listening to rain

Humphrey Bogart in the 1946 film version of Chandler's novel



     What critics say about Raymond Chandler's writing is that he took detective fiction and elevated it to literature.


     [a quote from The Thrilling Detective Web Site] --

"Chandler relished mystery writing because it seemed to lack pretension, and the pulps' restrictions on length and subject matter compelled him to improve and polish his storytelling skill.  

Never a master of plotting, Chandler found his own strengths instead in creating emotion through description and dialogue, and in presenting a prose idiom that melded the precision of his prep-school English with the vigor of American vernacular speech."



     The expression "the big sleep" means death.
     I like the writing in that book; I can always find something in it to write out or type out and study and share.

     A winding driveway dropped down between retaining walls to the open iron gates.  Beyond the fence the hill sloped for several miles.

     The reader gets the feeling of open space and height.  Open air.

     The word "faint" was used in both excerpts entered here last week:

On this lower level faint and far off I could just barely see...


A faint knowing smile curved his lips when I turned...

------------------------ On this lower level faint and far off I could just barely see some of the old wooden derricks of the oilfield from which the Sternwoods had made their money.

     The author is describing the visual space, the location -- and at the same time he gives us some backstory -- the Sternwood family has money, and this is how they made it.

     He does this again in last Friday's excerpt --

-------------------- There was a lot of oriental junk in the windows.  I didn't know whether it was any good, not being a collector of antiques, except unpaid bills.

     Visual description -- and the reader also receives the information that, unlike his Sternwood client, the private eye is not rolling in cash.   Unpaid bills are the only "antiques" he knows much about....


     Why does the jeweler next door to Geiger's shop smile a "faint knowing smile" when our detective goes in there?...

[excerpt, The Big Sleep]------------------ The book was not new.  Dates were stamped on the front endpaper, in and out dates.  A rent book.  A lending library of elaborate smut.

     I rewrapped the book and locked it up behind the seat.  A racket like that, out in the open on the boulevard, seemed to mean plenty of protection.  I sat there and poisoned myself with cigarette smoke and listened to the rain and thought about it.


SIX

Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee-high off the sidewalk.  Big cops in slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places.  The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car and the burbank top began to leak.  

A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in.  

It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain.  I struggled into a trench coat and made a dash for the nearest drugstore and bought myself a pint of whiskey.  Back in the car I used enough of it to keep warm and interested.


______________________
The Big Sleep
by Raymond Chandler
published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1939

-30-