When I read a Raymond Chandler novel, I expect to find lines such as:

"I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets."
or "He was a very small man, not much more than five foot three and would hardly weigh as much as a butcher's thumb."

Then, I find, "I got down there about nine, under a high hard October moon that lost itself in the top layers of a beach fog", and I realize what a fine and true writer the man was.

While I was reading The Big Sleep, I thought of a similarity Raymond Chandler had with the gypsy Flamenco guitarist, Manitas de Plata. Flamenco purists criticized Manitas de Plata for not adhering to the strictures of traditional flamenco. The problem with that line of thought is that Manitas de Plata didn't give much of a damn about rules. He was interested in expressing the fire in his soul and, especially in his early recordings, he did just that.

One of the criticisms of The Big Sleep is that there's an unexplained/unsolved murder. When director Howard Hawks was filming the The Big Sleep , he supposedly asked Chandler, who killed the chauffer? Chandler replied that he didn't know, and the implication was that he didn't care. Raymond Chandler didn't write mysteries. By the end of most mysteries all of the loose ends have to be neatly tied up. Chandler wrote detective/crime novels and there may be loose ends, just as in real life where not all crimes are solved. Chandler was interested in people and atmosphere. Any questions about the solutions of mysteries were a secondary concern for him.

I last read The Big Sleep when I was in my early 20's - longer ago than I care to think about. I liked the book very much then and It hasn't lost any of its magic over the years. I enjoyed this reading even more, possibly because I'm a better reader than I was then. At least I hope that I am.

n  "Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn’t a game for knights."n

Edited March, 2019: I've just finished reading The Annotated Big Sleep, edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto. For whatever reason, this is simply included as another edition of the novel rather than a separate work in its own right, and the only way I was able to find it was to use the ISBN number, which is 978-0-8041-6888-5. It brought up the correct edition, but when I clicked on it, GR took me to my original review of the novel itself.

I really enjoyed the annotated version and would give the annotation a solid four stars. It goes literally line by line through the novel, providing fascinating details about the time period, the city of Los Angeles, and, of course, the novel itself. Anyone who loves The Big Sleep would almost certainly enjoy this edition.

My original review of The Big Sleep from November, 2012:

What can one possibly say about this book that has not already been said? When a dying millionaire needs help, Philip Marlowe answers the call and changes forever the course of crime fiction.

This is the first of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels, featuring a complex plot with twists and turns so sharp that even the author ultimately couldn't figure them out, but so beautifully written that nobody cares. And at the heart of it all is the man who will become the prototypical P.I. with a code of his own that no mobster, cop, politician or beautiful dame can break.

When asked by a cynical prosecutor why he's willing to risk so much for $25.00 per day plus expenses, Marlowe replies, "I don't like it. But what in the hell am I to do? I'm on a case. I'm selling what I have to sell to make a living. What little guts and intelligence the Lord gave me and a willingness to get pushed around in order to protect a client....I'd do the same thing again if I had to."

Which pretty much says it all.

James L. Thane
www.jameslthane.com

Excellent detective writing by Raymond Chandler from a time long past. 6 of 10 stars

I sat in my office (also known as the living room) thinking hard-boiled thoughts. I’ve never taken to smoking personally, but I had one of those candy cigarettes… it didn’t go well with the scotch, so I kept the candy and passed on the drink.

Then I heard someone clear her throat. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, but I knew she was trouble from the moment she walked in. My feelings were only reinforced when she said, “Honey, do you think maybe you have too many books? It’s not that I mind them, but I think you’ve read less than half of the bookcase and you keep getting more.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “One can never have too many books or clever one-liners set aside for future use.”

“Well, what about this one?” She asked as she picked a random book from the case.

I nodded and tried to play for time. “The Big Sleep. 1939. Raymond Chandler. It inspired a Bogart movie of the same name. Not a bad movie at all. A classic.”

“But have you read the book?”

“…”

“Well?”

My wife always could see through me.

“No, but it’s next on the list.”

So, I read the book over the next few nights. I pretended not to notice the occasional grin on her face when she saw me. Her point was made, but once this case was started I needed to see it through to the end.

“Well,” she said as I put the book down for the final time. “What did you think?”

“A product of its time,” I said a little sadly. “Some obvious homophobia and a few slightly strange moments where Marlow seems more disgusted by the idea of ‘smutty’ books than he does with murder. The plot is overly convoluted, but that’s to be expected given the style. Unfortunately some of it doesn’t quite sit right with me in terms of the plot. It almost feels like Chandler had two 100 page stories that he decided to glue together and call a novel.”

“How’s the prose?”

“Sparse… like the review I intend to write. That is not really a problem though, it fits the genre. That said, I think Chandler spends more time describing ladies' legs than anything save a fight scene.”

“So, you didn’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that… Overall despite my complaints, the book is solid. Quite entertaining and worth a read. There’s a great running joke involving a gunman saying ‘Go – yourself’ and yes the ‘—‘ is actually there rather than the word. It’s played for laughs brilliantly and he repeats it so many times that Marlow gets some great lines in about it.” I smiled. He of the limited vocabulary indeed.

I gave it a bit more thought. “I think my favorite aspect is the knight metaphors. Marlow notices a picture of a knight trying to save a woman in the general’s home, but notes that the knight seems to be failing. He also keeps a chessboard in his apartment, with problems on it to help focus his mind. He notes at one point that the current problem on the board ‘wasn't a game for knights’. That’s clever and a great metaphor for Marlow himself. To an extent he’s defending the general’s honor, but the world he’s in is no place for a knight.

“So yeah, overall a solid three stars... There’s some great moments and I enjoyed my time with the cast of eccentric characters, but I guess I just prefer my detective novels a little more focused and a bit less rambling.”

She glared at me for a moment. “But you like Hammett?”

I shrugged. “There’s always an exception to the rule.”

We sat in silence for a moment. “So… about those other books in the case?”

I rolled over and pretended to sleep. One case at a time. This case was closed and it was time to get some sleep… but only a little sleep.

My 2022 review is below. I find that I enjoy the annotations immensely. There is such a rich vein of time and place offered by the authors, including: "3. Fairy-tale or “storybook” houses were all the rage in the 1920s, fanciful evocations of medieval Europe by way of Hollywood set design. The famously eccentric “Witch’s House” of Beverly Hills started out as a Hollywood set and was used in the silent film Hansel and Gretel, among others. This poetic description recalls the fairy-tale landscape in Chapter Four. Interiors and exteriors are at play in TBS: the Sternwood mansion, Geiger’s nice suburban home, and these wealthy estates house various forms of degeneracy and decay, while our hero represents the rain-drenched permanent outsider. It’s as existential as it is Grimm. It is also political. In A Room of One’s Own (1929), Virginia Woolf reflects poignantly on this division. Her twilight view of domestic interiors seen from the sidewalk leads her to wonder, “What was the truth about these houses…dim and festive now with their red windows in the dusk, but raw and red and squalid…at nine o’clock in the morning?” Woolf comments from the outside, excluded from membership in patriarchal “Oxbridge” by gender. Marlowe comments from the outside, excluded by class."


There are only a handful of iconic detectives more well known than Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s creation. Fortunately for fans, Chandler wrote more than one Marlowe mystery. For those of us who have read Chandler beyond, Marlowe, it is clear that Chandler was economical in never letting a good plot go to waste. He was a recycler before that was something to brag about. The Marlowe novels are the rework of earlier (and shorter) efforts and have shown the wisdom of perfecting a plot and dialogue. Most of us, will be satisfied without this deep—dive into his work and its influences.

I CERTAINLY WOULDN’T TRY TO READ THE BIG SLEEP FOR THE FIRST TIME WHILE SHUTTLING BETWEEN ANNOTATIONS.

"The point made throughout the novels is that Marlowe’s inviolable integrity has landed him outside the legal profession but kept him inside his own ethical code. Chandler himself had been fired as vice president of the Dabney Oil Syndicate in 1931, the precipitating event that made him a pulp writer. He later blamed the sacking on the Depression and various conspiracies against him, but in fact he was fired for drunkenness, absenteeism, in-office liaisons, and general erratic behavior. Such stuff as dreams are made on."

Here are a couple of my favorite reviews by GR friends:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


One of the most interesting things that this team of authors offers it the observation that private detectives basically worked for the rich. This tension was a consistent them in Chandler’s work where he sees Los Angeles as both pervaded and controlled by the cops, the gangsters, and, of course, the rich.

Enlightening (and with the Kindle edition) easy to search out what interests you most.
PS: In the electronic version you can easily toggle between the text and the footnotes.

Philip Marlowe here at your service, for scratch, I'm going to tell you a little tale of my last caper punks. Listen good, rich, sick, General Sternwood hired me to help him peel an onion, a shakedown the big squeeze, one of his two quite dizzy daughters Carmen got into a little pickle. I'll not spill the beans but say it's kind of a blue bedtime story with pictures, the sort polite society keeps on the Q.T. You'll need a big fireman's hose to clean up all the crud, any of you need a little dough? After a few killings throwing the lead and one hemlock, people nobody will miss just a bunch of dirty scum (I earned my 500 bucks) . The mugs kicked hard but I kicked harder, they shot but I didn't miss the torpedoes, their pushing up daisies now, just another day at the office, I sure needed the moolah. A shamus uses a raincoat for many purposes not just to keep dry, our sacred symbol , don't laugh. The General again commanded this private dick, to appear at his crazy mansion, Rusty Ragan the husband of Vivian the older sister, the less strange one took it on the lam. A thousand clams to find this ex- bootlegger, which isn't hay and the booze will wet the whistle my friends. I had developed a bad habit of eating regularly so accepted the gig. When Harry Jones , a small -time con man was rubbed out by a big gorilla named Canino that's dirty pool , I kind of liked the bum, must be getting soft I guess. Canino wasn't getting away, free as a bird not with Mrs. Marlowe's son still breathing one of us would soon be in the big sleep. But first I'll have to dig up some clues to where old Rusty is at, maybe go clay pigeon shooting instead with Carmen sounds like fun and she's cute as a bug's ear, dames can make you nuts, I stay away but not too far. A private dick needs to have laughs what harm could it cause and she is a looker besides her old man has a lot of cabbage... Now hit the road mugs, get this through your thick skulls I am a busy slob, with an itchy finger, pack heat and work for a living you lowlifes make like a chicken and go lay an egg somewhere else.....I have to apologize to all my good friends Mr. Marlowe has no manners his blunt speech can and will annoy people the wrong way, the association with racketeers has had a bad effect on him, again I am sorry for this embarrassing display, thank you again.

My first Chandler, and a enjoyable read being introduced to Philip Marlowe. The story is centred around a wealthy family, a possible backmail and the disappearance of the Patriarch's friend.

The book is a nice sub-set of 1930s Greater Los Angeles with characters from the rich side, downtown and a few sleazy areas bringing wealthy people, small-time and a couple of big(ger) time criminals together.

As others say, Chandler's writing is fine. My two favourite pieces are:
"..But nobody's going to break your heart, if it hasn't been done already. And it would take an awful lot of chisellers an awful lot of time to rob you of enough so that you'd even notice it".

"His thin claw like hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock".

Part Of The Nastiness Now

Raymond Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely" was his second novel and my first by Chandler. For my second Chandler, I went back to his first novel, "The Big Sleep". The novel introduces the private detective Philip Marlowe who is central to "Farewell, My Lovely" and to a series of Chandler novels. Marlowe has become an iconic literary figure and a representative of the American experience in his combination of toughness, loyalty, and innocence.

The story is set in Los Angeles in a 1930's era October, with all the action occurring within one week. Marlowe tells the story in the first person. An elderly, dying, wealthy man, General Sternwood, who has made his fortune in oil seeks Marlowe's help in finding the blackmailer of Carmen, the younger of his two daughters. Both daughters, Vivian in her 20s and Carmen in her late teens are wild and sexually promiscuous. The older daughter's husband, Rusty Regan, has disappeared, but Sternwood does not seek Marlowe's help in solving the mystery of his disappearance.

The plot of the book becomes highly tangled with a host of shady characters and confusing incidents. Plotting is of secondary importance at best to "The Big Sleep". The appeal of the book lies in its writing style, in its depiction of places and characters, and in the portrayal of Marlowe. Marlowe's character makes the book hang together. He is in his middle-30s, educated, unmarried, and something of a loner. It is never made clear why he has become a detective. Marlowe has an extraordinary gift for words and for precise descriptions and often outlandish metaphors. In a rough business with high risk to himself, he works for 25 dollars a day. He is unfailingly loyal to his employer and honest in what is shown to be a world of corruption. Marlowe drinks and smokes heavily, has his prejudices, and is vulnerable to the appeal of women. He also depends a good deal on luck. He has a reflective, thoughtful outlook on life that takes the book beyond the stereotype of crime fiction. In "The Big Sleep", Marlowe comes to understand the nature and finality of death and to realize how, he and every person are part of death's inevitability: "You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now."

For its time, "The Big Sleep" raised highly sexually explicit themes. Much of the story revolves around pornography, the gangsters in the trade, the women they used, and the customers. The book offers a seedy, raw portrayal of a business before it became legal and which Chandler clearly finds abhorrent. The book portrays all sorts of sleazy individuals from runners on the street to hardened leaders of rackets involved in extortion, gambling, and bootlegging as well as in pornography. The work also portrays individuals within the law, including the police, with varying degrees of sympathy. The cheesy rooming houses, hotels and offices in the story are juxtaposed to locations of wealth, as shown in Sternwood's estate. The depiction of the under life of Los Angeles, in terms of people and places, and of Marlowe's response of becoming "part of the nastiness now" give the book its character as somehow romantic, gritty, and repellent. The language of the book is tame by today's standards with its avoidance of expletives. Conversely, the writing is not bound by modern standards of political correctness.

Here is an example of Marlowe's skill in the depiction of places as he visits a rundown, decrepit office building which houses disreputable tenants.

"My rubber heels slithered on the sidewalk as I turned into the narrow lobby of the Fulwider Building. A simple drop light burned far back, beyond an open, once gilt elevator. There was a tarnished and well-missed spittoon on a gnawed rubber mat. A case of false teeth hung on the mustard-colored wall like a fuse box on a screen porch. I shook the rain off my hat and looked at the building directory beside the case of teeth. Numbers with names and numbers without names. Plenty of vacancies or plenty of tenants who wished to remain anonymous. Painless dentists, shyster detective agencies, small sick businesses that had crawled there to die, mail order schools that would teach you how to become a railroad clerk or a radio technician or a screen writer -- if the postal inspectors didn't catch up with them first. A nasty building. A building in which the smell of cigar butts would be the cleanest odor."

With its language, descriptions and development of Philip Marlowe the book holds the reader's attention through all the complexities of its plotting. "The Big Sleep" became an important work for American genre fiction, both in the detective story and in noir. More importantly, the book shows how American literature at its best resists easy categorizations between popular and highbrow or between the serious and the merely entertaining.

Robin Friedman

I am going through books I read in 2022. My end of year. "The Big Sleep" is one I reread - a noir masterpiece. Raymond Chandler's writing style - direct and lonely - and Sexual tension runs high between the characters. The decadent Hollywood mansions set the stage for a murder mystery where the characters got themselves into problems that they want others to work their way out of. And Chandler's unique writing style and the steamy, tension-filled plot make for a fast read. The setting of luxurious Hollywood mansions of yesteryear adds to the intrigue. If you haven't already, put this one on your shelf for 2023

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

It's been ages since I've read an older detective driven novel, but this one was a nice way to break the ice back into the genre. It was highly rated, but I'd never heard of it before it became a group read. Apparently there's a movie too; what rock have I been under?

Philip Marlowe is an "honest" guy - blunt and brash in the face of authority. Like many detectives, he goes by his own moral code and street system. He doesn't stick fully to the letter of the law, especially when it comes to revealing things he should, but he does right by his clients (if it fits to do so) and his conscience. The other key players aren't stereotypical exactly - we do get an ice-cold dame who wants to twist men around her fingers, but the older and ailing client who hires Marlowe has some uniqueness twisted in him. There's some crazy characters in here too that give it that bizarre touch. Characters suit the plot well but not really in cookie-cutter molds. If they are rather typical, I try to remember that since this is an older book, it was probably fresher then.

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

The mystery part isn't shocking, but it is well thought out and it takes creative, patient paths to get there. Marlowe does have to actually investigate - he seldom sits back and thinks about the case - he's constantly moving on his feet and interrogating, witnessing messes, avoiding sticky violence himself, and pushing all the right buttons. So, pacing isn't bad, somethings always going on so the book flies by.

Raymond Chandler writes well and it's easy to suck into the written world he conjured up. It's definitely not politically correct, especially when it comes to comments on homosexuals and a little bit with Jews, but this was common of the time period it was written. I just find it kind of funny now, but then again I rarely choose to get offended much anything.

A good hardboiled detective type, complete with mafia type thugs, rich clients, questionable police associations and femme fatales.

My re-read of The Big Sleep cemented one thing for me - Chandler is to crime writing what Dylan is to song writing. They tower over everyone that came before or after to such an extent that even the second best will always swim in their shadows. Having read Ross Macdonald and James Crumley, authors who are most influenced by Chandler (while being good enough themselves to stay in the discussion for the greatest the genre has seen); it is still surprising to see how Chandler does everything a bit better than everyone else.

Philip Marlowe is tasked by ailing General Sternwood to find out the person who is blackmailing him. Both of his daughters are a piece of work in their own right and the man himself is not sure how much he wants to find out about them. Watch out for Marlowe's interaction with the elder daughter Vivian Regan. Every time they share a scene the dialogue is as sharp and the girl as dangerous as a dagger dipped in venom. Vivian Regan has a weak spot for bad men, a weaker one for bad decisions and her weakest spot is for bad decisions regarding bad men. And she has a sister that makes her appear a paragon of judgment and virtue by comparison. Not surprising there is blackmail involved.

Chandler doesn't get enough credit for his plotting. Actually The Big Sleep is most famous for an unsolved ancillary mystery rather than the actual puzzle. It is a complex and satisfying mystery albeit one so smothered by prose and atmosphere that for first time readers the mystery will be the last thing on their mind. I too appreciated it more on my re-read.

Chandler is the greatest dialogue writer of all time and if that was not enough his eye for detail is unmatched and he describes the most mundane things in the most unique ways. His similes and metaphors have been aped by lesser authors with decreasing returns for too long. But here they are not a gimmick, they are great. They are oddly obscure and outlandish but peculiarly perfect and pertinent. (He doesn't do alliterations, that is just me.) A few examples though not exact quotes. Trees trimmed as carefully as poodles for dog shows, hangover is waking up with a motorman's gloves in mouth, cutting of a car is making an enemy and a pornographer's paraphernalia has the nasty stealthiness of a fag party. Yes his attitudes towards women or minorities doesn't hold up. But if that is the biggest complaint one can level against a eighty year old crime book, it is telling in itself how good the book is.

Philip Marlowe is my favorite crime protagonist. He is the noir hero stereotype, the pessimistic private eye who is married to the bottle and can't help but deliver a quotable one-liner every second page but yet it is a testament to Chandler's writing that he rises well above these generalities to become a character you invest in. He is hopelessly moral yet utterly cynical, possesses a razor sharp wit but never is acerbic or condescending to someone who doesn't deserve it.

Unlike Sam Spade, Marlowe is never the toughest guy in the room. He is the licked underdog that has every reason to drop the towel but he can't because of a sense of duty to trudge on even when no one else will. His moral code as a knight errant is inexplicable to anyone but himself. He doesn't take the girl or the money even though he desperately wants both till he is satisfied he has lived up to some standards of decency and loyalty that the world has passed by but he can't quit.

Chandler is the only crime author to consistently figure in collections of "Top 100 books ever written" for this one and The Long Goodbye. So pretty much a must read for everyone. Rating - 5/5

Movie Review The Big Sleep (1946) is a solid film noir but a sub-par adaptation of one of the best crime books. It completely misses the spirit of the novel. Marlowe's cynicism is unfortunately pared down and he seems more interested in romance. The biggest missed opportunity here is Bogart. He would have made a great Marlowe but his interpretation of the character here is disappointing. The blame lies with Howard Hawks, an overrated studio puppet who followed the same potboiler formula irrespective of whether he was making a screwball comedy (Bringing up Baby), noir or Western (Rio Bravo). Worth watching but nowhere as good as the book.