The Beach Reader reviewed Raymond Chandler by Raymond Chandler
Review of 'Raymond Chandler' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Philip Marlowe's not as hard-bitten, callous, and heartless as you may glean from the towering edifice of iconography that's grown up around him over the years. As written, he's actually a pretty nice guy, quiet and self-deprecating. Thinking back over the three Marlowe novels I've just read, I'm actually not even sure he shot anyone.
He's much more explicitly a hero in these books. In The High Window, Marlowe sticks with a case long after its no longer necessary; his actions in the last half of the novel have little to do with his job. He's motivated by the desire to figure out what's really going on, but also by the desire to help a clearly traumatized young woman escape a bad social situation and get back to her parents in Wichita. I found it rather touching, which isn't usually something you can say about noir fiction.
The dozen or …
Philip Marlowe's not as hard-bitten, callous, and heartless as you may glean from the towering edifice of iconography that's grown up around him over the years. As written, he's actually a pretty nice guy, quiet and self-deprecating. Thinking back over the three Marlowe novels I've just read, I'm actually not even sure he shot anyone.
He's much more explicitly a hero in these books. In The High Window, Marlowe sticks with a case long after its no longer necessary; his actions in the last half of the novel have little to do with his job. He's motivated by the desire to figure out what's really going on, but also by the desire to help a clearly traumatized young woman escape a bad social situation and get back to her parents in Wichita. I found it rather touching, which isn't usually something you can say about noir fiction.
The dozen or so short stories that precede the novels are a good intro to Chandler's style. You also get to see Chandler tackle subjects and points of view he never touches in the novels: some protagonists are actually cops, for instance. "I'll Be Waiting" is probably the best of these, about a hotel detective who gets a warning from his mobster brother and has to decide how to react.
I was worried that reading so much Chandler at once would start to drag and become repetitive, but the stories are different enough that they pulled me along. And the prose, as many, many others have pointed out, is unique and hilarious and wonderful. There's a reason Chandler's at the top of the list for 20th century detective fiction.
