May 2013 Discussion: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (spoilers)
 

The time has come to discuss the fascinating May 2013 MobileRead Book Club selection, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. What did you think?

Well, to tell the truth I didn't finish the book. About halfway inot it I realized I didn't care about the people involved and/or the outcome and I had other things I wanted to do instead of reading.
That being said, I did enjoy the 100 or so pages I did read. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the writing. I did not expect that at all! I'm pretty sure I read this book way back when I was a teenager, and back then the detective part (that had me yawning this time) was what pulled me in. I doubt I cared much about language or writing style back then, so it was really eye opening to reread the part that I did read!
I've always thought of the Philip Marlow books as "hard boiled", but comparing to today's crime books it felt very "benign". Which is nice!
I may come back to it when I'm in better mode for it, because the writing really appealed to me!

I must admit that I was in two minds about this book,but there is more in it than meets the eye.

It isn't the easiest book to read, not in the least through the language Chandler uses. The artificial constructed sentences describe the atmosphere, appearances and emotions. In fact, somewhat like a story board, for a film. In all honesty: this irritated me severely. But on the other hand, Chandlers writing style forced me to a closer, a slower paced reading, which had the effect of drawing me into the story, obviously.
On the surface the theme of the book is the ancient battle between good and evil. The good represented by the cynical detective Philip Marlowe, who seems to be the only person with morals and values in a corrupt world. It turns this though man into a Don Quichote; fighting the windmills. Or so it seems.
The evil is in the family of General Sternwood, in Carmen, the younger daughter, who does nasty things. She gets this compulsion when she is thwarted. And she gets away with it.
Her sister Vivian, who should have known better, covers for her as if she is an irresponsible child. It might be that Carmen has a disorder, but she literal gets away with murder.
On second thought, the theme of the book isn't between good and evil, but between evil and less evil. For in the end, the hero of the story becomes part of the corrupt society 'the great nastiness' himself.

I think Marlowe was always part of the great nastyness desertblues, he is just admitting it to himself and the reader. He's basically saying that in the end who you were, and what you did doesn't matter to the world. You were here, and now you're gone. He's a bit of a pessimist I think.

I quite enjoyed revisiting Raymond Chandler after a few decades (though not as many as for Sherlock Holmes!).

I had forgotten the homophobia in the book, which was no doubt just a reflection of the way things were - and no doubt still are, but it wouldn't be as acceptable to write it that way now.

He certainly portrayed a nasty and corrupt society very well. And even though Marlowe was honest and decent, he felt contaminated by the evil. And of course he gave Vivian the chance to get Carmen away somewhere else, where she should have been locked up as criminally insane.

For me, the feeling at the end was one of melancholy.

Carmen is surely the embodiment of the Sternwoods at their worst, but even at their best the entire family is, as the general pointed out, amoral.

Drinking and driving seemed to be no big deal in those days.

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.

Chandler seems to have a special knack for describing false smiles.

It certainly wasn't my favorite part of the book, but like you indicated it was a reflection of the times.

I hadn't read anything from Chandler before but I really enjoyed this. It may be the first book that I have read that dealt with life in the 30's in general, so it was enlightening to me in that respect too.

Note: I read the second book, Farewell, My Lovely, right after finishing this one, so I have muddled some of the details between books. I will try not to post any spoilers below for the second book.

I didn't notice that nearly as much as the racism in the book. I should clarify, I noticed it, but it didn't bother me too much because I expect it from someone in this time period. Homophobia is still very present and we all know it was much worse even a few years ago, so it didn't bother me in that regard. The overt racism in this book and even more in the second book is what really got my attention. Homophobia is still something that we are actively dealing with as a society, we tend to think of race as a more-or-less resolved issue.* There is no way a book like this would be well received in today's society, let alone made into a movie a couple years later. (I say that then think of Django Unchained or whatever that movie was.) It really gave me a different perspective on racism in the early 1900s, especially since this is set in LA. Los Angeles, not Louisiana which would have surprised me less!

I see some of the roots of today's action oriented books in these books. The tough protagonist who has a dark sense of humor and/or is only marginally a good-guy. I do see him as a clear good guy, but one who has been let down by the system. The picture he gives us is no longer a nice glossy image, it is like a picture on the wall of a smoking lounge that is yellowed, faded and smells a bit but still has value to the people in it.

This book was a big departure for me from what I normally read, which is part of the draw and part of the reason I got the Kindle in the first place, but I enjoyed it enough to continue on in the series.

*I am quite aware of how much it is around still, but it doesn't tend to get the same attention anymore.

I think Chandler was trying to portray how elements of waking life can become jumbled in our dreams.

That's one of the problems of older books. Context. I notice nobody commenting on the pornography lending library. It's now so mainstream that it's not worthy of comment...

True enough. In some of the old Dragnet TV episodes (as well as OTR episodes) Sgt. Friday and his partner go after pornographers. One time a man sent a poem with some erotic content through the mail and got pinched for it (a true story). The poem in question was from The Song of Songs which is Solomon's. In the old days when people made 'stag movies' the actors often wore masks on their faces to hide their identity.

I guess you're right. I forgot about (or didn't catch) Carmen's jade earrings being at one point her only attire.

I thought this was a fun read, not least because Chandler comes across not as a groundbreaker, but as a parody of himself. Especially at first before the plot (such as it was) got underway, when I thought he was working the similes and metaphors too hard. Just the same, the language was a joy to read.

I loved the staccato dialogue, the sense of place and time and the pervasiveness of evil. I thought his depiction of women was terrible. Not a one was believable; they were a bunch of vamps prone to screaming or giggling at inopportune times and behaving in an entirely incomprehensible manner (especially Silver-Wig) when necessary to get Marlowe out of a jam. That bothered me more than the homophobia or racism, which were organic in that context. Even their dialogue was frequently was absurd. One favorite, and from Vivian, supposedly the brightest of the bunch:

:rolleyes:

Oh yes, could not agree more! But I remember thinking that already when I read the books in my teens, so I was so prepared for it this time and just shock my head gentlly now and then...

What bothered me most in this book was the sometimes unexpected appearance of evil behind the mask of society, of normality; it gave me goosebumps.

Vivian Regan seemed to have no love for law enforcement. Did her views reflect Chandler's? On page 86 she says of Owen Taylor, "He has a police record. He didn’t know the right people. That’s all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country." And on page 226 she says to Marlow, "That makes you just a killer at heart, like all cops."

Since most men don't truly understand women, (and some even less than others), it shouldn't be surprising that some writers can't portray them well...

I think you missed Chandler's point, it wasn't the occasional unexpected appearence of evil behind the mask of society, but that society was evil at it's core, and that it was able to hide that fact so much of the time...

I did enjoy reading The Big Sleep. I tried watching the movie with Humphrey Bogart as Marlowe and I had to turn it off. I felt the movie just didn't work nearly as well as the book.

Of course the police back then were a bit on the rough side compared to what they are expected to be today. There was no miranda warning as yet and the rubber hose was (I understand) a very real thing. Now days the police are held to a higher standard of conduct (though there are still some incidents).

Mmm, interesting point of view as well..... There is more in the book than meets the eye.

I watched the film after reading the book way back and when rereading it for the Bookclub I heard the voice of Humphrey Bogart in my head the whole time....;)

Bogart was and still is Philip Marlowe. :)

I still like Robert Mitchum's Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely

I thought the book was 'readable' and not much else! I disliked Chandler's portrayal of women and this did, unfortunately, colour my judgement of the story. I struggled to read to the end as I didn't care about what happened to the characters.

I think I was only really reading as I'm one of those souls who hasn't yet learnt to put an unfinished book down and leave it if I'm not enjoying it!

I enjoyed reading the book. And that enjoyment primarily was owing to the very stylized noirish atmosphere conveyed by the language which bristles with incredible similes on nearly every page. Here's a fairly representative sample fron ch. 28.

"Her very blue eyes flashed so sharply that I could almost see the sweep of their glance, like the sweep of a sword. . . She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes. She bent over me. Her breath was as delicate as the eyes of a fawn."

And the women. . . :eek: They seem incapable of normal affection. Eddie Mars' wife "Silver-Wig" gives Marlowe a kiss after she frees him.

"Her face under my mouth was like ice. She put her hands up and took hold of my head and kissed me hard on the lips. Her lips were like ice, too.

"I went out through the door and it closed behind me, without sond, and the rain blew in under the porch, not as cold as her lips."

When one considers the vampiric quality of the Sternwood daughters--particularly the psychotic Carmen--one is certainly tempted to consider the book as misogynistic in the extreme. However the men are as bad: materialistic, cruel, vicious, brutal, sadistic, etc. Marlowe himself is no holy avenging angel. The only couple I can think of that seem to have a genuine affection is the unfortunate Harry Jones and the Blonde Agnes.

The plot of the novel is very diffuse and in many ways it is really a couple of stories vaguely linked by the dead Rusty Regan. It is the atmosphere of poison and rot that is memorable.

So in the end I believe that what makes the book live is its atmosphere of nihilistic darkness.

"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on tip 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. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed,. . . His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep."

Misogynistic, racist, homophobic; the book was everything my 21st century sensibilities have learned to abhor. In addition, the characters were unbelievable and shallow.

I loved it.

Sure, I would hate working in the same office with someone like Philip Marlowe, and we'd certainly get onto arguments over politics and so much else; but as a book, the rapid-fire dialogue and constant barrage of one-liners kept me awake and wanting more; and as for the attitudes displayed, I can chalk that up to being an unfortunate reflection of the times in which Chandler was writing (although that certainly doesn't absolve the author by any means).

This is strange. No one campaigned more than I against this selection, and no one seems to have enjoyed it more.

I was going to give this one a pass. However, after reading the above I just have to at least give a book with an ending like the above a chance. :) I hope it is worth the effort, but some whose opinions I generally respect liked it.

I didn't like the book at first, but it is one of the books that gets better with a close reading and a reflecting, I found.

"Today we're trained to be goody two-shoes, covering our eyes and ears from those things we're taught to disbelieve in. But the world keeps rubbing them in our faces. Evil is always there; you can't get rid of it. You just shift it around, and then are horrified when you trip over it. And you try to destroy anyone who take those hands covering your senses, even if they're only trying to remind that reality is there; not knowing that in the end you're just creating more evil by denying it..."

- Red

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.

I absolutely disagree, and I will endevour never to watch the movie. Though I do appreciate Bogart gave a memorable performance.

I agree and I think this goes along with my comparison of Chandler with The Great Gatsby. They both analyze decadence and wealth. Truly books for our time. They both also have a remarkable gift for description.

Someone mentioned Chandler's characters as 2-D. I don't know that I'd agree with that. I can still remember that psychopath dressed as a cowboy. The description was chilling, and I can't say why. I think it was in the Big Sleep. And the wicked, drunken, rich girl at the end who is so casual about others and life. She's a Buchanan alright.

In my neck of the woods, that's the way people talk. I've always wondered about the proper usage of that. My Granddaddy Sharpe, who had a third grade education, had a very unique way of speaking. He would speak of this here here and that there there and always pronounce the "Elm" in "Elm Avenue" with two syllables. Could you picture Bogart as Marlow speaking like that?

He wrote that one as a means of dealing with his wife's last illness I believe. Sissy was dying (the ultimate long goodbye) and he (as I understand it) wrote it for her first and foremost.

I think Americans pronounce the 's' but they don't spell with it, unlike the British.

If you mean El-um, like Fil-um (for film), that would be Irish, or possibly Geordie.

No way did Marlowe speak like that, lol.

There's a crazy chapter in the middle where a drunken binge turns into something resembling an acid trip. You don't read that in conventional detective tales.

On another note, I've read that Chandler's plotting was not the tightest. I'd agree with that. I think he said that when he didn't know what happened next, he'd send in a guy with a gun.