The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
Chancellor Press. First published 1939.
Marlowe spends half the novel tracing a blackmailer who's attempting to extract money from General Sternwood, an old, now invalid, oil millionaire, with two wild, spoilt daughters, the stories of whose lives would furnish several blackmailers. He solves that case, only to persist with doggedness born of integrity to his profession as a private detective, to try and uncover the mystery of the missing husband of the elder daughter. A few more bodies, beatings, abductions and wisecracks later he arrives at the gruesome solution.
Like all books that belong to this genre, it pushes a fiercely independent world view that may today be characterized as belonging to the 'Tea Party' of modern day America. Except, of course, it is much more honest and sincere, and always pushes the case of the underdog, the white underdog, generally. His writing is un-apologetically homophobic. It is also misogynist and racist, but not very overtly so. Though these are probably unreasonable complaints, given the times in which he was writing, and given his audience, it is difficult therefore to make the case that Chandler was a left-leaning liberal. (Not that one would want to). He probably hated communists and 'Okies'.
In an earlier post I had made the case that maybe P G Wodehouse and Raymond Chandler, both having attended the same school (Dulwich College) in London, learnt their witty writing styles there. Here are a couple more examples that prop up that argument.
"'Well, how's the boy?' he began. He sounded like a man who had slept well and didn't owe too much money."
"'Mr. Cobb was my escort,' she said. '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....'"
"I always wear my rubbers in bed myself. In case I wake up with a bad conscience and have to sneak away from it."
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