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Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Is there some special meaning that connects this passage to the rest of the story? Some symbolism in Marlow's dream that relates to the the other crimes? If so, I'm missing it.
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I went to bed full of whiskey and frustration and dreamed about a man in a bloody Chinese coat who chased a naked girl with long jade earrings while I ran after them and tried to take a photograph with an empty camera.
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I don't think it needs to mean anything. He probably just threw it out there, thought it sounded alright, and left it in. Chandler wasn't interested in writing detectives and plot-driven novels as he was in writing quality literature. The plotting of the Big Sleep is less than clock-work. He just throws stuff in. sometimes it meanders all over the place. He doesn't care. I guess as long as he had the end worked out, it all worked out. He was probably drunk a lot of the time.
Chandler is a superlative novelist who happened to use the vehicle of detective stories. He saw the world as a dark place and created a character to rub against it.
I suspect the strength of his evocation of California in the forties is aided by his upbringing in England. He went from rainy shores to sun-soaked. It amuses me that he spells towards with an 's.'
The Long Goodbye is the novel of his I like the most. It is his opus.
I think Chandler is the true inheritor of Scott Fitzgerald's crown. They both write about class, spectral nights and the heights and the depths of the human soul.