Chandler (No! Not the TV one!) Cruise (Yes! That one!)

Monday, when I drove my mother to the doctor, I took along a book to read while I waited. I've never been able to get into the typical magazines available in waiting rooms. No matter where or when you go, the magazines will mostly be the same. Topics will include home and hearth, personal care, sports, children, politics, gossip. Certainly nothing too controversial. Nor apparently, anything too literary. I can't recall ever having seen a copy of "The New Yorker" in a waiting area.

That morning as I got ready to leave for work, I was none too sure what book I wanted. Although, I was reading "Boy Toy," I opted to leave it. Instead I grabbed "Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe - A Centennial Celebration." As the jacket blurb says, "New Philip Marlowe Stories by some of the world's leading mystery authors."

I've had the book for a number of years, and I dip into it from time to time. But I can't say I've read it from cover to cover. But then it's not that kind of book. It's what it says it is: short stories by different authors featuring Chandler's Philip Marlowe. One additional element is that each story takes place in a different year. From 1936 to 1959.

With the hustle and bustle of Monday, I was only able to read one story of about ten pages. Then I skimmed the opening page for several other stories.

Chandler's writing style was distinctive. And he may have been the first author to make use of something I call contrapositive phrases. Instead of describing something directly, he will invert the logic and compare it to something in a negative way.

One great example is from "Farewell, My Lovely."

"The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building."

All this to say that I've again become enamored of Chandler and have started re-reading "The Long Goodbye." This was the last complete novel he wrote. (I'm excluding "Playback," which is more of a long short story.) And within a few pages, I was transported to LA in the early 50s. Marlowe has befriended Terry Lennox, a very polite drunk who is married to a millionaire's daughter. And soon Lennox is in a jam. And of course Marlowe offers assistance.

A most intriguing movie. The previews have shown a film that could be called "Mission Impossible - Future Tense." But this is far more a cerebral film. Again and again, I thought of Hitchcock. A man falsely accused must prove his innocence against incredible odds.

The future shown here, save for the pre-cogs, is an extension of the present. A society willing to restrict personal freedom and embrace continued open surveillance - both counter criminal and commercial. Retinal scans are omni-present. Buildings, streets, stores, subways, everywhere. But the scans are also used to offer tailor-made adverts to the individual. Cruise walks the streets and is provided with personal ads on almost every surface - sides of buildings, store fronts, on the sides of an overpass. He enters a store, and is immediately ask if he found his last purchase satisfactory.

The special effects and techno wizardy never overshadow the core. Yet, at the same time, the futuristic elements are essential to the substance of the story. It would not be the same story without those components.

There are the customary plot holes. But a couple of times, I thought some scenes had been shortened, so this may be more a problem of editing than logic. Once Cruise becomes suspect, it apparently never occurs to anyone to lock him out of official places. However, one scene in particular makes use of this omission and the retinal scans in a very perverse and funny way.

Cruise plays Cruise. But of course that's what we want him to do. The great paradox of being a celebrity performer. In fact, there is a brief scene in which his face is disguised, and you quickly wish for the regular visage. Actually, I'm certain that performers at the time of Aeschylus faced the same problem.

PAX!