Annotating a classic is a great way to make me buy it and read it all over again. * The experience is like a buddy read if your buddy is a wildly enthusiastic Wikipedian** who constantly interrupts you with things you didn’t know you didn’t know. Occasionally this does go too far, and I could feel the rush of blood to the heads of our three lovely annotators when they started defining words like jalopy, highball, chivalry, croupier and rake – rake? Yes, “the long L- or T-shaped stick that the croupier uses to sweep chips across the table”. I might probably have blue-pencilled those.*** But I loved the photos, maps, 1930s adverts, pulp magazine covers and so forth (what exactly did lounging pyjamas look like in 1935? It turns out they looked terrible) and especially the mini-essays about such matters as casual racism

As with much of American literature, the reader is faced with the challenge of reading work that is deeply flawed, but which is also the product of a racist and deeply flawed society. This challenge surfaces with canonical works by such authors as Jack London, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway as well as most early crime fiction

or the ambiguous mortality of Philip Marlowe (is he really a knight errant?****); or what were the big differences between the book and the famous Bogart/Bacall movie*****; the common crime novel trope of the descent into hell; and ending with the most curious question of all.

Because when the last mournful, wry page is turned, the smoke clears and the mirrors are put back in the drawers a discombobulating feeling creeps upon the reader which is - what exactly does Philip Marlowe achieve in The Big Sleep? And the answer is (spoiler alert) not that much. Everything that does happen – a blackmails b, x shoots y, z kidnaps j, j escapes and shoots m, b kisses c – would have happened if Philip Marlowe had never heard of General Sternwood and his two crazy daughters. Marlowe might as well have stayed in bed.

In conclusion, I’m glad to report that a reread of The Big Sleep is a delightful experience, the femmes are as fatale as an autopsy, the similes still startle like a butcher’s kindness and the plot still makes not too much sense to me. The death of the chauffeur is still famously unexplained. (Chandler didn’t know who did it.) But it’s not for the plot, Chandler is why we read Chandler

Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride's pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. Her smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.

and however many dead bodies litter these pages Raymond Chandler will always be alive and well and living in L.A. in the late 1930s.

****

*Other annotated versions I have got are I have got are Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Ulysses and HP Lovecraft.



**Someone who contributes to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia which anyone can edit, even lamebrains, but their edits don’t last long. For instance, when Jean-Luc Godard died on 13 September I checked his entry to clarify something and came across the statement “He was an anti-semite all his life.” What?? I noticed there was no source referenced & so I thought this is the work of some idiot. When I checked back five minutes later the statement had been deleted.



(Jean-Luc Godard channeling Peter Sellers)

***Blue pencils were used by editors in pre-digital times to indicate text to be removed before printing.

****Errant in this phrase means “wandering”, that is, no longer tied to one feudal lord. He is free to go forth and seek adventure. Philip Marlowe blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.



*****This is a whole complicated story, but how about this – the principal screenwriter was William Faulkner, yeah, that guy. The other thing is that the movie was filmed in 1944 but held back from release because Warners wanted to get some war pictures out first. While that was happening Bogart and Bacall became Hollywood’s Hottest Couple [TM] and so Warners dragged them back and shot some more scenes with them to add into the movie, then released it in 1946. But still they didn’t get any Oscar nominations & neither did the movie. The Oscars suck.

A more appropriate title might have been THE BIG SNOOZE!

I’m having a difficult time wondering what the gods of literary history were smoking when they awarded THE BIG SLEEP its status as a classic and a landmark achievement in the history of “hard-boiled” detective fiction?!

From my perspective as a thoroughly confused reader who never managed to puzzle out an actual plot, THE BIG SLEEP was a muddled, byzantine, tortuous, and painfully slow and slogging tale of deceit, blackmail, extortion, lust, seduction, murder, and pornography. Even admitting that the social world of the Prohibition era was a very different place and cultural norms were entirely foreign to what we consider as acceptable today, the level of misogyny, racism, and homophobia on every single page of the story was intolerably off the charts. The self-satisfied strutting machismo level of the men and, in contrast, the grotesque caricature of the women as clueless bimbos (as frequently unclothed as not) driven by sexual lust and material greed presented in conversations littered with tiresome arcane street slang and euphemisms served to turn THE BIG SLEEP into what might more accurately have been characterized as an advance parody of detective fiction to follow!

Then there was the question of alcohol! When I reviewed Hemingway’s erstwhile classic THE SUN ALSO RISES, I wrote,

”If THE SUN ALSO RISES has a theme, perhaps it is the character’s recognition of the ability of copious and endless quantities of alcohol at any time of the day or night (or perhaps more accurately, at ALL times of the day and night) to render their thought processes immune to the wear and tear that might be caused by the recognition of their other shortcomings.”

I doubt that it’s true but it sure seems like a possibility that Raymond Chandler was a Hemingway fan and used THE SUN ALSO RISES as source material for his character’s love of booze and all-day anytime and any reason imbibing!

The back cover blurb from the Los Angeles Times offered, “Marlowe remains the quintessential urban private eye.” Well, not in my books, he doesn’t. Definitely not recommended.

Paul Weiss

Excellent old time, hardcore detective sleuthing. Marlowe is sarcastic, cynical and exceptionally clever.

SO glad I finally got to this classic and look forward to the rest of the series.

Ray Porter was perfection as narrator.

Fantastic novel. It takes awhile to adjust to the old slang (the vernacular of that era), but once you do it is very delightful and witty. If you like detective mysteries, hard-boiled detective fiction or fiction Noir than you should enjoy this one.

OMG, how have I missed out on Raymond Chandler’s work for so long? From the very first sentence, I was hooked. The plot is pretty good, but where The Big Sleep excels is in characters and in atmosphere.

Philip Marlowe is the kind of guy you want to have on your side if there’s something not-quite-above-board happening in your life. Not a guy you would want to date, but definitely a guy who you hope you can afford when you need his skills.

I adored the dialog—Chandler had a real talent in that department. Marlowe is pitch perfect, letting the reader assess how much he knows and frustrating those that he is questioning/not answering. Working both sides of the law, friends with lawyers and with criminals, all of whom see him as a straight-shooter, he tries to be a decent guy. Decent or not, he’ll let something slide if it promises to complicate his life too much.

It is easy to see how works like The Big Sleep have influenced modern crime fiction. The almost-burnt-out investigator who is world weary and cynical is pretty standard, although the more interesting authors find a way to give the stereotype a new spin. The omnipresent rain, making the whole investigation into an endurance test. The moral ambiguity of “bad guys” who are actually pretty likeable and “good guys” who are pretty despicable. For me, a wonderful introduction to the hard-boiled genre and a darn good read besides.

Will someone please purge Peter Falk's voice from my head? I swear the man learned how to speak by having this book read to him as a child.

Again, shame on me for not having read yet another American classic. I've always been a fan of noir in movies or on television, but had not read much at all, until recently. So I set out to make up for my un-American pinko commie ways and read a red-blooded American mystery. Now I honestly can't tell whether Raymond Chandler loved or hated America.

I can tell you that he's a great writer. His prose in The Big Sleep is sparse, almost blunt. But Chandler occasionally turns a phrase that grabs the reader by the throat. In that way he's like Wodehouse, but a dark, serious Wodehouse with only a glimmer of a grim sense of humor.

I went the emotional rounds with Philip Marlowe, admiring him, then hating him, then admiring him again. He's clever, forthright, honest (except when he needs to be dishonest), witty, warm-hearted, then cold-blooded. He's a classic male chauvinist, bordering on a misogynist. Frankly, I really hated him when he interacted with women in such a condescending way. Yeah, I know, he's a product of his time, I get that. But it just got old. Outside of that glaring character flaw, I was fascinated with Marlowe. I think a good deal of my admiration of the detective had to do with watching Chandler's handling of his main character. It's almost as if the author let Marlowe run around and do what he liked, only to pull back on his leash when he was about to give away too much to the reader. I sometimes wondered if Chandler or Marlowe was "in control," which is a testament to the underlying liveliness of the text.

The plot itself was as convoluted as a klein bottle. I often found myself re-reading certain sections to keep the "who's who" straight in my head. The apparent insanity of most of the characters kept things confusing, but also immersed me in the slightly paranoid world in which Marlowe lived. And that's what this book is really about: immersion in an atmosphere. It's a trip. A dark trip, but a fun trip. Just be careful. You never know who's waiting in the dark. Oh, there's always someone there. You might even get to know one of them. And just when you think you know that person in the dark, you just might not. Watch out.

This isn’t really a review so much as a quick word of appreciation for a book I read decades ago. I suspect before Chandler and his ilk came along, crime fiction was much softer boiled. It also seems to have been a precursor for some excellent contemporary crime drama. Might The Sopranos, The Wire, and countless others owe a debt of gratitude to books like this for their intricate plotting, their colorful language, their stylized writing, and that definitive noir feel?

Over time I seem to have fused the book with the movie. I recall liking both, but can’t now separate their distinct elements. Certainly Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall were great together, what with the real-life chemistry they had going. Which reminds me – have you ever wished for a postcursor? By that I mean what might have been, but was not, a precursor to something observed ex post. In this case I’m talking about the somewhat recent convention of melding couples’ names – ones like Brangelina, Benifer, or, while they were still attached, TomKat. Had the scribes of yesteryear been on to the same thing, Bogey and Bacall could have been HumpBac. Along similar lines, Liz Taylor and Richard Burton might have been known to us all as Lizard. And Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz could have been Ballsi. (Sorry. Some might perceive this anachronistic wordplay to have been the sole intent of this post, but I really did like this book, The, uh…, The Big Sleep.)

When Howard Hawks was prepping the film version he sent Ray a telegram: "Who killed the chauffeur Owen Taylor?" Chandler, always honest, wired back, "I don't know." Then the Warner brothers complained to Hawks, "Why are you wasting our money on telegrams?"

And there you have it all.

This is Chandler's screwball musical, a salute to Rodgers & Hart. Hit tunes: The Lady is a Tramp, Where or When, To Keep My Love Alive, You Took Advantage of Me, I Didn't Know What Time It Was.
--Brilliant, sardonic, poetic, with Chandler's - Busby Berkeleyesque choreographic writing.

My 99th book of 2019. This book has been on my TBR for so long that the cover was actually starting to irritate me. In fact, even now it's finished, the cover continues to irritate me. I had an aversion to reading it just because I hadn't read it for so long. Anyway.

LA, wise-cracking private investigator, goes about in American cars with a gun, sometimes he slaps women if they get a little hysterical, he likes a drink, and money, and sure, he's a bastard at times. But he gets stuck into the case and he'll probably figure it out, because it's not much of a story if he doesn't. This was everything I expected it to be, a decent, fast noir read. Here's some quotes, because I'll give it to Chandler, there are some good 'uns.

'Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.'

'Brody took a gun out of the cigar box and pointed it at my nose. I looked at the gun. It was a black Police .38. I had no argument against it at the moment.'

And a cheer for when the book title appears in the book:

'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, 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.'

Reflections on The Big Sleep

- Classic hard-boiled detective fiction at it's finest. Every stereotype, every cliched phrase, it's all there and it is glorious. If you are looking for dames and gumshoes and sawbucks and swapping lead then look no further. Almost every page had a quotable line that had me smirking.

- This book is set in a different time. If you do not remember this, you may be upset or offended by the content. These characters are uncouth and indelicate. Several times during the book I said to myself "Dang, he can't say that!". But, he did . . . and that's just how it was.

- It's a bit convoluted. I am not going to lie - several times during the book I was not quite sure what was going on or where things were going. I am not even sure I fully understand the resolution. I reflect on this as a genre period peice and I enjoyed it for that, not necessarily a mind-blowing plot.

- Do I recommend this book? Really, only if you want to add some classic hard-boiled to your collection. If you only think you should read it because it is considered a must-read classic, I am not sure you will enjoy it all that much.

No matter how many times I read Chandler's Big Sleep - and I wouldn't like to count how many - I am always startled by the masterly audacity of the opening lines. Four sentences is all it takes and we've got the time, the weather and where we're located; we know who's talking to us, what he's wearing right down to the pattern on his socks and have no doubt at all of the cock-of-the-walk mood Marlowe's in - all because he's calling on four million dollars. Now I ask you, just who else would start right in like that?

But how to read The Annotated Big Sleep? Good question. In general, its left-hand pages contain the text of Chandler’s full-length novel. Right-hand pages feature the editors’ notes and illustrations. Both sides are irresistible. You might decide, I suppose, to read the text through and then get back later to the glosses and commentary. But I don’t have that kind of willpower.

Those right-hand pages are addictive. And since it’s Chandler who’s under investigation, the delivery has proper brio. The Romantic Tradition and Literary Modernism? Philip Marlowe’s debts are noted. Los Angeles’ geography and history? Those right-hand notations illuminate as they should. There are who-knew? asides. One of them recalls that the city once had a world-beating streetcar system, hence the scenes in The Big Sleep where we hear them passing by. And of course we get clarity on legion points of detail.

Chandleresque? I can’t say I ever spelled out what it meant myself. I’d simply read and re-read the Marlowe novels since I was a teenager—not so long after they were written as I like to think—until they felt like an element I swam in. But measure by measure, page by page, The Annotated Big Sleep does spell out the meaning of Chandleresque and makes a case that fascinates just as much as it convinces.

There are the familiar devices, obviously, that orientate the reader. Can’t imagine Chandler without the gumshoe, a femme fatale, the blondes? Fine, you’re up and running. Add blackmail, hard liquor, and the camera eye and you’re still hardly started on the accessories. Really, you’re not. But no matter, The Annotated Big Sleep has them covered. It considers the hard-boiled conventions, before Chandler and since. Along the way it settles that he’s rarely an inventor—not even when he thinks he might be. And it establishes—no question—that he had a genius nonetheless, for shifting those familiar devices up through the gears into art.

Then again, there are the fault lines. The Annotated Big Sleep spells those out too, because Chandler is complicated. A Victorian by birth and by disposition, apprenticed to the pulps in the Depression era, he liberated the hard-boiled form through talent and technique, and at the same time consorted with its casual prejudices. The editors’ analysis of class, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity fits The Big Sleep flush in the mainstream of the hard-boiled purview. Simply put, if you’re looking for a fair shake as a developed character in a Chandler story, it helps no end to be straight and white and male. Which can not only make for some queasy 21st-century reading; if you’re thinking of writing something Chandleresque nowadays, there’s a problem to solve.

The Annotated Big Sleep is splendid. Editors Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson, and Anthony Dean Rizzuto have supplied an excellent guide that shows us how much we didn’t know we were missing.

This is a classic noir novel, yet what elevates it above the ordinary, for me, is that it's also a song about Los Angeles, a place I once called home. LA presents many surfaces for many people--to see and be seen, to fantasize and be the objects of fantasy. But Chandler gets at the dark underside of it all in a way that few writers do. He sees the city in its stark white light and also in its shadows, he sees the glory and the rottenness and the flimsiness of the city's facades. It's a love song, a siren's song, and also a dirge, all rolled into an action-packed detective novel that carries you away in its own fantasies and hard-boiled lamentations. I love this book the way I love LA--not uncomplicatedly, but fully nonetheless.