Kyloe on 2/8/2006 at 16:31
Heart of Darkness would be an excellent choice for a busy month.
Uncia on 2/8/2006 at 16:47
Yeah, such an awesome and overlooked game. :heart:
Scots Taffer on 2/8/2006 at 23:33
Can I finish Life of Pi by September? WHO KNOWS?
I think I'll skip The Big Sleep (but I'll buy it for later reading) and suggest The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood for October.
SubJeff on 3/8/2006 at 17:20
Waterstones is doing a 3 for 2 on sci-fi, fantasy and crime atm so I picked up The Big Sleep (+2 others) yesterday. It's to be read this month and discussed next? I'm getting through the Book of the New Sun at such a rate that I might be able to manage them both by then.
Jonesy on 3/8/2006 at 21:35
I recommend the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon for October. Pulitzer prize winner in the fiction category, 2001.
Agent Monkeysee on 3/8/2006 at 23:59
Quote Posted by Jonesy
I recommend the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon for October. Pulitzer prize winner in the fiction category, 2001.
This is an awesome book and you guys should totally do it.
dracflamloc on 4/8/2006 at 15:11
Dunno how I missed the book club thread either but I'll be reading this one.
Paz on 26/8/2006 at 10:48
For anyone in the UK who wants to recreate the compare and contrast antics of GCSE English, has access to Channel Five and will be awake tomorrow afternoon, The Big Sleep is on at 2.40pm
Stitch on 1/9/2006 at 16:58
And it's on!
SPOILERS FOLLOW FFS DON'T READ ON IF YOU AREN'T DONE WITH THE BOOK
SERIOUSLY
OKAY
My take on <U>The Big Sleep</U> is, unfortunately, pretty much what I expected: a thoroughly enjoyable and yet paper thin read. Well written, engrossing, and utterly unable to plunge even a finger below the genre surface. Harry Potter with bullets and broads.
So what to discuss, then? It's difficult to resist getting seduced by Chandler's world full of greedy double-crossers and dangerous dames. The writing was immediate, clever, and even occasionally beautiful in its own grimy way. Marlowe was a likable protagonist, even if his demeanor sometimes worked against the story itself.
There's something thrilling about an unflappable protagonist who always seems two steps ahead of everyone else. The downside is Marlowe never really seemed to be in any real danger, which took the edge off of any scene that was supposed to be tense. Marlowe's ever-present seen-it-all cool also rendered incongruous any displays of genuine emotion; after the unmourned death of numerous underworld flunkies why would I believe that Harry Jones' murder would give Marlowe cause to even blink twice? Additionally, Marlowe's hunches often seemed like cheats fed from Chandler to give the readers the illusion that the private dick was more clever than he actually was. Giving a protagonist occasional omniscience is cheap writing.
Plot-wise, the book didn't build particularly well. Ideally a story of this genre builds steadily as the protagonist gets sucked into a situation more dangerous than he initially suspected, whereas <U>The Big Sleep</U> wraps up, in a sense, halfway through, leaving Marlowe to wander through a series of locales in near-aimless pursuit of someone he wasn't even sure he wanted to find. I'll chalk this up to being Chandler's first full length novel, but the loss of momentum was grating.
Having said all that, <U>The Big Sleep</U> was a great (if dated) read. In a book as shallow as this there's little I can think of to discuss beyond what I thought worked and what I thought didn't, and unfortunately it's far easier to discuss the latter. In the end this was an extremely successful foray into genre fiction that utterly defined the genre as we think of it today, and it's not difficult to see why.
So is it enough that genre fiction succeeds on its own terms? Or does a book have an obligation to aim higher than straightforward, surface-level action? Of course not. I firmly believe that brilliantly-executed trash is every bit as vital as anything you've ever read in a literature class. But as a source of discussion, it seems pretty bankrupt.
I'll be delighted if proven wrong, of course.
Aerothorn on 1/9/2006 at 17:24
Quote Posted by Stitch
But as a source of discussion, it seems pretty bankrupt.
I'll be delighted if proven wrong, of course.
Considering that you folks spent 1-2 pages argueing about it before you even read it, I'd say it made for pretty good discussion:P
Finished this book a few weeks ago so it's fading from memory but I'll give what I can remember.
Okay, my thoughts (glad I got here early so I'm not too influenced by the persuasive demagogues):
First off, I was suprised at how un-dated it was. I mean, it's written in 1939. Frankly, I can't watch most movies from the 1950s without being shocked at the dated sexism/racism/Suburbian Dream sort of thing. But I guess books age better? Maybe? My experience with noir is limited to a few films and Grim Fandango, and the influence the genre has had; never read an 'original' noir novel. So maybe it's just that the genre hasn't really changed in 60 years.
But it's more that it seemed just like a crime novel set in modern times. Our life is full of things they didn't have in 1939. Look around your room. Now remove everything with plastic in it. And mobile phones. And personal computers. And steroes. Etc. Bam, most of my stuff is gone. But it seems like life was basically the same, at least as far as the criminal underworld went.
The only part that struck me was dated was the whole underground pornography thing - I was quite confused until it occured to me that pornography was probably illegal back then (constitution be damned). And of course, a lot of the slang is dated (though sometimes humorously slow, as with 'frail').
The other thing that suprised me was the writing style. Usually in first-person novels we have a direct window into the narrator's head, but here we don't. Even when Phil talks about his thought process it's rarely entirely clear what's going on - so as stylistic as it may be it still requires you to read between the lines in ways most first person novels do. It took me a while to begin to understand just WHY Phil was such a horrendous prick to everybody (and I'm not sure I entirely do).
Also, yeah, on one hand I give the ending points for not being 100% clean and tidy, but it was a little anti-climatic, and the whole mini-romance thing with Mars' wife just didn't make much sense to me. Er. I probably should grab my novel and just respond to other people's more intelligent comments.
