I happily stumbled across *The Big Sleep* last month and really enjoyed it. I then read the next two and will eventually carry on and finish the series.
I love his descriptions and the way he blends in the vernacular (thank you slang dictionaries). I lived in LA for ten years, so it’s very easy for me to see the world he’s created which got me to wondering just how true the pictures were that he painted?
I know people used to smoke and drink a lot in the past, but in his stories the characters light up upon waking and drink from, pretty much, from late morning on. The descriptions of vice and drugs just don’t fit my image of the times. My image is that the world was more “family friendly” back then but women with black eyes, junkies, sexually molested characters populate his stories. Was Chandler putting a real underbelly on the page or exaggerating what was there?
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by applesandclover