The Long "I've heard this"

Reading Raymond Chandler novels, The Long Goodbye, The Little Sister, and Playback -- kept getting feeling of -- "I've heard someone say something like this before."

"I've heard this."

It's weird -- can hear and picture Humphrey Bogart because even if a person has only seen -- part -- of one -- of the Philip Marlowe movies, Bogart inhabited and owned that character so you totally picture him while reading. (Other characters H. Bogart played in films that were not based on Raymond Chandler novels -- Key Largo, To Have And Have Not, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon -- were similar, so the essence of that Type resonates and bounces around in memory and dominates.)

So while reading this collection of Chandler works, a pervasive sense of familiarity lives in your head, and you feel like, "Oh. Yeah. ...Yeah."

And some of it sounds like the way I've heard actual people talk -- especially Playback, the last thing he wrote in 1958. -- Expressions, turns of phrase. People I've known actually said some of those things, not so much now.

And -- unexpectedly enough -- some of it -- (the Chandler text) sounds like the 90s TV show "Friends."

I'm not kidding.
Just -- random, certain little phrases, ways of saying things, some kind of style -- it seems strange, but I knew I picked up on it. (At end of book, thought, now why didn't I write that down?)

And really -- Not so "strange" -- I noticed the same thing reading On The Road, by Jack Kerouac -- a couple of little spots, ways of using words, expressions -- and I'd be like, "Why does On The Road sound like "Friends"?

But of course it's the other way around.

On The Road and all of Raymond Chandler's writing is classic & well-known: I thought, Why wouldn't the producers and writers of a comedy show read the same stuff I read -- the same things lots of people read, that's how it got to be "classic." ...

There's a passage in The Little Sister where the character is asked for the spelling of something and he answers, with each letter, pausing to say, "...as in __________" -- with every letter, and the words he uses to illustrate which letter it is, are kind of unusual. And I went, "I don't believe this" -- because there's a "Friends" episode where an interviewer for "Soap Opera Digest" asks Phoebe for the "correct spelling" of her name and Phoebe says, "Yes, ok, P as in Phoebe, h as in heebie, o as in obie, e as in eebie, b as in beebie, and e as in -- 'ello there, Mate!"

bizarre?
silly?
stupid?
funny?
all of the above...? But when I read something similar in The Little Sister, thought -- OK, I've only heard a joke like that in two places. The "Friends" writer must have been echoing, or taking inspiration from this Raymond Chandler novel.

And since one of the characters on "Friends" is named Chandler -- I'm thinking that is maybe the producers' (Kaufman, Bright, Crane) homage to the mystery writer.

There's one episode (in Season 4, I think) where Phoebe is expecting triplets & the people for whom she's a surrogate want her to name one of the babies. Joey and Chandler get all competitive: Joey wants Phoebe to name the third baby Joey, and Chandler of course wants her to name it Chandler.

Joey says that "Chandler" isn't even a real name. "Name one person besides you who's named that!"

Chandler: "Raymond Chandler!"

Joey: "OK, somebody you didn't just make up!"

{Yes, think someone in the "Friends" writing room was definitely a Raymond Chandler fan.}

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