Well, even though I got the new Tim Powers novel for my birthday, I think I am going to have to keep traveling through Raymond Chandler’s corpus. I just finished The Big Sleep, and my version was in a four-novel collection. So just when Marlowe is having a couple of drinks that don’t do him any good and thinking about Silver-Wig, I turn the page and see Farewell, My Lovely begging me on.

The Big Sleep began sort of slow for me this time because I had read it before, probably more than once. But it wasn’t long before I was hooked. I’m not sure how to describe my love for Chandler’s work, and especially his protagonist who is the main appeal of his writing.

Chandler glamorized the LA/Hollywood area by exposing its glamor as a facade. (My August visit to Hollywood Blvd has strengthened my awareness of how flimsy this facade really is; and for the first time in reading this novel I knew what Marlowe meant when he said he ate at a luncheonette across from the Chinese Theatre.) What becomes glittering in Chandler’s world are the individuals struggling to keep some dignity among all the grasping and glitzy fakes.

In The Simple Art of Murder, Chandler’s non-fiction account of himself and his genre, he makes it amply clear that his reason for writing is to portray a hero. Without endorsind everthing Chandler thinks is involved in such a person, I think he does a great job and provides an awesome story because of that.

Here’s a brief extract from The Big Sleep:

“You ought to understand how any copper would feel about a cover-up like this,” he said. “You’ll have to make statements of all of it—at leat for the files. I think it may be possible to keep the two killings separate and to keep General Sternwood’s name out of both of them. Do you know why I’m not tearing your ear off?”

“No. I expected to get both ears torn off.”

“What are you getting for it all?”

“Twenty-five dollars a day and expenses?”

“That would make fifty dollars and a little gasoline so far.”

“About that.”

He put his head on one side and rubbed the back of his little left finger along the lower edge of his chin.

“And for that amount of money you’re willing to get yourself in Dutch with half the law enforcement in this county?”

“I don’t like it,” I said. “But what the hell am I to do? I’m on a case. I’m selling what I have to sell to make a living. What little guts and intelligence the Lord game me and a willingness to get pushed around in order to protect a client…”