n  n   

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

n  n
Third reading and I'm a Chandler convert!

-------------------------------------------
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.


----------------------------------------------
n  

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

n

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.

My first Chandler and won’t be my last. Cracker of a read. Dynamite dialogue. Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade will always be Humphrey Bogart. The role was made for him. Great storyline. Rich characters. I intend to read more.

“The game I play is not spillikins. There’s always a large element of bluff connected with it…When you hire a boy in my line of work it isn’t like hiring a window-washer and showing him eight windows and saying: ‘Wash those and you’re through.’ You don’t know what I have to go through or over or under to do your job for you. I do it my way. I do my best to protect you and I may break a few rules, but I break them in your favor. The client comes first, unless he’s crooked. Even then all I do is hand the job back to him and keep my mouth shut…”
-tRaymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is not the type of book I usually read. I don’t really care for detective novels, or multi-layered mysteries, or books in a series sharing the same protagonist. Raymond Chandler’s classic novel, a striking example of so-called “hardboiled” fiction, fits all three categories.

The Big Sleep features a private investigator – a “private dick,” in the parlance – named Philip Marlowe, who is hired by an old, dying millionaire to deal with a blackmailer who has targeted one of his daughters. In investigating this blackmail, Marlowe – who would eventually figure into seven completed novels, and numerous short-stories – gets more than he bargains for, as the clues he follows leads him down a labyrinthian path strewn with an increasing number of dead bodies.

Nothing in my tastes have changed. I still don’t really care for detective novels or mysteries, and the last thing I need in my reading life is to start a new book series. Rather, I came to The Big Sleep based on its reputation as great literature. I read it for the same reason I read War and Peace and Moby Dick and Les Misérables: because of its lofty status.

Having finished, there are two excellent things I discovered about The Big Sleep. First, its reputation is absolutely deserved. Second, it is only a fraction of the size of those aforementioned titles, and is paced like a bullet train. I could probably read this five times before finishing David Copperfield.

The Big Sleep begins at “about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid-October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.” Marlowe, who narrates in the first-person, is looking dope and dashing with his suit, tie, and display handkerchief. He has just arrived at the mansion of General Sternwood, who has two troublesome daughters, Vivian and Carmen. Vivian is married to an ex-bootlegger who has run off and disappeared. Carmen is being blackmailed regarding some scandalous photos. Marlowe is given the task of tracking down this blackmailer and keeping things hush-hush.

That is the setup. To say more about the plot is impossible, without spoiling the various twists, turns, and loop-the-loops. Also, to tell you more would tax my callback abilities. Even though I took extensive character notes, I’m still not sure I caught everything (even though Marlowe helpfully recapitulates the storyline on a couple occasions).

Suffice to say, Chandler’s core design is satisfying. It keeps you on your toes; it is tricky without being incomprehensible; and it is surprising without being implausible. There are some glaring loose ends, which I’ll touch on briefly below, but it’s nothing that worried me. The reason is that it’s not the plotting or the mechanics of The Big Sleep that make it a masterpiece. It is the writing.

Chandler’s Marlowe is a droll, deadpan tour-guide of 1930s Los Angeles. His descriptions are blunt and to-the-point; his dialogue – and the dialogue of everyone he meets – is stylized and peppered with marvelous jargon and idioms. Next time you’re going to leave a room, just tell people you’re “going to dust.” Believe me, it will lift you in the eyes of others. While none of the characters, including Marlowe, have a lot of psychological depth, they are all well-drawn, well-described, and memorable. That is to say, we may be dealing with pawns, but the pawns leave an impression.

Having never read Dashiell Hammett or James Cain or their contemporaries, I cannot make any claims as to what Chandler created himself, or what he improved upon. For that matter, I can’t even tell you if he did it better than anyone else. I can say, however, that The Big Sleep is a beautiful expression of crime noir, with the various L.A. locations, the crummy P.I. office, the day-drinking, the constant smoking (this should really have a Surgeon-General’s warning), and the ceaseless parade of low-lifes, mobsters, and femme-fatales. It was a hoot-and-a-holler to read, even with its retrograde views on race, homosexuality, and women. These views, obviously, are period-appropriate; unfortunately, as The Big Sleep was written in that period, it might also be the author’s true perspective.

(It’s hard to know what to make of Marlowe’s casual misogyny. At certain points, it seems played for laughs, as in the famous line about how “you have to hold your teeth clamped around Hollywood to keep from chewing on stray blondes.” At other times, though, Chandler-Marlowe’s feelings on women seem much darker).

Originally published in 1939, elements of the The Big Sleep appeared in Chandler’s earlier short stories, which he later “cannibalized” to create his novels. In the process, certain things got lost, and some plot-holes never got filled. Being diligent with my notetaking, I finished the last page with at least one big lingering question-mark. It took some sleuthing of my own to realize that the solution to that particular query had gotten lost in transition.

The thing is, I didn’t care. Despite the occasional roughness, The Big Sleep felt oddly perfect. The final product accomplishes exactly what it sets out to accomplish, and it does so with exceptional skill. Chandler’s commitment to the bit is impressive, and he nails the lexicon, the highly-polished one-liners, and Marlowe’s cynical, world-weary existence. In form and function and execution, it is a wonderful example of the dizzying heights to which genre fiction can rise.

This is one of those Goodreads specials. Without Goodreads, I probably would never have cared to read The Big Sleep. It's outside of my preferred genres, it's detective (which I think is generally overplayed), and it's not even all that popular in the world at large.

Good thing for Goodreads. Sorry for the pandering, but it's true.

The Big Sleep was so smooth and so good. I won't sully it with a crappy synopsis. It's worth a read, I'll stop it there.

I'll leave you with some of those quotes:

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

Being 6'5", I'm using this one:
“Tall, aren't you?" she said.
"I didn't mean to be."
Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.”

“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.”

“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.” (Yes, it's a bit sexist, published 1939 so you can give it some slack without supporting it. I like the sentiment of this line comparing a hangover to other things.)

“Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness.”

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.”

"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."

Highly recommended

4 out of 5 Stars

UNO CHE LAVA LA BIANCHERIA SPORCA DEGLI ALTRI



Questo è un libro che ho letto molti anni fa, nel periodo in cui iniziavo a realizzare un sogno coltivato a lungo.
Un buon motivo per tenerlo nel cuore.
Ma, certo, non l’unico: ancora prima del ricordo, conta che sia bello e prezioso.
A suo modo, è un autentico capolavoro.


Eterni e indimenticabili, Humphrey Bogart e Lauren Bacall

Noir. In versione hard boiled.
Introduce Philip Marlowe, l’archetipo del detective privato, il prototipo del private eye.

Marlowe è duro e idealista, un sognatore imbevuto di disincanto, solitario e disilluso, onesto e leale, testardo e audace.
Marlowe e le donne: sembrano cascargli ai piedi, pare non gradirlo, si concede riluttante, è romantico e sentimentale. Scontroso ironico tagliente brutale, ma sempre malinconico. Un assaggio: Marlowe-Bogart chiede alla Bacall: Cos'hai che non va?, e lei risponde:Niente che tu non possa sistemare.
Un eroe non eroe, un fallito che vince sempre, risolve tutti i casi ma la giustizia non trionfa mai, e il disincanto di Marlowe cresce, ogni gioia gli si soffoca nel bicchiere, perché il mondo proprio non riesce a cambiarlo. Il mondo è marcio e corrotto.

L’unica difesa sono un paio di scarpe comode, quindi, lavoro di gambe (e ruote), e una lingua sferzante (che dialoghi!)
Gran fumatore e buon bevitore, è incorruttibile, senza macchia e senza paura, un cavaliere del XX secolo.


1947: ”The Lady in the Lake” di Robert Montgomery, regista e protagonista nei panni di Marlowe. Il film è tutto girato in soggettiva, dal punto di vista del narratore e protagonista Marlowe, che si vede solo tre volte, sempre riflesso su uno specchio, a inizio, metà e fine film.

Lo leggo, o meglio, l’ho letto, provando tenerezza perché ho sentito Marlowe vicino, un amico, provando ammirazione, perché è meglio di me, ma anche compassione, perché qualcuno lo pesta sempre, e le donne lo tradiscono spesso, perché il Male contro cui lotta è più forte di lui.

Il Grande Sonno, la morte, uscì nel 1939, e sette anni dopo giunse adattato sullo schermo, mettendo insieme un trio meraviglia: il regista Howard Hawks, lo sceneggiatore William Faulkner (insieme a Leigh Brackett e Jules Furthman), il protagonista Humphrey Bogart. Sì, c’era anche The Look, Laureen Bacall, che due anni prima aveva incrociato il suo destino con quello di Bogart nel suo film d’esordio, To Have and Have Not (“Acque del Sud” nella versione italiana), romanzo di Hemingway, sceneggiato sempre da Faulkner, e film sempre diretto da Hawks – a Laureen bastò dire Anyone got a match? e fu subito una star, letteralmente alla sua prima apparizione.


Robert Mitchum è stato Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely-Marlowe, il poliziotto privato, 1975, regia di Dick Richards, e nel 1978, diretto da Michael Winner, che spostò l’azione a Londra, in The Big Sleep-Marlowe indaga. Preferisco nettamente il primo

La trama è paradigmatica quanto lo è il protagonista: così ingarbugliata che è difficile riassumerla, e ci si chiede come faccia Marlowe a dipanare la matassa.
Siamo a Los Angeles alla fine degli anni Trenta. Marlowe racconta in prima persona, non potrebbe essere altrimenti, ha troppa personalità per lasciarsi raccontare da un narratore in terza persona, per quanto eccellente come Chandler (gran lavoratore della pagina, leggeva e rileggeva, correggeva, s’accaniva nella cura del suo stile).
Incipit fulminante:
Ero ordinato, pulito, ben raso e sobrio, e non me ne importava che la gente se ne accorgesse. Sembravo il figurino dell'investigatore privato elegante. Andavo a far visita a un milione di dollari.


The Long Goodbye, 1973, regia di Robert Altman, Elliott Gould nei pani di Marlowe. Nel cast anche Sterling Hayden

Il nostro eroe viene ingaggiato da un anziano milionario, per risolvere un tentativo di ricatto. Le indagini ben presto rivelano gioco d’azzardo (quisquilie), un traffico di pubblicazioni pornografiche (criminale per l'epoca), al primo omicidio se ne aggiungono presto altri due per un totale di tre morti, droga (illegale allora come ora), omosessualità. Una matassa ginepraio.

Ma che importa seguire la trama, risolvere il caso insieme a Marlowe? Per me, nulla: per me conta lui e il suo sarcasmo che nasconde un’anima spezzata, le dark lady che incontra, l’atmosfera.


Icona

Secondo l’autorevole IMDb, Philip Marlowe è giunto sullo schermo 23 volte, la prima nel 1945 (Dick Powell), la più recente nel 2012. Dall’inizio della sua carriera cinematografica sono passati quasi ottanta anni, ma Marlowe è sempre pimpante.
Tra i tanti, mi piace ricordare la sua versione secondo me più azzeccata, quando a impersonarlo è Robert Mitchum; la sua versione più ribelle in The Long Goodbye di Robert Altman interpretato da un indimenticabile Elliott Gould; e quello strano esperimento del 1947, Robert Montgomery regista e interprete principale, titolo The Lady in the Lake (uno dei migliori romanzi di Chandler-Marlowe, insieme a The Big Sleep per l’appunto, al già citato The Long Goodbye, a The High Window e Farewell, My Lovely) interamente girato in soggettiva, un tentativo che avrebbe dovuto spingere lo spettatore a identificarsi nel protagonista, e che invece risultò piuttosto raggelante e rallettante.

Da non dimenticare che Marlowe è protagonista del bel romanzo di Osvaldo Soriano Triste, solitario y final.


Merchandising

Non m'importa se i miei modi non le piacciono. In confidenza, non piacciono neanche a me: ci piango su spesso, specialmente durante le lunghe sere d'inverno.


Raymond Chandler