The
Washington Times published 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).
… “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.”
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/23/book-review-the-annotated-big-sleep-by-raymond-cha/
You can also read my Crime Beat column on Raymond Chandler
(seen in the above photo) via the below link:
No comments:
Post a Comment