The Big Sleep

You would think that after you read Tropic of Cancer nothing could shock you. But shock is always contextual. An F-bomb amongst a crowd of profanities is barely noticed, whereas the same bomb dropped in a preschool classroom gets a lot more attention. In addition, Tropic of Cancer was not a massively popular book, but The Big Sleep was. I had seen the movie, and I didn't remember anything too racy, just a lot of sharp talk and cigarette smoke. But the book has plenty of pornography, nudity, drugs, sex, and adult behavior. I wasn't expecting it. And when one character responds to Marlowe by saying, "Go ------ yourself," that dash spoke louder than any paragraph in Henry Miller's work.

But that dash, how interesting! I have seen swear words in just about every book on the list. But this book, a book written for adults, refrains. It refrains not from the sentiment, but from the word itself. And for some reason, that decision captures the moral spirit of this book. The sentiment of adult seediness is all there, but there is a big dash hovering over it. That sentiment and that dash are both in the lead character and narrator, Philip Marlowe.

In my memory, Marlowe was a worldly guy, a ladies man, a tough guy whom nothing surprises. And my memory is pretty spot on. Except that he might as well have a halo over his head. He strikes me as a noir Rhett Butler, a guy who plays the scumbag, hangs with the scumbags, but in his heart is something else. Marlowe can talk the talk and solve the puzzles, read people and anticipate their next move, but there is nothing rotten at his center. He may drink more than is approved of today, but he is unaffected by his alcohol consumption. He can drive, fight, think on his feet and resist temptation no matter how much booze is sloshing around in his belly. Here is a guy who has the opportunity to sleep with a number of women and doesn't once. He doesn't even seem to feel the temptation. Not once does he need to take a cold shower.

Instead, the thing that he cares about is an old, dying man who in turn cares about the well-being of his daughter's missing husband. The women are femme fatales every one, but their dance is made on the periphery of the action, an action that works between men. And just so that you don't go thinking Marlowe and his fellows are gay, Chandler gives us real homosexuals to contrast with Marlowe's masculinity. When the young lover swings at Marlowe, he lets you know they are different, he and the gay fighter: "It was meant to be a hard [punch], but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like." Being gay makes you weak, and Marlowe is not weak. And he is not gay either. He isn't. So stop considering it. Just stop it.

No, he isn't gay; he is a catcher in the rye, only it's not children running through the rye. It's the old man. The big moral responsibility in Marlowe's adventure is to keep the old man from discovering how rotten his corrupted daughters are and that Regan has been shot and killed by one of them.

And this tenderness that Marlowe feels for Sternwood (yeah, that sounds like an erection), and Sternwood's tenderness for Regan are set up in opposition to all the other relationships in the novel. In this world, relationships are leverage, bargaining positions that can shift as the individual's needs shift. This is a novel of alliances, not love. Los Angeles is a corrupt place where cops can be bought, pornographers protected, murderers hidden and everyone can be betrayed. And Marlowe can navigate all these shark infested waters even as he holds his moral lamp above the waters. So like Mitchell, Chandler wants it both ways--a hard and gritty novel with sentimentality tucked into the harsh folds and slid into the sharp corners.

This is a famous novel not just because it is a great storyline, not just because it is representative of a whole genre, not just because it's an excellent mystery. This novel is also beautifully written. The overstated similes that seem to be the hallmark of private detective fiction are genuine and powerful in this novel. Hell, I found them to be downright poetic. For example, "So she giggled. Very cute. The giggles got louder and ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting." That is everything a simile should be! Those giggles become a physical thing with a tangible character. Chandler does an incredible job describing his scenes with precision and color and his characters have voices you can hear, and not just because you've watched enough black-and-white movies to know the accent. The plot develops with mystery and inevitability and never gets muddled. This book is on the this list because Chandler is a superb writer.

If I had time I would love to compare The Big Sleep to Red Harvest. If there is anyone out there playing along, I would love to hear your own thoughts. Till then, I'll take my two fingers of scotch and get back to work under intermittent light of the neon sign outside my window.