He had “a great deal of domed brown forehead that might at a careless glance have seemed a dwelling place for brains” (The Big Sleep) … “a dimple in his chin you could have lost a marble in” (“Mandarin’s Jade”) … “one of those moustaches that get stuck under your fingernail” (“Trouble Is My Business”) … “a few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock” (The Big Sleep) … “hair the color of the inside of a sardine can” (“Blackmailers Don’t Shoot”) … “She had weedy hair of that vague color which is neither brown nor blonde, that hasn’t enough life in it to be ginger, and isn’t clean enough to be grey” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “pale eyebrows bristling and stiff and round like the little vegetable brushes the Fuller Brush man gives away” (The Big Sleep) … “A dry, tight, withered smile that would turn to powder if you touched it” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “[His] eyes popped so far out of his head they looked as if they were on stilts” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “Her lips rustled like tissue-paper” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “Her hair was as artificial as a night club lobby” (The High Window) … “a couple of eyebrows … they waved gently, like the antennae of some suspicious insect” (The Long Goodbye).
Nor did matters improve lower down his face …
The eyes were “the color of a drink of water” (The Lady in the Lake) … “dirty ice” (The Long Goodbye) … “as simple as forest water” (“I’ll Be Waiting”) … “the lifeless glitter of thick ice” (“I’ll Be Waiting”) … “as dead as stale oysters” (“Blackmailers Don’t Shoot”) … “Her eyes became narrow and almost as black and shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray” … they “snapped very wide open, like seeds bursting from a pod” (“Nevada Gas”) … and he had “a stare that would have frozen a fresh-baked potato” (The Long Goodbye) … “He had two expressions—hard and harder” (Playback) … “He had eyes the color of a drink of water” (“The Lady in the Lake”—short story).
His smile was “as stiff as a frozen fish. His long pale hands made gestures like sick butterflies over the top of his desk” (“The Man Who Liked Dogs”) … “a dry, tight, withered smile the lips have forgotten before they reach the eyes” (The Big Sleep) … “a nice smile—like an alligator” (“The Curtain”) … “the sort of smile the operating room sees” (The Big Sleep) … It “hung from the corners of his mouth like cobwebs in the corners of an old ceiling.” (“Bay City Blues”) … “He smiled—call it a down-payment on a smile” (Playback).
He had a nose “like a straphanger’s elbow” (The Little Sister) …
And as for the mouth … it was “a mouth made for three-decker sandwiches” (“Red Wind”) … “He had a mouth a dentist could have got both hands in, up to the elbows” (“The Man Who Liked Dogs”) … “His mouth looked like a black pit and his breath came in little waves, choked, stopped, came on again, limping” (“Red Wind”) … “He grinned widely with as many teeth as a horse” (“Red Wind”) … “He had beautiful teeth but they hadn’t grown in his mouth” (“Finger Man”).
“Her teeth had the nice shiny look that comes from standing all night in a glass of solution” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “He grinned. His teeth had a freckled look” (“Red Wind”) … “He grinned. His dentist was tired of waiting for him” (“The Pencil”) … “The smile fell off his face like a soiled rag” (Farewell, My Lovely).
And the voice that came out … “a dry voice. You might even call it parched” (The High Window) … “a toneless voice, flat as a piece of slate” (The Lady in the Lake) … “a soft voice, soft and dry, like the rustle of well-worn leather” (“The Curtain”) … “thin and dry and rustled like bamboo leaves” (Playback) … “a voice as silky as a burnt crust of toast” (“Red Wind”) … “The mellow voice of a circus barker” … “a voice like old ivory (“Guns at Cyrano’s”) … “a hushed voice, like a six-hundred dollar funeral” (The Little Sister) … “a voice the size of a marble” (The Lady in the Lake) … “hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock … a voice that could have been used for paint remover” (The Little Sister) … “used to split firewood” … “a voice as hard as the blade of a shovel” (The Lady in the Lake) … “the voice was still as a breadstick” (The Big Sleep) … “as cool as boarding house soup” (The Little Sister) … “as cool as a cafeteria dinner” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “a voice that grew icicles” … “The big man purred softly, like four tigers after dinner” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “a voice you could have cracked a Brazil nut on” (The Lady in the Lake).
It was … “fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest” (“Trouble Is My Business) … It “faded off into a sort of sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment” (The Little Sister) … “Thick and clogged, as if it was being strained through a curtain or somebody’s long white beard” (The Little Sister) … It “dragged itself out of her throat, like a sick man getting out of bed” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “like a convalescent rooster learning to crow again after a long illness” (The High Window) … “something like a very large and very old dog barking” (“Bay City Blues”) … “I left her laughing. The sound was like a hen having hiccups” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “He snorted and his nostrils got very wide. They had been wide enough for mouseholes to start with” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “She laughed without making any more sound than you would make cracking a bread stick” (Farewell, My Lovely).
And before a few more lines had passed, it “screamed like a dozen sheets tearing” (“Bay City Blues”).
“He talked the way New Yorkers used to talk before they learned to talk Flatbush” (The Long Goodbye) … “It is so long since I heard anyone talk the way Jane Austen writes” (“Pearls Are a Nuisance”).
As you look at his imagery, certain themes emerge. Animals abound: “I flicked the blackjack at his wandering hand. It drew into itself, like a slug on a hot stone” (“The Man Who Liked Dogs”) … “Fat spiders slept behind the windows like bishops” (“English Summer”) … “An hour crawled by like a sick cockroach” (The Long Goodbye) … He felt “as cold as a frog, as green as the back of a new dollar bill” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “a Charvet scarf you could have found in the dark by listening to it purr” (The Little Sister) … “The brown man screamed thinly, like a hungry kitten” (“Spanish Blood”) … “The thunder was tumbling about in the hills, like a bunch of elephants playing tag” (“The Curtain”) … “The lake was as motionless as a sleeping cat” (The Long Goodbye).
Of all the animal kingdom, he seemed to have a marked preference for fawns: “She jerked away from me like a startled fawn might, if I had a startled fawn and it jerked away from me” (The Little Sister) … “Her breath was as delicate as the eyes of a fawn” (of Mona Mars in The Big Sleep) … and the lake in Lady in the Lake is called Fawn Lake …
Sometimes the animal imagery is transferred, as in “The barman scuttled around, hating us with the whites of his eyes” (“Try the Girl”).
Or else “He looked at me, like a stone lion outside the Public Library” (“Mandarin’s Jade”) … “The big man looked at me as if I had just hatched out” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “crazy as a pair of waltzing mice” (“Killer in the Rain”).
Even when it’s inanimate, it’s more often harsh than not. The perfume was “elderly … like three widows drinking tea” (The Lady in the Lake) … “His face was like a vacant lot” (The High Window).
The plot had “all the originality and drive of a split fingernail” (The High Window) … “as gaudy as a chiropractor’s chart” (The Little Sister) … “He waved a generous hand on which a canary-yellow diamond looked like an amber traffic light” (The Little Sister) … “A nice sense of humor—like a morgue attendant” (Farewell, My Lovely).
The occasional softer image is allowed to intrude: “I pushed [the door] open with the tenderness of a young intern delivering his first baby” (The Little Sister) … “She shut the door … as carefully as if it was made of short
pie crust” (Farewell, My Lovely) … “the perfume shop with its rows of delicately lighted bottles, ranged like the ensemble in the finale of a Broadway musical” (“Guns at Cyrano’s”) … “He fluttered around making elegant little gestures and body movements as graceful as a Chopin ending” (The Little Sister).
Or an ironic one: “a garage as easy to drive into as an olive bottle” (“Try the Girl”) … “thin as an honest alibi” (The High Window) … “tasteless as a roadhouse blonde” (“Spanish Blood”) … “The walls here are as thin as a hoofer’s wallet” (Playback) … “He was as neat as a gift book” (“Mandarin’s Jade”) … “It felt like shaking hands with a towel-rack” (The Lady in the Lake).
The topic of time seemed to inspire: “Another army of sluggish minutes dragged by” (The Big Sleep) … “For all of a minute—which in a spot like that can be as long as a chiropractor’s thumb” (The Lady in the Lake) … “The minutes dropped silently down a well” (The Little Sister) … “The passing minutes seemed to fall into a void, with a soft whirring sound, like spent rockets” (The Long Goodbye).
And, as Marlowe would say, “Always the wisecrack where possible”: “A man you can’t kid is a man you can’t trust” (The Lady in the Lake) … “He’s so tight his head squeaks when he takes his hat off” (“Trouble Is My Business”) … “The only difference between you and a monkey is you wear a larger hat” … “He looked like a man who could be trusted with a secret—if it was his own secret” (The High Window) … “Take your ears out of the way and I’ll leave” … “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” (The Big Sleep) … “He’s the fellow for whom they coined the phrase, ‘as ignorant as an actor’ ” (The High Window).
And the Groucho-esque “If you don’t leave, I’ll get somebody who will.”
In the same way that Chandler “cannibalized” some of his short stories to form the basis of his early novels, he would rework certain of his favorite similes. It’s interesting to see how he honed them.
Sometimes they were simple variations on a theme: “He shut his mouth as if a winch controlled it” (“The Curtain”) … “He shut his mouth with all the deliberation of a steam shovel” (“The Man Who Liked Dogs”).
“He looked about as unobtrusive as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake” (Farewell, My Lovely) becomes “I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split” (The Long Goodbye) … “As easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket” (Playback).
Or …
“As a bluff mine was thinner than the gold on a weekend wedding ring” (“Finger Man”) becomes “His surprise was as thin as the gold on a weekend wedding band” (The Long Goodbye).
But sometimes the changes are subtler. In “Try the Girl” the cop “looked poor and sour and honest” but in Farewell, My Lovely he looked “poor enough to be honest.”
“Her giggles ran around the room like rats” (“Killer in the Rain”). In The Big Sleep they … “ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting”—somehow a more evocative image.
The scene in which Marlowe first meets General Sternwood in The Big Sleep is an excellent example of Chandler shaping his material. In the original scene in “The Curtain,” Carmady (the pre-Marlowe private eye) is told by General Winslow, “Take your coat off, sir … Orchids require heat, Mr. Carmady—like rich old men.” By The Big Sleep it has become “You may take your coat off, sir. It’s too hot in here for a man with blood in his veins.” The difference being that we now know what sort of man this “rich old man” used to be, and how he now lives what is left of his life through others.
The old man licked his lips watching me, over and over again, like an undertaker dry-washing his hands.
There were, of course, times when—as he himself was aware—he was prone to “run the similes into the ground” …
A hush that would have made a Southern senator sound like a deaf mute asking for a second plate of mush.
—“Bay City Blues”
He looked as nervous as a brick wall.
—Farewell, My Lovely
His smile was as faint as a fat lady at a firemen’s ball.
—The High Window
He had brilliant eyes that wanted to look hard, and looked as hard as oysters on the half-shell.
—Farewell, My Lovely
The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.
—Farewell, My Lovely
She looked as flustered as a side of beef.
—The High Window
I was about as much use as a hummingbird’s spare egg would have been.
—The High Window
On the dance floor half a dozen couples were throwing themselves around with the reckless abandon of a night watchman with arthritis.
—Playback
The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl uses her last good pair of stockings.
—The Big Sleep
A small radio that was as full of static as the mashed potato was full of water.
—The Lady in the Lake
“I could use a five dollar bill so rough Abe Lincoln’s whiskers would be all lathered up with sweat.”
—The High Window
… he said softly, in the manner of a sultan suggesting a silk noose for a harem lady whose tricks have gone stale.
—“Mandarin’s Jade”
The purring voice was now as false as an usherette’s eyelashes and as slippery as a watermelon seed.
—The Big Sleep
I go limp as a scrubwoman’s back hair.
—“Pearls Are a Nuisance”
She was as limp as a fresh-killed rabbit.
—Farewell, My Lovely
“This car sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic.”
—“Mandarin’s Jade”
He had a heart as big as one of Mae West’s hips.
—Farewell, My Lovely
He had as much charm as a steel puddler’s underpants.
—The Long Goodbye
The [TV] commercials would have sickened a goat raised on barbed wire and broken beer bottles.
—The Long Goodbye
The house was leaking guests out of the evening air … goodbyes were bouncing around like rubber balls.
—The Long Goodbye
He was as calm as an adobe wall in the moonlight.
—The Long Goodbye
A hat that had been taken from its mother too young.
—The Little Sister
He came back softly … debonair as a French count in a college play.
—Farewell, My Lovely
Just as he uses Los Angeles as a character in his stories, he uses buildings. His descriptions key in the mood …
The Rossmore Arms was a gloomy pile of dark red brick built around a huge forecourt. It had a plush-lined lobby containing silence, a bored canary in a cage as big as a dog-house, a smell of old carpet dust and the cloying fragrance of gardenias long ago.
—The Lady in the Lake
… and even the weather plays a bit part …
That semi-desert where the sun is as light and dry as old sherry in the morning, as hot as a blast furnace at noon, and drops like an angry brick at nightfall … the air’s stale before it gets up in the morning.
—The Lady in the Lake
Chandler was in love with words to the point of being besotted by them. When he ventured into fantasy fiction—a form that intrigued him enough for him to contemplate giving up the “hard-boiled stuff” to concentrate on it—the words betrayed him and he self-indulgently overwrote.
For him the detective form was ideal. It allowed him to use language exotically but within a tight discipline—one that he did much to refine over the years:
Detective stories should be about the detective first and the story second.
It is the pace that counts, not the logic or the plausibility, or the style.
It is a dream world which may be entered and left at will, and it leave
s no scars.
His kind of story was at a far remove from the “classic” form, one that he distrusted intuitively …
[It isn’t] possible to write a strictly honest mystery of the classic type … To get the complication you fake the clues, the timing, the play of coincidence, assume certainties where only 50 per cent chances exist at most. To get the surprise murderer you fake character, which hits me hardest of all, because I have a sense of character … for Christ’s sake, let’s not talk about honest mysteries. They don’t exist.
—Letter to George Harmon Coxe—June 27, 1940
The detective or mystery story as an art form has been so thoroughly explored that the real problem for a writer now is to avoid writing a mystery story while appearing to do so.
—Letter to James Sandoe—January 26, 1944
Time—and greater experience—did nothing to dilute his skeptical view:
The novel of detection little by little educates the public to its own weaknesses, which it cannot possibly remove, because they are inherent. It can flourish only until enough people know its vocabulary.
The World of Raymond Chandler Page 18