Just because I found it. I [heart] noir and pulp and such.

Tomorrow, the Spouse the Nine Year-Old and I will be headed to the Jersey Shore for a week. Posting here will be sporadic, at best. So–to keep you occupied while I am away, how’s about you let me know what you’d like to talk about here? Or not talk about (yes, I know I am obsessive about Clive. I can cut down, honestly I can! No. I can’t. I am too far gone).

In writing news, my agent sent out That Subtle Knot and expects to get feedback in a couple of weeks, give or take a few nail-biting hours. I am more than halfway done with the super-sexy novella, and On Bold Adventure (aka Richard Sharpe Settles Down, At Last)is burning a hole in my brain, so that will be September’s project.

I have no Life News, except to report that my mom–The Queen of Flakes–actually remembered to call me on my birthday, although she did not remember precisely how old I was.  One step at a time, right?

This weekend, I learned a profound truth I will carry with me forever:

You cannot trust Ava Gardner.

We watched The Killers, an Ernest Hemingway story starring Gardner and Burt Lancaster. And, because no woman can possibly be that beautiful and not have something wrong with her, she is a double-crossing, lying, manipulative thief.

Like in other movies of hers, where she turns out to be a Bad Woman.

But honestly, how stunning was she?

Today I have some substance over at the Risky Regencies.

And Goedi sent this to me, per yesterday’s comment:

Poem: “In Love with Raymond Chandler,” by Margaret Atwood from Good Bones And Simple Murders (Doubleday).

In Love with Raymond Chandler

An affair with Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because of the mangled bodies and
the marinated cops and hints of eccentric sex, but because of his interest in furniture. He
knew that furniture could breathe, could feel, not as we do but in a way more muffled,
like the word upholstery, with its overtones of mustiness and dust, its bouquet of
sunlight on aging cloth or of scuffed leather on the backs and seats of sleazy office
chairs. I think of his sofas, stuffed to roundness, satin-covered, pale blue like the eyes of his
cold blond unbodied murderous women, beating very slowly, like the hearts of
hibernating crocodiles; of his chaises longues, with their malicious pillows. He knew
about front lawns too, and greenhouses, and the interiors of cars.
This is how our love affair would go. We would meet at a hotel, or a motel,
whether expensive or cheap it wouldn’t matter. We would enter the room, lock the door,
and begin to explore the furniture, fingering the curtains, running our hands along the
spurious gilt frames of the pictures, over the real marble or the chipped enamel of the
luxurious or tacky washroom sink, inhaling the odor of the carpets, old cigarette smoke
and spilled gin and fast meaningless sex or else the rich abstract scent of the oval
transparent soaps imported from England, it wouldn’t matter to us; what would matter
would be our response to the furniture, and the furniture’s response to us. Only after we
had sniffed, fingered, rubbed, rolled on, and absorbed the furniture of the room would
we fall into each other’s arms, and onto the bed (king-size? peach-colored? creaky?
narrow? four-posted? pioneer-quilted? lime-green chenille-covered?), ready at last to do
the same things to each other.

EKM sent me a link relating the news that Clive Owen is set to play Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe in a film directed by Frank Miller.

When I sent the news to the Completely Understanding the Manic Crush I Have Spouse, He Feels The Same Way About Scarlett Johanssen, he asked me if I needed a glass of water, and if I was all right. I did, and I was not. EKM suggested I rest until the light-headed feeling passed.

I love Raymond Chandler. I’ve read everything he’s ever written, multiple times, and saw The Big Sleep more times than I read it, even. I am not sure the combined reality can live up to what I am imagining, but I am so darn excited.

Megan