Friday, May 30, 2008

Definition of Anti-Hero by Raymond Chandler

Apparently Raymond Chandler wrote an essay in 1950, "The Simple Art of Murder," about the detective story. Part of it is a criticism of typical early-20th-century British detective stories, which Chandler despised.

In his conclusion, however, Chandler goes off on a riff about the essential nature of the classic hard-boiled-dick detective character which he perfected in his novels such as The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye, and which at their best modern detective-story novelists like Lee Child continue to express to perfection. Here is Chandler's description of the character and appeal of the tough-guy private eye, a description so tough and hardboiled, yet so sentimental and hopeful, that you will find yourself compelled to read it aloud to get the full effect. "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean...." Irresistable!
--mac mccarthy

----

In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.