Saturday, January 20, 2024

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

 

I have been enlightened, I see was at least some of the fuss is about. Twisty as its reputation (and yeah, the chauffeur ...) but what really makes the novel work is the combination of Chandler's somewhat heightened language and Marlowe's attitude (which might well be Chandler's from what I know of his biography). It's not a perfect novel (that chauffeur ...) but it is a very, very good one--deep in the foundational structure of Noir and other related Twentieth Century genre fiction.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett

  Known classic spy/thriller novel from the mid-1970s. Turns out it's really well-written. It seems to me to have a lot in common with F...

  • In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune
      So, this was a book that I almost stopped reading a couple-three times. It's not *bad*, exactly, but it's a weird dissonant tonal ...
  • The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
      This is an intricate novel, probably overcomplicated for the story it tells, with antecedents ranging from Barker to Borges to folklore fr...
  • Where They Wait by Scott Carson
    This is an actual Horror novel. Not a big shock, reading the blurbs, but the jacket text makes it seem vaguely Mystery/Technothriller-ish, a...