at one point hed needed a break from poe and hawthorne and melville and hed gone on a raymond chandler binge -- a novel a day with the help of a pack of cigarettes and endless cups of coffee at the caf mediterranean -- and he still remembered that hed been impressed in those heady days by what he took to be the anachronism of the writers tough-minded romanticism : down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean , who is neither tarnished nor afraid .