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The Chandler Collection: Volume 1
The Big Sleep: The Lady in the Lake: The Little Sister
In everything that can be called high art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man... He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He is a relatively poor man or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he would not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in. Raymond Chandler - The Simple Art of Murder
In everything that can be called high art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man... He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. He is a relatively poor man or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he would not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham and a contempt for pettiness.
The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in. Raymond Chandler - The Simple Art of Murder
571 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
2 people are currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Raymond Chandler
449 books5,615 followersRaymond Thornton Chandler was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some more than once. In the year before his death, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America.
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is a founder of the hardboiled school of detective fiction, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers. The protagonist of his novels, Philip Marlowe, like Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective". Both were played in films by Humphrey Bogart, whom many consider to be the quintessential Marlowe.
The Big Sleep placed second on the Crime Writers Association poll of the 100 best crime novels; Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Lady in the Lake (1943) and The Long Goodbye (1953) also made the list. The latter novel was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. In it he wrote: "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."
Parker wrote that, with Marlowe, "Chandler seems to have created the culminating American hero: wised up, hopeful, thoughtful, adventurous, sentimental, cynical and rebellious—an innocent who knows better, a Romantic who is tough enough to sustain Romanticism in a world that has seen the eternal footman hold its coat and snicker. Living at the end of the Far West, where the American dream ran out of room, no hero has ever been more congruent with his landscape. Chandler had the right hero in the right place, and engaged him in the consideration of good and evil at precisely the time when our central certainty of good no longer held."
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 7, 2022
Good stuff. Twisted, knotty plots, art deco, multiple femmes fatale, roaring not only 1920s but 1930s, too. Poor big city America, crazy rich big city America and a lone ranger, searching for truth. Interesting characters and beautiful worldbuilding. I almost enjoyed the setting and descriptions of 1930s (?) California more than the stories themselves. Almost. The way how the plots are twisted and how the reader is tricked is on another level. Don't think I read anything that matches this. Some bits can be predicted but good luck with getting the full picture, motivations and the rest. Also, despite the complexities - tied ends. Returned me my appetite for crime fiction.
February 26, 2014
(Picador's first collection of Chandler's novels includes The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake and The Little Sister, with no supplemental material.)
There's something about Raymond Chandler that is very like poetry. Though he's probably best remembered as another chronicler of the typical 'hard boiled detective' story, there's a deeper, richer touch to his language. This may be why it proves so difficult to make a film adaptation of his work that is both faithful to the original plot and appropriately aware of his voice. This is also why, though I'm not a mystery reader per se, I love reading him.
A perfect example, without any context, from the end of THE BIG SLEEP:
'Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill.'
He has perfectly, simply and beautifully juxtaposed a visual worthy of the finest fantasy against the mundanity of his character's exterior life. That this is a passage from a detective/crime tale makes it remarkable in itself, but Chandler's wonderful economy with words and fearless use of contrary imagery or even language elevates it in my estimation above much non-genre writing as well.
The Big Sleep is my first Chandler novel, but I have previously read the short-story collection Killer in the Rain. This novel is constructed quite firmly from three or four stories from that collection, and it occasionally shows. While we're put into a fairly pat situation (dick goes to old money patron and is given an assignment which turns out to be bigger than at first it seemed), Chandler manages to weave together disparate elements from his earlier stories in a way that actually works overall. We start from that simple beginning, follow through to what seems like an end, but then our private detective Philip Marlowe can't leave well enough alone. He's off on another related search that seems plainly cut from another story. But, again, it works.
Marlowe, as a representative of the breed of hard-boileds, is fairly typical: a long-time veteran who knows the right people in a corrupt city, and who has a high moral standard in spite of what he sees...and of what he does. Chandler's talent, though, gives us an insight into this man's inner workings in a way both lyrical and base. Marlowe is more akin to Sir Galahad than he is to Sam Spade.
LADY IN THE LAKE shows major changes since The Big Sleep. This novel once again brings us a hard-boiled Philip Marlowe mystery that is again secondary to the lyrical nature of Chandler's prose. But this time around, a formula appears to be at work: trouble with the cops, who may or may not be crooked; wealthy employer trying to avoid a scandal; smart, wisecracking femmes who are more fatale than they may seem...or maybe less; and a mindbogglingly, unnecessarily complex solution that requires about ten pages of exposition to a room of people to sort it all out.
Lady in the Lake also revisits earlier short stories of Chandler's, cannibalising most notably 'No Murder in the Mountains' among others. Perhaps it was a subconscious memory of the plot from that story that had me feeling one step ahead of Marlowe most of the way, but then the mystery's not really the thing where Chandler's concerned. His simple but beautiful way with words turns a pedestrian whodunnit into something just that measure higher. He will suddenly lapse into a reverie over the fauna of the area, or will imbue a character with a poignantly phrased insight beyond what we might expect, and readers are immediately reminded we are in the presence of a Writer who happened to specialise in mystery rather than of a Mystery Writer.
Though Marlowe is a prototype of the standard Hard-Boiled Dick, there is none of the now-stereotypical braggadocio we expect of the type. He is an older, more experienced and more objective viewer of human nature as the type tends to demand, but not one from whom we can reasonably expect womanising, punches-first, drinks-always behaviour. He is a cautious professional, willing to cooperate with The Law, so long as it doesn't compromise his relationship with his employer (in fact, this book's Degarmo is closer to the typical hard-boiled fella, and meets an appropriately noir fate).
Lady in the Lake is still fine Chandler but readers new to him would be better served by beginning with The Big Sleep.
I confess I'm a bit surprised that THE LITTLE SISTER is as highly regarded a novel as it appears to be. Perhaps it's inevitable, when an authour places their detective in Los Angeles, that he will at some point brush up against the Hollywood scene. Here, though, it feels a little forced.
Indeed, at the start of the book, we're given absolutely no indication that we'll end up immersed in starlets, studios and gangsters, but that is the way Chandler seems to work (and it's also probable that this springs from his typical reworking of multiple short stories into one novel). When we begin, it's with just another case for the world-weary Philip Marlowe. He's given $20 from a girl from Kansas to find her missing brother somewhere in LA. The story's never as simple as that, and sure enough neither is the client (the titular 'little sister'). If this were the extent to which the tale went, it would probably do fine. Unfortunately, just as things seem to be clearing up Chandler throws a severe left curve and we are dragged willy-nilly through a labyrinthine plot that even Marlow has to lay out for numerous characters before it's over.
The plain strength of this book lies in its occasional lyrical waxings on various topics. These come out of the blue -- as Chandler's more remarkable wordsmithing tends to -- and go on for a page or so before disappearing back from whence they came. But they leave a lasting impression, and one that will remain longer than the myriad ridiculous details of the case.
Perhaps that's where this novel's power comes from, and why it has received such remarkable praise where his other work hasn't: his philosophic ramblings lend a more intellectual air to what would otherwise be a pedestrian mystery. Perhaps that is, finally, Chandler's strength overall.
This collection is a fine starting point for novice Chandler readers, but I wholeheartedly recommend reading the early short-story collection The Killer in the Rain first.
There's something about Raymond Chandler that is very like poetry. Though he's probably best remembered as another chronicler of the typical 'hard boiled detective' story, there's a deeper, richer touch to his language. This may be why it proves so difficult to make a film adaptation of his work that is both faithful to the original plot and appropriately aware of his voice. This is also why, though I'm not a mystery reader per se, I love reading him.
A perfect example, without any context, from the end of THE BIG SLEEP:
'Outside the bright gardens had a haunted look, as though small wild eyes were watching me from behind the bushes, as though the sunshine itself had a mysterious something in its light. I got into my car and drove off down the hill.'
He has perfectly, simply and beautifully juxtaposed a visual worthy of the finest fantasy against the mundanity of his character's exterior life. That this is a passage from a detective/crime tale makes it remarkable in itself, but Chandler's wonderful economy with words and fearless use of contrary imagery or even language elevates it in my estimation above much non-genre writing as well.
The Big Sleep is my first Chandler novel, but I have previously read the short-story collection Killer in the Rain. This novel is constructed quite firmly from three or four stories from that collection, and it occasionally shows. While we're put into a fairly pat situation (dick goes to old money patron and is given an assignment which turns out to be bigger than at first it seemed), Chandler manages to weave together disparate elements from his earlier stories in a way that actually works overall. We start from that simple beginning, follow through to what seems like an end, but then our private detective Philip Marlowe can't leave well enough alone. He's off on another related search that seems plainly cut from another story. But, again, it works.
Marlowe, as a representative of the breed of hard-boileds, is fairly typical: a long-time veteran who knows the right people in a corrupt city, and who has a high moral standard in spite of what he sees...and of what he does. Chandler's talent, though, gives us an insight into this man's inner workings in a way both lyrical and base. Marlowe is more akin to Sir Galahad than he is to Sam Spade.
LADY IN THE LAKE shows major changes since The Big Sleep. This novel once again brings us a hard-boiled Philip Marlowe mystery that is again secondary to the lyrical nature of Chandler's prose. But this time around, a formula appears to be at work: trouble with the cops, who may or may not be crooked; wealthy employer trying to avoid a scandal; smart, wisecracking femmes who are more fatale than they may seem...or maybe less; and a mindbogglingly, unnecessarily complex solution that requires about ten pages of exposition to a room of people to sort it all out.
Lady in the Lake also revisits earlier short stories of Chandler's, cannibalising most notably 'No Murder in the Mountains' among others. Perhaps it was a subconscious memory of the plot from that story that had me feeling one step ahead of Marlowe most of the way, but then the mystery's not really the thing where Chandler's concerned. His simple but beautiful way with words turns a pedestrian whodunnit into something just that measure higher. He will suddenly lapse into a reverie over the fauna of the area, or will imbue a character with a poignantly phrased insight beyond what we might expect, and readers are immediately reminded we are in the presence of a Writer who happened to specialise in mystery rather than of a Mystery Writer.
Though Marlowe is a prototype of the standard Hard-Boiled Dick, there is none of the now-stereotypical braggadocio we expect of the type. He is an older, more experienced and more objective viewer of human nature as the type tends to demand, but not one from whom we can reasonably expect womanising, punches-first, drinks-always behaviour. He is a cautious professional, willing to cooperate with The Law, so long as it doesn't compromise his relationship with his employer (in fact, this book's Degarmo is closer to the typical hard-boiled fella, and meets an appropriately noir fate).
Lady in the Lake is still fine Chandler but readers new to him would be better served by beginning with The Big Sleep.
I confess I'm a bit surprised that THE LITTLE SISTER is as highly regarded a novel as it appears to be. Perhaps it's inevitable, when an authour places their detective in Los Angeles, that he will at some point brush up against the Hollywood scene. Here, though, it feels a little forced.
Indeed, at the start of the book, we're given absolutely no indication that we'll end up immersed in starlets, studios and gangsters, but that is the way Chandler seems to work (and it's also probable that this springs from his typical reworking of multiple short stories into one novel). When we begin, it's with just another case for the world-weary Philip Marlowe. He's given $20 from a girl from Kansas to find her missing brother somewhere in LA. The story's never as simple as that, and sure enough neither is the client (the titular 'little sister'). If this were the extent to which the tale went, it would probably do fine. Unfortunately, just as things seem to be clearing up Chandler throws a severe left curve and we are dragged willy-nilly through a labyrinthine plot that even Marlow has to lay out for numerous characters before it's over.
The plain strength of this book lies in its occasional lyrical waxings on various topics. These come out of the blue -- as Chandler's more remarkable wordsmithing tends to -- and go on for a page or so before disappearing back from whence they came. But they leave a lasting impression, and one that will remain longer than the myriad ridiculous details of the case.
Perhaps that's where this novel's power comes from, and why it has received such remarkable praise where his other work hasn't: his philosophic ramblings lend a more intellectual air to what would otherwise be a pedestrian mystery. Perhaps that is, finally, Chandler's strength overall.
This collection is a fine starting point for novice Chandler readers, but I wholeheartedly recommend reading the early short-story collection The Killer in the Rain first.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews