plotless

A friend of mine, when asked what film he felt like seeing, would sometimes say “the plotless Batman.” Such a thing may never have been filmed, but I was sympathetic to the idea– a string of incidents with nothing linking them but the figure of Batman himself.

I think Raymond Chandler often comes close to that. Sure, there’s always a loose story in each of his novels, but it generally seems like an excuse for Marlowe to pass through a string of locations inhabited by quirky characters. And I like that.

Chandler’s own favorite was the second novel, Farewell, My Lovely. My own favorite is The Long Goodbye (the last of the large novels) but it’s the second one that I was in the mood to reread, just because it felt like I’d reread that one the least recently. I just checked, and there is no evidence that I’ve read it any more recently than 2003. That seems like it might be false, but then again, maybe it really has been 6 years.