From Up Close, She Looked More Pregnant Than Most Pregnant Ladies. She Looked That Way From Far Away, Too.

Last weekend, the weekend before Sylvie was born, I devoured my first Raymond Chandler novel, The Big Sleep. The characters, with the exception of Philip Marlowe himself, are ridiculous* caricatures, especially the women, and the plot was ridiculously* convoluted -- I'm still not sure what happened  -- but the writing is stellar. There's something very Art Deco about it, very vivid and economical, all dramatic stylized swoops. Those zingy one-liners; those crazily apt similes and metaphors! Yum. There are too many great ones to list here, but the one that goes something like "He looked more like a dead man than most dead men" has stayed with me. The construction works to describe lots of things, like my current situation. Although I gave birth a week ago, I still look more pregnant than most pregnant ladies. (Try it! It's fun! Not the looking pregnant thing -- which is decidedly unfun -- but playing around with the "He looked more ___ than a ___ ___construction. If you come up with a good one, please do share by leaving it in the comments.) You can read some good Chandlerisms here but that list is by no means definitive. There were at least that many good lines in The Big Sleep alone.

Take this, from The High Window:

"From 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."

It's very similar to a description that I've always liked, from the movie Clueless, written by Amy Heckerling:

Tai: Do you think she's pretty?

Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.

Tai: What's a Monet?

Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

I wonder if Heckerling is a Chandler fan.

*Ridiculous is my new favourite word, ever since Luke has started using it a lot -- except he pronounces it "ree-dick-lee-us."

Comments

[Kate C.]

I *love* The Big Sleep. Agreed about the one dimensional characters and inscrutable plot - but I still love it.

[babelbabe]

He looked more demonic than most demon babies.