Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne (1918)
Apparently, Lawrence Osborne was approached by Raymond Chandler Ltd and asked to write a Phillip Marlow novel in the iconic crime-writer’s style.
I was curious to see how it would work out, because I really like Chandler, but I’m also aware of the casual racism, homophobia and misogyny that marble his work and make it distasteful to modern readers. Would it be possible, I wondered, to excise the rotten bits, or are they integral to the noir package?
For the most part, Osborne delivers a successful update. Partly, that’s due to the novel’s premise: Marlow is 72 years old in ONLY TO SLEEP and has adapted to the modern PC values swirling around him. To a certain extent, he’s a typical grumpy old man who doesn’t understand why Madonna is popular but, mostly, creeping mortality has grabbed him by the lapels and forced him to notice the beauty around him. The world is still a grubby, dangerous place, there are plenty of murdered drug dealers lying in the tall grass. But now, “telltale clouds of butterflies” mark the spots where they fell.
Marlow is dragged out of retirement by two insurance company bureaucrats to investigate a suspicious claim. A heavily insured older man died on a midnight swim and his young widow immediately cremated the remains and cashed in. The company sought out Marlow because he is old, and therefore unobtrusive. He is also fluently bi-lingual and the fraud, if it occurred at all, took place in Mexico.
In the original Marlow books, the detective called Spanish “a beautiful language,” even as he denigrated Mexican characters as “greaseballs” or “spicks.” With age, Marlow has stopped the childish name-calling and allowed generous, long-buried impulses to flourish. He now loves Mexico. Even the roads curve “with operatic courage” and the hummingbirds that flit around breakfast tables are reincarnated spirits of Aztec warriors.
The transformation from jaded tough-guy to slightly-sentimental-old-man feels natural to me, partly because I’m going through similar age-related changes myself. But I also feel it’s a reasonable character development, given the starting raw material. In THE BIG SLEEP, Marlow works through chess problems, alone, when the case stalls. And the novel ends very philosophically: “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower . . .”
Marlow was always more intellectual than the legion of Mike Hammer clones, but he wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes style detective, either. Holmes notices tiny clues overlooked by the police and uses his giant brain to collate scraps of data. Marlow tends to have flashes of psychological insight, which he pursues with Cockroach-like persistence. Marlow keeps intruding into peoples’ lives until they get frustrated and beat him up, more or less advertising their guilt.
ONLY TO SLEEP follows that pattern. Donald Zinn, the elderly insured guy, has always been a grifter, and Marlow immediately suspects his “death” is just another scam to avoid mounting debt. When Marlow interviews Zinn’s beautiful young wife, Delores, that first impression is fortified. So, Marlow follows Delores, knowing she will eventually hook up with her husband to resume their luxurious, parasitic pattern of living. Eventually, Delores gets tired of seeing Marlow every time she looks over her beautiful shoulder and offers to pay him off.
Sure enough, that’s when Marlow gets the crap beaten out of him. He agrees to accept the incriminating payment in a deserted house and is assaulted by a knife-wielding underling. As in the original Marlow books, the violence is a type of psychosis where the henchmen derive a perverse pleasure from their work.
Here, Marlow barely escapes death because he has a sword hidden within his cane. But he’s lost a lot of blood and convalesces in a shady private hospital where he is held prisoner, reminiscent of an episode in FAREWELL MY LOVELY.
Marlow IS like Sherlock Holmes in one respect: they both value their personal sense of justice over conventional law. Several times, Holmes lets a murderer off the hook, if there is an understanding that he will leave England. In ONLY TO SLEEP Marlow doesn’t particularly care that an insurance company has been cheated, and he has no intention of jailing Delores for her part in the crime. (Donald Zinn gets what he deserved when his body is mutilated and stuffed in a sack). Marlow solves the case but doesn't recover the company's cash. He just extorts enough money from Delores to make a restitution payment to Paul Linder’s father. (Paul Linder was the unfortunate person who provided the corpse for Zinn’s insurance scam.)
Marlow feels a sense of closure, helping out another old man who spends his time fishing in a canal that doesn’t have any fish.
Like I said, Osborne successfully eliminates the homophobia and racism that mars Chandler’s work (you need a shower after reading FAREWELL MY LOVELY.) The only complaint I have about this novel is a lingering misogyny. Marlow wasn’t particularly interested in the case until he realized that Zinn’s wife, Delores, was Hollywood-gorgeous—she elevated a stupid, sordid crime into “a beautiful fraud.” I’m not sure why Marlow and other hardboiled detectives can’t be interested in women who are merely attractive in the way ordinary people are attractive; the female leads must be spectacularly, outrageously, jaw-droppingly stunning.
But there’s more to it than mere silliness. When Marlow first meets Delores, her eyes have “the level interest in something new that a leopard has. While it decides whether you can be killed or not, its eyes are remarkably gentle and serene.”
As in Chandler, that type of description is a backhanded compliment. Women are beautiful and exotic, but they are also a different (predatory) species, something to be admired from a safe distance, like animals in a zoo.
They aren't quite human.
If you want realistic depictions of women in a noir setting, you have to read Dorothy Hughes.
I was curious to see how it would work out, because I really like Chandler, but I’m also aware of the casual racism, homophobia and misogyny that marble his work and make it distasteful to modern readers. Would it be possible, I wondered, to excise the rotten bits, or are they integral to the noir package?
For the most part, Osborne delivers a successful update. Partly, that’s due to the novel’s premise: Marlow is 72 years old in ONLY TO SLEEP and has adapted to the modern PC values swirling around him. To a certain extent, he’s a typical grumpy old man who doesn’t understand why Madonna is popular but, mostly, creeping mortality has grabbed him by the lapels and forced him to notice the beauty around him. The world is still a grubby, dangerous place, there are plenty of murdered drug dealers lying in the tall grass. But now, “telltale clouds of butterflies” mark the spots where they fell.
Marlow is dragged out of retirement by two insurance company bureaucrats to investigate a suspicious claim. A heavily insured older man died on a midnight swim and his young widow immediately cremated the remains and cashed in. The company sought out Marlow because he is old, and therefore unobtrusive. He is also fluently bi-lingual and the fraud, if it occurred at all, took place in Mexico.
In the original Marlow books, the detective called Spanish “a beautiful language,” even as he denigrated Mexican characters as “greaseballs” or “spicks.” With age, Marlow has stopped the childish name-calling and allowed generous, long-buried impulses to flourish. He now loves Mexico. Even the roads curve “with operatic courage” and the hummingbirds that flit around breakfast tables are reincarnated spirits of Aztec warriors.
The transformation from jaded tough-guy to slightly-sentimental-old-man feels natural to me, partly because I’m going through similar age-related changes myself. But I also feel it’s a reasonable character development, given the starting raw material. In THE BIG SLEEP, Marlow works through chess problems, alone, when the case stalls. And the novel ends very philosophically: “What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower . . .”
Marlow was always more intellectual than the legion of Mike Hammer clones, but he wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes style detective, either. Holmes notices tiny clues overlooked by the police and uses his giant brain to collate scraps of data. Marlow tends to have flashes of psychological insight, which he pursues with Cockroach-like persistence. Marlow keeps intruding into peoples’ lives until they get frustrated and beat him up, more or less advertising their guilt.
ONLY TO SLEEP follows that pattern. Donald Zinn, the elderly insured guy, has always been a grifter, and Marlow immediately suspects his “death” is just another scam to avoid mounting debt. When Marlow interviews Zinn’s beautiful young wife, Delores, that first impression is fortified. So, Marlow follows Delores, knowing she will eventually hook up with her husband to resume their luxurious, parasitic pattern of living. Eventually, Delores gets tired of seeing Marlow every time she looks over her beautiful shoulder and offers to pay him off.
Sure enough, that’s when Marlow gets the crap beaten out of him. He agrees to accept the incriminating payment in a deserted house and is assaulted by a knife-wielding underling. As in the original Marlow books, the violence is a type of psychosis where the henchmen derive a perverse pleasure from their work.
Here, Marlow barely escapes death because he has a sword hidden within his cane. But he’s lost a lot of blood and convalesces in a shady private hospital where he is held prisoner, reminiscent of an episode in FAREWELL MY LOVELY.
Marlow IS like Sherlock Holmes in one respect: they both value their personal sense of justice over conventional law. Several times, Holmes lets a murderer off the hook, if there is an understanding that he will leave England. In ONLY TO SLEEP Marlow doesn’t particularly care that an insurance company has been cheated, and he has no intention of jailing Delores for her part in the crime. (Donald Zinn gets what he deserved when his body is mutilated and stuffed in a sack). Marlow solves the case but doesn't recover the company's cash. He just extorts enough money from Delores to make a restitution payment to Paul Linder’s father. (Paul Linder was the unfortunate person who provided the corpse for Zinn’s insurance scam.)
Marlow feels a sense of closure, helping out another old man who spends his time fishing in a canal that doesn’t have any fish.
Like I said, Osborne successfully eliminates the homophobia and racism that mars Chandler’s work (you need a shower after reading FAREWELL MY LOVELY.) The only complaint I have about this novel is a lingering misogyny. Marlow wasn’t particularly interested in the case until he realized that Zinn’s wife, Delores, was Hollywood-gorgeous—she elevated a stupid, sordid crime into “a beautiful fraud.” I’m not sure why Marlow and other hardboiled detectives can’t be interested in women who are merely attractive in the way ordinary people are attractive; the female leads must be spectacularly, outrageously, jaw-droppingly stunning.
But there’s more to it than mere silliness. When Marlow first meets Delores, her eyes have “the level interest in something new that a leopard has. While it decides whether you can be killed or not, its eyes are remarkably gentle and serene.”
As in Chandler, that type of description is a backhanded compliment. Women are beautiful and exotic, but they are also a different (predatory) species, something to be admired from a safe distance, like animals in a zoo.
They aren't quite human.
If you want realistic depictions of women in a noir setting, you have to read Dorothy Hughes.
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