Tag Archives: Raymond Chandler

Books/Literature

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend…

The above line is from the John Ford directed film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The point of the quote is that sometimes a legend, or myth, becomes repeated so often that it essentially becomes fact… even if it isn’t true.

My feeling is that often these stories are just so good to the teller/audience that they have no problem accepting them because of that fact, even if a little investigation would result in upending the “legend”.

One of my favorite authors is Raymond Chandler. During his career, he wrote a number of short stories and some seven novels. The novels all featured detective Phillip Marlowe and many of them were subsequently made into films. Perhaps the most famous are the Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall film The Big Sleep…

Also well known is the Robert Altman directed The Long Goodbye…

The Big Sleep was Chandler’s first novel, released in 1939, and it took elements of various short stories he had written before and its a freaking spectacular novel in my opinion. The Long Goodbye was pretty much Chandler’s last Marlowe novel, released in 1953 and is also a spectacular book which shows how the author matured and faced death. Supposedly, the novel was written as his wife was dying and his grief informs much of what happens in the book. Chandler would release one more novel, Playback, in 1958 but it was an odd work, an adaptation of a script and… it doesn’t feel like a full throttled Chandler book. He would start one more book, Poodle Springs, but passed away in 1959 with only four chapters written. Years later Robert B. Parker would finish the novel and… it’s only ok IMHO.

As Chandler’s novels became big successes, audiences and critics noted the stories he presented were often very complex. In fact, that became something of a source of ribbing by some people and critics and, I strongly suspect, some of the ribbing had an edge to it.

See, Chandler was also something of a gruff person. When his works gained prominence and he started writing scripts in Hollywood (his most famous screenplay is probably for the film Double Indemnity), I strongly suspect he rubbed some people there the wrong way. It didn’t help that he was a very heavy drinker and maybe very moralistic and, perhaps, even repressed. Yes, there were rumors he was, despite being married, secretly closeted or possibly bisexual. Interestingly, the novel The Big Sleep did at times present a moralistic view of sexuality… and frowned at deviancies.

One story that has circulated for many, many years now involves The Big Sleep and that story, it seems to me, is the proverbial legend that supplants what are somewhat easily verified facts (you knew I was going to get back to that eventually, no?!).

So it has been noted by many The Big Sleep’s story is so complicated that even Raymond Chandler himself didn’t know who murdered one of the characters, the Sternwood’s chauffeur.

Lauren Bacall, the wife of Humphrey Bogart and co-star in the famous film version of The Big Sleep, at one point stated that while she and Bogart were going over the movie’s screenplay, Bogie supposedly had this revelation and stated “Hey, who killed the chauffeur?” and that this was when the studios -and Lauren Bacall implied people in general- realized the chauffeur’s murder was unsolved in the story.

Actor Robert Mitchum has a curious story, too. He stated that one day he was in a bookstore and Raymond Chandler was there. The store’s phone rang and it turned out the studio was calling for Chandler and Mitchum overheard the phone call. They were, according to Mitchum, trying to figure out who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep and Chandler supposedly said: “I have no idea”.

Cute stories, both of them, but I wonder if either is true.

There have been many others who have echoed the sentiment that The Big Sleep is a great story in spite of the fact that “it is so complicated even Raymond Chandler didn’t solve one of its murders”, referring, of course, to the Sternwood chauffeur’s death. It feels to me many of these stories, as I noted before, have a sharp edge to them. It’s almost like these critics are saying “Raymond Chandler writes so well but gives us such a labyrinthian story to tell that he doesn’t even realize he’s left a murder unsolved! What a bozo… amiright?!”

…only…

No. That’s not right.

And it takes only a little bit of research, actually pulling out a copy of The Big Sleep novel, to realize this legend is just that.

The following comes directly from The Big Sleep. For those who don’t know, the Sternwood chauffeur is found dead in his car, which had run through a pier, smashing it, and was submerged in water at some point that night. When detective Phillip Marlowe shows up, the car has been found and been brought to the surface and the chauffeur is inside, dead. There are several people/police around, including Bernie Ohls, the D.A.’s chief investigator and a friend of Marlowe’s.

From the book:

The plainclothesman scuffed at the deck with the toe of his shoe. Ohls looked sideways along his eyes at me, and twitched his cigar like a cigarette.

”Drunk?” he asked, of nobody in particular.

The man who had been toweling his head went over to the rail and cleared his throat in a loud hawk that made everybody look at him. “Got some sand,” he said, and spat. “Not as much as the boy friend got— but some.”

The uniformed man said: “Could have been drunk. Showing off all alone in the rain. Drunks will do anything.”

”Drunk, hell,” the plainclothesman said. “The hand throttle’s set halfway down and the guy’s been sapped on the side of the head. Ask me and I’ll call it murder.”

Ohls looked at the man with the towel. “What do you think, Buddy?”

The man with the towel looked flattered. He grinned. “I say suicide, Mac. None of my business, but you ask me, I say suicide. First off the guy plowed an awful straight furrow down that pier. You can read his tread marks all the way nearly. That puts it after the rain like the Sheriff said. Then he hit the pier hard and clean or he don’t go through and land right side up. More likely turned over a couple of times. So he had plenty of speed and hit the rail square. That’s more than half-throttle. He could have done that with his hand falling and he could have hurt his head falling, too.”

So, in a few paragraphs, Chandler offers three theories as to what happened to the chauffeur: 1) He was drunk and ran off the pier. 2) He was murdered, hit on the side of his head and the car run off the pier with him in it to make it look like an accident. Finally, 3) He committed suicide.

Note that Chandler goes into the greatest details with the suicide and further, it makes the most logical sense.

See, cars back in the 1930’s were not like cars today and they required more effort to skillfully maneuver.

The chauffeur being drunk is dispatched almost right away. The car drove “straight” through the pier and at a very high speed. Tire tracks in the rain water indicate this. So… not drunk.

The murder option, based on the explanations offered, would imply the killer would have had to be inside the car driving it very fast and straight down to the pier, then smash through that pier at high speed to then land upright in the water.

The killer would then swim out and leave the chauffeur’s body behind.

Now, this is a very dangerous thing to do, no? The killer could have just as easily gotten him/herself injured when smashing through the pier and falling in the water. Hell, they could have gotten themselves drowned.

So we fall to option three: Suicide.

Now, I will admit this much is true: The Big Sleep novel offers no absolute answer to what happened to the chauffeur. However, Raymond Chandler, far from being befuddled and not knowing what happened to the chauffeur, offers a very logical explanation for how he died… and it likely wasn’t a murder after all.

Within the context of the story, is it possibile he committed suicide? Absolutely. He was infatuated with Carmen Sternwood, one of the two “wild” daughters (Vivian Sternwood was the other daughter and she was played by Lauren Bacall in the movie). Carmen, we find, was being blackmailed and because he couldn’t help take care of that nasty business, he might have been distraught enough to commit suicide.

So, yeah, everything fits.

Going back to my main point, though, the legend turns out to be just that. It’s clear Chandler thought very hard about what happened to the Sternwood chauffeur and offered an explanation as to why he found himself dead.

Rather than the author being befuddled and having “no idea” who did him in, he very clearly had a strong idea of what happened.

Books/Literature

The Annotated Big Sleep (2018) redux

A couple of days ago I noted the release of The Annotated Big Sleep, a new printing of Raymond Chandler’s masterful noir crime tale originally released in 1939 which is presented here with a multitude of footnotes explaining the ins and outs of this novel.

I’ve read the novel at least three or maybe more times before and re-reading it with the footnotes proved a great delight.  There was one thing, however, more than any other thing that really stuck with me, and has stuck with me, since finishing reading this Annotated edition a few days before, and its worth pointing out.

The footnote in question involves an overview of the novel itself and the novel’s place in comparison to  other similar novels.  It involves the novel’s end and, therefore, involves elements which are clear SPOILERS.

Still, I want to write about this but, if you haven’t read the novel and want to give it a read, look away from here and get the book and read it.  It’s worth it.

Otherwise…

 

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

 

 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

 

Still there?

After the novel’s conclusion and in the second to last footnote presented in the Annotated Edition of this novel, we’re presented with this summary of The Big Sleep’s story:

“What Happened?” Carmen asks (protagonist private detective) Marlowe after trying to kill him.  “Nothing,” he responds.  Raising the question: What actually has happened in The Big Sleep?

There follows a description of the various story elements and characters presented in the novel.  What is astonishing is that you come to realize in this notation that so many things happened before Marlowe but could well have happened with Marlowe there as well as not there!

Characters are killed before Marlowe can “save” them… indeed, other than the one person Marlowe himself kills toward the end of the book, every one of these deaths would have happened whether Marlowe was around or not.  There’s even one notable killing, the chauffeur’s, which is famously never satisfactorily resolved at all!

Further, Marlowe never really “helps” anyone and, despite the book’s opening hinting at Marlowe being a Knight who will perhaps save a damsel in distress -we are presented a painting depicting such a thing- ultimately Marlowe becomes, at the book’s climax, the tied up “damsel in distress” who is saved by a woman!

And if you think even more about it, the mystery presented in The Big Sleep is not such a big mystery to just about all the major ancillary characters in the book.  In the end, the people who don’t know what’s going on are Marlowe, the man who hires him, and the reader.  By the end of the story the reader and Marlowe finally know what’s happening.  However, the man who hired him, the man who desperately wants to know what happened to another person, is left in the dark as Marlowe decides the truth would be too much for him to know.

As the footnote concludes:

Even the dead body, the traditional beginning point of so many murder mysteries, is only located at the end.  The genre has been turned -not so much upside down as inside out.

That last bit really hits home: The genre has been turned -not so much upside down as inside out.

A number of years ago I first saw the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds.  Considered by many to be a stone cold classic, I didn’t like the film.  In fact, though a huge fan of Mr. Hitchcock’s films, I thought it was a bust.  Then, a few years later, I saw the film again and it hit me: The Birds was Mr. Hitchcock taking on the very popular 1950’s monsters-on-the-loose genre… but inverting every cliche there was in it.  Instead of “giant” insects or animals, we have a common bird as the threat.  Instead of an army coming in to fight them off, we see no sign of any armed forces.  Instead of a dashing lead man and woman who live to triumph, we get barely alive survivors and a leading woman who is near catatonic.

So it is with The Big Sleep.  The main mystery involves the disappearance of a person yet our protagonist, for much of the novel, isn’t really looking for him.  As mentioned above, the dead body is located at the novel’s very end.  The protagonist, as mentioned above as well, is in the dark and, like the novel’s readers, trying to figure out what many/most of the other people within the novel already know.  Though he discovers the truth of the matter, he doesn’t reveal it to the person who hired him.

Coming away from this latest reading of The Big Sleep leaves me even more in wonder of the novel.

It bears mentioning again: Get your hands on this book.  Read it.

You’ll thank me later.

Books/Literature

The Annotated Big Sleep (2018)

There are writers and there are writers.

Raymond Chandler, to me, is one of the best writers there ever was: A man who could make his noir mystery novels absolutely sing.  Almost every line in every one of his books, of which he wrote a mere 7 if them (an eighth novel was in the works when he passed away in 1959), were fascinating, hilarious, and eminently interesting.

Mr. Chandler turned to writing relatively late in life and his first stories appearing in “pulp” magazines such as Black Mask.  When he made his jump to novels with The Big Sleep (his first novel) he took elements from these stories and reworking them.

The Big Sleep, which was originally released in 1939, is one of my all time favorite Chandler novels (though Farewell, My Lovely and The Long Goodbye are nothing to sneeze at!) and anyone with any interest in great mystery novels should check it out.

Now, I’m not pointing out this novel just for the heck of it.  I’m pointing it out because a few days ago The Annotated Big Sleep was released both in Paperback and Kindle and I’m not going to beat around the bush: You should get it.

Here’s my Amazon review of the novel:

Love Raymond Chandler’s novels -he is one of my all time favorite authors- and love The Big Sleep in particular and the Annotated Big Sleep is a truly wonderful peek behind the curtain at what makes this novel tick. We get a wealth of information regarding the creation of this book, particularly interesting being the short stories -and samples offered- of how Chandler “cannibalized” some of his short stories in the creation of this book.

We also get some wonderful history of L.A. back in the 1930’s, a guide to the slang Chandler used (much of this, of course, has become well known through books and films), as well as some very interesting insight into Chandler himself.

Having read the novel a few times before, this Annotated Edition was truly eye-opening, especially when it comes to some of the novel’s sexuality. I was always aware of it, but when pointed out in the Annotations it became clear to me that Mr. Chandler had some serious hang ups regarding sexuality, whether “straight” or otherwise. Still, after all this time one must be cautious to draw too many conclusions, though the inference of the author’s possible sexuality presented in one of the notations is certainly intriguing.

I have the Kindle edition of the book and it is incredibly easy to read the book and switch to the voluminous amount of footnotes. You read along and when you find a footnote you simply tap on it and are instantly transported to the information presented. Sometimes its offered with beautiful illustrations, often with very informative explanations, and once you’re done reading the footnote, you just tap the footnote number again and you’re back to where you were reading. Couldn’t be easier!

So if you’re a fan of Raymond Chandler’s works as I am and, as I said before, want to get a damn good peek behind the curtain regarding this novel, you absolutely must have The Annotated Big Sleep.