Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
Didn’t really enjoy this one. A few great lines doesn’t make a book! Too many horrible racist slurs to overlook.
There is reason Chandler is part of the Hardboiled Crime Trinity. This novel was perfect in pace, pitch, and plot. Sometimes you wonder if he is going to make a stretched metaphor stick, and he nails it just to spite you. This might not be a five-star novel in the house of novels, but in the bedroom of noir I haven't read many better.
I'm completely in love with this man. Why did it take me so long?!
As much as I like the 1940's atmosphere in the book I could do without the racism. The first part of the book is especially bad and it may have been written when this kind of thing was normal but it doesn't make it any nicer to read. Though it is an eye-opening lesson in what things were like back then.
Without that, it's an ok book and I love the sarcasm and some of the phrases the author uses.
I was a bit lost with some of his jumps in the case he's investigating, I don't think I understand why he goes out to the casino ship near the end or why Moose keeps turning up in random places. He seems to have a lot of intuitive flashes that aren't explained well enough for me to follow.
It was an interesting read though and I liked how it all came together at the end.
Without that, it's an ok book and I love the sarcasm and some of the phrases the author uses.
I was a bit lost with some of his jumps in the case he's investigating, I don't think I understand why he goes out to the casino ship near the end or why Moose keeps turning up in random places. He seems to have a lot of intuitive flashes that aren't explained well enough for me to follow.
It was an interesting read though and I liked how it all came together at the end.
Went & found the audio read by Elliot Gould. Found his reading of Marlowe #2 as entertaining as Marlowe #1, & this story was somewhat easier to follow, although a little far-fetched in places. (Random hypnotist?)
Still a bit boggled by Chandler's female characters, although I'm sure they're in line with his times. He went with the Big Sister - Little Sister dynamic again, only this time Big Sister was the wicked one & apparently drove men mad with love & could make them do anything she wanted. I get the feeling this was Chandler's favorite fantasy.
Litter Sister delivers lines like, "You're so wonderful!" The ending would have been better without them.
Still a bit boggled by Chandler's female characters, although I'm sure they're in line with his times. He went with the Big Sister - Little Sister dynamic again, only this time Big Sister was the wicked one & apparently drove men mad with love & could make them do anything she wanted. I get the feeling this was Chandler's favorite fantasy.
Litter Sister delivers lines like, "You're so wonderful!" The ending would have been better without them.
Marlowe's a pretty sentimental guy.
I belong in the minority who enjoyed The Big Sleep a little bit more.
I belong in the minority who enjoyed The Big Sleep a little bit more.
there are a lot of chandler imitators out there. the worst of them seem to assume that the hardboiled novel is all about the attitude. it's not; it's about the style. the story cannot exist without philip marlowe. and what is philip marlowe? nothing more and nothing less than the words he speaks in narration.
there are a lot of ugly things in this book, and i am not talking about the murders. i don't think that the racism and misogyny (both latent and overt) on display here are things to forget, or forgive, or "get over." they are things that need to be stared straight in the face. at least with chandler we are presented with the (some?) hypocrisies of crime through a voice that is hard and clear and unforgettably unique. perhaps even honest, in its own way.
"It's not that kind of story," I said. "It's not lithe and clever. It's just dark and full of blood."
there are a lot of ugly things in this book, and i am not talking about the murders. i don't think that the racism and misogyny (both latent and overt) on display here are things to forget, or forgive, or "get over." they are things that need to be stared straight in the face. at least with chandler we are presented with the (some?) hypocrisies of crime through a voice that is hard and clear and unforgettably unique. perhaps even honest, in its own way.
"It's not that kind of story," I said. "It's not lithe and clever. It's just dark and full of blood."
I have read a lot of mysteries but I’ve just starting reading some Raymond Chandler and this is the second novel I’ve read. The first thing I’ve noticed about Chandler is how much writers after him have plundered his style. Many authors I’ve read have clearly appropriated his style especially his dialog style. So, I get why he’s an iconic author. But…
His stories are very confusing. There are a lot of characters but their relationship is convoluted. A lot of what he writes is just hard to understand. He makes up his own slang which makes it even harder to understand. He really isn’t a very good PI because he makes things more difficult for himself and creates risk he doesn’t need to do. He seems to like being a jerk and insulting people for no reason. He never seems to get paid. It seems like his reward is being a tough guy, aloof and dark.
Of course, he does have that great style. I mean “I’ll bet she snaps a mean garter.” Is a great sounding line, but what does it mean?
His stories are very confusing. There are a lot of characters but their relationship is convoluted. A lot of what he writes is just hard to understand. He makes up his own slang which makes it even harder to understand. He really isn’t a very good PI because he makes things more difficult for himself and creates risk he doesn’t need to do. He seems to like being a jerk and insulting people for no reason. He never seems to get paid. It seems like his reward is being a tough guy, aloof and dark.
Of course, he does have that great style. I mean “I’ll bet she snaps a mean garter.” Is a great sounding line, but what does it mean?
“Penguin Readers” editions are rewritten in simplified language for learners of English, with restrictions on both vocabulary and grammatical structures depending on the level.
Sometimes this works well. Here, it doesn't work at all. The original is pretty much entirely about the language and writing, but this "translation" loses almost everything, sometimes even to the extent of making the meaning quite confused.
For comparison — the original has an elaborate multi-page section of him arriving at the Grayle residence:
Here, this entire thing becomes:
This would be bad enough on its own, but this approach also makes the plot (which is complex enough anyway) almost impossible to follow. I frequently found myself completely lost until I flipped back a couple of pages, and re-read a key plot point that had been shrunk down to an almost throwaway half sentence.
Sometimes this works well. Here, it doesn't work at all. The original is pretty much entirely about the language and writing, but this "translation" loses almost everything, sometimes even to the extent of making the meaning quite confused.
For comparison — the original has an elaborate multi-page section of him arriving at the Grayle residence:
It was close to the ocean and you could feel the ocean in the air but you couldn’t see water from the front of the place. Aster Drive had a long smooth curve there and the houses on the inland side were just nice houses, but on the canyon side they were great silent estates, with twelve foot walls and wrought-iron gates and ornamental hedges; and inside, if you could get inside, a special brand of sunshine, very quiet, put up in noise-proof containers just for the upper classes.
[long argument with gatekeeper snipped]
He waved his hand and I went in through the half open gate. The drive curved and tall molded hedges of dark green completely screened it from the street and from the house. Through a green gate I saw a Jap gardener at work weeding a huge lawn. He was pulling a piece of weed out of the vast velvet expanse and sneering at it the way Jap gardeners do. Then the tall hedge closed in again and I didn’t see anything more for a hundred feet. Then the hedge ended in a wide circle in which half a dozen cars were parked.
One of them was a small coupe. There were a couple of very nice two-tone Buicks of the latest model, good enough to go for the mail in. There was a black limousine, with dull nickel louvres and hubcaps the size of bicycle wheels. There was a long sport phaeton with the top down. A short very wide all-weather concrete driveway led from these to the side entrance of the house.
Off to the left, beyond the parking space there was a sunken garden with a fountain at each of the four corners. The entrance was barred by a wrought-iron gate with a flying Cupid in the middle. There were busts on light pillars and a stone seat with crouching griffins at each end. There was an oblong pool with stone, waterlilies in it and a big stone bullfrog sitting on one of the leaves. Still farther a rose colonnade led to a thing like an altar, hedged in at both sides, yet not so completely but that the sun lay in an arabesque along the steps of the altar. And far over to the left there was a wild garden, not very large, with a sun-dial in the corner near an angle of wall that was built to look like a ruin. And there were flowers. There were a million flowers.
The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.
I sneaked over to the side entrance and pressed a bell and somewhere a set of chimes made a deep mellow sound like church bells.
Here, this entire thing becomes:
Aster Drive was full of nice big houses near the ocean. The man at the gate of the Grayle's place was ugly and unfriendly, but he let me in eventually and I parked next to the five or six cars in the driveway. The house itself wasn't much. Smaller than Buckingham Palace. I rang the doorbell.
This would be bad enough on its own, but this approach also makes the plot (which is complex enough anyway) almost impossible to follow. I frequently found myself completely lost until I flipped back a couple of pages, and re-read a key plot point that had been shrunk down to an almost throwaway half sentence.
The main reason to read Chandler is the hardboiled noir prose. People don't talk like this, but life would be a lot more fun if they did.
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
“I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn’t tell me whether it hurt his face.”
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room."
“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”
“I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn’t tell me whether it hurt his face.”
“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room."