with gladiator sweat. found it to be an aphrodisiac. why should harlequin surprise you?

i would argue that for some women, it's a huge relief to have these books available. as i've said before, i've read a lot of these, and once in a while one was really good but for the most part what they are is representative of a perfected formula, one that eases the hearts of women everywhere. and yeah, not just their hearts. i learned a lot about sex from harlequin, and judith krantz.

harlequin is based here in toronto, so i admit i'm biased on their behalf. everybody i know who has worked with them has loved the experience. editors love perfection, and harlequin has the formula down.

Adrian wrote: "Wow. Let it go.

BTW, I went to that show and it was really cool. Too bad you missed it. :P"

i could have been a contender! if i had had a pink leopard outfit, and john taylor's eye! i could have been his child bride. ;P

damn you, adrian. :)

Kerry wrote: "Hell I read it and still don't think I have the key to the big sleep."

i knew somebody was going to bust me on that. there are many keys. :)

that's great that he gets to go on the holocaust trip. i'm still pissed my sister didn't take me to see duran duran for my 12th birthday. the video for the reflex was taped during that show and every time i watched that video my heart broke a little. :P

Jonathan wrote: " . . . am following and enjoying this dialogue, though i've added virtually nothing to it . . . i'm nearing page 100, and am with patty regarding the question of protecting the general-- thanks for..."

i think it's important with a book like this to keep the climax to yourself. your first time should be inscrutable. i've read it a bunch of times and knowing the end doesn't ruin the experience for me, seeing as the plot isn't necessarily the most rewarding thing about the book, as swanny and others have rightly pointed out but hey! if you've never seen the movie or read it yet, far be it from me to tell you the key to the big sleep. :)

Kerry wrote: "I finished last night.

I want to talk about Marlowe and Silver Wig (thanks Mo). I didn’t really buy it when Marlowe kissed her. I think Chandler was stretching a little bit with this one.
..."

SPOILERS!!

i was really interested to see what you'd think of the women characters kerry, since we both have a love of du maurier, and austen.

silver wig has always felt like a bit of a put-up job to me too. she comes out of nowhere, to be, i guess, the damosel in distress, since he's disqualified vivienne, and carmen both in that role. i'd venture to say other chandler novels are more successful in giving marlowe a romantic run for his money. it's so plastic. rusty regan wanted her; eddie mars wanted her; marlowe wants her. she's a trophy. her disappearance obviously figures quite heavily in the book, and it needs resolving, especially since we need to know what happened to rusty regan, and yet? the fact that the last line of the novel is about silver wig has always bothered me. silver wig is just the one that got away.

i don't think it's any different than in the old files. if joseph wants to talk about books with us, eventually somebody may decide to read his book and they'll post about it here. we've had authors who have only posted a handful of times and never come back after they've talked about their books before. people get busy, too.

i tend not to read our own. it's nothing personal. i bought the skipper's book because i liked the voice in his posts and i was curious as to how it would translate to fiction, without all those ellipses. :P

so joseph, it's my personal opinion that this thread is warranted, if precipitous. i probably won't read your posts in the other groups: it's hard for me to make enough time to read everything here and in inner workings. :)

Ben wrote: "i found this here: http://www.iol.ie/~galfilm/filmwest/3...

it's pretty funny....

In January 1944, Paramount discovered that their biggest star, Alan Ladd, was due to be drafted to fight i..."

sure does. and you know what? i'd be sad if they didn't make the blue dahlia. it's actually one of the few alan ladd movies i've seen. you see how confusing it all gets?

and,

back then? :P

"A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. I always regard the first draft as raw material. What seems to be alive in it is what belongs in the story."

-- a great quote from chandler on writing i found in a guardian blog entry

the comments on the blog are quite interesting -- someone points out that the big sleep came out when chandler was 51. it was his first novel.

Ben wrote: "wait, is that a joke? the guy's a drunk and hollywood's bad for injecting him with glucose?
"

why is everybody asking such hard questions today? ;)

i realize that chandler was a drunk, and glucose is just glucose. i guess what's bad about it in my estimation is that they are leeching off of broken people, in this case, chandler. they facilitate his addiction not put him in rehab and wait to make the production happen later, or do the project with someone else now. and when i read this judy garland leapt into my mind: how they pumped her full of drugs when she was so young, to keep her awake for the long days on set, and she died, a drug addict. it's not like i don't know that they did it to themselves: i've read horrible stories about david o. selznick, and his attempts to maximize the working hours in a day. it's just that i think it's a sick corruption of the american dream.

i don't know. hollywood is a confusion to me. fatty arbuckle's case for example. i find it hard to believe he was guilty, because buster keaton, his friend, and one of my heroes, believed he was innocent. other accounts make it hard to believe he wasn't guilty. scott fitzgerald and raymond chandler were well on their way to destroying themselves before they ever set foot in hollywood. but it's like cut flowers: they have such vibrance, and you want them for yourself, so you cut them away, and they die quicker, and it's your fault. you loved them sure, but you took from them.

p.s. i thought we all decided i was humourless? :P

it's disgusting how they were constantly shooting up these poor writers, and actors, and directors with drugs or vitamins or glucose or whatever it was they had on hand in order to get movies made. hollywood has destroyed a lot of people. :(

Alex wrote: "But if he did resolve it, and I think it was resolved, what could he say other than he didn't know that he had left it unresolved?
"Mr. Chandler, why did you leave the murder of Owen Taylor unres..."

alex, i don't know if i can argue this point anymore. :)

i was trying to answer the reference that swanny made to a theory that chandler planned the book this way. the quote i'm able to find readily available -- i don't have his letters to hand is "They sent me a wire... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either" he only recognized that it was when it was pointed out to him. whether or not it is integral to the story or whether it enriches the story (and for the record, i agree with johnny that it makes for a more scintillating read to have the story veer off into directions unknown) is another question.

Ben wrote: "Maureen wrote: "as for chandler having an awkward relationship with hollywood, i can't think of one serious novelist who loved it. "

i don't know about loved it, but what about budd schulberg? he ..."

budd schulberg was a creature of hollywood. daddy was the head of paramount. a completely different story in my opinion than that of an outsider like chandler, or faulkner, or fitzgerald, or hammett, or any of the brits -- of course my opinion on this is coloured by david niven's. his vignette of the broken fitzgerald working on the screenplay for the film raffles is something i'll never forget. ;)

ONCE AGAIN SPOILERS. :)

alex: i was the one who said that the action goes nowhere, and does nothing to serve the plot, and i said in reference to owen taylor.

it's nice to think that chandler as a novelist did leave this murder/possible suicide unsolved on purpose, but it's just not true. his correspondence indicates as much. he admitted he did NOT know that he had left it unresolved. sorry you guys. :)

as for chandler having an awkward relationship with hollywood, i can't think of one serious novelist who loved it. they were lured to hollywood on the prospect of big bucks and quickly learned that writing for the studios meant you were writing for the studios, and the hays code, and not themselves.
what always interested me is whether he was cheesed that he wasn't the one writing the screenplay himself -- though my guess is if he was contracted to another studio, that may be the reason why.