The Big Sleep by Raymond ChandlerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
After many years, I’ve reread this classic P.I. novel by Raymond Chandler, and it did not disappoint. Yet I wonder if if it was submitted to an agent today whether it would even see the light of day.
The Big Sleep breaks many of the so-called rules for good writing so popular today. It does a lot of telling rather than showing, and contains many info dumps – Chandler’s impeccable descriptions of 1940s Los Angeles for which the book is justly famous. Protagonist Phillip Marlowe is a man’s man, and the female characters exude sex, decadence and duplicity – surely such a lack of political correctness would never make it into print today. The language is chock full of period slang that you’d encounter in a noir film – did the average person really speak like that in 1939? The plot is somewhat contrived, the characters larger than life. But somehow, it all works so wonderfully! Thank goodness Raymond Chandler did not have to adhere to today’s publishing standards.
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