Reading the 20th Century discussion
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The Big Sleep
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The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (June 2022)
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A re-read of RC is always a most welcome thing
See also PG Wodehouse
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My review traces my uneven relationship with Chandler: first time it was 2-stars, then I reread and moved up to 4-stars - this time it could even go to 5-stars based on the opening.
Yet more evidence of how much timing and mood affect our responses to a writer/book.
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I'm sure mood, context, timing, expectation etc all play a massive part in our reactions to what we are reading
It’s great when it turns out this way, but I have reread books and thought what on earth did I see in this.
Jill wrote: "It’s great when it turns out this way, but I have reread books and thought what on earth did I see in this."It has been visited by The Suck Fairy:
https://www.tor.com/2010/09/28/the-su...
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I think expectation had a big part to play - I only read Chandler for the first time a few years ago and came to him with that whole weight of reputation, especially in terms of writing style. But (and Sid may remember this) I got hung up on Marlowe saying something about how Carmen enjoyed being slapped around by her men, and just couldn't get past that.
Now, I've caught Marlowe's voice and it's all slipped into place :)
Rosina wrote: "Jill wrote: "It’s great when it turns out this way, but I have reread books and thought what on earth did I see in this."It has been visited by The Suck Fairy:
https://www.tor.com/2010/09/28/the-..."
Good to know it’s not just me then. I now don’t reread, as I prefer my memories, even if they are wrong.
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I'm about half way through. I can't remember how many times I've read it - 3 or 4, I think - but this is the first time in at least 15 years and I'm loving it. Right from the opening paragraph, Chandler's style and brilliant prose catches the mood. There are fewer wisecracks than most people think, but some wonderful similes, like the orchids with "nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men". It's "newly washed" which is so brilliant, I think.The homophobia is hard to take sometimes, though. I know it was the prevailing attitude in 1939, but it's pretty repellent to modern sensibilities (well, to my sensibilities anyway). Still, we can't pretend attitudes were otherwise and the rest of it is just great. I may have to finish it this evening...
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I partly listened to the audio when travelling today (unsociably), and Elliot Gould does a fine voice for Marlowe.
Sid, you're right, far fewer wisecracks than I remembered, and there's a lovely grace to the writing even when what is described is ugly. And who knew there was so much rain and fog in LA?
I read someone say that Marlowe is a Dantesque figure leading us through the underworld, but he's more involved than that. (view spoiler)
Can't wait for more Marlowe.
I'm delighted you've come round!Your reference to the knight at the beginning reminds me that in The High Window Marlowe describes himself as "a shop-soiled Sir Galahad." He's being ironic, of course, but it's not a bad description, I think.
I also have to say that, much as I love Humphrey Bogart, he is not Marlowe to me. He plays him too seedily, I think, and too much like Sam Spade. Marlowe is more noble and more philosophical than that, even if he does hide it well, sometimes.
(I'm not keen on any of the Chandler film adaptations, although Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye wasn't bad at all...just not Marlowe. I don;t think anyone has ever really got him right.)
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Yes, his descriptions are excellent all round, but especially the details he gives of clothes which say so much about the character. (His description of Moose Malloy at the start of Farewell, My Lovely is just magnificent!)
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There's also the knight on the chessboard in Marlowe's room: 'Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.'
I did have to giggle at 'Kiss me, you beast.' 😏
Roman Clodia wrote: "I did have to giggle at 'Kiss me, you beast.'"Really? I've lost count of the number of women who have said that to me. 😉
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The moment I started this I realised I knew the plot inside out.
Still, as I observe in my last review, knowing the plot won't diminish the pleasure of one more ride around the block in 1930s Los Angeles and the peerless company of Marlowe.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5/5
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Roman Clodia wrote: "I still found the plot convoluted, but agree that the pleasures of the book go beyond just what happens. Can't wait to read the next one."I believe when they made the movie they went back to Chandler and asked him who killed someone - I think it was the driver - and he said he didn't know.
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Haha, glad to know I'm in good company then if Chandler himself lost the plot at points ;))
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Chandler, like PG Wodehouse, who will feature later in this series, had been educated at Dulwich College, a school founded by Edward Alleyn, the great actor-manager whose company, the Admiral’s Men, included the poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s great rival. In Chandler’s stories, his protagonist also appears as “Mallory”. He is a 20th-century knight who treads the mean streets of Hollywood and Santa Monica, and who also visits the houses of the stinking rich, with their English butlers, corrosive secrets and sinister vices. Chandler plays with this medieval conceit in surreal metaphors. For instance: “It was a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
In The Big Sleep – the title refers to the gangster euphemism for death – Marlowe is summoned to the home of old General Sternwood whose wild daughter, Carmen, is being blackmailed by a seedy bookseller. But The Big Sleep transcends its genre, moving WH Auden to write that Chandler’s thrillers “should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art”.
From: The 100 best novels: No 62 – The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...
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To paraphrase Marlowe, a sensible person would just walk away having completed his assignment for General Sternwood but Marlowe just has to know all the answers.
So, so good
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"I'm not keen on any of the Chandler film adaptations, although Elliot Gould in The Long Goodbye wasn't bad at all...just not Marlowe. I don't think anyone has ever really got him right"
I adore that adaptation and have watched it many times over the decades since first encountering it on TV as a kid in the 1970s. Locating it in the 1970s works brilliantly. Elliot Gould made a memorable Marlowe if one that is a long way from the book version.
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That's what I am listening to Judy. I'm loving the narration. He really brings it alive
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The part with Sternwood's orchids, where they are made to sound unattractive and there is so much emphasis on the stifling heat, is quite a contrast with the beautiful orchids at the top of the brownstone in the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout! I've just checked and a number of Wolfe stories had appeared before The Big Sleep - I wonder if Chandler had read any of them.
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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
5/5
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I suggest pressing on, as these books are so quick and easy to read, but we'll go with the consensus view.
Either way for me. Happy to do either July or August.
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Nigeyb wrote: "Okay then, let's do Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe #2) in July then. I'll set it up. Thanks for your replies"Hurrah! I'm in.
"He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck... He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food."
Can't wait.
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I've just read what I think is a great blog essay which looks at this aspect, as well as many others, commenting: "Ostensibly a conservative tract, The Big Sleep is really a bohemian tourist brochure: Visit scenic Babylon! I think noir is always a hymn to Babylon hidden in a denunciation of it."
https://johnpistelli.com/2017/01/16/r...
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It’s a recurring issue with books written in less enlightened times. I can always see beyond it but understand that not everyone can
Reading the 20th Century
Books mentioned in this topic
Farewell, My Lovely (other topics)Farewell, My Lovely (other topics)
Farewell, My Lovely (other topics)
The Big Sleep (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Rex Stout (other topics)Raymond Chandler (other topics)
The Big Sleep (1939) (Philip Marlowe #1)
by
Raymond Chandler
The discussion officially opens on 1 June 2022 however feel free to comment before and after
Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe is working for the Sternwood family. Old man Sternwood, crippled and wheelchair-bound, is being given the squeeze by a blackmailer and he wants Marlowe to make the problem go away. But with Sternwood's two wild, devil-may-care daughters prowling LA's seedy backstreets, Marlowe's got his work cut out - and that's before he stumbles over the first corpse . . .
Best-known as the creator of the original private eye, Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959. Many of his books have been adapted for the screen, and he is widely regarded as one of the very greatest writers of detective fiction.