“Just for Fun”
Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep
Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep
So much of the criticism related to Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel The Big Sleep does not deal with the novel directly or solely, but often indirectly or through a lens. Although he had already been publishing short stories in pulp magazines such as The Black Mask, The Big Sleep was Raymond Chandler’s first novel. Publication of the novel certainly gave him a wider exposure but, for critics and public alike, Chandler was still largely unknown. Early reviews reflect a public largely unaware of Raymond Chandler and still not sure what The Big Sleep is all about. Seen in hindsight they seem rather hesitant and unenlightened based on the legendary status the book enjoys today. Nonetheless, it is clear that these initial reviews picked up on some of the elements of style that would help The Big Sleep become a classic and, in the process, help move detective fiction from the arena of cheap pulp fiction to the arena of serious literature. This process, however, took time. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that serious attention to Chandler was paid, and at that point Chandler had gone on to publish several other novels, all of which starred the private eye Philip Marlowe, who had made his debut in The Big Sleep. Thus, when critics began to recognize The Big Sleep as a work of literary merit and examine it anew, they not only looked at The Big Sleep, but they looked at the other Chandler novels as well, since the character of Philip Marlowe appeared in all of them. Additionally, Chandler even used the character of Philip Marlowe, albeit under different names, in short stories he published prior to The Big Sleep. Critics, in effect, often treated the oeuvre of Raymond Chandler as if it were one work, discussing various topics such as Marlowe’s style, the California setting, or Marlowe’s treatment of women. Complicating matters further is the fact that The Big Sleep is often read or interpreted through the life of Raymond Chandler himself. A study in Raymond Chandler’s main protagonist Philip Marlowe, in many cases, becomes a study in Raymond Chandler. Much of the criticism, in fact, revels in mentioning Chandler’s private life ― his reclusive nature, for example, or his marriage to an older woman ― and uses Chandler’s biographical details to shed light on his novels, including The Big Sleep. In order to understand and appreciate The Big Sleep, in other words, you have to understand and appreciate Raymond Chandler. The surrounding biographical trappings to The Big Sleep are so numerous that very few pieces of criticism deal exclusively with The Big Sleep ― that is, pieces of criticism that look at the text of The Big Sleep and nothing but that text. Many pieces of criticism, in fact, can be seen as psychological case studies in either Philip Marlowe or Raymond Chandler, depending on which figure the critic is using to shed light on the other. But The Big Sleep can stand on its own. Specifically, I wish to focus on an element not mentioned in the critical literature, namely the significance of Marlowe’s enjoyment of his work, an enjoyment that springs primarily from his cursory, detached, and impersonal approach. Although Marlowe is enjoying himself throughout much of the novel, by the end that enjoyment is revisited and perceived differently, all of which is a result of his involvement with the sinister underbelly of Southern California, an involvement that forces Marlowe to recognize the importance of stability and genuine friendship. The protagonist, Philip Marlowe, is not a static type, but rather undergoes a transformation from the beginning of the novel to the end, and this transformation can be appreciated without any reference to the biographical details of Raymond Chandler or Chandler’s other novels.
The Big Sleep draws a reader in initially simply because it is a lot of fun, and this fun emanates in large part from the adventure and mystery of Philip Marlowe and his work. Not just mystery, moreover, as in whodunit, but mystery as in never knowing what place Marlowe will go next and what he will find when he gets there. Readers are fascinated with exploring the unknown, especially when doing it from a safe distance. When Marlowe approaches Geiger’s house after seeing “a single flash of hard white light,” the reader wonders what the flash was (31). Was it the flash from a gunshot? Marlowe, of course, as if in response to the reader’s sense of adventure, decides on going into the house. As he is about to knock on the door he hears three shots. The reader wonders what is going on and what will happen next. Will Marlowe be shot? Did someone get shot? Is someone dying? Were they even gunshots at all?(The text does leave room for a little doubt.) All of these questions run through the reader’s mind as Marlowe is deciding how to get into the house. And, of course, all of these questions are running through Marlowe’s mind as well. And this is the point, really. Marlowe loves the mystery and adventure of his work, the idea of not knowing what is in the house but really wanting to find out.
The entire novel, in fact, dances endlessly from one adventure to the next as Marlowe works his case. The very opening of the novel starts in a strange place ― the Sternwood residence. From the very beginning, then, the mystery and adventure start. Even within the Sternwood residence there are distinct places of travel and adventure: the main hallway, the General’s greenhouse, Vivian’s room. Marlowe works his leads and hunches and travels to whomever or wherever he needs to. From the Sternwood residence he goes to A.G. Geiger’s bookshop and eventually trails a man out of the store. From there he visits a couple of other bookstores. After that he drives to Geiger’s house and waits, eventually seeing the “flash of hard white light.” At this point he decides to make his way into the house. He observes someone running out of the house. Inside he finds a dead man and a live naked woman. It is difficult to be bored ― for the reader of Marlowe ― with this kind of frenetic movement from one mysterious place to the other; this is a lot of fun. Marlowe reminds us of the strangeness of all the people and places he is encountering by constantly describing them. Chapter seven opens up with a description of Geiger’s house, which Marlowe has just entered.
It was a wide room, the whole width of the house. It had a low beamed ceiling and brown plaster walls decked out
with strips of Chinese embroidery and Chinese and Japanese prints in grained wood frames. There were low
bookshelves, there was a thick pinkish Chinese rug in which a gopher could have spent a week without showing his
nose above the nap. There were floor cushions, bits of odd silk tossed around, as if whoever lived there had to
have a piece he could reach out and thumb (33).
The description continues for several more sentences. It is interesting to observe the synthesis of fun and adventure as Marlowe examines a strange room in a house and jokes how the rug was so think a “gopher could have spent a week without showing his nose above the nap.” Marlowe’s descriptions extend to people as well, even people he has already met. Here he is describing his second encounter with Vivian Sternwood.
She wore brownish speckled tweeds, a mannish shirt and tie, hand-carved walking shoes. Her stockings were just as sheer as the day before, but she wasn’t showing as much of her legs. Her black hair was glossy under a brown
Robin Hood hat that might have cost fifty dollars and looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of a
desk blotter (53).
Again, Marlowe relishes adventuring into the strange. It is clear he enjoys every new encounter and that each one provides him with a wealth of material for his comic wit. Vivian, for example, is made to look like a silly woman who wears a Robin Hood hat made with one hand out of a desk blotter. The important point to take away from these kinds of descriptions is Marlowe’s way of relating to people; he is not very interested in getting close to anyone, emotionally or otherwise. His comic edge, for example, detaches people from him. He does not treat people as being equal to him, but as fodder for the comic barrier he creates between him and them. This barrier that Marlowe creates through his language has been commented on by John Hilgart, but Hilgart views it primarily as a defense Marlowe employs to protect his identity from being consumed in a bleak, crime-ridden world.
Marlowe himself, moreover, makes it quite clear that he is enjoying himself. Soon after Marlowe meets General Sternwood, he wonders why the General needs him to work the case, thinking that the job is really “a lawyer’s job” (17). But he takes the case nonetheless. He admits there may be more to it than meets the eye and thinks “At a casual glance I thought I might have a lot of fun finding out” (17). There is a playfulness to this thought that gives away Marlowe’s modus operandi ― Marlowe is really less concerned with his clients and more concerned with having a little fun. Even the word “casual” gives insight into how he approaches life. A little further into the novel, while Marlowe is still in the early stages of the case, he is having difficulty meeting up with A.G. Geiger. He decides to look up his phone number in the phone book and, after finding it, says, “I dropped my nickel and dialed his number just for fun” (25). Again, there is very much the sense that Marlowe enjoys snooping around and just seeing where things might lead. Talking to Geiger on the phone may not lead anywhere. On the other hand, it may prove very beneficial. In either case, however, Marlowe is going to have fun doing it.
In addition, Marlowe just enjoys talking. His simile-rich wise-guy kind of language is witty, clipped, provoking, and, quite very often, hilarious. Here is part of how he describes finding Carmen Sternwood sitting drugged out and naked on a chair in Geiger’s house.
She seemed to be unconscious, but she didn’t have the pose of unconsciousness. She looked as if, in her mind, she was doing something very important and making a fine job of it. Out of her mouth came a tinny chuckling noise which didn’t change her expression or even move her lips. She was wearing a pair of long jade earrings. They
were nice earrings and had probably cost a couple of hundred dollars. She wasn’t wearing anything else (34).
This is meant to be funny. There is, moreover, a structure to it that illustrates the work that went into making it funny. Rather than stating she was naked first, which is the first thing anyone would notice, he states it last and almost as if it were an afterthought. Marlowe, in other words, as he is setting up his joke and delivering the punch-line, is not overly concerned with finding an almost comatose naked lady on drugs sitting on a chair. Rather, he is more drawn to observing the comic elements of the whole situation. The humorous aspect to the whole scene, therefore, helps to objectify Carmen as the butt of a joke as well as indicate Marlowe’s rather casual and careless attitude to her. He is enjoying her as a funny spectacle more than as a woman in an indecent position who is in serious need of help.
Although the novel abounds in this kind of humor, it would be misleading to suggest that Marlowe is always detached, impersonal, and forever just trying to find novel people and situations so that he can find something to laugh about. True, much of the novel is in this humorous vein, but there are moments and areas where Marlowe seems genuine, real, or compassionate. One of these, for example, is his attitude toward General Sternwood. Although Marlowe’s attitude is difficult to determine exactly, it does seem as though he is genuinely touched by the relationship the General had with Terrance Regan. Marlowe tells the General that he is still looking for Regan because he believes Regan may have had something to do with the blackmail angle. For all practical purposes, however, the case does seem to be closed and so there is really no practical reason for anyone to find Regan. Marlowe’s interest in finding him, therefore, illustrates his desire to bring Regan and the General back together, or to at least find out what happened to Regan so that the General has closure. Marlowe’s humanitarian gesture is legitimized by the fact that the General ultimately encourages Marlowe to find Regan.
Another example of Marlowe’s genuineness and compassion is shown through his encounter with Mona Grant or “Silver Wig.” Mona, who goes into hiding in order to protect her husband, is arguably the only person in the novel besides Marlowe that acts unselfishly. Although it is never explicit, Marlowe seems attracted to this feature in her, allowing himself to get close to her and demanding that she kiss him. “There’s no hurry. All this was arranged in advanced, rehearsed to the last detail, timed to the split second. Just like a radio program. No hurry at all. Kiss me, Silver-Wig” (187). True, there is some humor in this scene, but Marlowe’s attraction to Silver-Wig is undeniable, an attraction prompted by Silver-Wig’s unselfish act for her husband.
We witness a genuine Marlowe again in the closing paragraphs of the novel, where he waxes philosophically about death and the meaning of life. The barrier Marlowe creates with his humor is entirely gone in this scene, allowing him to comment on others as well as himself genuinely and honestly. Here is an excerpt from the closing.
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill?
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the
same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where
you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. (219).
Like many of the passages in the novel, it is never quite clear exactly what is being said. What exactly does Marlowe mean, for example, by “nastiness.” He first mentions it in relation to dying — “the nastiness of how you died.” In the next sentence, however, he claims that he is “part of the nastiness now.” But Marlowe is not dying, nor is he dead. More probably, Marlowe is referring to Rusty Regan’s manner of death ― specifically, a relatively good man senselessly killed in a dirty oil field by the unstable Carmen Sternwood. Ultimately, however, the meaning is problematic. There is the word “now.” Marlowe is “part of the nastiness now,” implying that before he was not.
Applying what is being said in a more general sense, the nastiness becomes the sum of events that have led up to this final scene ― that is, the countless cursory, detached, and impersonal adventures that Marlowe has experienced. Only now, in retrospect, they are not seen as fun or adventurous, but only nasty. This change in Marlowe’s perception comes after the final problem of the case has been solved, namely the problem of what happened to Regan. No longer on the case, Marlowe now has time to reflect on exactly what has been accomplished and it is here that we come full circle, for Marlowe most likely always primarily wanted to find Regan for the General while the blackmailing angle was secondary. Finding out that Regan died senselessly, thereby leaving an old man without a friend, the full humanity of Marlowe comes through and the comic edge is shattered. Marlowe’s concern for the General represents a meaningful and genuine act of humanity which is made all the more powerful by its contrast with the endless parade of murderers, thugs, and sexual deviants that Marlowe has experienced in his detached and impersonal manner while working the case.
This change in Marlowe may not be believable. Perhaps it is too sudden. Perhaps there is not enough in the novel that precedes it to warrant it. Nonetheless, the dramatic tone combined with the lack of humor in the final passages make it clear that the Marlowe at the end of the novel is different from the Marlowe we witness throughout much of the rest of the novel. He now no longer seems like someone who enjoys the mystery and adventure of endlessly going from one unknown person or place to the next. Such a shift represents a more inclusive humanity, one that recognizes that everyone, including Marlowe, needs a more stable environment, one that includes a good friend like Terrance Regan.
Works Cited
Athanasourelis, John Paul. “Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond
Chandler.” Studies in the Novel 35 (2003): 325-338.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Knopf, 1966.
Hilgart, John. “Philip Marlowe’s Labor of Words.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 44
(2002): 368-391.
The Big Sleep draws a reader in initially simply because it is a lot of fun, and this fun emanates in large part from the adventure and mystery of Philip Marlowe and his work. Not just mystery, moreover, as in whodunit, but mystery as in never knowing what place Marlowe will go next and what he will find when he gets there. Readers are fascinated with exploring the unknown, especially when doing it from a safe distance. When Marlowe approaches Geiger’s house after seeing “a single flash of hard white light,” the reader wonders what the flash was (31). Was it the flash from a gunshot? Marlowe, of course, as if in response to the reader’s sense of adventure, decides on going into the house. As he is about to knock on the door he hears three shots. The reader wonders what is going on and what will happen next. Will Marlowe be shot? Did someone get shot? Is someone dying? Were they even gunshots at all?(The text does leave room for a little doubt.) All of these questions run through the reader’s mind as Marlowe is deciding how to get into the house. And, of course, all of these questions are running through Marlowe’s mind as well. And this is the point, really. Marlowe loves the mystery and adventure of his work, the idea of not knowing what is in the house but really wanting to find out.
The entire novel, in fact, dances endlessly from one adventure to the next as Marlowe works his case. The very opening of the novel starts in a strange place ― the Sternwood residence. From the very beginning, then, the mystery and adventure start. Even within the Sternwood residence there are distinct places of travel and adventure: the main hallway, the General’s greenhouse, Vivian’s room. Marlowe works his leads and hunches and travels to whomever or wherever he needs to. From the Sternwood residence he goes to A.G. Geiger’s bookshop and eventually trails a man out of the store. From there he visits a couple of other bookstores. After that he drives to Geiger’s house and waits, eventually seeing the “flash of hard white light.” At this point he decides to make his way into the house. He observes someone running out of the house. Inside he finds a dead man and a live naked woman. It is difficult to be bored ― for the reader of Marlowe ― with this kind of frenetic movement from one mysterious place to the other; this is a lot of fun. Marlowe reminds us of the strangeness of all the people and places he is encountering by constantly describing them. Chapter seven opens up with a description of Geiger’s house, which Marlowe has just entered.
It was a wide room, the whole width of the house. It had a low beamed ceiling and brown plaster walls decked out
with strips of Chinese embroidery and Chinese and Japanese prints in grained wood frames. There were low
bookshelves, there was a thick pinkish Chinese rug in which a gopher could have spent a week without showing his
nose above the nap. There were floor cushions, bits of odd silk tossed around, as if whoever lived there had to
have a piece he could reach out and thumb (33).
The description continues for several more sentences. It is interesting to observe the synthesis of fun and adventure as Marlowe examines a strange room in a house and jokes how the rug was so think a “gopher could have spent a week without showing his nose above the nap.” Marlowe’s descriptions extend to people as well, even people he has already met. Here he is describing his second encounter with Vivian Sternwood.
She wore brownish speckled tweeds, a mannish shirt and tie, hand-carved walking shoes. Her stockings were just as sheer as the day before, but she wasn’t showing as much of her legs. Her black hair was glossy under a brown
Robin Hood hat that might have cost fifty dollars and looked as if you could have made it with one hand out of a
desk blotter (53).
Again, Marlowe relishes adventuring into the strange. It is clear he enjoys every new encounter and that each one provides him with a wealth of material for his comic wit. Vivian, for example, is made to look like a silly woman who wears a Robin Hood hat made with one hand out of a desk blotter. The important point to take away from these kinds of descriptions is Marlowe’s way of relating to people; he is not very interested in getting close to anyone, emotionally or otherwise. His comic edge, for example, detaches people from him. He does not treat people as being equal to him, but as fodder for the comic barrier he creates between him and them. This barrier that Marlowe creates through his language has been commented on by John Hilgart, but Hilgart views it primarily as a defense Marlowe employs to protect his identity from being consumed in a bleak, crime-ridden world.
Marlowe himself, moreover, makes it quite clear that he is enjoying himself. Soon after Marlowe meets General Sternwood, he wonders why the General needs him to work the case, thinking that the job is really “a lawyer’s job” (17). But he takes the case nonetheless. He admits there may be more to it than meets the eye and thinks “At a casual glance I thought I might have a lot of fun finding out” (17). There is a playfulness to this thought that gives away Marlowe’s modus operandi ― Marlowe is really less concerned with his clients and more concerned with having a little fun. Even the word “casual” gives insight into how he approaches life. A little further into the novel, while Marlowe is still in the early stages of the case, he is having difficulty meeting up with A.G. Geiger. He decides to look up his phone number in the phone book and, after finding it, says, “I dropped my nickel and dialed his number just for fun” (25). Again, there is very much the sense that Marlowe enjoys snooping around and just seeing where things might lead. Talking to Geiger on the phone may not lead anywhere. On the other hand, it may prove very beneficial. In either case, however, Marlowe is going to have fun doing it.
In addition, Marlowe just enjoys talking. His simile-rich wise-guy kind of language is witty, clipped, provoking, and, quite very often, hilarious. Here is part of how he describes finding Carmen Sternwood sitting drugged out and naked on a chair in Geiger’s house.
She seemed to be unconscious, but she didn’t have the pose of unconsciousness. She looked as if, in her mind, she was doing something very important and making a fine job of it. Out of her mouth came a tinny chuckling noise which didn’t change her expression or even move her lips. She was wearing a pair of long jade earrings. They
were nice earrings and had probably cost a couple of hundred dollars. She wasn’t wearing anything else (34).
This is meant to be funny. There is, moreover, a structure to it that illustrates the work that went into making it funny. Rather than stating she was naked first, which is the first thing anyone would notice, he states it last and almost as if it were an afterthought. Marlowe, in other words, as he is setting up his joke and delivering the punch-line, is not overly concerned with finding an almost comatose naked lady on drugs sitting on a chair. Rather, he is more drawn to observing the comic elements of the whole situation. The humorous aspect to the whole scene, therefore, helps to objectify Carmen as the butt of a joke as well as indicate Marlowe’s rather casual and careless attitude to her. He is enjoying her as a funny spectacle more than as a woman in an indecent position who is in serious need of help.
Although the novel abounds in this kind of humor, it would be misleading to suggest that Marlowe is always detached, impersonal, and forever just trying to find novel people and situations so that he can find something to laugh about. True, much of the novel is in this humorous vein, but there are moments and areas where Marlowe seems genuine, real, or compassionate. One of these, for example, is his attitude toward General Sternwood. Although Marlowe’s attitude is difficult to determine exactly, it does seem as though he is genuinely touched by the relationship the General had with Terrance Regan. Marlowe tells the General that he is still looking for Regan because he believes Regan may have had something to do with the blackmail angle. For all practical purposes, however, the case does seem to be closed and so there is really no practical reason for anyone to find Regan. Marlowe’s interest in finding him, therefore, illustrates his desire to bring Regan and the General back together, or to at least find out what happened to Regan so that the General has closure. Marlowe’s humanitarian gesture is legitimized by the fact that the General ultimately encourages Marlowe to find Regan.
Another example of Marlowe’s genuineness and compassion is shown through his encounter with Mona Grant or “Silver Wig.” Mona, who goes into hiding in order to protect her husband, is arguably the only person in the novel besides Marlowe that acts unselfishly. Although it is never explicit, Marlowe seems attracted to this feature in her, allowing himself to get close to her and demanding that she kiss him. “There’s no hurry. All this was arranged in advanced, rehearsed to the last detail, timed to the split second. Just like a radio program. No hurry at all. Kiss me, Silver-Wig” (187). True, there is some humor in this scene, but Marlowe’s attraction to Silver-Wig is undeniable, an attraction prompted by Silver-Wig’s unselfish act for her husband.
We witness a genuine Marlowe again in the closing paragraphs of the novel, where he waxes philosophically about death and the meaning of life. The barrier Marlowe creates with his humor is entirely gone in this scene, allowing him to comment on others as well as himself genuinely and honestly. Here is an excerpt from the closing.
What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill?
You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the
same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where
you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. (219).
Like many of the passages in the novel, it is never quite clear exactly what is being said. What exactly does Marlowe mean, for example, by “nastiness.” He first mentions it in relation to dying — “the nastiness of how you died.” In the next sentence, however, he claims that he is “part of the nastiness now.” But Marlowe is not dying, nor is he dead. More probably, Marlowe is referring to Rusty Regan’s manner of death ― specifically, a relatively good man senselessly killed in a dirty oil field by the unstable Carmen Sternwood. Ultimately, however, the meaning is problematic. There is the word “now.” Marlowe is “part of the nastiness now,” implying that before he was not.
Applying what is being said in a more general sense, the nastiness becomes the sum of events that have led up to this final scene ― that is, the countless cursory, detached, and impersonal adventures that Marlowe has experienced. Only now, in retrospect, they are not seen as fun or adventurous, but only nasty. This change in Marlowe’s perception comes after the final problem of the case has been solved, namely the problem of what happened to Regan. No longer on the case, Marlowe now has time to reflect on exactly what has been accomplished and it is here that we come full circle, for Marlowe most likely always primarily wanted to find Regan for the General while the blackmailing angle was secondary. Finding out that Regan died senselessly, thereby leaving an old man without a friend, the full humanity of Marlowe comes through and the comic edge is shattered. Marlowe’s concern for the General represents a meaningful and genuine act of humanity which is made all the more powerful by its contrast with the endless parade of murderers, thugs, and sexual deviants that Marlowe has experienced in his detached and impersonal manner while working the case.
This change in Marlowe may not be believable. Perhaps it is too sudden. Perhaps there is not enough in the novel that precedes it to warrant it. Nonetheless, the dramatic tone combined with the lack of humor in the final passages make it clear that the Marlowe at the end of the novel is different from the Marlowe we witness throughout much of the rest of the novel. He now no longer seems like someone who enjoys the mystery and adventure of endlessly going from one unknown person or place to the next. Such a shift represents a more inclusive humanity, one that recognizes that everyone, including Marlowe, needs a more stable environment, one that includes a good friend like Terrance Regan.
Works Cited
Athanasourelis, John Paul. “Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond
Chandler.” Studies in the Novel 35 (2003): 325-338.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Knopf, 1966.
Hilgart, John. “Philip Marlowe’s Labor of Words.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 44
(2002): 368-391.