An Unsuitable Job for a Poorly-Defined-Character-Who-is-Nonetheless-an-Interesting-Concept

In Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, the legendary private eye Philip Marlowe is introduced (at least, in novel form), and like it not, Marlowe is one of the most important figures in the genre’s history. For that reason alone, every serious mystery fan should read The Big Sleep at least once. Whether they will enjoy the book is another matter altogether.

The plot: uhm… Marlowe goes from place to place to witness people getting gunned down, and comes across every racist homophobic sexist in the city of Los Angeles. It seems that everyone’s primary purpose in life is to make Marlowe’s existence a living hell. There’s some stuff about pornography, blackmail, and other cheerful subject matter, and an attempt is made to create a plot out of it. The attempt fails. In fact, at times the book makes you wonder whether Raymond Chandler somehow managed to defy space and time and read John Dickson Carr's The Grandest Game in the World back in the 1930s, never realizing that its summary of a hardboiled mystery was a satire, not a guide on how to write them!

Perhaps you can tell that I’m having a hard time summarising the plot of this book. It isn’t because I’m worried about spoiling anything but more because, well, the plot defies description. Raymond Chandler hastily cobbles together a few short stories, and you can tell. Plot holes abound in this disaster of a tale, but this writing technique affects more than just plot. Let’s ignore plot for now.

Characters are laughably inconsistent. Chandler converted some short stories into a novel and made similar characters into one character in a few cases. Unfortunately, this makes some characters flip-flop back and forth between two personalities. Consider the case of Vivian Regan. She is a cold, seemingly-emotionless woman in her first appearance. She then, for all intents and purposes, disappears from the story, only to re-emerge as a drunken flirtatious moron in the second act, where she asks Marlowe to kiss her for no apparent reason. When, near the end of the book, Marlowe reveals something about Vivian’s character, it makes sense for the character we saw in scene one, but not the mad gambler of part 2. Let’s take another character, General Sternwood. When we first meet him, he shows a silly tendency to be all poetic instead of talking sparingly, like a frail, perpetually ill, elderly man would. When he shows up again for a second scene, he forgets all about this character trait and talks normally.

The biggest problem might be Marlowe himself. I remember the first time I read The Big Sleep, I found him an intolerable jackass whose mission in life was to annoy everyone and be rude to as many people as possible. Upon re-reading, I discovered to my surprise that here was a character who refused to be compromised by the nastiness of the world around him, trying to do the noble thing… He’s a far stronger character than I remember, but he’s still inconsistent. At one point, he finds a naked woman in his bed (Of course! The love of my life is naked in my bed right now—she’s a computer.). What does he do? Throw her out, because he simply cannot take advantage of her. A great, perfectly noble gesture. So why in the name of the three heads of Cerberus does he practically force another woman to kiss him later on, and is perfectly willing to make out with the General’s other daughter (who is going through her own wild character swing at that time)?

Indeed, the only consistent character in the entire book is Carmen Sternwood, but that’s not a good thing. She’s so obviously nuts from her very first appearance! Right off the bat she intimates that she’s willing to take off her clothes for Marlowe, and she keeps showing up with guns, threats, etc. and finally tries to seduce Marlowe by hopping into his bed naked while he’s away. And yet it takes Marlowe forever to realize, hey, this girl isn’t quite normal, is she?

Which brings me to the plot. It’s laughable in every way. It’s positively ludicrous. First Chandler establishes that the chauffer’s death cannot be suicide, then he expects you to swallow the suicide theory? Or does he? No satisfying conclusion is ever proposed. And what about the final twist? Marlowe, apart from the obvious SYMBOLISM!!! that really should have given him a hint or two, has no reason to suspect the culprit of being the culprit. Yet he inexplicably knows they are the culprit before they try to open fire on him, and so he does something to save his life. How did he know that person was going to do something so bloody stupid? What took him so long to realize the person was rotten to the core? And can he stop describing the bloody room he’s in and just get on with it??? (It gets particularly annoying at the end, with Chandler shoehorning some pretentious ramblings on “The Big Sleep” to justify a tangential-at-best title.)

But hey, look, there’s a naked girl here! And a girl who’s more than willing to take off her clothes there! Virgins and whores, virgins and whores! This is the stuff of Frank Miller’s fantasies! Raymond Chandler’s women in this book are literally either virgins or whores. They exist only to intimate to Philip Marlowe that they’d love to help out a private dick in any way they can. This is quite simply Raymond Chandler’s wish fulfillment session, and it's every bit as ludicrous as Mike Hammer's big debut in I, The Jury: plot holes and all.

But there are some genuinely good ideas in this train wreck of a book. The best idea, despite a flawed execution, is the character of Philip Marlowe. Despite inconsistencies in character he comes across as a likeable hero. I particularly liked how, near the end, Marlowe explains why he’s performed some apparently-motiveless actions: to spare an old, dying man unnecessary pain. That struck a chord with me.

Although Chandler goes overboard on descriptions, he has some moments where the imagery he conjures up is just perfect, such as the image of a knight in a stained-glass window. And many of Marlowe’s snarky one-liners are genuinely funny. But what really struck me is that Marlowe doesn’t spout one-liners just for the sake of being a smart-ass. It gives him the advantage over his opponents as they try to figure out whether he’s bluffing them or not, and that in turn buys him time to think.

And that is as best as I can sum up The Big Sleep. It’s a flawed, flawed book with some interesting ideas that Chandler would explore better in further entries in the series. And yet, this book has such a high reputation!!! Why??? Time Magazine selected is as one of the 100 Best Novels, but the plot is silly, the characters change traits as convenient, the women are caricatures at best, and the whole thing is an incomprehensible mess. Let’s just admit it: Raymond Chandler was not perfect. Neither, for that matter, were Dickens, Poe, or Shakespeare. Can critics finally get over it and admit that “literary” authors can have an off-day and simply write something bad? Just because it’s Chandler, doesn’t mean that every word has a pre-destined literary purpose that we mere mortals can’t understand! As fascinating a figure as Raymond Chandler is, The Big Sleep is a very sub-par showing of his talents.

Notes: I have particular hatred for this book for several reasons. Its bloated reputation is the biggest reason, but a far more personal reason is that, as far as I can tell, this book started the single most annoying line a female character in these types of mysteries ever says: "You're cute." (She is trying to be coy, you see.) I hate, hate, HATE this line, which is EVERYWHERE in this book. As far as I know, when most authors use this line they're consciously emulating Chandler, even if someone else beat him to the punch.

I was forced to re-read this book for a class. Although I tried to be generous to it, I hated it when I first read it and I still hate it. I recognize its importance now and I can appreciate its historical value, but I still dislike it intensely. Farewell My Lovely is much, much better.