The Annotated Big Sleep

I thoroughly enjoyed this in-depth analysis of _The Big Sleep_. The notes dissect the themes, imagery, and background of Chandler's most famous novel. Additionally, it reveals Chandler's strategy of "cannibalizing" scenes from previously published stories to build TBS. As an added bonus, the notes compare and contrast the novel with the film.

As the book's cover blurb recommends, if you haven't read TBS, you can read through without the notes. If you have read it, the notes will deepen your appreciation and understanding of the story.

Reading this w/the annotations was pure pleasure.

One of the essential reprints of 2018. The annotations are nearly as thrilling as Chandler's prose.

I've read TBS previously in three different editions. The wonderful annotations make this edition the best. They put the reader in the 1930'3 LA scene of corruption with sharp observations that compliment Chandler's incomparable hard-boiled prose. However, the best line in the book - indeed, the best line in all of hard-boiled literature - doesn't get a comment. Here's the line: "Dead men are heavier than broken hearts."
Critics generally find that the hard-boiled manner in telling a story began with Hemingway and Hammett. This edition makes plain that such a method started right here with The Big Sleep.

Love Raymond Chandler's novels -he is one of my all time favorite authors- and love The Big Sleep in particular and the Annotated Big Sleep is a truly wonderful peek behind the curtain at what makes this novel tick. We get a wealth of information regarding the creation of this book, particularly interesting being the short stories -and samples offered- of how Chandler "cannibalized" some of his short stories in the creation of this book.
We also get some wonderful history of L.A. back in the 1930's, a guide to the slang Chandler used (much of this, of course, has become well known through books and films), as well as some very interesting insight into Chandler himself.

Having read the novel a few times before, this Annotated Edition was truly eye-opening, especially when it comes to some of the novel's sexuality. I was always aware of it, but when pointed out in the Annotations it became clear to me that Mr. Chandler had some serious hang ups regarding sexuality, whether "straight" or otherwise. Still, after all this time one must be cautious to draw too many conclusions, though the inference of the author's possible sexuality presented in one of the notations is certainly intriguing.

I have the Kindle edition of the book and it is incredibly easy to read the book and switch to the voluminous amount of footnotes. You read along and when you find a footnote you simply tap on it and are instantly transported to the information presented. Sometimes its offered with beautiful illustrations, often with very informative explanations, and once you're done reading the footnote, you just tap the footnote number again and you're back to where you were reading. Couldn't be easier!

So if you're a fan of Raymond Chandler's works as I am and, as I said before, want to get a damn good peek behind the curtain regarding this novel, you absolutely must have The Annotated Big Sleep.

If you love Raymond Chandler and have read everything, both fiction and non-fiction, that is available, biographies, letters, everything, and have reconciled yourself to the failures of all those would-be Marlowe updaters to hit the mark ("New! A Philip Marlowe novel by the latest bandwagon rider!") (let's face it, Chandler died and he's not coming back) then this annotated edition is a gold mine. Each note is as tasty as the prose it illuminates and the only criticism is, why stop now? You've got more to do, people. Get on to the rest of the canon. The only negative is, the book ended and I wanted to stay immersed in a world that no longer lives except in our imaginations. (But then, that's all the worlds we think we inhabit, isn't it?)

If I were ever to teach a course on creative fiction writing, I’d assign The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Published in 1939, it was his first novel. Then I would assign The Annotated Big Sleep published in 2018. The Annotated Big Sleep eloquently and interestingly takes its readers into the thoughts of the brilliant Raymond Chandler with poignant comments by Chandler about his times and his novels and his responses to his critics and social commenters. The Annotated Big Sleep elegantly and thoroughly addresses the question: What is literary fiction? How does it differ from nonliterary genre fiction (which most noir genre detective fiction is)?

My discussion takes the liberty of commenting at times on, by way of comparison, two recently published collections of stories each by an Irish author who is regarded (though not by me) as a master of literary fiction. I refer to Last Stories by William Trevor (1928-2016) published in 2018 and The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) published in 2019.

Literary fiction reveals its time but remains meaningful for future generations. E.g. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Tale of Two Cities

Literary fiction has style, which Chandler deemed imperative. Literary fiction prose has prosody (sound and rhythm) and is resplendent with metaphors that illuminate. Aristotle argued in The Poetics that great metaphors are a sine qua non of great poetry. I loved Chandler’s critique of Ross MacDonald’s simile: The rust on Archer’s car was like acne.

One must have talent to write good metaphors. Chandler’s are brilliant. In TBS Chandler uses the convention of pathetic fallacy seamlessly. His references to canonized literature is superbly done. Think Remembrances of Things Past.

According to the annotated version, Chandler believed that literary style must be elevated over plot. Personally, I don’t see plot and style at war. And I disdain the modern thinking that plot is irrelevant and that the essence of fiction is only the characters. Think William Trever and other long and boring New Yorker stories. Though some are quite good. Think T.C. Boyle or Alice Munro.

And of course, Chandler’s dialog sparkles. You won’t find exposition in his dialog, meaning he won’t use dialog to tell the reader something that the other character knows. There is subtext in Chandler’s dialog, i.e. the character usually means something other than what she or he says or what she or he says has more than one meaning.

Can any of us remember a quote from a William Trevor or an Elizabeth Bowen story? Months or years later, do we care about what happened to their characters? Or even remember? TBS is chockfull of memorable quotes. Think “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”

Literary fiction advances or illuminates a moral POV. Think The Divine Comedy.

Nonliterary genre fiction is formulaic no matter who the characters might be. Typical best-selling romance formula: Girl with noticeably large breasts and long silky (usually blonde) hair notices boy with fabulous physique on page 2. Girl kisses boy on page 5. Boy has the opportunity to remove girl’s bikini top on page 10 but refrains from doing so because he respects her. Boy meets girl’s parents and they hate him, order girl not to see him again. And so forth.

Nonliterary genre lacks subtlety.

Marlowe’s character is consistent but his actions aren’t. Chandler’s books thrive on subtext and pretext.

Stephen King argued in his 2003 National Book Award speech that a hallmark of literature is that it illuminates its time. TBS is famous for illuminating the look and feel of Los Angeles in 1939. Sternwood, a main character in TBS, even when he wasn’t on stage, we learn in the Annotated Version, was likely a surrogate for the L.A. oil baron George Hancock of Hancock Park fame. One had to be wealthy to hire a private sleuth and so Chandler’s characters are the aristocrats and/or the nouveau riche and the grifters who feed upon them. Chandler left the unemployed to Upton Sinclair. As Scott Fitzgerald said: I write about the rich because those are the people I know.

When I was researching Ursula Le Guin in preparation for writing my review of The Dispossessed I was surprised to learn that Le Guin chose the Sci-Fi genre because it paid well. I suspect that Chandler chose the detective genre because he admired the writing of Dashiell Hammett (perhaps Poe and Conan Doyle as well) and because he liked it.

In How Fiction Works, its author James Wood (literary critic for The New Yorker) explains that it is not only attention to details and objects that an author includes in a scene that is important but which details and objects the author chooses. Bad writers choose boring, irrelevant details. The objects in TBS have life and often multiple meanings. Wood uses Madam Bovary to illustrate his examples. Flaubert was exquisite when it came to describing physical details. IMHO so is Chandler. Think of the stained glass above the entry door to the Sternwood mansion.

William Trevor wasn’t terrible when it came to making his scenes vivid. His characters were simply boring because of their passivity and his stories were boring because of their deus ex machinus or lame epiphany endings. Elizabeth Bowen began her stories with vivid descriptions of the landscape, but this was boring because the descriptions weren’t integrated into the stories. Those descriptions delayed introduction to the characters and the action. After all, we read fiction to meet the characters, not the trees.

Chandler’s books, like Arthur Conan Doyle’s, like Charles Dickens’s, have given us cultural icons, and life lessons. Trevor’s stories end with lessons, epiphanies, but they are lessons meaningful to the characters but lost on posterity. Will a William Trevor story ever be made into a motion picture? TBS has been made into how many?

Dickens novels were first published in chapters in pulp-paper magazines. But Dickens novels, resplendent with details and descriptions while being about characters that generations of readers have cared about. His long descriptive wonderful iconic opening to A Tale of Two Cities is about the people of London and of Paris in 1780, telling a story of the French revolution through the eyes of his characters.

The Annotated Big Sleep is instructive of most of what creative writing students need to know.

I've read THE BIG SLEEP three or four times already, of course, but reading it this way -- with notes and supplemental materials on the right-hand page facing the text on the left-hand page -- made it feel so fresh it was almost new to me. If you love American crime fiction, you will never have more fun reading it than with this annotated version of THE BIG SLEEP. It's utterly mesmerizing stuff.

Excellent addition to my library. I will chew on it slowly, and enjoy it. Could I have some more please! Thank you. "The General spoke again, slowly using his strength as carefully as an out-of-work showgirl uses her last good pair of stockings."

Great story, made into a syrupy, fractured tale by Warner Brothers eager to promote their latest starlet. Usually the novel is far better than the Hollywood adaptation; it this instance it's an excellent novel and an entertaining, somewhat confusing movie with some dated dialogue that never appeared in the novel (for instance, the "It depends on who is in the saddle" routine).
The annotations add significantly to the narrative, though it's difficult to interrupt your reading of the story to focus on individual annotations. I found myself reading all annotations for an individual page of storyline, then reading the narrative page without interruption.
A few of the annotations were overly academic in nature: it's difficult to care about how P.I. Marlowe compares to this or that knight from the middle ages, or to discern the relevance of some of the poetry cited.
Overall, the annotations added to a pleasurable read.
I also learned a lot of "tough guy" lingo from Chandler that will impress the local hoodlums. Does anybody really talk like this?

I have read Raymond Chandler's book The Big Sleep before and enjoyed it. This annotated version left me with the feeling that I was reading the book for the first time but still enjoying it immensely. The story is timeless, and the characters are great. The difference now is that the annotations and the pictures add so much. I now understand some of the terms better, and I have a much clearer idea of the background of the period the book is set in. I guess some people might find all of the annotations intrusive, but I believe if you will just keep reading you will get over that. The Big Sleep is a classic detective story. and I highly recommend this edition.