Posted by Sterling on 17/7/2012, 23:40:07, in reply to "Re: Farewell, My Lovely"
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******SPOILERS******
Guillermo,
I think that we can take Hemingway's explanation in Chapter 33 at face value as far as the Sonderborg clinic. (I love the Hemingway joke.) Similarly, most of the rest of the novel is wrapped up in Chapter 40 (which starts with Chandler using Anne to mock the wrap-up chapter).
As for Velma, she herself is incapable of love. She doesn't understand it. Therefore, she assumes that Malloy will kill her for setting him up. She has always assumed he had figured it out, which he probably would have (he's smarter than he first appears) if he were not blinded by love. When he finally does realize, she shoots him in terror. We know that Malloy would never have hurt her, but she does not. I believe hiding out from Malloy is the main reason that she must conceal her identity.
Chandler was famous for his elaborate plots. He often employs the technique he uses in FML of employing two apparently independent plots (Plot 1: Malloy, Velma, Mrs. Florian; Plot 2: Marriott, stolen jewels, Mrs. Grayle) and then starts to weave them together. But I, at least, do not read Chandler for the story as much as for the language and style. Chandler once said, "I live for syntax." And he's darn good with it, but most of us are struck primarily by his outrageous similes and metaphors. The "tarantula on a slice of angel food" is perhasp the most famous from FML.. Check out this sentence: "She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak, and large moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones." That's from The High Window. Great stuff.
--Previous Message--
: ***SPOILERS***
:
: I finished. I liked it a lot, even better than
: "Red Harvest". But there's something I can't
: understand: why is Velma interested in disappearing
: everybody that knew her before she married the
: millionaire, if he knows everything about her past and
: has no problem with it? There seems to me to be no
: motive for her murdering Marriott and Malloy, her life
: is all settled and yes, Malloy might have been a
: nuisance, but not a danger. And what's with the
: Sonderborg clinic, and the psychic, and all that
: stuff? Does anybody understand everything and can
: explain?
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