Monk

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Monk finished rereading "The Big Sleep." God, that book goes down smooth. It is worth revisiting every few years. One of those perfect works of art.

Next on the hit-and-run parade is Han Li Thorn's "Spike Trap." This means we are loosening what was the one hard constraint on this reading. This is a first reading, but Monk is thinking that erotica novels are plotted simply enough that it is okay.

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“Chandler did not write about crime, or detection - as he insisted he did not. He wrote about the corruption of the human spirit, using Philip Marlowe as his disapproving angel, and he knew about it, down to the marrow.”

-- George V. Higgins

Ah, just the way I like my prose - smooth and nasty.

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I liked Higgins' blurb so much that I did some quick googling and found this cutting thought of his about being a writer:

If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.

Ouch! I wonder if blogging counts. Probably not. I suppose people have to care to part with some of their money for your lays and sighs. But whatever gets you through the day.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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“Do you like Orchids?”

“Not particularly, ” I said.

The General half-closed his eyes. “They are nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men. And their perfume has the rotten sweetness of a prostitute.”

-- "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler

I have only read a few of Chandler's novels, but I imagine that this is the only one I will feel the need to come back to time and again. I think Chandler got everything he could out of the genre on this one. Even "The Long Goodbye" is a clear second.

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