Word: marlows
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...suppurating surface, this writer, Philip Marlow, is as racked and brilliant as the man who created him. Marlow, who relishes the cheap irony that his name echoes that of Raymond Chandler's famed sleuth, is a failed novelist hitting 50 with a terrifying thud. His career has been sidetracked by illness and bile. His marriage to an actress (Janet Suzman) is just an awful memory. He lies in a London hospital with psoriatic arthritis, a crippling condition of the skin and bones. The pain and the pain-killers force Marlow's mind down strange old country lanes and treacherous culs...
...sense, Potter is no Marlow. His works -- novels as well as plays -- are lionized, though the author is unawed: "I think novels are rather easier to write than plays. Years ago I loved the theater -- until television came along, until I really saw it, saw what you could do with it. I love what television could be if they left it alone." Exemplarily, British TV has left Potter alone to create his atonal rhapsodies, whereas Marlow suffers the impotence of creative failure. And yet, Potter knows Marlow well; the author's biography crosses his character's life at crucial points...
Potter was born, the same year as Marlow, into a poor family in the Forest of Dean, those sprawling West Country woods where young Philip spots his mother copulating. Potter moved to London, as his character does, was graduated with honors from Oxford, ran unsuccessfully for Parliament in 1964, then began writing teleplays. For half his life he has suffered from the same disease as Marlow, and must stay occasionally in the sort of hospital he lances so vigorously in the series. Potter insists that Detective is not autobiographical, "except for the illness, with which I'm overly, sickeningly familiar...
...been rare since the hostile fire turned intense late in the summer. Between duties, some soldiers kill stray scorpions and centipedes in the three-and four-man bunkers. When he was out and about during a stint as liaison officer to the British peace-keeping troops, First Lieut. Lee Marlow of Nashville found to his surprised pleasure that "people in Beirut seemed friendly. They waved and said hello." But now he and everyone else must spend the bulk of their time hunkered down. "It's mostly boring, really," says one of the riflemen guarding a road to the main...
Letter writing to parents, siblings and girlfriends is a principal pastime. "They're looking forward to going home next month," Marlow says of his men, "and some of the troops can't wait to get out of here. But I don't think morale is a problem." That was before Sunday...