The Big Sleep (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Raymond Chandler
- First Published: 1939
- Type of Work: Novel
- Genres: Long fiction, Mystery and detective literature
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, United States or Americans, Sex or sexuality, Murder or homicide, 1930’s, California, Los Angeles, West, U.S., Blackmail, Detectives, Corruption, Private investigators, Pornography
- Locales: Los Angeles, CA
The Big Sleep was Chandler's first novel, and some critics say that it is his best, In it, Chandler's knightly hero, Philip Marlowe, fights vice, particularly materialism and sex, and champions the virtues of loyalty and friendship.
Everything in this unseasonably wet October in Southern California is damp and unnaturally green, a color that Chandler associates with corrupt female sexuality. Marlowe meets his client, General Sternwood, an elderly invalid, in a steamy greenhouse filled with plants “with nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead...
[The entire page is 739 words long]
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