That is to say that I have never read any of his iconic and of-a-time novels but nevertheless his words and the invariably thick, menacing atmosphere that they project are very real to me through the dramatisation of his books on the big screen and through the medium of radio plays.
Just take any of Chandler's many one liners and even if just said to yourself silently you find the words issuing forth in the drawled, gravelly and bourbon infused tones of the great actors who have made a good living out of, in particular, his main character of the Private Detective Philip Marlowe.
The list is unparalleled I would say in quality and pedigree apart from perhaps Shakespearean thespians.
Amongst the Hollywood 'A' Listers are Bogart and Mitchum, Gould, Powell, R Montgomery,Garner, Boothe, Gambon, Caan, Carey and G Montgomery not to mention those on the airwaves recruited no doubt willingly for the prestige of the role.
In the last couple of days, whilst driving about between work appointments I have been enthralled by a BBC production of Chandler's "Playback" with British Actor, Toby Stephens giving a passable rendition of Marlowe.
The classic one liners and put downs in the dialogue of Playback were cleverly put together and beautifully delivered.
"Her eyes went down to the paper very, very slowly. Her eyes held on to it. Her hand moved to take it, but his was quicker"
"Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But never is. He's high up in the stands with a hip flask. Common sense is the little man in a grey suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always someone else's money he's adding up."
"There was something Mongolian about his face, something south-of-the-border, something Indian, and something darker than that"
"One of the women had enough ice on her to cool the Mojave desert and enough make-up to paint a steam yacht"
"The walls around here were as thin as a Hoofer's wallet"
"I recall when this town was so quiet dogs slept in the middle of the boulevard and you had to stop your car, if you had a car, and get out and push them out of the way. Sundays it was like you was already buried. Everything shut up as tight as a bank vault. You couldn't walk down Grand Street and have as much fun as a stiff in a morgue. You couldn't even buy a pack of cigarettes. It was so quiet you could of heard a mouse combin' his whiskers"
"She had a pair of legs - so far as I could determine - that were not painful to look at" (Playback)
"I moved to the door. I wouldn't say she looked exactly wistful, but neither did she look as hard to get as a controlling interest in General Motors"
"'This is a rich town, friend,' he said slowly. 'I've studied it. I've boned up on it. I've talked to guys about it'"
"Wherever I went, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house"
Having enjoyed these in the context of a really good detective story I found myself researching other similar witty and biting phrases within the wider body of work of Chandler.
"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window." (Farewell My Lovely)
"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun." (Farewell My Lovely)
"I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name" (The Little Sister)
"Thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away" (The High Window)
"I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." (The King In Yellow)
"He snorted and hit me in the solar plexus. I bent over and took hold of the room with both hands and spun it. When I had it nicely spinning I gave it a full swing and hit myself on the back of the head with the floor" (Pearls Are A Nuisance)
"The big foreign car drove itself, but I held the wheel for the sake of appearances" (Farewell, My Lovely)
"She's a charming middle age lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she's washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all" (Farewell, My Lovely)
"It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills" (The Big Sleep)
"The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather gray for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building." (Farewell My Lovely)
"He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck" (Farewell My Lovely)
"Across the street somebody had delirium tremens in the front yard and a mixed quartet tore what was left of the night into small strips and did what they could to make the strips miserable. While this was going on the exotic brunette didn't move more that one eyelash." (Red Wind)
"Ok, Marlowe," I said between my teeth. "You’re a tough guy. Six feet of iron man. One hundred and ninety pounds stripped and with your face washed. Hard muscles and no glass jaw. You can take it" (Farewell My Lovely)
"All right," I yelled. "I’ll go up with you. Just lay off carrying me. Let me walk. I’m fine. I’m all grown up. I go to the bathroom and everything. Just don’t carry me" (Farewell My Lovely)
"You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that, oil and water were the same as wind and air to you" (The Big Sleep)
"I. . . just sat, not smoking, not even thinking. I was a blank man. I had no face, no meaning, no personality, hardly a name. I didn't want to eat. I didn't even want a drink. I was the page from yesterday's calendar crumpled at the bottom of the waste basket " (The Little Sister)
"The General spoke again, slowly, using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work show-girl uses her last good pair of stockings." (The Big Sleep)
"His smile was as stiff as a frozen fish." (The Man Who Liked Dogs)
"There were two hundred and eighty steps up to Cabrillo Street. They were drifted over with windblown sand and the handrail was as cold and wet as a toad's belly." (Farewell My Lovely)
"I called him from a phone booth. The voice that answered was fat. It wheezed softly, like the voice of a man who had just won a pie-eating contest." (Trouble Is My Business)
"I belonged in Idle Valley like a pearl onion on a banana split" (The Long Goodbye)
"Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel cake" (The Big Sleep)
"'Please don't get up,' she said in a voice like the stuff they use to line summer clouds with" (The Long Goodbye)
"It jarred me. It was like watching the veneer peel off and leave a tough kid in an alley. Or like hearing an apparently refined woman start expressing herself in four- letter words" (The Lady In The Lake)
"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight" (Little Sister)
My ultimate favourite is the one liner that produces that strong image of a senior member of the clergy getting a bit carried away.
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