Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond ChandlerBook to Movie Challenge (and maybe the 2nds Challenge if I get stuck)
I haven't seen this movie at all, and it has been made twice, once with Dick Powell in the forties, and once with Robert Mitchum (TV movie in the 1970s) as Philip Marlowe. I think I'd watch the Mitchum version myself. The book is a classic, starring the hardboiled detective Marlowe. Chandler is a great writer, but this once didn't grab me quite as much as The Big Sleep, but I wasn't as in the mood for this book as I've been too tired to read. Chandler has Marlowe so cool, so hip, it can be hard to follow what he says, and why. I don't try to make sense of the mystery, just go with the flow, and know that Marlowe knows what he is doing.
Marlowe was initially looking for somebody, and then got caught up in a jewelry theft, and ransom, and some rich dame, and crooked cops, and clunks on the head. (I find it hard to write normally, I immediately fall into the pattern of Bogart talking, in sparse, concise phrases)
It was a good read; several times I'd stop and reread a particularly cynical/funny phrase, and by the end, the mystery tied up really well. I would have enjoyed it more if I had been able to read it for an hour or two at a time, but I found I got 3 minutes segments before being interupted this week, too many children, and that made it hard to really get into the story. My bad, Mr Chandler; I'll still keep reading your work.
My husband is a huge Raymond Chandler fan and I know he has influenced a number of my favorite crime fiction writers. Someday I'll actually get around to giving him a try. It's hard when you keep getting interrupted while reading, especially when a book would be better read with less of them. I am glad you still enjoyed this one though!
ReplyDeleteMost books are hard to really enjoy unless you get chunks of time to read. I had that problem on our trip. I could only read 2-3 pages at a time and usually less than 10 pages a day. Hard to follow the storyline.
ReplyDeleteAdded this to the Book to Movie listing. Doesn't really sound like my type of book.
ReplyDelete