short stories

Raymond Chandler's THE BIG SLEEP was the first of his novels featuring private detective Philip Marlowe. In creating this tough-as-nails, chain-smoking, heavy boozing investigator, Chandler was one of the first writers of the ''hardboiled" mystery genre. While its style has become a tradition over 60 years since it was first published, it is important to understand how original THE BIG SLEEP was. Literature had only seen before gentleman detectives such as Sherlock Holmes solving the mysteries of the genteel classes. THE BIG SLEEP, on the other hand, involves the seedy Los Angeles underbelly, with a cast of gamblers, con-men, and perverts.

The book opens with the visit of Philip Marlowe to the estate of old, dying General Sternwood. The general's two daughters constantly vex him by getting into all sorts of trouble. One's a infantile neurotic, the other's mired in gambling debts and has already been thrice married. Sternwood hires Marlowe to resolve the blackmail of one of his daughters by a shady bookseller. Once bodies start to drop, however, it becomes apparent that Marlowe is in for more than he bargained for.

In his Philip Marlowe novels, Chandler was more concerned with creating characters of various degrees of depravity, dialogue, and narrative style than with plot. In fact, only in the last three pages does he put all the pieces in place, in such a fashion that resolving the mystery seems like an afterthought. Nonetheless, the reader enjoys the ride. Marlowe's thoughts, which we get from the first-person narrative, and the witty dialogue is entertaining enough.

THE BIG SLEEP is also a window on a period of American history much different from the present. Nearly every scene has the characters lighting up, whether pipes, cigarettes, or cigars. In one scene, the police harass a homosexual boy with glee. In few other books do we see there sorts of details which show how Los Angeles of 1939 was not like it is today.

All in all, I'd recommend THE BIG SLEEP. Even if this doesn't seem like your genre, it has an important place in American literature.

It's often been said that Raymond Chandler is the quintessential writer about Los Angeles in the 1940's in the way that Faulkner fictionalized the American South. The Big Sleep is the best example of Chandler's affinity for the city, particularly in the light of it's unique blend of pre-fabricated history associated with the film industry and the pre-Hollywood era. That being said, it's a bit ironic that we tend to think of Philip Marlowe as personified by Humphrey Bogart, even though he's been played by several actors over the years and the film of The Big Sleep is markedly different from the book.

"Chandleresque" suggests a certain style of writing and of using metaphors and language that can't really be described to anyone unfamiliar with his work without lapsing into stereotype. For any other mystery writer, that would be a negative, but since Chandler is the man who, with The Big Sleep, more or less invented the detective novel as we know it today it's astonishing to read and realize what kind of impact it might have had on those who read the first printing.

The Big Sleep introduces Philip Marlowe as the private eye who is both uncorruptable and one step ahead of his antagonists. His characterization is what drives the story, which as mysteries go is not the most suspensful or even all that mysterious. Indeed, the "mystery" such as it is is barely given notice by Chandler, short of the necessities. While there are some good plot twists, they seem to come together in a generally haphazard manner. None of that matters, because the main interest is in what Marlowe will do next and how he will react. Chandler creates some interesting supporting characters as well, but they float in and out of the story overwhelmed by the protagonist.

The Big Sleep is an excellent starting point for getting re-acquainted with classic detective fiction and exploring the development of the genre. It's a relatively quick read as well, which helps the suspense build and leaves you wanting more. It's also a classic vessel for channeling the aura of Los Angeles as it was in what we consider to be its heyday, and what Chandler considered to be something else altogether.

Chandler is, bar none, the best writer of the so-called "hard boiled detective" genre, and this is his greatest work.

In a labyrinthine plot featuring corrupt, orchid-growing millionaires, beautiful blondes, gray men with guns and the cynical, deeply romantic narrator-protagonsit Marlowe, we see Los Angeles of the 1940s as Marlowe looks for the truth about murder, pornography and, ultimately, loss.

The sheer genius of Chandler's writing-- aside from the accompished plot twists-- is his deceptively simple language, which sparkles, and his narrator's deadpan wit. From the descriptions of women ("Inside was a blonde. A blonde! A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.") to the caustic remarks in the face of death ("She would either shoot me, or she wouldn't.") to his existential comments ("I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun"), Marlowe is as entertainign to lsiten to as he is to watch.

Chandler's achievement here goes beyond the action sequences, or the wit of his narrator, or the complexity of his plots. His narrator, the tough-as-nails Marlowe, appeals because he is profoundly romantic at heart, but doomed, like Hamlet, to be disappointed. Like Hamlet-- who writes a play to discover the origins of his misery-- Marlowe too is a storyteller, whose stories lead to one kind of understanding, where actions and sequences finally cohere. But Marlowe's dilemmas are Hamlet's, in that although he can tell the story, his sense of what it all means at the end is far from complete.

Chandler's stories are really about people who are lost. Marlowe's quest to find the body and re-tell the story-- although always successful-- is always undermined by his elliptical and understated awareness that, for all our ingenuity and striving, it all ultimately comes down, as it does for Hamlet and for all of us, to the big sleep.