The Big Sleep POSSIBLE SPOILER

[MeganAbbott]

Oh boy, actually I think, for me, talking to someone reading THE BIG SLEEP for the first time is really instructive for me, Bentley. While there are many hardboiled authors I still have yet to explore (including many of the big guns), Chandler's my favorite, so in many ways, I see him with blinders now. I love to chat with folks reading him with fresher eyes--I see so many new things in his books that way. For instance, until you mentioned his use of language I'd forgotten how delicate it is--and how visual the novels can be. So thanks so much for that!

--Megan

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bentley wrote:

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MeganAbbott wrote:
It's true, isn't it? With such a complicated, famously twisty plot, you need him to hold onto. And I'd go anywhere with Marlowe.
I'll try to skirt any spoilers, but wanted to say one of my favorite things about the book is how it sets up (or extends, as Hammett does it first, in part, in MALTESE FALCON) the now-traditional idea that the private detective must remain alone and must avoid the threat posed by various femme fatales ... kind of fear of contamination thing, like in the famous episode halfway through(POSSIBLE SPOILER)

...when he kicks Carmen out of his bed...

What a scene! I love how, after she leaves, he can still see her imprint on the sheets and he tears up the bed "savagely"!

--Megan

lol).

Bentley

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Hello Megan,

I am almost done. But put spoiler in the Message Subject line for those folks who are not.

I agree with you..you almost feel you know Marlowe; there are so many doublecrosses/blackmail(s) taking place..if you were not with a great writer..you might get lost in the shuffle. I should have realized what that meant (Carmen and her thumb) but missed it (a real Sherlock Holmes here).

Bentley

Message Edited by bentley on 09-29-2007 09:27 AM

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You didn't spoil anything for me. To him they were another species (like alien beings)..look but try to not get involved if you can help it..but he thinks Carmen is just a dope but Mrs. Regan is something else. If you are alone..there is nobody to spill your secrets to. I have to hand it to Chandler..usually there are one or two people who are murdered but I think I have counted five!

Megan, thanks for coming over here to see me..I am very intimidated by all of the novelists and folks frankly who know this genre cold (hard boiled I mean..lol). I have three (I guess maybe four or five) strikes here, I am not a novelist, I do not want to be one, I am not a crime book guru and I knew nothing about Chandler nor had I read any of his books. I really have nothing to add to the conversation in terms of comparing the genre offerings or in terms of recommendations. However, I am going to read Chandler, learn about him and enjoy his writing. I absolutely adore his analogies, metaphors and imagery. It is so visual. Carmen was a loose cannon right from the beginning of the novel and nothing got any better with her. Frankly the Sternwoods are all a bit odd. What I am also enjoying are the indicators of the time period when this was written...like dropping 5 cents in the telephone booth. Chandler is terrific and I plan to read everything he has written as well as the recommendations made. It will take me a long time to get through everything; but it will be an enjoyable journey.

Thanks for your post.

Bentley

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[CharlesArdai]

I love Scudder -- but he does some things over the course of the series that Chandler's detective would never do. I remember one book where he chops a woman's hand off with a meat cleaver, for instance. Now, you could argue that she deserved it -- she was making snuff films in which she killed young men for sexual pleasure -- but still. Marlowe would have handled matters differently.

That's not to say that Scudder is dishonorable or indecent -- I agree with your characterization of him as honorable and decent -- but his code is somewhat morally "elastic," to use a phrase I remember Lawrence Block using in an interview once...

--Charles

[bentley]

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IBIS wrote:
Bentley, I'm with you, I'm here for the ride.

One thing that I also picked up from THE BIG SLEEP is that Marlowe sees himself as a bit of a knight in shining armor.

When he goes calling on "four million dollars", (General Sternwood's Mansion) in the second paragraph, he sees over the entrance doors ("...which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants") "...a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair.

"The knight .... was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying."

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I agree with you about Marlowe who really was the hero version I think of Chandler himself. The bigger than life male who knows best. I loved reading The Big Sleep and thinking about the time period in which it was written and all of the differences from life today. The portraits had a lot of clues in them which revealed elements of the plot later on..didn't they?

Yes, sadly I have a lot of reading to do to catch up with some of these folks in terms of this genre...more of a classical type of reader I guess. But I am certainly enjoying my first encounter with Chandler..I have to go rent the Bacall/Bogart version..I read that Vickers actually stole the scenes away from Bacall and they had these edited out for that reason. I bet it is terrific anyways.

[bentley]

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CharlesArdai wrote:
I love Scudder -- but he does some things over the course of the series that Chandler's detective would never do. I remember one book where he chops a woman's hand off with a meat cleaver, for instance. Now, you could argue that she deserved it -- she was making snuff films in which she killed young men for sexual pleasure -- but still. Marlowe would have handled matters differently.

That's not to say that Scudder is dishonorable or indecent -- I agree with your characterization of him as honorable and decent -- but his code is somewhat morally "elastic," to use a phrase I remember Lawrence Block using in an interview once...

--Charles

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Maybe Scudder was drinking at the time like Marlowe? But Marlowe would have taken care of the lady first with gallantry.

Chopping off a hand is not the decency that I want to run into. Maybe he had his own moral code independent of the norm.

[CharlesArdai]

> Maybe Scudder was drinking at the time like Marlowe?

Scudder was definitely a drinker -- perhaps the heaviest drinker of all private eyes -- but interestingly, he became more violent when he gave up booze and returned to sobriety. As Block describes it, alcohol acts as a buffer for Scudder, a piece of "smoky glass" between his eyes and the too-bright, too-glaring, too-painful-to-look-at-directly world in which he lives.

--Charles

[IBIS]

That's a very revealing quote from Block re Scudder's drinking. As the series progresses, and Scudder stays on the wagon through his AA meetings, Block ratches up the violence. The cases become more violent, and the bad guys much more vicious.

Even Scudder's close friends (like the bar-owner who wears a butcher's apron and goes to early Mass) edge closer to the fringe of society. The flexible moral framework of Scudder's world is definitely stretching.

Who knows how far Marlowe' moral code would be pushed were he living in 21st century LA?

[bentley]

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IBIS wrote:

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Bentley wrote:
I think during the time period when these were written there was a code of ethics and honor really meant something (the older generations really did not need a lot of stuff to be happy).

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I think it's a code that seems to pass beyond the time period of Chandler.

In current crime fiction, for example Lawrence Block's series with Matt Scudder.
Scudder follows the same code of ethics, even though he is not a licensed PI. He is incredibly honorable and decent.

And in Susan Grafton's series, Kinsey Milhone also behaves in a similarly honorable way.

I wonder if that's a "shamus" or crime detective's moral code that spans time?

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Where does the honor or moral code come from? Is this the type of life that the authors aspired to? Did they think their lives less honorable? I always thought that it came from generations past. And that it was just an ideal; which had been created as a norm to strive for.

Chandler's writing is in an era where chivalry was very much alive..he sort of universally invented the crime detective's moral code with Marlowe and maybe folks just latched onto that through the decades.

I also am curious about the concept of the decent man. Is that a myth today? What constitutes a decent man? What kind of moral code does a decent man have. You see corporate CEOS/Execs like in Enron for a quick example who had all of the trappings of decent men; but then bilked thousands of their pensions. I am just questioning what decency has come to mean in today's world and maybe this decent, chivalrous crime detective is a thing of the past which continually is recreated to keep that ideal or dream of the ideal alive.

Edited by Admin. for formatting only.

Message Edited by Jessica on 10-25-2007 03:58 PM

[CharlesArdai]

While answering those weighty questions is probably beyond the scope of a site whose topic is crime fiction, I'd just say that there are plenty of decent men out there (and women) -- they just don't make the front pages of newspapers. Lots of hard-working, caring people who try to treat each other well and generally succeed. But if you write a book about someone like that, it's not a crime novel -- unless the decent person winds up the victim of a crime, or perhaps snaps and turns into a criminal, or something of that sort.

Looking to crime fiction for a representative picture of the types of people in society is a little like reading a batch of Western novels and saying "Does everyone in this world ride horses?"

--Charles

[bentley]

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CharlesArdai wrote:
While answering those weighty questions is probably beyond the scope of a site whose topic is crime fiction, I'd just say that there are plenty of decent men out there (and women) -- they just don't make the front pages of newspapers. Lots of hard-working, caring people who try to treat each other well and generally succeed. But if you write a book about someone like that, it's not a crime novel -- unless the decent person winds up the victim of a crime, or perhaps snaps and turns into a criminal, or something of that sort.

Looking to crime fiction for a representative picture of the types of people in society is a little like reading a batch of Western novels and saying "Does everyone in this world ride horses?"

--Charles

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A musing in the Off Topic Cafe; and I really was talking about the outward appearance of respectability, etc. because of job and money. And I agree with you that there are a lot of decent men and women who just lead very normal lives.

I think the focus was on an investigator who was hard drinking yet had a strong virtuous moral code. I was kind of asking where that came from and if Marlowe were invented today whether his moral code would be the same? I understand what you are saying that Marlowe is not everyman.

[bentley]

Having completed The Big Sleep..I can say that I really liked it a lot. It was dated in some parts and I wonder if Marlowe and some of the detectives might have had to be sent to diversity training nowadays with the terminology they used for Carol et al. It really was a freer and different age..everybody just said what was on their mind..like it or not.

How many murders were there in that novel? The double crosses, etc. were too numerous to count. I think I have all of the murders and suicides straight but they were happening fairly quickly.

Let me try to count them up.

We had Owen Taylor who killed Arthur Gwynn Geiger and he supposedly committed suicide afterwards.
We had Arthur Gwynn Geiger killed by Owen Taylor.
We had Joe Brody killed by Carol Lundgren.
We had Harry Jones killed by Canino.
We had Canino killed by Marlowe.
We had Rusty Regan killed by Carmen Sternwood

We had Mona Mars under house arrest.
We had Rusty dead in the sump (Vivian protecting Carmen and in a backwards way her father)
We had Eddie Mars conspiring to shake down Vivian and helping her out to get back at Rusty who was sweet on Mona.
Carmen was a nut case and needed 24 by 7 supervision.
We had Joe Brody doublecrossing the General at the beginning of the novel; about ready to do it again.
We had Geiger blackmailing his clientele.

A really odd group of people but an excellent novel.

Loved it.

Bentley

[MeganAbbott]

Bentley--
I've never tallied it up like that---wow!
Have you heard the funny (possibly mythical) story about Howard Hawks calling Raymond Chandler up when he was making the movie? My apologies if someone already mentioned it, but apparently Bogart and Hawks and Faulkner, et al, couldn't figure out who killed the chauffeur and Hawks sent Chandler a telegram in La Jolla, or called him up (depending on who's telling the story), and asked him, Who Killed Owen Taylor? And Chandler picked up his copy of the book, paged through it, and sent a return telegraph that said something to the effect of, "Damned if I know." So Hawks decided, like Chandler, to leave it ambiguous (e.g., could be a suicide, etc.). Sounds too good a story to be true, but...

Best,
Megan

[Clea_Simon]

Makes misogyny almost attractive, doesn't it? (and yes, I'm a fan, too. Just a bemused one.)

[bentley]

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MeganAbbott wrote:
Bentley--
I've never tallied it up like that---wow!
Have you heard the funny (possibly mythical) story about Howard Hawks calling Raymond Chandler up when he was making the movie? My apologies if someone already mentioned it, but apparently Bogart and Hawks and Faulkner, et al, couldn't figure out who killed the chauffeur and Hawks sent Chandler a telegram in La Jolla, or called him up (depending on who's telling the story), and asked him, Who Killed Owen Taylor? And Chandler picked up his copy of the book, paged through it, and sent a return telegraph that said something to the effect of, "Damned if I know." So Hawks decided, like Chandler, to leave it ambiguous (e.g., could be a suicide, etc.). Sounds too good a story to be true, but...

Best,
Megan

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Megan..thank goodness you are here. You have made my day with that story. It may be too good to be true but somehow I think it "sounds real". Because I couldn't figure out who killed the chauffeur either and read the book a second time thinking I missed something. There was the mention of suicide but it was like one of those hypothetical comments which did not seem grounded after all of the other murders. But I had to stick to the suicide (I thunk sort of "final answer)... because there was nothing else. Chandler's answer (if it is true) was so Marlowe like!

You know I might be the only person reading these books for the first time in this discussion group..but so what. I am buying them at barnes and noble (so there you go)..a new buyer of these books that everybody else seems to have read years ago. Well it is a real treat for me to discover a genre of older icons who I have not read and many new folks as well. I like the classics, a good mystery, best sellers, history now and again, historical novels and devour books so it is odd for me to find lists of books that I have never read. So reading them I am.

I had also purchased THE HIGH WINDOW so I am just starting that now. Others have told me that they liked this one or that one better but I will read this next anyways. I plan to read all seven of Chandler's books so I can savor each one and there really does not appear to be any order except in terms of publishing dates (I could be wrong on that).

Megan, I wrote them all down because I decided I was losing count of all of the folks "just done away with" by one or another of the characters. This group was really a "band of thieves". LA must have had a busy time of the year when this allegedly all had occurred.

Anyways...as always thanks very much for all of your comments as I read on. Your story was a relief that I really had not missed anything about "Owen"

Message Edited by bentley on 10-10-2007 12:36 PM

[bentley]

Quite a write-up on Hammett and did not realize he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett

[MeganAbbott]

I think the story is true, too! Sometimes, there's Chandler bashing, folks saying his plots are too complicated, but their murkiness is one of the things I love about him. And I think it reflects that anxietey that underlies all of the noir: that the world is an even more complicated, unfathomable place than we know and the old rules, and old principles, no longer stand, even when they should. After all, he isn't writing a Holmesian mystery that, however tangled, can be untangled by cool logic and reason.
I'm so eager to see what you think of them as you work your way through. HIGH WINDOW is one of the ones everyone tends to put at the bottom of their list, but it's filled with riches too!

(I didn't read them in order when I first read them and I wish I had--they're interesting in terms of Marlowe's character, as you'll see!)

Best,
Megan




Megan..thank goodness you are here. You have made my day with that story. It may be too good to be true but somehow I think it "sounds real". Because I couldn't figure out who killed the chauffeur either and read the book a second time thinking I missed something. There was the mention of suicide but it was like one of those hypothetical comments which did not seem grounded after all of the other murders. But I had to stick to the suicide (I thunk sort of "final answer)... because there was nothing else. Chandler's answer (if it is true) was so Marlowe like!

You know I might be the only person reading these books for the first time in this discussion group..but so what. I am buying them at barnes and noble (so there you go)..a new buyer of these books that everybody else seems to have read years ago. Well it is a real treat for me to discover a genre of older icons who I have not read and many new folks as well. I like the classics, a good mystery, best sellers, history now and again, historical novels and devour books so it is odd for me to find lists of books that I have never read. So reading them I am.

I had also purchased THE HIGH WINDOW so I am just starting that now. Others have told me that they liked this one or that one better but I will read this next anyways. I plan to read all seven of Chandler's books so I can savor each one and there really does not appear to be any order except in terms of publishing dates (I could be wrong on that).

Megan, I wrote them all down because I decided I was losing count of all of the folks "just done away with" by one or another of the characters. This group was really a "band of thieves". LA must have had a busy time of the year when this allegedly all had occurred.

Anyways...as always thanks very much for all of your comments as I read on. Your story was a relief that I really had not missed anything about "Owen"

Message Edited by bentley on 10-10-2007 12:36 PM

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[bentley]

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MeganAbbott wrote:
I think the story is true, too! Sometimes, there's Chandler bashing, folks saying his plots are too complicated, but their murkiness is one of the things I love about him. And I think it reflects that anxietey that underlies all of the noir: that the world is an even more complicated, unfathomable place than we know and the old rules, and old principles, no longer stand, even when they should. After all, he isn't writing a Holmesian mystery that, however tangled, can be untangled by cool logic and reason.
I'm so eager to see what you think of them as you work your way through. HIGH WINDOW is one of the ones everyone tends to put at the bottom of their list, but it's filled with riches too!

(I didn't read them in order when I first read them and I wish I had--they're interesting in terms of Marlowe's character, as you'll see!)

Best,
Megan

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I think we are on the same page. I agree wholeheartedly so far. I like it so far. And I am also reading Block's The Sins of the Fathers to compare Scudder with Marlowe. Marlowe is out ahead. It is funny how fans always have to compare every book by an author and put them in some order from best to worse (even though all of them are great). I guess it is just human nature to want to do some ranking.

Edited by Admin. for formatting only.

Message Edited by Jessica on 10-25-2007 03:59 PM

[IBIS]

Bentley, are you enjoying Block's SINS OF THE FATHERS?

That was an early book; Matt becomes much darker in his later books. I hope you enjoy Block as much as I have.
True, Matt Scudder is not as great a literary character as Phillip Marlowe, but you can't miss Chandler's influence.

[bentley]

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IBIS wrote:
Bentley, are you enjoying Block's SINS OF THE FATHERS?

That was an early book; Matt becomes much darker in his later books. I hope you enjoy Block as much as I have.
True, Matt Scudder is not as great a literary character as Phillip Marlowe, but you can't miss Chandler's influence.

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I am but as you can see from the quotes that I have just started. I loved The Big Sleep so that is in the back of my mind.

Scudder to me appears to be a darker character (with psychological scars) already with his dropping out of the police force, his marriage and life, sitting in churches to think (not that there is anything wrong with churches), seems ok with paying for info, etc. He seems to me to be a tormented soul. Drinking without getting drunk..but still drinking. He seems to be a man going through the motions sometimes who got the wind knocked out of him and is breathing fast and furiously to keep himself alive. He is smart and I look forward to getting to know Block's PI.

I do see Chandler's influence..but I am still in the early stages. I think Chandler and Marlowe are funnier. Scudder seems darker.

Chandler and Marlowe ahead so far. But I guess I can like them both.

[bentley]

About Lawrence Block:

http://www.lawrenceblock.com/index_framesetfl.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Block

http://www.nmajh.org/exhibitions/galut/block.htm

AUDIO INTERVIEWS WITH BLOCK:

http://wiredforbooks.org/lawrenceblock/

HYSTERICAL; THAT IS ALL I CAN SAY:

http://www.mysterynet.com/books/testimony/block.shtml

TALKING MYSTERY WITH LAWRENCE BLOCK:

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/oct99/block.htm

[Coggins]

Here's a little more on Hammett and THE MALTESE FALCON ... First, a tour of Spade's apartment (and the place that Hammett wrote the book):

http://tinyurl.com/yjv5au

Then two parts of a multi-part podcast of Hammett expert Joe Gores talking about FALCON and Hammett:

http://tinyurl.com/2rewjj

http://tinyurl.com/2szf6c

A third is coming soon ...

--MC