The Washington Times ran my review of The Annotated
Big Sleep.
Raymond Chandler once wrote that ’some literary antiquarian of a
rather special type may one day think it worthwhile to run through the files of
the pulp detective magazines’ to watch as ’the popular mystery story shed its
refined good manners and went native,’” the editors of “The Annotated Big
Sleep” write in their introduction of the late, great Raymond Chandler’s
classic crime novel.
“He might have said, as the genre of
detective fiction kicked out the Britishism and became American. A chief agent
of this transformation was Raymond Chandler himself. ’The Big Sleep’ was
Chandler’s first novel, and it introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, the
archetypal wisecracking, world-weary private detective who now occupies a
permanent place in the American imagination.”
The editors note that in their annotated
edition of “The Big Sleep” they trace the many veins of meaning into the
intricate novel, which they call “a ripping good story.” The editors inform us
that Raymond Chandler (July 23, 1888 March 26, 1959) did not think of himself
as primarily a “mystery” writer, calling his novels and stories only
“ostensibly” mysteries. But his work was confined within the limitations of
genre fiction during his lifetime and many years after, even though he was
lauded while he was alive by W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Graham
Greene and Christopher Isherwood.
But today, as the editors point
out, Chandler is taught in university courses and Le Monde voted “The Big
Sleep” one of the “100 Books of the Century.” The novel was also made into two
films, with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in the 1946 film, and Robert
Mitchum portraying Philip Marlowe in the 1978 film. (Dick Powell, Robert
Montgomery, James Garner and many other actors have portrayed Philip Marlowe in
films based on Raymond Chandler’s other novels).
Unlike his great predecessor, Dashiell
Hammett, Raymond Chandler was not an ex-detective, and he didn’t associate with
police officers, racketeers or grifters. He was born in Chicago, but he was
raised in Nebraska, England and Ireland and he attended Dulwich College, where
he studied languages and the classics.
He served in the Canadian infantry in
World War I and he ended up in Los Angeles in 1913. After he was fired from his
job as an oil executive due to his drinking and other offenses, he became a
regular contributor to the pulp magazines at the age of 45. His first short
story, “Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,” was published in 1933. Raymond Chandler’s
first novel, “The Big Sleep,” was published in 1939. The novel sold about
10,000 copies in two print runs for Knopf. The novel was not a best-seller, but
it sold more than the average mystery novel.
“I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with
dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks
with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I
didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective
ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” So begins the well-known
and celebrated opening that introduces the reader to Philip Marlowe, the
first-person narrator of “The Big Sleep.”
The big sleep is a metaphor for death
and it is the first of many fine metaphors and similes that Raymond Chandler
employs in his novel. “The Big Sleep” is a novel about organized crime,
blackmail, gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, wealth, family secrets and murder.
Philip Marlowe’s narration and running commentary on everyone he meets and
everything he encounters is timeless. Marlowe is an incorruptible modern knight
in a corrupt world.
As the editors note, the city of Los
Angeles was in many ways Raymond Chandler’s other major character alongside
Philip Marlowe. “Its character was set by its sudden expansion, and also by the
greed and self-promotion that went with it,” the editors write. “It was a city
of excess, escapism (Hollywood!), tawdriness, exhibitionism, and corruption.”
Along with the classic crime story, the
editors of “The Annotated Big Sleep” sprinkle the book with the historical
context of Raymond Chandler’s LA, and they offer extracts from his letters, an
analysis of the novel’s characters and plot, and facts about the films made
from the novel. The book also offers photos and maps. “The Big Sleep” remains a
classic crime novel that is discovered by each new generation of crime
aficionados (I first read it as a teen-age crime-fiction aficionado in the
early 1960s) and the novel continues to inspire crime writers and film makers.
“The Annotated Big Sleep” not only
delivers a great novel, it also provides a literary and historical treatise on
the life, times and work of one of America’s greatest writers, Raymond
Chandler.
• Paul Davis is a writer who covers
crime, espionage and terrorism.
THE ANNOTATED BIG SLEEP
By
Raymond Chandler
Annotated
and edited by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean Rizzuto
Vintage Books, $25, 512 pages
