The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep
source
Name	The Big Sleep
Author	Raymond Chandler
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Crime fiction
Publisher	Alfred A. Knopf
Pub date	1939
Media type	Print

The Big Sleep is a 1939 crime novel by Raymond Chandler featuring private detective Philip Marlowe. Set in Los Angeles and its environs during the late 1930s, the novel interweaves a complex murder mystery with intersections among wealthy families, corrupt officials, and organized crime figures. Chandler's prose and moral vision helped shape the hardboiled tradition alongside contemporaries such as Dashiell Hammett and influenced later writers and filmmakers including James M. Cain, Ross Macdonald, and Elmore Leonard.

Plot

The narrative follows private investigator Philip Marlowe after he is hired by aging patriarch General Sternwood to deal with the gambling debts of Sternwood's daughter, Carmen Sternwood. Marlowe's inquiries bring him into contact with booksellers, blackmailers, and mob-connected operators like Dean and Arthur Gwynn Geiger. Encounters escalate with the involvement of cab drivers, chauffeurs, and police detectives tied to Murder, Inc.-era networks, leading to multiple deaths including that of a chauffeur and a bookseller, and culminating in confrontations with a seductive socialite, Vivian Rutledge, and the revelation of hidden crimes and family secrets. Along the way Marlowe negotiates with private bankers, confronts corrupt lawmen, and uncovers links to narcotics trafficking and exploitation schemes tied to Hollywood figures and expatriate circles.

Characters

Key figures include detective Philip Marlowe, client General Sternwood, and Sternwood's daughters Carmen Sternwood and Vivian Rutledge. Antagonists and suspects range from small-time hoodlums to established racketeers; notable peripheral figures parallel historical archetypes such as corrupt detectives resembling those implicated in scandals involving Los Angeles Police Department factions and organized crime bosses of the era like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. Other personalities who populate the novel's milieu reflect the worlds of publishing, gambling, and nightclubs associated with names like Saints and Sinners Club-style venues, as well as minor aristocrats and expatriates linked to San Marino, California salons and Hollywood social sets. Marlowe's moral code places him at odds with socialites, blackmailers, and crooked attorneys modeled on real-world legal controversies of the 1930s.

Themes and Analysis

Chandler examines decadence among the upper class through the Sternwood family's decline, critiquing the corrosive influence of wealth and vice as seen in scenes referencing gambling salons, bookshops, and illicit sex rings. The novel foregrounds ethical isolation and solitary heroism embodied by Philip Marlowe, resonating with tropes in hardboiled fiction and echoing existential concerns found in contemporary works by John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway. Layered motifs include sexual predation, moral ambiguity, and institutional corruption, paralleling public scandals involving municipal politics and police corruption in Los Angeles during the late 1930s. Stylistically, Chandler's prose juxtaposes sharp similes and ironic narration, a technique that influenced later narrators in detective fiction from Ross Macdonald to James Ellroy.

Film Adaptations

The novel inspired notable adaptations in Hollywood and international cinema, most famously the 1946 film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. That film compresses Chandler's plot and shifts certain character emphases, producing an iconic film noir alongside works like Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon. A later 1978 adaptation directed by Michael Winner starred Robert Mitchum and Joan Collins, offering a periodized reinterpretation contemporaneous with neo-noir revivals that included films like Chinatown and Taxi Driver. The novel's cinematic legacy extends to television adaptations, radio dramatizations on networks akin to NBC and CBS, and stage versions produced in repertory theaters and noir festivals influenced by institutions such as the British Film Institute and the American Film Institute.

Publication and Reception

Published in 1939 by Alfred A. Knopf, the novel followed Chandler's earlier short stories and his debut novel The Big Sleep's contemporaries in the pulps and literary magazines that also featured work by Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane. Early critical response praised Chandler's style and atmospheric depiction of Los Angeles, while some reviewers criticized the novel's convoluted plot; later assessments by scholars associated with institutions like UCLA and USC position the work as central to American crime literature. The novel influenced paperback revolutions led by publishers such as Penguin Books and Ballantine Books and cemented Chandler's reputation, earning him posthumous recognition in lists compiled by entities like the Modern Library and the Library of America.

Category:1939 novels Category:Novels by Raymond Chandler