“All writers are punks and I am one of the punkest.”
From Playback (1953)
I wrote that on the back of a leather jacket with silver ink.
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"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. I put them on and went out of the room.”
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I’d have liked to see a 90s Bruce Willis play Marlowe. Tho i love every Marlowe movie in their own way. Apropos Gould’s Marlowe, that’s absolutely what Kinky Friedman is riffing on in his crime novels. Even down to the dance studio neighbours.
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My favorite from Trouble Is My Business
"Anna Halsey was about two hundred and forty pounds of middle-aged putty-faced woman in a black tailor-made suit. Her eyes were shiny black shoe buttons, her cheeks were as soft as suet and about the same color. She was sitting behind a black glass desk that looked like Napoleon’s tomb and she was smoking a cigarette in a black holder that was not quite as long as a rolled umbrella. She said: `I need a man.’ "
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I saw Kinky do a reading from some of his books between songs. The banter was well-rehearsed, but it was brilliant and had a Chandleresque rhythm.
“Are there any kids in the audience? I hate to say ‘fuck” in front of a C.H.I.L.D.”.
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I also loved the first time Marlowe met Moose Malloy:
…He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino hat, a rough gray sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie, pleated gray flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of colored feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn’t really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
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Haha, good catch sir or madam - I’d honestly gone blank on that personal connection, but I’m sure the vividness of that imagery is what stuck with me through the years and prompted that (hurried!) choice of username. I’d also forgotten MM was the source of the “tarantula” simile, one of Chandler’s most celebrated. Farewell, My Lovely is possibly my fave of his novels too, for its distillation of his recurring themes, but tighter in plot and focus than most of the others (which remain masterpieces, nonetheless, of course).
Love your anubisatar icon btw 
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I got the Library of America two volume set of Chandler’s works - novels and stories - when I was working at a bookstore. I’ve read and re-read 'em more times than I can remember, so a lot of it lives on my skull’s hard drive. I love most of it, but some works are far from my favorites. Not nuts about The High Window/The Brasher Doubloon, The Little Sister, Nevada Gas, and Spanish Blood.
The King in Yellow is wonderful, esp when Our Hero refuses an offered drink, saying, “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
Poor Moose. He really loved his Velma, who was as cute as lace pants.
My avi is Tutankhamon’s Anubis, and it is indeed magnificent. An almost identical one, but in sad shape, was found in Horemheb’s tomb:
Couchant jackal from the tomb of Horemheb (photo by Harry Burton, who also photographed all of Tut’s goodies)
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Absolutely ditto! THW and TLS are my least preferred also, in that order, in what is to be fair a magnificent run of novels. Playback is obviously a much slighter piece of work than the others, and probaby next in that ranking as we ascend, but it has a certain uniqueness and curio value.
I too have Chandlerisms burned into me. Just last weekend I told my brother-in-law “I can fade that too!” during a game of chess - I know it’s from crap shooting, but I got it from, IIRC, “the carroty man” who’s a super in some rundown boarding house (TLS again, I think).
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If Raymond Chandler is the once and future king of opening paragraphs, does that make T.H. White the Philip Marlowe of book titles?
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