The Big Sleep

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"She's a grifter. I'm a grifter. We're all grifters. So we sell each other out for a nickel."

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Third reading and I'm a Chandler convert!

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You know that thing about there being the 'right' and 'wrong' time to come to a book? Well, the first time I tried Chandler I disliked this book (see original 2* review below). But it's been nagging at me that so many people whose tastes I respect and often share revere him... so I tried this again and this time we clicked!

I'm still not convinced that Chandler is the literary genius that some proclaim (to be fair, though, this is the only book of his I've read) but I liked the snappy pace, the noir atmosphere, the way Marlowe is both laconic and verbally extravagant with those similes. The stained glass window showing a knight rescuing a damsel is a suitable analogue to Marlowe himself, albeit in a powder-blue suit, and the head-spinning plot never flags. Hurrah - I'll definitely read more Marlowe now.


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What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep

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So... my first Chandler, a writer coming to me replete with recommendations from friends - but, honestly, just a so-so read for me. I can see how this would have shaken up the crime genre in 1939 bringing a literary sensibility to what was essentially pulp fiction, but today this feels jaded and old-fashioned.

A lot depends on whether you:

A) like Chandler's writing style : 'he wore a blue uniform that fitted him the way a stall fits a horse', 'a screen-star's boudoir, a place of charm and seduction, artificial as a wooden leg'; and

B) can stomach the casual and pervasive racism, homophobia and misogyny.

A crux moment came for me when faced with this: 'She didn't mind the slap...Probably all her boy friends got around to slapping her sooner or later. I could understand how they might.' Uh, yeah, great...

On the plus side, I was interested to see how the hard-boiled noir genre comes into being, not least the way in which it influences a contemporary writer like James Ellroy who casts a modern jaundiced eye back on the era and its values.

Chandler, though? Not for me.

I seesawed on how to rate this, and this genre is new to me, but in the end the piquant narrator and his unique point of view won me over. It is an entertaining read, moves fast and surprisingly, even if the B&W movie runs through your brain. I had to keep reminding myself it was 1939, and that maybe people really did talk this way. It is also the first of Chandler's, so expecting improvement in his others, which I will space out and read when I need a fix of hardboiled noir.

What style! Holy Moses! Chandler writes with a purpose: to put you right in the shit. In The Big Sleep he writes with the economy of biting words that surrounds Philip Marlowe, a detective whose seen the hardbitten world, with the street's lexicon.

Hardboiled? Certainly. But I've read some hardboiled stuff that was boiled down to a tasteless mass. This stuff's full of flavor, bitter and sometimes bittersweet.

You've seen the movie, now read the book. They're similar in style, but the story differs enough to make each quite enjoyable on its own.

I was urged to read Chandler by a Goodreads friend or two, and boy I'm glad I did. However, since this is my first go 'round I'm going to close the dam on this review. The Big Sleep has a twisty, complicated plot and Chandler's writing is good enough that both deserve further reading to give them their due.

The quintessence of the hard boiled detective story here overshadows plain old good writing. Some of the similes sound hackneyed, but Chandler did much to construct the cop-jargon/lingo mythos we see as cliche nowadays; otherwise the language is succinct and muscular. Marlowe is well developed as are the wild sisters Sternwood. The plot is thick but believable, the violence anything but gratuitous. By today's standards the action is minimal.

As important as any human character is Los Angeles seen through the private eye's eyes. Credulity is won by the brutal honesty regarding human nature. It's easy reading.

There are few shots fired, a few tails executed slowly and methodically rather than overdone chase scenes. It's much more realistic than run-of-the-mill mysteries or crime dramas.

Raymond Chandler was a fine writer. The film starring Bogart missed the mark by a wide margin. The novel is a must-read.

Okay, so it wasn't bad. There's lots of fistfights and shooting and dames, and our detective hero is appropriately jaded and tight-lipped. The bad guys are crazy, the women are freaks in both the streets and the sheets, and there's a subplot involving a pornography racket. Everyone talks in 30's-tastic slang and usually the reader has no idea what everyone keeps yelling about. It's a violent, fast-paced, garter-snapping (the Depression equivalent of bodice-ripping, I imagine) detective thriller, and you could do a lot worse. Chandler, like his contemporary Dashiel Hammett, has a gift for gorgeous description and atmosphere, and uses it well. But I just can't stomach giving this more than 2 stars.

Here's my problem: while I understand that the 1930's were a very homophobic and sexist time and that books written during that era are bound to include some stuff that makes me uncomfortable, that doesn't mean I'm going to enjoy reading a book where the hero is homophobic and misogynist. Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled detective of The Big Sleep, makes Sam Spade look like a refined gentleman in comparison. And I guess he is - Spade has pimp-slapped his share of the ladies, but never tried to assure the reader that "she didn't mind the slap...Probably all her boy friends got around to slapping her sooner or later. I could understand how they might." Spade never described a room's decor as having "a stealthy nastiness, like a fag party." Also, the female characters in this book are all loathsome. There's no Brigid O'Shaunessy, who was violent and evil and awesome; and there's no Effie Perine. Only a couple of psycho rich girls who Marlowe sneers at while rolling his eyes at their repeated attempts to sleep with him, the stupid whores.

I'll admit, there can be certain guilty pleasure to be had from reading the perspective of such an unashamedly bigoted character. But it gets old fast, and eventually just left a bad taste in my mouth. Thank you for your time, Mr. Marlowe, but I'm casting my lot with Mr. Spade. He knows how to treat a lady.

Read for: Social Forces in the Detective Novel

Not my kind of book. I understand that it was written in a different time but I didn't appreciate neither the misogynistic portrayals of women nor the homophobic and racist remarks.

It is always a pleasure to revisit a good book and find it even better than you remember. But it is humbling to discover that what you once thought was its most obvious defect is instead one of its great strengths. That was my recent experience with Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

I had read it twice before—once twenty years, once forty years ago—and have admired it ever since for its striking metaphors, vivid scenes, and tough dialogue. Above all, I love it for its hero, Philip Marlowe, the closest thing to a shining knight in a tarnished, unchivalrous world.

But even though I recalled Chandler's metaphors with pleasure, I also tended to disparage them as baroque and excessive. Having read too many Chandler imitations and watched too many Chandler parodies, I had come to view his images as exotic, overripe things which could survive only in a hothouse—corrupt things like the orchids the aged and ever-chilly General Sternwood raises as an excuse for the heat.

This time through, I refused to let individual metaphors distract me, but instead allowed the totality of the imagery—including the detailed description of the settings—do its work. When I did so, I was not only pleased by the aptness of the descriptive passages but also surprised by the restraint of most of the metaphors. True, there are a few outrageous similes, but they are always used deliberately, for humor or shock, and often refer to the General's daughter Carmen, who deserves everything she gets. Overall, the sustained effect of the imagery is to evoke vividly and atmospherically the beauty and corruption of Los Angeles.

But, first and foremost, the author's imagery is the narrator Marlowe's too—as is also the case with Joseph Conrad's narrator Marlow—and because of this it reveals to us the heart of Marlowe's personal darkness: his place in the world, the person he wishes to be, and the profound distance between the two.

Chandler introduces us to Marlowe at the Sternwood's palatial mansion, a medieval gothic structure within sight of—but mercifully upwind from—the stinking detritus of Sternwood's first oil well, the foundation of the family fortune. Over the hallway entrance, a stained-glass window depicts a knight who is awkwardly—Marlowe thinks unsuccessfully—trying to free a captive maiden (her nakedness concealed only by her long cascading hair) from the ropes that bind her. Marlowe's initial impulse? He wants to climb up there and help. He doesn't think the guy is really trying.

Thus, from the first, the despoliation of L.A., the corruption of big money, and a vision of chivalric romance complicated by sexuality—a vision which encompasses both the urgency and impotence of knight-errantry--reflect Philip Marlowe's character and concerns. As the book proceeds, the ghost of Rusty Reagan, an embodiment of modern day romance (Irish rebel soldier, rum-runner, crack shot), becomes not only part of Marlowe's quest but also his double, another young man with “a soldier's eye” doing General Sternwood's bidding, lost in the polluted world of L.A. At the climax of the novel, everything that can be resolved is resolved, as Marlowe, the ghost of Reagan and one of the Sternwoods meet amidst the stench of the family's abandoned oil well.

Afterwards, though, all Marlowe can think about is Eddie Mars' wife, the captive "maiden" who cut off all of her once-long hair to prove she didn't mind being confined (“Silver-Wig” Marlowe calls her), who rescued him from killers by cutting his ropes with a knife, but who is still so in love with her corrupt gambler husband that Marlowe cannot begin to save her.

This seminal work of the detective genre introduced Los Angeles PI Philip Marlowe who works on the edges of the law to work for his clients. Enter wild women in the shadows, dark dimly lit streets, hoodlums and grifters, smokey bars and lighting a woman's cigarette, enter the world of real po-lice, no more super intelligent upper class detectives, now the PI is an every man trying his best, and some times brushing with the grey edges around the law to get his job done. 5 out of 12, upped to 6 out of 12, after my 2016 reread.