NOIRTRASH
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2015
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THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler
5 starz
Chandler came along after Dashiell Hammett and James M.Cain and David Goodis were famous and popular. Chandler believed he could best them, and did it with his first novel THE BIG SLEEP that introduces Philip Marlowe, the alcoholic private detective. Chandler is the champion of them all.
Marlowe is hired by a dying General Sternwood to rescue his whore daughters from black mailers. And they are whores who keep bad company. People die almost from the beginning.
I've read this book five times or so. Its the best because its written so damn well. Chandlers style was simple...every chapter is a scene Chandler paints in great and fine details before he paints each character in the same detail, then gets to the action. Chandler invented metaphors, and no one wrote them better. Marlowe never sleeps with any of the women.
Philip Marlowe is Saint George slaying dragons to save beautiful women with corrupt souls. Saint George makes his appearance in the first scene.
ONE
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. 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.
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.
5 starz
Chandler came along after Dashiell Hammett and James M.Cain and David Goodis were famous and popular. Chandler believed he could best them, and did it with his first novel THE BIG SLEEP that introduces Philip Marlowe, the alcoholic private detective. Chandler is the champion of them all.
Marlowe is hired by a dying General Sternwood to rescue his whore daughters from black mailers. And they are whores who keep bad company. People die almost from the beginning.
I've read this book five times or so. Its the best because its written so damn well. Chandlers style was simple...every chapter is a scene Chandler paints in great and fine details before he paints each character in the same detail, then gets to the action. Chandler invented metaphors, and no one wrote them better. Marlowe never sleeps with any of the women.
Philip Marlowe is Saint George slaying dragons to save beautiful women with corrupt souls. Saint George makes his appearance in the first scene.
ONE
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. 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.
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying.
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