Fiction, Reviews

‘The Big Sleep,’ by Raymond Chandler

Leave a comment

Her smile was tentative, but could be persuaded to be nice.

Recently I watched an old interview with Andrew Klavan in which he cited The Big Sleep, the first Philip Marlowe novel (1939), which he admires very much. He mentioned how he adopted Marlowe as a literary hero when he read the first scene of this book, where the detective enters the palatial Sternwood mansion. Above the door he sees a stained glass window depicting a knight attempting to free a maiden tied to a tree. Marlowe doesn’t think the knight is trying as hard as he could, and thinks that if he lived there he’d have to climb up himself and help out.

That, Klavan says (and I agree), is the key to Philip Marlowe’s character. He’s a knight out of romance, plunked down in the 20th Century where he has no place. His adventures involve him in many compromises, but he strives to keep some honor.

Even when the fair maidens don’t really deserve rescuing, as is the case in The Big Sleep. Old General Sternwood, confined to a wheelchair, has summoned Marlowe because he has received blackmail demands related to his daughter Carmen. Carmen is flighty, promiscuous, and not very bright. He also mentions a man named Rusty Regan, ex-husband to his other daughter Vivian. The general liked Rusty, but the man has disappeared. He hopes he’s all right. Marlowe intuits (correctly) that the general isn’t really much concerned over the blackmail; he’s trying to work up to asking Marlowe to locate Rusty.

Soon Marlowe will be a near-witness to a murder, with Carmen Sternwood present (high on drugs). Then the body will disappear. And Marlowe will find himself looking for Rusty Regan after all – not because he cares about the Sternwood daughters, but for the old man’s sake.

The Big Sleep is an intriguing book. Plot-wise it’s confusing and not neatly tied up. The author himself, famously, wasn’t sure who killed the Sternwood chauffeur. And there’s one scene where Marlowe is captured by a notorious murderer, who then conveniently goes away, leaving him to be watched by a suggestible woman whom Marlowe persuades to free him. (A very weak plot device, you can’t deny.)

And yet this book is treasured by readers and critics alike. I treasure it myself. The prose is masterful, the characters are fascinating, the atmosphere draws you in, and the conclusion has been a model for all but the most cynical of hard-boiled writers ever since.

On this reading I was particularly struck by a minor character, the purest hero of this story. His name is Harry Jones. He’s a short, unprepossessing man, a two-bit gambler. Yet he makes the ultimate sacrifice for a woman who doesn’t deserve him. Marlowe pays him the greatest respect – he’s the man Marlowe would like to be, but pure knights of that sort do not survive in our world.

Taken all in all, The Big Sleep is a great novel. If you haven’t read it and like hard-boileds, you should. Cautions for drugs and sexual situations – pretty racy stuff for 1939.

Publishing, Reading

Books dropped and words picked up

1 Comment

I had hoped to have a book review for you tonight, but I soured suddenly on the thing I was reading and gave it up. I’m not sure why I acquired it in the first place – the Amazon synopsis must have been misleading. It turned out to be a woman’s book, though the author was a man. It concerned a woman who gets involved with a couple who prove to have dark secrets. Seemed to be constructed on the basic Gothic pattern – a big old Victorian house was involved. But the story gave strong indications of wandering into Fifty Shades of Grey territory, and my interest dropped like one of my pills, or pens, or whatever other items I find myself dropping all the time in my dotage.

But I had a good morning. My audio book recording brought me – faster than I expected – to the end of Chapter 2 of Troll Valley. I found time to edit and master it too. The whole exercise was a lot less stressful than it has been up to now, so I felt no end of a professional narrator.

I think the final product will lack the polish that many audiobooks boast, but I believe I’m delivering a good performance. I was actually moved today, reading Otto Iverson’s testimony of faith – if you remember that scene in the old stone church. My voice caught a bit, but I did not stop the recording to do it over. The catch was in character.

I have learned very little wisdom in my long life, but I’ve gotten fairly comfortable with the difficult truths of incrementalism and perseverance – you do a little every day and it mounts up in the end. Don’t look at how little you’ve done today – watch how the work accumulates over time.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Long Goodbye,’ by Raymond Chandler

Leave a comment

She had an iron smile and eyes that could count the money in your hip wallet.

Recently I was poking around Amazon Prime for a movie to watch, and I hit on the old 1973 film adaptation of The Long Goodbye. I hadn’t seen it in many years, and watched it again just to see if I liked it any better than I did in my youth. I found I did not. It’s a Robert Altman vehicle, meaning Raymond Chandler’s story is mostly subsumed in Altman’s improvisations, and Elliott Gould is not Philip Marlowe by any stretch of the imagination. (I must confess the movie did the story no harm by simplifying the plot, though.)

Anyway, I figured I might as well re-read the book (first published 1953) and see how it compared. As I expected, I liked it a whole lot better than the movie, though it’s not without flaws.

Terry Lennox is sporadically one of Philip Marlowe’s few friends. He’s a wounded war veteran with interesting facial scars, and Marlowe encounters him sometimes in evening clothes with rich women on his arm, and sometimes drunk in the gutter. Terry has been married to an heiress named Sylvia, been divorced by her, and then remarried again. Now and then he and Marlowe get together for a drink.

One night Terry shows up asking Marlowe to drive him across the border to Mexico. Marlowe does this, with some misgivings. Once back, he learns the news – Terry’s wife has been murdered, and the police are looking for him. Marlowe gets arrested and subjected to some third degree… and then the whole business is dropped. Word is that Terry has killed himself in Mexico. Shortly afterward, Marlowe gets a letter from Terry, apparently posted just before his death. Tucked in the envelope is a $5,000 bill, which Marlowe puts away in his office safe because he’s uncomfortable about how he earned it.

Through his connection with Terry, Marlowe gets an inquiry from the publisher of Roger Wade, a bestselling author of historical thrillers. Roger has a serious drinking problem and writer’s block. The publisher has the idea that Marlowe might be the man to nursemaid Wade, dry him out and keep him working. Marlowe is not interested, even after a personal appeal from Wade’s stunningly beautiful wife, Eileen. But that doesn’t stop her appealing to him to find Wade after he disappears on a bender. Marlowe tracks him down at a seedy health spa and drags him home. He forms a prickly friendship with the man, while still refusing the babysitting job.

That’s enough to explain how things start out. The plot progresses in what seems to me a somewhat uneven, lurching fashion, as if Chandler was describing his own difficulties writing it through the creative travails of Roger Wade. The final conclusion is (to my mind) a little unsatisfying – but not as weird as the climax they gave us in the movie.

Critics, I understand, are divided concerning The Long Goodbye. Some consider it Chandler’s best work. Others judge it one of the weakest in the series. I myself enjoyed reading it, but found it a little claustrophobic. The story was, after all, somewhat crowded with author’s surrogates. Both Terry Lennox, the shell-shocked, psychologically broken war veteran, and Roger Wade, the bibulous, self-loathing author, are expressions of Chandler’s own self-image. And almost all narrator characters – including Philip Marlowe – are alter egos of their creators.

Also, the book features a series of “solutions,” each replacing the other as if the author couldn’t make up his mind.

But it’s worth reading. I enjoyed it all in all. Also, there’s references to the war in Norway.

The Kindle link I’m using here is for the edition I read, which is the only ebook edition I can find that’s not part of an omnibus. If you can find a different edition, I advise you to buy that, because this one (published in Ukraine) is laden with OCR errors. The “illustrations” advertised are just old paperback cover art, unrelated to the story.

I find, on searching our archives, that I’ve already reviewed this book here once. I need to review more Philip Marlowe novels, and have set about reading another.

Music

Easter Singing: Hear the Bells Ringing

Leave a comment

Today’s song may be my favorite Christian song, and this acapella version is special to me. Annie Herring of 2nd Chapter of Acts wrote “Easter Song” in 1972 and has been covered by Keith Green and Glad. It captures the moment of discovering the open tomb much like a Christmas song proclaiming Christ’s birth.

“But the angel said to the women, ‘Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you’” (Matt. 28: 5, 7 ESV)

Hear the bells ringing
They’re singing that you can be born again
Hear the bells ringing
They’re singing Christ is risen from the dead

The angel up on the tombstone
Said He has risen, just as He said
Quickly now, go tell his disciples
That Jesus Christ is no longer dead

Joy to the word, He has risen, hallelujah

Fiction, Reviews

‘Time to Die,’ by Alex Robert

Leave a comment

In the beautiful city of York, England, a man hangs himself in his apartment. Once he was a high-flying financier, but he helped to engineer a massive Ponzi scheme and went to prison for several years. Inspector Jack Husker, just back on the job after suffering a major injury, is dispatched to dot the bureaucratic i’s and cross the t’s. But the crime scene officer has his doubts about the death, and soon Jack is thinking murder.

When one of his partners in the scheme dies in a fall from his balcony soon after, all doubt is removed.

Jack Husker, hero of Time to Die, has a reputation on the force. He’s the cop the brass send in when they want a battering ram and are willing to overlook a little excessive force. But Jack, teamed with his colleague Lisa Ramsey, with whom he is carrying on a tentative flirtation, will be walking a little softer on this case.

Jack will extend his inquiries to the city of Leeds, where he’ll meet another female detective who makes a strong play for his attention – a distraction he doesn’t need. He’ll find connections to international crime and dangerous gangsters. The final showdown, when it comes, will be (for this reader) a bit of an anticlimax.

I was amused when, in one scene, Lisa has a meeting with a confidential source at the Jorvik Viking Centre (a place I’ve always wanted to visit).

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this book. It’s part of an ongoing series, and although I didn’t feel that the author shortchanged me at all (except for a frustrating refusal to describe his characters physically), I have an idea I would have followed along better if I’d started at the beginning. Jack’s tactics seemed kind of scattershot to me, and he went into the climactic confrontation without any plan at all, being rescued only by a sort of deus ex machina.

Also, Jack’s relationship with Lisa was kind of hard to understand. Two people strongly attracted to one another who seem determined to mutually sabotage their chances. (But what do I know about relationships?)

I wouldn’t rate Time to Die high on my list of favorites, but it was all right. The prose was good. Cautions for strong language.

Religion, Uncategorized

More on art: Trying to think above my weight class

Leave a comment
Photo credit: Evie Fjord. Unsplash license.

Still haven’t finished the book I’m reading, so you get further puerile musings on art tonight.

I have read Andrew Klavan’s The Truth and Beauty twice, and I’m still not sure I understand it. I kind of suspect that’s the point of the book – that art is essentially an effort to convey an experience that can’t be pinned down in words. You “catch” it or you don’t. Kind of like Zen, I suppose, though I hate to use that comparison.

But my point (I think) is that art is mysterious and evasive. There are formulas, but they never really touch the heart of the thing. It’s what C.S. Lewis called “Joy” in Surprised by Joy, and he linked it with Romanticism – which, not coincidentally, is what The Truth and Beauty is also about.

I watched one of Klavan’s interviews on YouTube the other day, and (if my memory is correct) he said he talked about the value of Pi and Fibonacci’s theorem in TTAB. He said that Pi expresses itself in Fibonacci’s Golden Ratio, which, he maintained, suggests that the Trinity itself is expressed in creation. Every living thing around us, from the smallest single-cell animal to the human and the elephant, develops according to that ratio. The leaves of the trees tend to grow in tripartite forms. Fractals create three-part shapes, leading to astonishingly naturalistic digital images.

The value of Pi – the number three plus a little more. Three, but not a static three. There’s some mystery added, a little extra to surprise us and keep us off balance.

Theologians have scoffed at the legend of St. Patrick teaching the Irish about the Trinity by showing them a three-leaf clover. “Bad analogy,” they say.

But what if the clover expresses the Trinity in a more profound way? Not as an analogy, but as an artifact? The metaphorical fingerprints of the Potter in the clay vessel He has created?

I think this Fibonacci stuff may be one reason why I was never a good artist, back when I was young and dreamed of making a living with pencil and brush. An art teacher in high school once told me I was good at symmetry, and that pleased me. But symmetry isn’t what you want in art, I think, most of the time. You want dynamism –a sense of movement, if only the movement of the viewer’s eye.

I missed that Fibonacci knack – dividing things into threes, creating a compelling imbalance. My work just sat there. (Among its other failings.) I always think of a panel from the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip that impressed me – Hobbes leaps at Calvin, and the line of his body and tail is so elegant that you can feel the motion. I could never draw a line like that, though I wanted to very much.

Anyway, I guess it all goes back to a basic disconnect between our impoverished age and the past (the break came during the World Wars, I think). The old artists believed they were expressing God (or even pagan gods), and sought to recreate beauty. Nowadays, artists only think they’re expressing themselves – and they believe themselves to be cosmic accidents (bad for the environment too).

Christians are capable of producing really great art. Subcreation. Genuine, God-reflecting beauty. We’ve done it in the past. And our competition is occupying itself taping bananas to walls. It should be an easy contest.

But we need a) to take art seriously, and b) to encourage our talent.

Uncategorized

On art: I think above my weight class

3 Comments
Photo credit: Sui Sim. Unsplash license.

Tonight I must be in an antic mood, for I intend to talk about Art.

This is, of course, absurd. I am a middlebrow, generally unknown fantasy writer. Google my latest novel (The Baldur Game, in case you forgot, which is not unlikely) you’ll find that the only person talking about the book online is me. I have zero standing to make pronouncements about Art.

But I’ve had a couple thoughts. I’ll maunder on about the first one tonight. The next one will be provided the next time I find myself with a night without a book to review.

One truth that grows increasingly unavoidable as one grows old (though I think I’ve never repressed it much myself) is that we are going to die. The sands of time are sinking, the sun is setting in the west. Choose your metaphor.

I’m inclined to think of it as like floating down a river. You can’t slow your velocity and you can’t go ashore and rest – you are forever being carried by the current.

The river has pleasant stretches and unpleasant stretches. Some stretches are horrible. Some are delightful.

But good or bad, they speed past. The bad ones come to an end, but so do the good ones.

And sometimes you see one so wonderful, so sublime that you want to preserve it. You want to share it. You feel that the world will be better – it will be an act of love for humanity – if you can just preserve that moment for others to enjoy as well.

That’s what art is. An effort to preserve – to freeze – one of those fleeting moments and make it available to others.

Art, therefore, is an attempt at stopping time.

Or it was, until the Postmoderns decided that Art should be an exercise in self-expression, the less interesting the self, the better.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Operation Echo,’ by Ed Church

Leave a comment

Author Ed Church recently commented on our “About Us” page, and I was reminded of his Brook Deelman books, which I’d much enjoyed but lost track of. I checked and, behold, there is a new volume in the series. I read Operation Echo with great enjoyment.

Brook Deelman, South African-born former London police detective, has now set up a modest private investigation agency with his buddy Jonboy. They have a variety of clients, but they never expected to be approached by Inspector Terry Barnes (retired). Brook has had a strained relationship with the man in the past. But Barnes, having time on his hands now, has decided to try to find the answer to a question that’s been troubling him for many years. There’s a man who belongs to his club, Sir Archibald Gough, a millionaire who made his fortune as a music promoter. Barnes has always felt there’s something… vaguely wrong about Gough. He’s not sure what bothers him about the man, but he’s certain there’s something. He wants Brook and his partner to check the man out.

They do, and are not prepared for where the investigation will take them – back to the Cold War and the year 1963, the year of the Kim Philby scandal and multiple black eyes for British Intelligence. A story of a very secret operation which has left very few traces behind. Punctuated with a knock-down fight or two.

I thought the plot itself was slow getting started, as the original problem, based on a mere ungrounded suspicion, seemed a little implausible. However, the characters – especially Book Deelman, our hero – were so fascinating that I simply enjoyed the ride. And the plot, once it found its legs, ran extremely well.

I highly recommend Operation Echo and all the Brook Deelman books. Cautions for language, but nothing else really.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Dain Curse,’ by Dashiell Hammett

2 Comments

“Lily and I were true sisters, inseparable, hating one another poisonously.”

Recently, in the course of my explorations of old mysteries on YouTube, I watched once again the 1978 CBS TV miniseries adaptation of Dashiell Hammet’s The Dain Curse, starring James Coburn. The dramatization kept to the plot in broad terms, but made a lot of cuts, most of which, it must be admitted, improved the story. For some reason they moved the setting from California to New York state (contrary to the usual custom of that California-based industry). The plot was streamlined in various ways. The casting of Coburn, a famously lean man, as the “Continental Op” (a fat character who is never named in any of his stories), a case of literal streamlining, was justified through turning him into a fictional version of the author himself (who had indeed been a Pinkerton detective), calling him “Hamilton Nash.”

I had watched the original broadcast on TV, and having watched it again now I was curious to re-read the book. It’s not Hammet’s best work, in my opinion.

The story begins with the Continental Op visiting the San Francisco home of Dr. Edgar Leggett, who is involved in chemical experiments involving diamonds. Some of the diamonds he keeps in his laboratory have apparently been stolen in a break-in. The Op finds Leggett’s story fishy, and before long breaks it down into a messy scheme involving false identities and blackmail. At the end of this episode of the story, the Leggetts’ daughter, Gabrielle (who is a morphine addict) has been orphaned, and is left with the conviction that she is a victim of “the Dain Curse” (Dain is her mother’s name) and doomed to cause the death of any person who gets close to her.

But there are two further sections in the book. In the second, the Op is hired to locate Gabrielle and finds her in the temple of a fashionable San Francisco cult, where he barely manages to save her from murder, after which her fiancé whisks her off to a quick wedding and honeymoon in a southern California seaside town. In the third, there is yet another murder, and Gabrielle once again comes under suspicion. After clearing her, the Op takes it on himself to wean her off her drug addiction.

The origins of The Dain Curse as a serial story in Black Mask Magazine are very evident, and don’t always help with readability in a consolidated narrative. Each episode (it was originally a four-parter) involves its own dramatic arc, and each ends with a “solution,” though the actual culprit is kept secret until the very end of the book. Hammett was never in Raymond Chandler’s class as a prose stylist, and the writing here is rarely memorable. The plot of The Dain Curse involves a lot of repetition, and doesn’t reach the levels Hammett achieved in The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man, or even in Red Harvest (which is believed, by the way, to have inspired the Samurai film Yojimbo, and by extension A Fistful of Dollars and a score of other copycats).

But it’s worth reading. I must say though that (in my opinion) the cuts the writers made in the TV version were well taken and effective.

Music

Palm Sunday Singing: When I Survey the Wonderous Cross

Leave a comment

Today’s hymn isn’t the typical Palm Sunday theme, because I’ve been thinking about the cross lately and meant to post another hymn on the cross last Sunday. Isaac Watts on this favorite in 1707 as a communion hymn, and it’s become a beloved Easter hymn. The tune sung above was adapted from a Gregorian chant by prolific hymn tune writer Lowell Mason (1792-1872), “the father of American church music.”

“But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6:14 ESV)

1 When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

2 Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God:
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.

3 See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down:
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

4 Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.