The High Window – Raymond Chandler, 1942 ★★★★

Blood and Tax Brackets 

Class isn’t as big a theme in American literature as one might expect, but it crops up often enough. In Raymond Chandler’s The High Window, it comes into play two ways, as income and moral refinement.

Protagonist Philip Marlowe is a very classy guy who relates to what it is to be down-and-out. When he pays a visit to the palatial Pasadena home of Mrs. Murdock, a wealthy widow who marinates in her port-soaked seclusion, he takes it in with the air of a jaded Bolshevik:

“The sidewalk and the parkway were both very wide and in the parkway were three white acacias that were worth seeing. There was a heavy scent of summer on the morning and everything that grew was perfectly still in the breathless air they get over there on what they call a nice cool day.”

Farewell, My Lovely – Raymond Chandler, 1940 ★

Falling out with Chandler

Few genres are as evocatively articulated in a single prose passage as is detective-noir in the novel Farewell, My Lovely. Those few short paragraphs would prove yet more memorable when transported to film.

It happens all at once after some sudden if typical violence. Our protagonist, private eye Philip Marlowe, is getting the business from two heavies he thinks are cops, only they aren’t very law-abiding. After roughing him up and warning him away from a crook, they kick him out of their car in the middle of a deserted road.