Too cool for school. The gin flowed, and my favorite scene was the old, rich invalid in the greenhouse with orchids watching Marlo drink because the old man no longer could drink. This depression era novel both created and at the same time raised the noir bar to a place where very few books could match drink-for-drink the cool untouchable power of Chandler's intricate while at the same time satisfying style (the recent book by Saroff, Paper Targets: Art Can Be Murder comes close). Read the annotated version The Annotated Big Sleep )if you read this a 2nd time (because you will want to read it a 2nd, 3rd, 4th time... ) to get the real story of what was going on as Chandler was writing this masterpiece.

Probably the best annotated book I ever read is the classic Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner, which will make you re-see and appreciate many aspects of Lewis Carroll's book. Of course, if you read literature--any Shakespeare, for example--you appreciate having the footnotes as you read. One summer I read Ulysses without a guidebook, and then again with one, and of course it was a richer experience for me, as a result. Reading an annotated book is in many ways like taking s master class on one book, and this is the case with the work of Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto. You get a rich stew of personal letters, excerpts from the original stories, lots about the LA Chandler loved and hated, film connections, some translations of gangster lingo (which would be useful especially for first tie readers who knew nothing about the genre). and some analyses of the novel from the perspectives of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity.

I'll re-post my original review of Chandler's book below, and I have read it maybe three times, now, but thanks to them, I gained a deeper appreciation for the book. I can say I mainly read this now because I was going to visit Los Angeles, and Chandler's book is one of the great L.A. books.

Of L.A. he writes that it was "dark with something other than night." His Philip Marlowe stood against the corruption of that city's gangsters and crooked cops, and also the rich, such as the Sternwood family that is central to this story.

What's a bit of what I learned?

*That Chandler's book was created in part from short stories he had published in pulp rags such as Black Mask.

*I knew this before, but had it reconfirmed that Chandler was interested more in character and language than plot; for instance, people would write to him and ask who killed the butler, Owen Taylor. Chandler always said he didn't know, and I don't think he really cared.

*Chamdler, on writing noir: ""When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun."

*Chandler understood that mystery was as much about melodrama as anything else, using some of the literary tools of realism with a dose of heightened emotions, especially fear.

*Chandler had two literary heroes he references throughout: Hemingway and Hammett

*Though Chandler owed something to Camus' The Stranger, his Marlowe was much more of a good man, a kind of knight fighting corruption in the city.

*The editors think the book could have been more appropriately titled Not Looking of Rusty Regan, since he denies he is looking for this guy throughout the book. I like that.

8/25/17 review:

“You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell”--Chandler

Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. He published some short stories, honing his craft, and finally made his debut; The Big Sleep was published in 1939, and made a justifiable name for himself. The real accomplishments include 1) clever dialogue, 2) some kinda ridiculous but wonderful noir “poetic” description and philosophizing and 3) a great hard-boiled detective, Philip Marlowe.

The novel is deservedly renowned, but it may best be known perhaps for a film version with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is almost universally loved in spite of the critical claim of its incoherence. Everybody (but a few critics care) disdains coherence; they are looking at and listening to Bogart and Bacall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjJlB...

I won’t say anything about the plot, which to my mind is not that remarkable here, and sort of beside the point. The point is Marlowe. I would describe him as a wisecracker, though he was also much more:

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

One guy he describes as “hatchet-faced.”

Gangster lingo: "You big handsome brute! I oughtta throw a Buick at you."

"I leered at her politely."

“Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains. You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it.”

And Marlowe gets entangled with or fights off a few women: “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.”

Dames, huh?

“You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.”

This is one great scene from the Bogart film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3t8H0...

And another:

“I sat down on the edge of a deep soft chair and looked at Mrs. Regan. She was worth a stare. She was trouble.”

But it’s not just detective Philip Marlow that is caustically clever; the women get their jabs in, too, as one says:

“Such a nice escort, Mr. Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten—when Larry Cobb was sober.”

Some of the more “literary” writing that would more inform his writing later is here:

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

And the film, too, oh boy, but don’t ignore the book, this is the real deal. And it may not even be in the top three books he wrote!

Aυτό είναι το βιβλίο του Τσάντλερ (1939), στο οποίο π��ρουσιάζει για, πρώτη φορά, τον θρυλικό 'Φίλιπ Μάρλοου' και το οποίο θεωρείται ένα από τα σημαντικότερα αστυνομικά μυθιστορήματα με 'νουάρ' ατμόσφαιρα.

Συμφωνώ με τον πρόλογο του Ίαν Ράνκιν ότι η πρώτη παράγραφος αποτελεί αξέχαστο δείγμα 'νουάρ' γραφής, όπως και το τέλος του βιβλίου (συμπληρώνω εγώ), το οποίο είναι εκπληκτικό και, ίσως, 'ανατριχιαστικό' λόγω του κυνισμού που αποπνέει.

Το πρώτο μισό του βιβλίου κινείται σε μια γοτθική ατμόσφαιρα που στοιχειώνει (ειδικά με την περιγραφή της απόκοσμης και στοιχειωτικής έπαυλης των Στέρνγουντ) με μοιραία πρόσωπα και μυστηριώδεις γυναίκες με σκοτεινά κίνητρα να προσπαθούν να παγιδεύσουν τον Μάρλοου.

Το δεύτερο μισό έχει πιο αργή ροή, στην αρχή, με υπερβολικές περιγραφές των σπιτιών, των χώρων και του καιρού που δημιουργούν λίγο κοιλιά στη πλοκή. Ωστόσο, το τελευταίο μέρος που οδηγεί στη 'κάθαρση' αποζημιώνει με ανατρεπτικό τρόπο και 'κλείνει το μάτι' στον αναγνώστη.

Ο Τσάντλερ καταφέρνει να περιγράψει αποτελεσματικά το 'σκληρό' πρόσωπο της Αμερικής, μετά τη 'σκοτεινή' περίοδο της ποτοαπαγόρευσης και του οικονομικού κραχ, και να αποδομήσει το τέλειο 'υποκριτικό' προσωπείο του 'Αμερικάνικου Ονείρου'. Ίσως υπονοεί με ειρωνικό τρόπο ότι, εκείνη την εποχή, η Αμερική βρισκόταν σε μια περίοδο 'μεγάλου ύπνου'.

Υ.Γ.: Kάνουν εντύπωση οι περιγραφές αισθησιακών φωτογραφήσεων, η χρήση ναρκωτικών και το παράνομο εμπόριο ερωτικού και αισθησιακού υλικού, θέματα - ταμπού για την εποχή που γράφτηκε το βιβλίο.

Συνολική Βαθμολογία: 3,8/5 ή 7,6/10.

Βαθμολογία για τα καινοτομικά στοιχεία της υπόθεσης και για την ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσα πλοκή: 4,5/5 ή 9/10.

Leído en 2012.
Primera novela que leo del famoso detective Philip Marlowe.

Aun no siendo un gran forofo de la novela negra me ha gustado la técnica narrativa del autor. Sigo prefiriendo a Bevilaqua de Silva, pero reconozco que Marlowe tiene gran atractivo como personaje.

Sometimes, when our dogs get really, really excited, they wag their tails so hard, they fall on their asses, then they slide a little bit on our hardwood floors.

That's what happened to me with this novel, this week. It made me wag my tail so hard, I fell on my ass. I'm writing this review from the hardwood floor.

Here's the thing: this book isn't for everyone. It's American “detective fiction” from the 1930s. You know. . . pulp fiction, “noir fiction,” edgy, pulpy, stylized novels from a distinct time in U.S. history. A time when two of my favorite writers, Carl Sandburg and Langston Hughes, were making small, literate crowds of readers hungry for their new beat, their new tone. A time when jazz was playing in the background on hundreds of thousands of radios.

(It's fitting that Carl Sandburg should be mentioned here. He and Raymond Chandler were born just 10 years apart, in the Chicago area. How could they not be affected by rhythm and blues?? It was all around them).

Despite his beginnings, Mr. Chandler ended up, ultimately, in southern California, “which both fascinated and repulsed him because of the paradox of its beauty and tawdriness.”

He was a quirky man, married to a woman old enough to be his mother, and I was fascinated to learn that when he died “just seventeen people attended his funeral.”

It seems, in many ways, that he was a loner, as so many of us on here are. By “loner” I don't mean to suggest that you or I are people who don't have friends or family. I just suspect that many of us on here who list “reading” as a top hobby are often people who avoid crowds. Avoid parties. Many of us who list “reading” and “writing” as our two top hobbies might as well just admit that we bar the door.

So. . . Mr. Chandler was different, but maybe not so different from you, or me. Turns out, his fictional creation of Philip Marlowe, his now famous (infamous?) detective was quite different, too.

Philip Marlowe, Chandler's fictional detective, has been described as many things in other reviews, probably most commonly as a “misogynist” and a “homophobe,” but I had the pleasure of meeting him for the first time this week, and I'd like to share what my own, personal experience was of him.

I found him to be a guarded, walled-off man, who is more likely struggling with a dissociative disorder than misogyny or homophobia, though Marlowe's behavior certainly smacks of both.

Interestingly, I found Marlowe's disgust of gay men equal to that of women. And, to be perfectly honest, I think I could present a pretty good argument that Marlowe is a closeted, gay man who is choosing to be asexual (“Did you know that worms are of both sexes and that any worm can love any other worm?”).

What we know for sure: Marlowe is a man who finds every excuse to be alone and stay alone, whether it involves a verbal savagery against a gay, male killer in the story, or the verbal barbs used against either of the sexually suggestive Sternwood sisters.

Oh, and it certainly wasn't lost on me, as a reader, that the one woman he appears to desire in the story has “lips of ice” when he ultimately kisses her. She is death itself to him, or so it seems.

I was surprised (and, quite frankly, shocked) to love Marlowe as much as I did. Despite his casual hatred of the people around him and his incessant tough-guy posturing, I found him a fascinating, complicated character, and when I read these lines, a part of my heart softened toward him (and all loners, really):

. . . this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories.

Damn it. I didn't expect to feel this way at all. I mean, I love detective fiction from this time period, so I suspected I'd be a fan, but I had no idea that Raymond Chandler had a skill set that spanned this scope of emotion for me.

I laughed throughout almost the whole novel ("Two coffees," I said. "Black, strong, and made this year."), I had one night when I stayed up late reading it and got the creeps so bad, I couldn't fall asleep, and. . . oh yeah, I cried.

This is one slice of California dreaming for me—only Cain's Mildred Pierce brought to life the rocky coastline, the “wind twisted Monterrey cypresses,” and the “tall eucalyptus trees [that] always look dusty” more than this story did for me.

I just freaking loved it.

There’s a story regarding the movie version of The Big Sleep that I love, and if it isn’t true, it should be. Supposedly, while working on adapting the book the screenwriters (William Faulkner & Leigh Brackett) couldn’t figure out who killed one of the characters. So they called Raymond Chandler, and after thinking about it for a while, Chandler admitted that he’d completely forgotten to identify the killer of this person in the book and had no idea who did it. Since no one complained about the flaw in the book, the movie just repeated it and didn’t bother answering the question either.

And that’s the thing about The Big Sleep. The plot is overly complex, and it’s pretty clear that Chandler was making it up as he went. It’s still a crime classic because Philip Marlowe books weren’t about the plot, they were all about the character and the atmosphere.

Marlowe is hired by wealthy and dying General Sternwood to see what he can do about illegal gambling debts that his daughter Carmen has incurred. The general’s other daughter was married to a bootlegger named Rusty Regan that has disappeared, and the old man was fond of Rusty and misses his company. Everyone that Marlowe deals with assumes that he’s been hired to find Rusty, and the detective is soon caught up in a web of blackmail and several murders.

Chandler’s first book is a classic and would help redefine and reinvent the mystery genre. With Philip Marlowe, the prototype to the small time smart-ass private detective with an unbreakable code of honor would be established and it’s influenced countless fictional detectives since. Chandler’s no-nonsense, razor sharp cynical prose is still a delight to read.

ريموند چندلر (????ـ????) از چيره‌دست‌ترين نويسنده‌گان داستان‌هاي پليسي‌ست. او به‌نسبت ديگر پليسي‌نويس‌هاي نامور ــ مثل «آگاتا کريستي» يا «ژرژ سيمنون» ــ آثار زيادي ننوشته است، اما همين تعداد رمان‌ها و داستان‌هاي کوتاه‌اش جزو شاخص‌ترين آثار تاريخ ادبيات پليسي و جنايي‌ست. شاهکار چندلر و معروف‌ترين رمان او، بي‌شک، «خواب گران» است. اين کتاب اولين رمان چندلر و همچنين اولين داستان اوست که در آن سروکله‌ي کارآگاه زيرک و محبوب‌اش، فيليپ مارلو، پيدا مي‌شود.
شهرت «خواب گران» از آن‌جا بالا گرفت که، در سال ????، فيلمي بر مبناي آن و با بازي «همفري بوگارت» در نقش فيليپ مارلو اکران شد.

In any poll of the greatest private eye novels ever written, there is a great chance that the top 5 would contain The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett and the Chandler trifecta of The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, and The Long Goodbye. The fifth? If you stay in the deep past than possibly The Drowning Pool by Ross Macdonald (thereby by keeping the genre’s triumvirate together), or--depending on your level of tolerance--Red Harvest (giving the top 5 to only two writer, albeit geniuses in their field) or I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane. If you decide to mine the medium past, then: Promised Land by Robert B. Parker, When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block or--again, depending on tolerance--The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley. From the recent past there is Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley or L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais. Regardless of its ultimate position on any list, though, there is little doubt that The Big Sleep, written in 1939, was Raymond Chandler’s first masterpiece.

Upon deconstruction, it did not start out as a masterpiece. Boiled down, the detective novel slowly expands to define the parameters of the mystery (what apparently happened) while gradually peeling away layers (revealing what actually happened), until both threads arrive at an end point (the solution). There are no layers to the plot of The Big Sleep. Instead there are clusters. Which in a way is not too surprising; it is said Chandler cannibalized two earlier short stories in the creation of this work.

General Guy Sternwood, retired and rich, infirm and nearing the end of his life, hires private eye Philip Marlowe to put a stop to a blackmail attempt concerning one of his two rambunctious daughters. During their initial conversation Marlowe has a feeling that the General’s true concern is more for Rusty Regan, a likable bootlegger who married his other daughter and disappeared without a word a month earlier. Whether it is fear for Regan’s wellbeing or worry that he might in some way be involved with the potential blackmail, Marlowe could not immediately infer. He would examine it more closely in short order. It is the second of the aforementioned clusters of criminal activity he would have to sort through. The first are the blackmailers. A third arises before the novel is finished. They are connected more by tenuous threads than woven as parts of a greater tapestry. Marlowe dogmatically unravels them nonetheless.

Then what makes this a classic? Putting aside the smooth narrative and the rich atmosphere, remember, you can only examine the inner workings of a novel after completion. The actual reading experience must reign. With The Big Sleep the true layers of complexity lay not so much with the plot as with the man. Philip Marlowe is more than honest; he is honorable: a condition that inherently includes the inability to walk away leaving immorality unexposed. He willing follows paths scorched black by those with souls shrouded by darkness. It weighs heavily upon him.

Perhaps it is because he has become too aware of how the world around him works. Corrupt police departments are a result of corrupt cities. Corrupt politicians exist to fill the needs of that city. Corrupt citizenry have picked corruption as its means of survival. And through it all Marlowe, a prominent contrast with his environment, continues forward armed with the belief that loyalty to a just client and the ability to unearth the truth from beneath overwhelming nastiness will somehow help stem the tide, if only for a precious, deserving few, if only for a while. It is the slow, layered reveal of those beliefs and the testing of them at the conclusion of the novel that resonates with the reader. The hero tested is the core ingredient to good fiction. The hero morally tested elevates the norm into something greater. When this internal conflict is elegantly presented and intimately felt, immortality is achieved. Which is why The Big Sleep will remain forever relevant.

Here Comes Marlowe

Chandler's The Big Sleep was his first published novel and gave us Philip Marlowe, everyone's favorite Hardboiled private eye. Marlowe, who is also portrayed so well by Bogart in the movie of the same name, is a moody, taciturn private eye with his own sense of right and wrong. Setting the stage for future novels, he finds himself protecting a crazy rich family and finding that the denizens behind the high walls and locked gates are up to their eyeballs in gambling, blackmail, murder, and petty rages. This book is a classic that sets the stages for decades of private eyes. Marlowe here is tough. He's nobody's patsy. And he's not the bumbling joker so many PIs in the fifties became. So many great lines here. Just a great amount of fun to read, even knowing how it all plays out in the end.

I'm usually a plot-challenged person. It takes me awhile to be able to figure out what's going on when a movie or book plot gets too complicated, with the double-crosses and the lies and the reversals...the chess game is usually too much for me.

I don't usually hold that against the story I'm being told, I just figure it wasn't my cup of tea and let it go.

This one, though, I loved every minute of and will absolutely have to reread someday. Just to re-savor all the little crackling asides, poetic creases, iridescent visions, and sexy, manipulative, deeply, extravagantly subtly disturbed characters.

This is my second Chandler, (see 'Farewell, My Lovely') and I'm just going to have to tackle everything he ever wrote now...good thing there isn't too much of it.

Two marks of a great writer: they don't turn you off when the plot gets too hard to handle, and they instantly make you want to reread them when you're done.

Actually, I'll go ahead and add a third: they make you sort of quietly promise that you are going to tackle their collected works, as well.

He's worth reading for the sheer language of it all- the minute characterizations, the suspense, the banter and the antiquated slang which is still badder-assed than anything you hear nowadays....

Philip Marlowe: wiseguy, drinker, chain smoker, full of cunning and observation and wisdom and taste, ethical after his own severe fashion, despondent, cynical, world-weary, thoroughly masculine and yet actually a bit of dandy and an intellectual....consistently compelling and deeply enigmatic...

این شما و این هم کارآگاه فیلیپ مارلوی ریموند چندلر. بخوانید و از نثر قاسم هاشمی نژاد لذت ببرید.
گفتم "نمیتونی تصمیم بگیری؟"
آبدهنش را قورت داد و سیگار بین لبهاش ورجه ورجه کرد. با صدای فشرده ی ضعیفی گفت " فکر نکنم شمارو بشناسم."
"مارلو اسممه. دمی که یکی دو روزه سعی داری تعقیبش کنی."
"من هیچکی رو دارم تعقیب نمی کنم، دکتر."
"این ابوقراضه داره میکنه. شاید تو جلودارش نیسی. خود دانی. حالا من دارم می رم قهوه خونه ی اونطرف خیابون صبحونه بخورم، آب پرتقال، ژامبون و نیمرو، نون تُست، عسل، سه یا چار فنجون قهوه و یه خلال دندون. بعدش میخوام برم بالا تو دفترم که در طبقه ی هفتم همین ساختمونیه که جلوته. اگه چیزی تو دلت قلنبه شده که فوق تحملته یه سری بزن بالا و بریزش بیرون."
...
گفتم " یکی دو روزیه داری دنبالم می کنی. عین جوون عزبی که داره سعی میکنه دختری رو بلند کنه و عرضه ی قدم آخرو نداره. شاید بیمه فروشی. شاید یه بابائی به اسم جو برودی و میشناسی. تعداد شایدا زیاده، اما تو حرفه ی ما تعدادشون اصلا زیاده."
چشمهاش وق زد بیرون و لوچه اش کم و بیش افتاد تو بغلش. به تندی گفت " یا مسیح، چطور ممکنه اینارو بدونی؟"
"علم غیب دارم. مطلبتو بتکون و بریزش بیرون. همه ی روز وقت ندارم."
...
قیافه ی خشنی نشانش دادم. "تو همشو میتونی به پلیس بگی بدون یه پاپاسی، هری. این روزا تو مرکزشون گوشتکوبای خوبی دارن واسه اقاریر. اگرم تو این هیر و ویر کشتنت، همچنان اگنس حی و حاضره."
گفت "امتحانش مجانیه. اونقدرام نازک نارنجی نیسم."
"اگنس باس یه چیزی داشته باشه که منِ غافل ندیدم."
"اون یه دغله. خُفیه. منم یه دغلم. همه مون دغلیم. همه همدیگره رو در ازای یه سکه میفروشیم. باشه. ببینم میتونی مجبورم کنی بفروشمش؟" دست دراز کرد سمت یکی دیگر از سیگارهای من. تروتمیز گذاشتش بین لبهاش و با کبریت روشنش کرد همانطوری که خود من می کنم، دو بار با ناخن شستش نگرفت و آنوقت کشید به پاش. قلاجهای منظمی زد و تو چشم تو چشم من خیره شد، یک آدمکِ عجائب غرایبِ قرص که می تونستم باش دسر شته کنم. یک آدم کوچولو در دنیای آدم بزرگها. یک چیزی درش بود که از قضا مرا می گرفت.
با لحن یکنواختی گفت " ککلک مَلَک اینجا سوار نکردم. اومدم اینجا و حرفم مُک یکجفت صدی بود. قیمت بی سنب و سو همونه. اومدم به این هوا که جواب آره میشنفم یا نه، مرد و مردونه. حالا تو داری آژان واسم یراق کنی؟ باس از خودت خجالت بکشی."

Do yourself a massive favor and read this one. It belongs on every personal bookshelf.