Maybe it is Modern Art?

After reading chapters 20-26 and writing my blog post last night I think we learned something more about Marlowe the character and Marlowe the man that makes him even more real than I may have originally thought. Within those chapters we learn that Marlowe is not just interested in the money, for once the “case” is complete and the check in the bank, he heads back out in search of Regan. This has to be from a connection he feels with General Sternwood or maybe even with the thrill or the need to know why. Also we see the human, the mortality of Marlowe when he is taken by surprise and has the crap beat out of him. I feel that these events prove to us or show us a sense of realism, he no longer is the knight in shinning armor; he is a human looking for answers just like everyone else.

With that said, I feel that it would not be a stretch to say that it is this sense of realism or the somewhat chaotic , stream of consciousness form that makes this closer to modern art than I had previously thought. If we are to say that T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” is art or modern art with its stream of consciousness, rambling as if it were the thought being tossed around in ones mind, then naturally we would have to say that, The Big Sleep, too is modern art or at least eerily close to it. They both are predominantly first person rants, constant thoughts, conversations, and just trying to make sense of a “modern world.”

Now, armed with my new found perspective, thanks to T.S. Eliot and the middle chapters of Chandler, I feel confident in saying, yes, Chandler’s, The Big Sleep, was a play on modern art in its time period.
- Brad