sitting on the sidewalk like a baby

You can't just walk out on the Organization.

Back in the 1980s, Donald Westlake wrote a fascinating essay on genre, and the gay subtext in Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye. It was not well received, but nowadays few are aware of the homophobic response it prompted at the time.

Up until that point, a particular literary genre had nurtured the American vision of homosexuality, a genre whose point of departure was a burning curiosity to know what really goes on in the lower depths: the hardboiled crime novel. While the reform-minded social realists (Crane, Norris, Farrell, et al.) had never had much time for homosexuality -- perhaps sharing the notion that it was chiefly an aristocratic pastime typical of pallid Etonians -- the hardboiled writers from Hammett onward found it hard to keep away. Although gays are not as commonly associated with tough-guy fiction as racketeers, crooked cops or B-girls, the fact remains that all the main contributors to the genre -- Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Spillane, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, among others -- helped to elaborate a gay stereotype. As the influence of hardboiled realism spread, the incidence of homosexual characters increased dramatically in mainstream mystery writing.

She was always a great one for encouraging sin. Blue sin, red sin, fabulous purple sin.