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language: English
country: USA
year: 1939
form: novel
genre(s): mystery
dates read: 6.12.23-7.12.23
I listened to an audiobook of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep while I was traveling yesterday. it did satisfy my desire for timeful pulp fiction, but I think it was less successful than Red Harvest.
the highlight is probably that Chandler is often quite funny — certainly more so than Hammett was. I particularly enjoyed Marlowe being told, “You leak information like a radio announcer” — meaning not at all. shoutout to radio journalism. the humor is often dry and always sarcastic, and it definitely helps lighten the mood a bit.
I also appreciated that Marlowe (in contrast to the intentionally impersonal Continental Op) is more of a person: he has a home (such as it is) and a history and an inner life. you can see him as an obvious extension of the hardboiled interest in “ordinary” detectives rather than superheroes like Holmes — the primary adjective I’d use to describe him is, simply, “pathetic”, which it turns out is actually an engaging starting point.
the downsides are, first, that despite obviously writing in Hammett’s mold the novel lacks all of Red Harvest’s sensitivity to power and class and any of its interest in broader questions of “truth” and “justice”. The Big Sleep is really just focused on the sordid personal lives of an oil family and never moves beyond that. while the vibes were entertaining, then, it was much less satisfying, and less compelling, overall.
second, while obviously Red Harvest is also sexist, it’s truly just relentless in Chandler, both through Marlowe’s interiority and in the overall structure of the narrative.
the plot is also a bit all over the place, but while I marked this as “plot-driven” on Storygraph in reality it’s neither plot- nor character-driven: the whole novel is an exercise in vibes and atmosphere, and in that, at least, it definitely succeeds.
moods: adventurous, mysterious