A chief agent of this transformation was Raymond Chandler himself.The Big Sleep was Chandler s first novel, and it introduced the world to Philip Marlowe, the archetypal wisecracking, world-weary private detective who now occupies a permanent place in the American imagination.
![]() But his work was confined within the limitations of genre fiction during his lifetime and many years after, even though he was lauded while he was alive by W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood. The novel was also made into two films, with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe in the 1946 film, and Robert Mitchum portraying Philip Marlowe in the 1978 film. Dick Powell, Robert Montgomery, James Garner and many other actors have portrayed Philip Marlowe in films based on Raymond Chandler s other novels). He was born in Chicago, but he was raised in Nebraska, England and Ireland and he attended Dulwich College, where he studied languages and the classics. After he was fired from his job as an oil executive due to his drinking and other offenses, he became a regular contributor to the pulp magazines at the age of 45. ![]() Raymond Chandler s first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. The novel sold about 10,000 copies in two print runs for Knopf. The novel was not a best-seller, but it sold more than the average mystery novel. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didnt care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. So begins the well-known and celebrated opening that introduces the reader to Philip Marlowe, the first-person narrator of The Big Sleep. The Big Sleep is a novel about organized crime, blackmail, gambling, drugs, alcohol, sex, wealth, family secrets and murder. Philip Marlowes narration and running commentary on everyone he meets and everything he encounters is timeless. ![]() Its character was set by its sudden expansion, and also by the greed and self-promotion that went with it, the editors write. It was a city of excess, escapism (Hollywood), tawdriness, exhibitionism, and corruption. The Big Sleep remains a classic crime novel that is discovered by each new generation of crime aficionados (I first read it as a teen-age crime-fiction aficionado in the early 1960s) and the novel continues to inspire crime writers and film makers.
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