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Post by Deleted on Apr 14, 2017 0:02:29 GMT
A great writer in terms of vocabulary and style, but so many of his books really suck to get through. The Lady in the Lake was the only one I truly enjoyed. The Long Goodbye was interminable.
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Post by mikef6 on Apr 16, 2017 0:44:23 GMT
"The Little Sister" is my favorite of his books. "The Big Sleep" and, yes, "The Long Goodbye" are, to me, masterful.
Two very good movies have been made from The Big Sleep. The indispensable one is from 1946 and stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The 1978 with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe has many pleasures. Bogie and Mitch make two very different Marlowes but both are legitimate.
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Post by movielover on Apr 16, 2017 0:46:24 GMT
I loved "The Long Goodbye" myself.
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Post by pimpinainteasy on Apr 18, 2017 10:39:58 GMT
i like his style. but the overtly complicated plots turn me off at times. same is the case with the lew archer novels.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 18, 2017 17:55:36 GMT
I like reading Chandler just for the language and the characters, especially Marlowe the knight-errant, and their interactions with the world. The focus in Chandler's work is never the plot, though he was more interested in the puzzle than many critics, himself included, gave him credit for. (The Lady in the Lake, as you note, @nxnwrocks , is quite clever.) There's a world-weariness in Chandler, sharply distinguished from a childish cynicism, that makes his trenchant observations on the human condition all the more powerful.
"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
It's one of the most famous openings of them all, but its power still grips, grabs, holds you. My God, who can write like that nowadays?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 21, 2017 23:43:12 GMT
I like how someone asked him who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep and he said he didn't know.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 21, 2017 23:51:48 GMT
I like how someone asked him who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep and he said he didn't know. It was Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, when making the great film adaptation, who asked him: they sent Chandler a telegram from the set, asking him who killed the chauffeur. Chandler wrote back, angrily, saying that it was all in the book (which it wasn't). Hawks and Brackett shrugged and kept making it. Then Chandler called them and said, "Uh... I just checked. As to who killed the chauffeur... Damned if I know!"Unfortunately, this great and oft-repeated tale has now been proved probably to be false. See below. Still, as I write, it demonstrates Chandler's lack of interest in the plot and concentration on writing and characters.
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Post by mikef6 on Apr 22, 2017 4:30:47 GMT
I like how someone asked him who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep and he said he didn't know. It was Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, when making the great film adaptation, who asked him: they sent Chandler a telegram from the set, asking him who killed the chauffeur. Chandler wrote back, angrily, saying that it was all in the book (which it wasn't). Hawks and Brackett shrugged and kept making it. Then Chandler called them and said, "Uh... I just checked. As to who killed the chauffeur... Damned if I know!" The way I heard it, it was a phone call to Chandler in middle of the night. In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. It IS there. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them.
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Post by Nalkarj on Apr 22, 2017 4:44:09 GMT
It was Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, when making the great film adaptation, who asked him: they sent Chandler a telegram from the set, asking him who killed the chauffeur. Chandler wrote back, angrily, saying that it was all in the book (which it wasn't). Hawks and Brackett shrugged and kept making it. Then Chandler called them and said, "Uh... I just checked. As to who killed the chauffeur... Damned if I know!" The way I heard it, it was a phone call to Chandler in middle of the night. In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. It IS there. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them. Oh, gee, I heard differently, Mike. I haven't got the book in front of me (ages since I read it), but I don't remember an explanation for the chauffeur's murder. (Confirmation bias? Maybe.) Perhaps Chandler just doesn't make it very clear... Let's see if I can find my source for the tale... Thanks for setting me straight on the point, though! EDIT: TCM reports Hawks might have, in fact, made the tale up. Ah, too bad, but thanks for giving me an opportunity to check up on it. (Never trust stories you hear, even if they've been repeated over and over--don't I remember that from the first time I ever took a journalism class, so many years ago?) Nonetheless, I think it best exemplifies what both Chandler and Hawks thought of the plot! SECOND EDIT: Jerry Speir in his Raymond Chandler and Sarah Trott in her War Noir report the tale fairly consistently to the old story, but with Chandler's response being "I don't know" rather than "Damned if I know" and no telegram. (Where did the telegram part come up, I wonder?) That may just be, of course, Chandler's lack of care about the question, as you hypothesized.
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Post by mikef6 on Apr 22, 2017 10:23:55 GMT
The way I heard it, it was a phone call to Chandler in middle of the night. In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. It IS there. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them. Oh, gee, I heard differently, Mike. I haven't got the book in front of me (ages since I read it), but I don't remember an explanation for the chauffeur's murder. (Confirmation bias? Maybe.) Perhaps Chandler just doesn't make it very clear... Let's see if I can find my source for the tale... Thanks for setting me straight on the point, though! EDIT: TCM reports Hawks might have, in fact, made the tale up. Ah, too bad, but thanks for giving me an opportunity to check up on it. (Never trust stories you hear, even if they've been repeated over and over--don't I remember that from the first time I ever took a journalism class, so many years ago?) Nonetheless, I think it best exemplifies what both Chandler and Hawks thought of the plot! SECOND EDIT: Jerry Speir in his Raymond Chandler and Sarah Trott in her War Noir report the tale fairly consistently to the old story, but with Chandler's response being "I don't know" rather than "Damned if I know" and no telegram. (Where did the telegram part come up, I wonder?) That may just be, of course, Chandler's lack of care about the question, as you hypothesized. I haven't read The Big Sleep in a while myself, but it has been since the first time I heard the story about the chauffeur. I remember thinking, "Ah, there it is" when I got to the place that explains it.
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ironjade
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Post by ironjade on May 20, 2017 15:07:21 GMT
I doubt anyone reads Chandler for his plots; it's his prose style, characters and witty dialogue which make his novels so enjoyable. See also Stephen King.
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Post by poelzig on May 22, 2017 7:18:42 GMT
I like reading Chandler just for the language and the characters, especially Marlowe the knight-errant, and their interactions with the world. The focus in Chandler's work is never the plot, though he was more interested in the puzzle than many critics, himself included, gave him credit for. ( The Lady in the Lake, as you note, @nxnwrocks , is quite clever.) There's a world-weariness in Chandler, sharply distinguished from a childish cynicism, that makes his trenchant observations on the human condition all the more powerful. "There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."
It's one of the most famous openings of them all, but its power still grips, grabs, holds you. My God, who can write like that nowadays? James Ellroy
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Post by bonerxmas on May 22, 2017 8:22:05 GMT
It was Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, when making the great film adaptation, who asked him: they sent Chandler a telegram from the set, asking him who killed the chauffeur. Chandler wrote back, angrily, saying that it was all in the book (which it wasn't). Hawks and Brackett shrugged and kept making it. Then Chandler called them and said, "Uh... I just checked. As to who killed the chauffeur... Damned if I know!" The way I heard it, it was a phone call to Chandler in middle of the night. In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. It IS there. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them. thats not the story that chandler himself told, here is what he wrote to jamie hamilton in march of 1949: "I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making The Big Sleep, the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or commited suicide. They sent me a wire (there's a joke about this too) asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at. The joke was in connection with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Believe it or not, he saw the wire, the wire cost the studio 70 cents, and he called Hawks up and asked him whether it was really necessary to send a telegram about a point like that. That's one way to run a business." (The Raymond Chandler Papers, ed. by Tom Hiney and Frank McShane, Penguin 2001, p. 105) www.amazon.com/Raymond-Chandler-Papers-Nonfiction-1909-1959/dp/0802139469#reader_0802139469theres a reason he didn't know - that book was a cut and paste job of some stories he had published years before, he liked to recycle his old work
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Post by nutsberryfarm π on Apr 28, 2019 0:39:54 GMT
The way I heard it, it was a phone call to Chandler in middle of the night. In "The Big Sleep," that old tale about the screen writers calling Chandler to ask who killed the chauffeur is probably an urban legend. In the novel, there is no question. It IS there. The entire murder plot is very clear. The screenwriters could have found it easily. If there IS any truth to the call, it has been speculated that Chandler just didn't care about their question and, basically, said, "I don't remember" and hung up on them. thats not the story that chandler himself told, here is what he wrote to jamie hamilton in march of 1949: "I remember several years ago when Howard Hawks was making The Big Sleep, the movie, he and Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or commited suicide. They sent me a wire (there's a joke about this too) asking me, and dammit I didn't know either. Of course I got hooted at. The joke was in connection with Jack Warner, the head of Warner Bros. Believe it or not, he saw the wire, the wire cost the studio 70 cents, and he called Hawks up and asked him whether it was really necessary to send a telegram about a point like that. That's one way to run a business." (The Raymond Chandler Papers, ed. by Tom Hiney and Frank McShane, Penguin 2001, p. 105) www.amazon.com/Raymond-Chandler-Papers-Nonfiction-1909-1959/dp/0802139469#reader_0802139469theres a reason he didn't know - that book was a cut and paste job of some stories he had published years before, he liked to recycle his old work Wow!
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Post by jimanchower on May 14, 2019 8:55:34 GMT
A great writer in terms of vocabulary and style, but so many of his books really suck to get through. The Lady in the Lake was the only one I truly enjoyed. The Long Goodbye was interminable. He's one of my favorite writers, I have all his books a biography of his and a book of his letters. It's been 20 years since I've read most of his books but I recently reread the Long Goodbye and it held up beautifully for me.
His style is so distinctive I can definitely see it being something you either like or don't.
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