The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

Fatal Flaws? – In a 2014 conversation sponsored by the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, Joyce Carol Oates spoke on a panel discussing Saul Bellow with Benjamin Taylor and Peter Orner. During questions-and-answers with the audience, Oates was asked how she reconciled Bellow’s and other male writers’ misogyny with her admiration for their writing. “Oh, well,” Oates replied, “if you’re a woman, and a writer and a reader, if you reject all of the misogynist writers, you’re going to have two or three little people here [to read.]” The same holds true for homophobic, anti-Semitic, and racist work. To read these works doesn’t mean we condone these attitudes (even though the writing often historically has been celebrated). Rather, we read these works in context, an “impure” practice, I realize, that for many on the Left is a deal-breaker. However, I believe many of these offending works in classic literature are still well-worth reading and studying, especially when a reflection or discussion afterward can spotlight and wrestle with the book’s flaws. I hadn’t read “The Big Sleep” in close to 40 years and the book is now 84 years old. I had forgotten the novel’s homophobia, which jumped off the page for me like hard slaps in the face. Did these passages offend me now? Yes. Did they turn me off? Nearly. If Chandler were alive today (he died in 1959, about four months before I was born), would he be as homophobic? Possibly, but not likely. Was Chandler a talented writer? Certainly. Should he be read today? Absolutely. Does the homophobia make “The Big Sleep” a “bad” book? No. Should the homophobia in “The Big Sleep” be discussed? That could only help. Like any discussion about any piece of literature, a constructive conversation about the work’s strengths and weaknesses will further illuminate our understanding of the world around us. Not all flaws are fatal even though the prejudice behind such flaws is untenable.