The Big Sleep, novel by Raymond Chandler

THE BIG SLEEP
Chapter Twenty-Four (Opening Paragraph)
By Raymond Chandler

The apartment house lobby was empty this time. No gunman waiting under the potted palm to give me orders. I took the automatic elevator up to my floor and walked along the hallway to the tune of a muted radio behind a door. I needed a drink and was in a hurry to get one. I didn’t switch the light on inside the door. I made straight for the kitchenette and brought up short in three or four feet. Something was wrong. Something on the air, a scent. The shades were down at the windows, and the streetlight leaking in at the sides made a dim light in the room. I stood still and listened. The scent on the air was a perfume, a heavy cloying perfume.

ABOUT THE NOVEL: Published in 1939, The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature detective Philip Marlowe. The book has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978. The story, set in Los Angeles, is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing one another and many secrets exposed throughout the narrative. In 1999, the book was voted one of the ”100 Books of the Century” by French newspaper Le Monde. In 2005, it was included in “TIME’s List of the 100 Best Novels.” (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

Writing advice from Raymond Chandler

WRITING ADVICE FROM RAYMOND CHANDLER:

• A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

• Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder… The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It [style] is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

• The challenge is to write about real things magically.

• The more you reason the less you create.

• Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it.

• I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn’t have to be great writing, it doesn’t even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

Photo: Raymond Chandler’s novels

Writing Advice from Raymond Chandler

WRITING ADVICE FROM RAYMOND CHANDLER:

• A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

• Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder… The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It [style] is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

• The challenge is to write about real things magically.

• The more you reason the less you create.

• Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it.

• I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn’t have to be great writing, it doesn’t even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

Photo: Raymond Chandler’s novels

Haruki Murakami Reads Ross Macdonald

In this excerpt from The Paris Review interview with Haruki Murakami — bestselling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle — the writer discusses the influence of hardboiled detective fiction on his work.

INTERVIEWER: … hard-boiled American detective fiction has clearly been a valuable resource. When were you exposed to the genre and who turned you on to it?

MURAKAMI: As a high-school student, I fell in love with crime novels. I was living in Kobe, which is a port city where many foreigners and sailors used to come and sell their paperbacks to the secondhand bookshops. I was poor, but I could buy paperbacks cheaply. I learned to read English from those books and that was so exciting.

INTERVIEWER: What was the first book you read in English?

MURAKAMI: The Name Is Archer, by Ross Macdonald. I learned a lot of things from those books. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. At the same time I also loved to read Tolstoyand Dostoevsky. Those books are also page-turners; they’re very long, but I couldn’t stop reading. So for me it’s the same thing, Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler. Even now, my ideal for writing fiction is to put Dostoevsky and Chandler together in one book. That’s my goal.

INTERVIEWER: At what age did you first read Kafka?

MURAKAMI: When I was fifteen. I read The Castle; that was a great book. And The Trial.

INTERVIEWER: That’s interesting. Both those novels were left unfinished, which of course means that they never resolve; your novels too—particularly your more recent books, like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle—often seem to resist a resolution of the kind that the reader is perhaps expecting. Could that in any way be due to Kafka’s influence?

MURAKAMI: Not solely. You’ve read Raymond Chandler, of course. His books don’t really offer conclusions. He might say, He is the killer, but it doesn’t matter to me who did it. There was a very interesting episode when Howard Hawks made a picture of The Big Sleep. Hawks couldn’t understand who killed the chauffeur, so he called Chandler and asked, and Chandler answered, I don’t care! Same for me. Conclusion means nothing at all. I don’t care who the killer is in The Brothers Karamazov.

INTERVIEWER: And yet the desire to find out who killed the chauffeur is part of what makes The Big Sleep a page-turner.

MURAKAMI: I myself, as I’m writing, don’t know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don’t know the conclusion at all and I don’t know what’s going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don’t know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there’s no purpose to writing the story.

Read the rest of The Paris Review interview here.

Photo: Haruki Murakami and cat friend.

Distilled Stories, quote by Raymond Chandler

“A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.”

RAYMOND CHANDLER

In searching for an image to accompany this quote, I discovered an interesting project from 2010, when Just Beer, a brewery in Westport, Massachusetts, released a 12-part hardboiled detective story — on the labels of the company’s India Pale Ale.

According to an article at beerpulse.com: “The Case of the IPA” is a hardboiled detective farce printed chapter by chapter on 12 bottles of a newly released India Pale Ale. Each 22-ounce bottle not only has 22 ounces of brilliantly deduced IPA [India Pale Ale], but also 1 of the 12 chapters of the story. Each case has 12 bottles, which makes for the entire tale told in a case. And so, “The Case of the IPA” is indeed a case of the IPA. Brewer Harry Smith proposed the idea to author Paul Goodchild and they quickly agreed on a format: a noir-ish detective serial. Smith brewed up a batch of hoppy craft brew whilst Goodchild penned the story. It’s a mystery of zany brewers and their intrigues; sure to tickle the ribs and please the belly of any fan of craft beer. As this is a bottle by bottle mystery, Just Beer reminds all to “please read responsibly.”

###

Chapter 1 from The Case of the IPA

I do not boast. My credentials are those of an intrepid adventurer. They are both obvious as the scar on my cheek and subtle as the squint in my eye. For several years now, I’ve been a two-bit shamus in a dirty, gritty, bluesy, and cool city of some renown. I stepped when the boil got too hot on The Case of the India Pale Ale. It started with a summons from a wealthy brewer named Cornelius Fuggle(no relation). He lived in a swank starter mansion in the ‘burbs. The casual staff showed me to his office, knocked once then gestured. I opened the door, pushing against a stack of papers and books. ‘Mind your step,’ came a distracted disembodied voice. I weaved through the OCD towers of yellowed tomes into a clearing dominated by a giant repro of an ersatz antique chart. Fuggle was plotting a route from Blackwall to the sub-continent, getting data from a mildewed log, fiddling with dividers and a straight edge, drawing with a quill dipped in a well of his own blood. ‘Authenticity!’ he exclaimed then passed out.

Photo: Just Beer’s India Pale Ale with labels that feature “The Case of the  IPA”

Writing Advice from Raymond Chandler

WRITING ADVICE FROM RAYMOND CHANDLER:

• A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

• Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder… The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It [style] is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

• The challenge is to write about real things magically.

• The more you reason the less you create.

• Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it.

• I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn’t have to be great writing, it doesn’t even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

Photo: Raymond Chandler’s novels

The Big Sleep, novel by Raymond Chandler

THE BIG SLEEP
Chapter Twenty-Four (Opening Paragraph)
By Raymond Chandler

The apartment house lobby was empty this time. No gunman waiting under the potted palm to give me orders. I took the automatic elevator up to my floor and walked along the hallway to the tune of a muted radio behind a door. I needed a drink and was in a hurry to get one. I didn’t switch the light on inside the door. I made straight for the kitchenette and brought up short in three or four feet. Something was wrong. Something on the air, a scent. The shades were down at the windows, and the streetlight leaking in at the sides made a dim light in the room. I stood still and listened. The scent on the air was a perfume, a heavy cloying perfume.

ABOUT THE NOVEL: Published in 1939, The Big Sleep is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature detective Philip Marlowe. The book has been adapted twice into film, once in 1946 and again in 1978. The story, set in Los Angeles, is noted for its complexity, with many characters double-crossing one another and many secrets exposed throughout the narrative. In 1999, the book was voted one of the “100 Books of the Century” by French newspaper Le Monde. In 2005, it was included in “TIME’s List of the 100 Best Novels.” (Read more at wikipedia.org.)

LAVA Literary Salon: A Dashiell Hammett Evening, 4/27/13

Our friends at LAVA (Los Angeles Visionary Association) have asked us to help spread the word about an event scheduled for Saturday, April 27, 2013 — LAVA Literary Salon: A Dashiell Hammett Evening. This sounds like an amazing event — and if you make at least part of your living as a writer, it’s probably tax deductible (research!) — a special evening to celebrate the life and work of Dashiell Hammett, the author who started the hardboiled detective genre.

Here’s what you can expect…

Julie M. Rivett (Hammett’s granddaughter and editor of several books about him) wlll discuss the author’s professional life, private life, public life, and literary legacy.

Richard Layman, a Hammett biographer, will trace the author’s remarkable journey from high school dropout to world renowned writer.

Q&A with Rivett and Layman.

The Long Beach Shakespeare Company will present scenes starring legendary Hammett characters, including Nick and Nora Charles.

Buffet Dinner that features gourmet fare popular in exclusive restaurants circa 1950.

Date: Saturday, April 27, 2013

Time: 630-10:30 p.m.

Location: Los Angeles Athletic Club, 431 West 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90014

Tickets: $100 (more information here)

ABOUT THE LAVA LITERARY SALON SERIES: LAVA’s Literary Salon is a place for lovers of great Los Angeles writers to come together in historic spaces for good company, fine food, and fascinating discussions by experts in the field. Events take place in the historic Los Angeles Athletic Club, where Raymond Chandler, then a young oil executive, played bridge and eavesdropped on the powerful men who would shape the city and his detective fiction.

Thoughts on Writing, Quotes by Raymond Chandler

RAYMOND CHANDLER’S THOUGHTS ON WRITING

• A writer who is afraid to overreach himself is as useless as a general who is afraid to be wrong.

• Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder… The moment a man begins to talk about technique that’s proof that he is fresh out of ideas.

• The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It [style] is a projection of personality and you have to have a personality before you can project it. It is the product of emotion and perception.

• The challenge is to write about real things magically.

• The more you reason the less you create.

• Don’t ever write anything you don’t like yourself and if you do like it, don’t take anyone’s advice about changing it.

• I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn’t have to be great writing, it doesn’t even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.

Photo: Raymond Chandler’s novels

Distilled Stories, Quote by Raymond Chandler

“A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.”

RAYMOND CHANDLER

In searching for an image to accompany this quote, I discovered an interesting project from 2010, when Just Beer, a brewery in Westport, Massachusetts, released a 12-part hardboiled detective story — on the labels of the company’s India Pale Ale.

According to an article at beerpulse.com: “The Case of the IPA” is a hardboiled detective farce printed chapter by chapter on 12 bottles of a newly released India Pale Ale. Each 22-ounce bottle not only has 22 ounces of brilliantly deduced IPA [India Pale Ale], but also 1 of the 12 chapters of the story. Each case has 12 bottles, which makes for the entire tale told in a case. And so, “The Case of the IPA” is indeed a case of the IPA. Brewer Harry Smith proposed the idea to author Paul Goodchild and they quickly agreed on a format: a noir-ish detective serial. Smith brewed up a batch of hoppy craft brew whilst Goodchild penned the story. It’s a mystery of zany brewers and their intrigues; sure to tickle the ribs and please the belly of any fan of craft beer. As this is a bottle by bottle mystery, Just Beer reminds all to “please read responsibly.”

###

I admire the cleverness of this project — and, for laughs, am posting the first chapter of this curiosity.

Chapter 1 from The Case of the IPA

I do not boast. My credentials are those of an intrepid adventurer. They are both obvious as the scar on my cheek and subtle as the squint in my eye. For several years now, I’ve been a two-bit shamus in a dirty, gritty, bluesy, and cool city of some renown. I stepped when the boil got too hot on The Case of the India Pale Ale. It started with a summons from a wealthy brewer named Cornelius Fuggle(no relation). He lived in a swank starter mansion in the ‘burbs. The casual staff showed me to his office, knocked once then gestured. I opened the door, pushing against a stack of papers and books. ‘Mind your step,’ came a distracted disembodied voice. I weaved through the OCD towers of yellowed tomes into a clearing dominated by a giant repro of an ersatz antique chart. Fuggle was plotting a route from Blackwall to the sub-continent, getting data from a mildewed log, fiddling with dividers and a straight edge, drawing with a quill dipped in a well of his own blood. ‘Authenticity!’ he exclaimed then passed out.

Photo: Just Beer’s India Pale Ale with labels that feature “The Case of the  IPA”