Didn't Read It
A guided tour through the stories that have shaped our culture and the world we live in.
Whether you’re a literature nerd, a romance aficionado, or just Not That Into Books, there’s no denying that the “great works” of literature have played a part in influencing everything from public policy to superhero movies. If you’ve ever wanted to know whether that pretentious guy on Twitter is correct in referring to news stories as “Orwellian,” wondered what stories inspired shows like Bridgerton, or just been curious about why, exactly, your high school English teacher was so insistent about assigning books by Dead White Guys, Didn’t Read It is the podcast for you.
Didn't Read It
Dizzy Dames & Private Eyes: Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep," Pt 1
Gumshoes! Dead chauffeurs! Fake bookstores! We're diving into the noir world of Raymond Chandler as Marilyn Drew Necci takes us on a journey through "The Big Sleep."
You can find Drew's weekly column at The Auricular: https://www.theauricular.com/ or you can find her on BlueSky at @annihilatethisweek.bsky.social
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-Thankful to William Albritton for our incredible theme song, "Books 2.0"
-Thankful to LNDÖ for our closing music, "Hit the Streets."
There's a, there's a metaphor in that. But then all of these armed women and he just can't get his gun up.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I never thought of that.
>> Grace Todd:Books, books, books.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Books, books, books.
>> Grace Todd:Hello, and welcome to Didn't Read it, the podcast that walks down these mean streets. I am your host, Grace Todd, and this week I am joined by an old pal of the pod, Drew Nietzsche. Hi, baby.
>> Drew Nietzsche:How's it going?
>> Grace Todd:It's been better, honestly.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Same. Oh, God, same.
>> Grace Todd:Is anything going well anywhere for anyone?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Ah, I don't really actually know. if so, I haven't heard about it.
>> Grace Todd:Well, as we all struggle through the abyss, would you like to remind people who you are specifically?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Sure. Okay. So I'm Drew. I was on here about a year ago, I think, talking about Ulysses by James Joyce. I am a music journalist who works at a university these days, because guess what? Journalism doesn't pay the bills, folks. I don't know. I've been in a lot of bands. I've sold books. I sold books for 12 years. you know, just been in Richmond forever.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And you have a, you still have a column.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes, in theauricular.com, which is, T H E A U R I C U L A R the auricular dot com. Look it up. yeah, I write a weekly column about local music, local shows, live shows in particular, but with a focus on not just things that are happening locally, but specifically on local bands and local artists.
>> Grace Todd:It's a great column.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Why, thank you.
>> Grace Todd:And it's been. Gosh, you've been doing it for over a decade now.
>> Drew Nietzsche:That's true. Yeah. I started it the first week of 2014. So I guess we're at 11 years now, which is wild to think.
>> Grace Todd:The grand dom of the Richmond local music scene. Sure.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. Something like that.
>> Grace Todd:Well, welcome back.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Oh, I. Thank you.
>> Grace Todd:It's so nice to see you.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, you too. Like, we don't hang out enough. I'm bad at hanging out, everyone. That's a little. A little personal insight. I'm bad at hanging out. I'm just at home all the time.
>> Grace Todd:But, well, that's the nice thing about podcasts is they're basically asynchronous hangouts.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, it's true. That's true. You're just, you know, hanging out in your house alone, listening to people who you potentially never met. But, ah, so, yes, you've.
>> Grace Todd:You have done an incredibly generous thing and given me a bit of a research break.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Oh, well, I'm always glad to do it.
>> Grace Todd:Which I really needed after reading multiple biographies of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Oh, my. Wow. Yeah, I look forward to that episode.
>> Grace Todd:they will have aired before this comes out.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Okay, well, I'm sure I loved them.
>> Grace Todd:But your girl was tired. and you have very graciously offered to give me a research break by telling me about a novel and an author.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes, Raymond Chandler, the writer of many private eye novels that kind of established the genre, along with, Dashiell Hammett, who wrote the Maltese Falcon, and one or two other people. But Raymond Chandler's first, novel, and probably his most famous, is called the Big Sleep. And that is what we are here to talk about today.
>> Grace Todd:I could use a big sleep.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, it's a metaphor for being dead, so.
>> Grace Todd:Well, look.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, I don't know. There's probably a lot of relief in being dead. It's like, oh, the things I don't have to care about any longer.
>> Grace Todd:Some of us yearn for the abyss.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Okay, so we're going to start with some things about Raymond Chandler, not his biography. We'll get to that later. But I wanted to talk about the fact that I think Raymond Chandler's writing style is really important, and his m. Philosophy. This is. We're going to start with his philosophy and his writing style. He approached writing detective stories from a perspective of needing there to be magic on the page. He would cut his typing paper into long, thin strips that were about the size of. Like, if you cut your typing paper into three pieces, like, instead of folding it up, you literally cut it into three separate pieces, and he would use each of those pieces as a full page. And his philosophy was there needed to be a little magic on every page or he should rewrite that part. So.
>> Grace Todd:That seems so stressful.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, I imagine you fix it in editing.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, no, I just mean, like, that seems like such a. A high standard to hold yourself to.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, well, he only completed eight novels and about two dozen short stories, so, you know, he. He wasn't a fast writer by any means. He also wrote a few original screenplays, which we'll talk about. But, yeah, he. He was more methodical. I don't. It's hard to say whether he was making a good living or not. But he came to writing later. He was originally kind of an alcoholic executive at an oil company. We'll talk about that later. Oh, yeah, his alcoholism is definitely a factor in a lot, but we'll get to that later. For now, I wanted to introduce an essay called the Simple Art of Murder, which is Chandler's sort of manifesto. And there's a bit in the beginning that I think you will appreciate. Grace. This is in the first paragraph, I believe this ran in the Atlantic or Saturday Evening Post or something like that. You know what? I didn't write it down. Should have done that. Should have done that. It's in his book the Simple Art of Murder, if you want to read it today. Because let me tell you, those magazines aren't around anymore. I mean, not. Not the ones from the 40s when this ran, anyway. Jane Austen's chronicles of highly inhibited people against a background of rural gentility seem real enough psychologically. They're. There's plenty of that kind of social and emotional hypocrisy around today. Add to it a liberal dose of intellectual pretentiousness and you get the tone of the book page in your daily paper and the earnest and fatuous atmosphere breathed by discussion groups and little clubs. These are the sort of people who make bestsellers, which are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are false, fostering culture. Just get a little behind in your payments and you'll find out how idealistic they are.
>> Grace Todd:Whoa. Holy shit.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. So this guy.
>> Grace Todd:So not much has changed.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, okay, yes, but also he's very dramatically kicking against the prevailing literary aesthetic of the day. He got into detective stories when he was an alcoholic executive and would be on the road and would buy dime pulp magazines. Black Mask and those sorts of things, which later became the places that published his short stories. And he grew to really resent the stuff that he felt like was aimed at a higher audience. And he thought that whole distinction was crap. And so this essay mostly goes through and is like, detective stories are great in theory, but a lot of them are garbage. And he talks about tons and tons of different formats that were cliche of the detective story in this era. You're Agatha Christie, you're Arthur Conan Doyle. Sherlock Holmes. he tears apart the Red House Mystery by A. Milne in here, which we all remember. AA Milne. He wrote Winnie the Pooh.
>> Grace Todd:I was gonna say.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. He also wrote detective novels. Oh, I have not read the Red House Mystery. It is one of many public domain books that I got for free and put on my phone and haven't gotten to.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, fair. Now, to make sure I understand the point, he's railing against the highbrow detective.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Novel, but he's also. Well, he's railing against highbrow fiction and saying that detective fiction connects a lot more with people, but that there's tons and tons of it. And it's not just the new ones that are coming out of which there are plenty, but the ones that stick around to become famous. Because, of course, he's writing, 40, 50 years after Sherlock Holmes's heyday and they're still selling.
>> Grace Todd:Right.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And his point is, what makes a detective story good? It's hard to make a detective story good, even though it's easy to just churn one out. And he kind of delivers a manifesto of what was called at the time the hard boiled detective story, which today would be something, that would be called crime fiction, noir fiction, whatever you want to say. we're going to talk about noir later when we discuss movies made about this book. But. But there is a portion here that I wanted to read. It's one of the last paragraphs. And I think it's really important to understanding everything that you encounter in his fiction. And this is one of the last things he writes in here. This is like his big summation. In everything that can be called art, there's a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He's the hero, he's everything. He must be a complete man and a common man. Yet an unusual man he must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. And, this is like what he based his ethic of writing about his main character, Philip Marlowe, on was this idea of, he's, an outlaw, but he's got a code. You know, the cops don't all love him, but they sort of respect him because he goes hard and he does what he has to do and he gets his man. He solves the case, and you can't ever say he's gone back on his own morals. Now, there are many detective stories of the era in which the detectives are not this honorable. But Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is a very honorable Man. And it is his Achilles heel at times.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:It makes his life hard. There are many Raymond Chandler stories or books in which by the end of it, Philip Marlowe has made no money. No.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Like, he told him his rates and he never got paid because now everybody involved is dead. Yeah. And he got a guy put in jail, but he's like, oh, the world is awful. We're gonna see some of that.
>> Grace Todd:That's. That's really interesting to think about from the perspective of like, I feel like we are in the middle of a. A good guy backlash. Like, during the late. Like the late 90s. Right. And the early 2000s, everything was very gritty. Everything was very like, we love an anti hero and we're still doing the antihero stuff, but we're also in the middle of this massive, like, Marvel superhero. Very clean cut. Like the goodest of the good guys.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep.
>> Grace Todd:And I. It's interesting how though, like, that swings.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, I think if you look at. Culturally right now, we're in a time of the ascendancy of the Toni Sopranos, the Walter Whites. The people who are aspirational to us now are the many white male anti heroes of that sort of down and dirty crime noir fiction. And I'm, mostly talking about tv.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Because that's become the prestige format. People don't really look to that, to. To novels for that. They don't really even look to movies for that. But also the Marvel movies were making huge sums of money that had never been made before. That's ending. You know, the more recent ones aren't doing as well. You're not hearing the cultural conversation about it. And it's like the territory has been seeded. And Vince Gilligan talked about this recently. The creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, how he started out doing anti hero stories at a time when that felt revolutionary. And now it feels like the norm. And those anti hero characters have become aspirational. And he's looking around at the world going, maybe I really created a monster here. And it was a really interesting statement that he made about that. I can't remember if he wrote something or if he said something in an interview about it, but.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, I just. I wonder if part of the pendulum swing sort of connecting the idea of, like, there are 8 million detective novels and none of them are written very well.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And the detective novel requires moral clarity at its center.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep.
>> Grace Todd:Writing an engaging, interesting, flawed protagonist who is nonetheless possessed of moral clarity is really, really hard.
>> Drew Nietzsche:For sure.
>> Grace Todd:It is an incredibly difficult thing to.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Do m. And Chandler found it difficult.
>> Grace Todd:Right.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And it.
>> Grace Todd:I. I wonder if part of the pendulum swing is that so much of the culture we consume is, like, antiheroes are easy to write.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep.
>> Grace Todd:And heroes are not easy to write. And a lot of the time they just come out seeming really, really trite. Right. Like, it's the old thing about, like, no one likes Superman.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, yes, people like Batman better, but that's because Batman feels more flawed. And depending on what Batman story you're reading, he might actually do something that feels like he's transgressing really, clean and clear moral code. That's because he comes from Gotham, while Superman comes from Metropolis, which at the time would have been like saying he's from Brooklyn and Superman's from Manhattan. I don't think that distinction really holds in the present day, but in the 30s it might have. Yeah, yeah. but the one thing that makes Superman interesting to me is he is a Jewish allegory at a time when, yes, the Jewish community was very much ostracized. I mean, anti Semitism was really on the upswing in the 30s, which, of course, we all know where that led. But.
>> Grace Todd:But anti Semitism was defeated and has never come back again, right?
>> Drew Nietzsche:No, of course not. There aren't rising anti Semitic Nazi parties. And Israel's certainly complicating things, let me tell you. Because if you don't hate Jewish people, but you hate the Israeli government, the Israeli government loves to be like, this is because you hate Jewish people.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Superman doesn't get enough credit for being as interesting as he is and as his origins are as a character. And I think that's partly because of what happened to the character in the franchise in, like, the 50s and 60s.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And 70s and 80s. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like the early Superman stuff, he wasn't just invulnerable to the point of, like, nothing even fazed him. That came later. And it was maybe not a good choice.
>> Grace Todd:He shifted from being an allegory for a very specific thing to being an allegory for just, like, America, who is undefeatable and will grow forever. And there aren't any problems with this.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, yeah, yeah, very true. But, you know, of course, detective fiction was happening at the same time and had a lot of the same complicated cultural factors feeding into it. The Big sleep is from 1939, so it's the only one of, Chandler's books that really predates. He had short stories before this. But this is his first novel, and it's the only one that really predates the whole World War II thing.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, okay.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. So it's very much from that interwar period. And there are, as with pretty much any fiction from this era, there are unexamined prejudices that come out, especially because Chandler's writing about a seedier sort of milieu. So, sure, I don't remember if there's anything that we today would be like, this is racist, but there's definitely something in here that is viciously homophobic. So that's not fun. We'll talk about it when we get there. Okay, But I want to start from the beginning. And basically the novel starts with our protagonist, Philip Marlow, going to call on a very rich old man who lives in a real place, which was interesting to me. You can Google it and find this giant castle manor in the outskirts of Los Angeles on the Internet. His the dress is in here and it's real. But let's start here. It was about 11 o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder blue suit with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober. And I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on$4 million. And in 1939,$4 million is like.
>> Grace Todd:A lot of M money.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Half a bill today, you know, it's crazy.
>> Grace Todd:Sober and I didn't care who knew it.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes, well, see, and that's the. He wants, he wants there to be a good line on every page. Yeah, that's the little magic for that first little piece of typewriter paper.
>> Grace Todd:I'm gonna start saying that when I show up for work obligations, I'm sober and I don't care who knows it.
>> Drew Nietzsche:That'd be good. They'll, they'll certainly appreciate that. You know, it's the kind of thing that when you. It's. It's almost like my T shirt is raising a lot of questions that are being answered by my T shirt kind of sentiment, you know. But so he shows up, he's waiting for the butler to come take him to the old man of the household who he's come to call on to take a case. And while he waits, he encounters one of General Sternwood's two daughters. This is the youngest daughter, Carmen. And we'll read a little bit about carmen. She was 20 or so small and delicately put together, but she looked durable. She wore pale blue slacks, and they looked well on her. She walked as if she were floating. Her hair was a fine, tawny wave cut much shorter than the current fashion of page boy. Tresses curled in at the bottom. Her eyes were slate gray and had almost no expression when they looked at me. She came over near me and smiled with her mouth. And she had little sharp, predatory teeth as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. They glistened between her thin, too taut lips. Her face lacked color and didn't look too healthy. Tall, aren't you? She said. I didn't mean to be. Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother for her. Handsome too, she said, and I bet you know it. I grunted. What's your name? Riley, I said. Doghouse Riley. That's a funny name. She bit her lip and turned her head a little and looked at me along her eyes. Then she lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theater curtain. I was to get to know that trick that was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air. So that's Carmen. Wow. Carmen is a piece of work, and we're shortly going to find out more about that. But she basically sits in his lap, you know, and he's standing up. She kind of flops over into his arms and he has to catch her, and he's like, what is happening? And she's like, you're so cute. And then the butler comes and gets him, and he's like, oh, Saved by the bell, you know. So they go out to the greenhouse, which is where old man Sternwood hangs out. The general is a, veteran who came back from the war. The war, and made all his money in oil. Which a lot of people don't know this, but there was a big oil boom in California in the early part of the 20th century. And that was actually the industry Chandler worked in. He was an oil executive. He was a VP at, maybe even Standard Oil. I don't remember which oil company. But the point is, he was doing all this kind of thing, but he was also womanizing an alcoholic. And they ended up being like, you gotta go. And it was the Depression, and he was like, well, I could try writing detective stories. So that's how he got here. So the fact that he's talking about people who made. Made their money in oil, it's something that he has some experience with. So they go out to the greenhouse, and Sternwood is out there in his wheelchair and, basically delivers to Marlow, like a collection of IOUs. And these IOUs come from a fellow named Geiger, who is a bookseller, Rare and Fine Books. And, he basically says, are these real? And the General says, I assume so. And Marlowe says, I just pay him. You know, Carmen ran up these debts. Carmen has an older sister as well. And this comes up in their conversation. Her name is Vivian. She's vivian Regan. But Mr. Regan is missing. He was a liquor runner named Rusty, and the General was a fan of Rusty Regan. And he used to sit out in the greenhouse and BS with the General. And the General is, of course, dying of some unexplained malady. And he really can't do anything but sit in the greenhouse because it's very hot, and he needs it to be very hot. He's, like, wrapped in a blanket out there.
>> Grace Todd:He's dying of two hot daughters. Itis.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I mean, that's definitely part of what's going on. There's no doubt about it. But. So a previous blackmail attempt occurred with the General and Carmen, and this guy's name was Joe Brody, and he tried to blackmail Carmen for the. Basically, for the. For the more of these gambling debts or whatever. And the General's like, well, I paid him, and he, I guess, went away. But now there's this other thing. I'm sick of paying these people. And Marlowe says, well, you could turn me loose on them if you want. I'm not convinced this is the best idea. And he's like, why? And he's like, it's just a whole bunch of trouble for something that you could just make go away. And he's like, they'll keep coming, and maybe so it'll just happen again. But the General says he has his pride. So he says, do what you think is best. And Marlowe says, okay. I mean, it might be cheaper and easier to stand for a certain amount of squeeze. That's all I'm saying. I'm afraid I'm rather an impatient man, Mr. Marlow. What are your charges? I get 25 a day in expenses when I'm lucky. I see. It seems reasonable enough for removing morbid growths from people's backs. Quite a delicate operation, you realize that. I hope you'll make your operation as little of a shock to the patient as possible. There might be several of them, Mr. Marlowe. I finished my second drink and wiped my lips and my Face. The heat didn't get any less hot with the brandy in me. The General blinked at me and plucked at the edge of his rug. Can I make a deal with this guy? If I think he's within hooting distance of being on the level, yes. The matter is now in your hands. I never do things by halves. I'll, take him out, I said. He'll think a bridge fell on him. So he's taken the case, but he's not at all convinced that this is really a good idea. But he also has talked to the General about the missing Mr. Regan, and the General seems to miss him more than you might expect of like, oh, my son in law, who was the former liquor runner, but the guy used to sit with them. However, when Marlowe says, do you want me to go after him? The General's like, no, no, I'd like to know if he's okay. But I'm not paying you for that. I just want to handle these gambling debts. Okay, well, before he leaves, the butler says, Mrs. Regan would like to see you.
>> Grace Todd:Nuh.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And so that is Rusty's wife, Vivian. and she is up in a room drinking, which Marlowe drank with the General because the General was like, you should drink, because I can't anymore. So this is a drinking family we will come to see.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, if you marry a rum runner.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. And, and I believe he's her second husband. So. And I mean, this is a woman in her late 20s, maybe mid-20s.
>> Grace Todd:She's moving through them at a good clip.
>> Drew Nietzsche:For sure. For sure. So she's like, my father hired you to find Rusty? And he's like, no, I didn't m. No, he doesn't even say that. This is Marlo's thing. He does not do this. You will see as you read Raymond Chandler, that Philip Marlowe ain't gonna volunteer any information.
>> Grace Todd:A good policy, actually.
>> Drew Nietzsche:So he's like, I don't know, he hired me for something. I'm not gonna tell you what. That's between you. You can ask him. And she says basically like, if you're trying to find Rusty, I don't. I don't want this going on. Let's. Let's read a little bit of this. Mrs. Regan said, well, how you go about it then? How and when did he skip out? Didn't dad tell you? I grinned at her with my head on one side. She flushed. Her hot black eyes looked mad. I m. Don't see what there is to be cagey about. She snapped. And I don't like your manners. I'm not crazy about yours. I said I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind you ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a scotch bottle. I don't mind you showing me your legs. She's basically half dressed in, like, fishnet stockings and a robe. You know, they're very swell legs, and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross examine me. She slammed her glass down so hard that it slopped over on an ivory cushion. She swung her legs to the floor and stood up with her eyes sparking fire in her nostrils. Wide. Her mouth was open and her bright teeth glared at me. Her knuckles were white. People don't talk like that to me, she said thickly. I sat there and grinned at her. Very slowly, she closed her mouth and looked down at the spilled liquor. She sat down on the edge of the Chase Lounge and cupped her chin in one hand. My God, you big, dark, handsome, brute. I ought to throw a Buick at you. So they're not getting along too well. And she. She takes a while to come around to, oh, I'm flipping out about the whole my husband being missing and my dad hiring you to find him thing. That's not even what he hired you for, is it? And Marlo's like, okay, it isn't what he hired me for. She's like, God, why'd you lead me through all this? He's like, you brought me up here, lady. And she's like, well, then you should get out. So he leaves.
>> Grace Todd:You're infuriating, you big, hot man.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, totally. Totally. So he goes outside and he's looking out across the hills at the abandoned oil derricks that brought the general his fortune, and he's thinking about it. He kind of assesses the case. I walked down a brick path from terrace to terrace, followed along inside the fence and so out of the gates to where I had left my car, under a pepper tree on the street. Thunder was crackling in the foothills now, and the sky above them was purple black. It was gonna rain hard. The air had the damp foretaste of rain. I put the top up on my convertible before I started downtown. She had lovely legs. I would say that for her. They were a couple of pretty smooth citizens, she and her father. He was probably Just trying me out. The job he had given me was a lawyer's job. Even if Mr. Arthur Gwyn Gyger Rare books and deluxe Editions turned out to be a blackmailer, it was still a lawyer's job unless there was a lot more to it than met the eye. At a casual glance, I thought maybe I might have a lot of fun finding out. So he's like, all right, let's do this. He goes and checks out some information about first editions in the library. Basically there's reference books like this. This is of course long before the Internet where now you could pull it up on your phone, but.
>> Grace Todd:And all the information would be fake and AI, generated.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Oh, quite possibly that might serve his purposes. Anyway, as we'll see. So he goes to Giger's store and there's an interesting bit where he's walking in. It says the entrance door was set far back in the middle. And there was a copper trim on the windows which were backed with Chinese screens so I couldn't see into the store. There was a lot of oriental junk in the windows. I didn't know whether it was any good not being a collector of antiques other than unpaid bills. The entrance door was plate glass, but I couldn't see much through that either because the store was very dim. A building entrance adjoined it on one side and on the other was a glittering credit jewelry establishment. The jeweler stood in his entrance, teetering on his heels and looking bored. A tall, handsome white haired Jew in lean dark clothes with about nine carats of diamonds on his right hand. A faint knowing smile curved his lips. When I turned into Geiger's store, I let the door close softly behind me and walked on a thick blue rug that paved the floor from wall to wall. There were blue leather easy chairs with smoke stands beside them. A few sets of tooled leather bindings were set out on narrow polished tables between bookends. There were more tooled bindings and glass cases on the walls. Nice looking merchandise, the kind a rich promoter would buy by the yard and have somebody paste his book plate in. At the back there was a grained wood partition with the door in the middle of it shut. In the corner made by the partition in one wall, a woman sat behind a small desk with a carved wooden lantern on it. And this woman is like a sexy blonde.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And. Yeah. Oh yeah. And she gets up and she's gonna die, isn't she? I can't. No. I think she lives. I think she lives. I think she lives. Spoilers. I Think I believe this lady lives. no. She turns out to be a reasonably major character. As she gets up, comes over to Marlowe. He says, she approached me with enough sex appeal to stampede a businessman's lunch and tilted her head to finger a stray tendril of softly glowing hair.
>> Grace Todd:I know that he's, like, one of the great novelists, but, like, the way. The way these women are all described is just, yeah, there a lot it is.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And. And that's the thing. Like, one thing I think about reading this today, it's been interesting in my life, going back to books that I loved before I transitioned, because I thought, think. Although, you know, guys, I'm a trans woman, I'm sure you all know, there was a time in my life where I knew I was a woman and wasn't telling anyone. And I think that was a bit of a different experience than just living as myself. And I didn't really realize it at the time. And then I go back to things that I encountered then, and you see it through new eyes. It's like, okay, I realize now how this implicates me where before I didn't. And so I think there are things I notice about some of this, that there's just a lot of unquestioned assumptions. He's not as bad as HP Lovecraft, who is an outright open racist. He is. But he definitely is not questioning a lot of things. And that is a common mainstream problem pretty much in all areas, including our own. But I think it's less of a problem today than it used to be. This is the 30s. It's real bad. I mean, you notice he called the jeweler a Jew with no second thought. It's not chill. You know, there's a lot of this.
>> Grace Todd:Definitely. I was like, oh, there goes the 1930s antisemitism.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Correct.
>> Grace Todd:but this. Part of the reason I'm mentioning it is because, like, it's not even that it's offensive. I mean, it is a little offensive, A little. But it's mostly just, like, it's laid on so thick, and it's so funny. Like, every single woman who comes on. On the page might as well be like a beautiful zoo animal.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Like, yeah, yeah, it's true.
>> Grace Todd:But at least they have, like, a role to play. Like, there's much. I have read much worse books from the same era, from even later, where the women are not even remotely people, and these women have, like, stuff to do. It's just. It's just so funny.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Pretty much every female character in this book is Here for a reason. Pretty much every character. There's no like eye candy or randos even, even the Jewish guy at the door who gave him a knowing smile. We're going to find out why. Like that. That's serving a purpose.
>> Grace Todd:Like, I want to be described as durable and predatory.
>> Drew Nietzsche:What I will say about these sorts of semi cliche, you know, the dame was, was gorgeous and blah kind of things that you associate with noir crime fiction. I picked up Raymond Chandler late in my high school career and was like, whoa, this is actually really good. And maybe five years later, I had the opportunity to check out a Mike Hammer novel. Those are written by a fellow named Mickey Spillane who was a part time prize fighter. And those are the cliche you always hear about. The Mike Hammer novels are the private eye cliche of the era. And the first one came out in 1940, so right around the same time this book did. Okay, so if you, if you're surprised at how good this is, keep in mind what Chandler said to us in the Simple Art of Murder. This is hard to do. Well, yes. And there are plenty of people who sold just as many books as he did and did it way less good. And you could stumble upon them going, raymond Chandler's cool. But there are only eight books. I want more. Yeah, you're gonna find those guys real quick. Like, Dashiell Hammond is highly recommended by me. He wrote the Maltese Falcon, he wrote the Thin Man. He's great. pretty much anybody else from this era writing this kind of fiction, you take your chances.
>> Grace Todd:Genre fiction is really hard to pull off. I mean, that's what we talked about a little bit in our Anne Rice, our Sleeping Beauty episodes. Erotica, is hard to do.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, for sure, for sure.
>> Grace Todd:All right, back to our blonde with legs as long as the day and nice teeth.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes, she is doing a more subtle version of the rap you'd get at a local Richmond restaurant called Grand Staff and Stein, which is disguised to look like a speakeasy. You walk in the door, it looks like a bookstore. It's not a bookstore. It's very obvious the second you look around for a minute and the woman behind the counter is gonna ask you, what's the password? Ah. And you can get it off their Facebook page. And then you go in the back and you're at a bar. But it's all this, like, cliche of a speakeasy. This is the real deal. She's like, was it something? But what she means is, what's the password? And he starts Pulling this kind of bookish nerd vibe. Like, oh, I took it seriously that this is a bookstore, and she's not prepared for that. He starts using some of the stuff that he came up with out of the first edition book in the library and just basically trying to ask her, what do you have? Do you have this? Do you have anything like this? I'm looking for this. And she is just like, oh, what? And. And he says, well, is Mr. Geiger here? Mr. Geiger is not here. He won't be in until later. So he says, oh, I will wait for him. I will sit in this nice easy chair here, and I will wait for him. And she's just like, clearly, like, get this guy out of here. But what can she do? If she threw him out, it would kind of blow the whole deal. Like, sure. If he's fallen for this as a bookstore, she has to keep that kayfabe going. So he sits, and he's really just casing the joint. But she doesn't know that because she has bought his nerd act hook, line and sinker. While a guy comes in, and the guy goes over and she says something to him and immediately lets him through the door in the partition. And the guy's back there for a few minutes, and he comes out carrying a wrapped parcel. And Marlowe is like, Hm. And the guy walks out the door. Marlowe gets up, follows him out the door, starts following him down the street. And the guy immediately is like, oh, no, somebody's following me. And starts running, trying to get away from him. And at one point, he kind of disappears into some bushes, then pops back out right in front of Marlowe. And he doesn't have the book anymore. Marlowe's like, m. So he stops following the guy and looks for the book. Well, the book is full of smut. Naked ladies and such.
>> Grace Todd:Pornographers.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Correct. This is the real operation that Geiger's running. He's. He's, Running.
>> Grace Todd:Are the rich young ladies making pornography? I'm sorry, I shouldn't start making guesses.
>> Drew Nietzsche:We'll get there. Oh, we will get there. No, we're getting there soon. So there's another bookstore across the street. Marlowe goes by the bookstore, starts talking to the lady in the bookstore, and he's like, running the same line, but not. Not in a, like, look at me, I'm a bookish nerd way. Just like a guy. And he walks in and he says, what about this book? What about this book? And the woman's like, let me look she goes to a catalog, and she's like, these aren't real. None of the ones you brought up to me are real. And he's like, nope, they're not. Woman at Geiger store across the way, she didn't know that. And the woman is like, yeah, Geiger's store. M. He's like, what's going on over there? And she's kind of cagey, but she describes Geiger to him. So he goes back to his car, parks and waits. It's raining. He's sitting out there in the rain. As you may remember, he has a convertible. I'll read you a little bit about the rain. Rain filled the gutters and splashed knee high off the sidewalk. Big cops and slickers that shone like gun barrels had a lot of fun carrying giggling girls across the bad places. The rain drummed hard on the roof of the car, and the Burbank top began to leak. A pool of water formed on the floorboards for me to keep my feet in. It was too early in the fall for that kind of rain. I struggled into a trench coat and made a dash for the nearest drugstore and bought myself a pint of whiskey. Back in the car, I used enough of it to keep warm and interested. I was long over parked, but the cops were too busy carrying girls and blowing whistles to bother about that. And he's watching Geiger's store, and people are coming in, people are going, and they're coming out with their little brown wrapped parcels.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Everyone take notes. We might have to start buying our pornography from fake bookstores again soon.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I guess that's possible. Whoa. All right. So eventually, Geiger shows he recognizes him by the description that was given by the across the street bookseller. So he shows a young guy, runs out of the store and basically holds an umbrella over him, leads him inside, comes back out without the umbrella and drives the car around the block to park it.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, he fancy.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Fancy, yes, Correct. So Marlowe is like, all right, I'm gonna wait here for that guy to leave. And then I'm following him. He follows him. He goes up to his house in the Hollywood Hills, and the rain is slacking off. He's like, thank God. He's parked there waiting. Carmen Sternwood shows up. Oh, so you called it. Like, Carmen Sternwood has just shown up at the pornographer's house. Now, I don't know if you know about this, but back in the day, like, this is 85 years ago. Your registration for your car was attached to your steering column. So anybody could walk by your car and see who the heck you were. They got rid of that. But back then, it wasn't the case. In fact, door locks weren't even universal. Probably they were by this point, but it took a few decades for door locks to be universal. I don't know if you could lock the door. Your Model T, for example.
>> Grace Todd:That explains some stuff in some old novels that I have read and not really thought about.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. They get the registration off the steering column, and you're like, how did they know whose car this is and what's on the steering column? Yeah, that your registration didn't used to be something you had to get out of your glove compartment. It was on your steering column. That was the thing. Yeah. So he figures out he sees a woman walk in. He. He can't tell who it is. That's how he figures it out. He sees that it's Carmen Stern Wood's car. With the.
>> Grace Todd:With the predatory orange peel teeth.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Correct. She was the one who fell in his lap and was, when he was still standing up, the younger of the two Stern woods. All right, so Marlowe is like, let's see what happens. After a while, he sees a big flash of light, and somebody screams.
>> Grace Todd:No, that's a, bad sign, right?
>> Drew Nietzsche:So he's like, oh, no. Is my client getting raped and murdered in here? I better go see. And he runs in, and right as he gets to the door, he hears a bunch of shots. Gunshots, loud. And somebody runs. And, like, they'd gone out the back door, down some stairs, because we're in the Hollywood Hills, so the stairs take you down to the next street over. So there's no way he's catching this guy. He's gone. He kicks in the window. Oh. Goes in the door, you know, unlocks the. Unlocks the place, goes in, and he finds there are two people in the room. One is naked, the other is dead. And some of these chapters end so well. Basically, Carmen is naked and high out of her mind and just kind of on what.
>> Grace Todd:What do people get high on in 1930?
>> Drew Nietzsche:I don't know if this is revealed right away, but it's. He eventually figures out that she's on a mix of aether and laudanum.
>> Grace Todd:Whoa.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. Like, laudanum, for those who don't know, is basically a tincture of opium. Like, if instead of. You were gonna. You were like, I want to take opium, but I don't want to smoke it. I want to drink it. That's laudanum. Ether is more like Knockout gas.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. That's a weird thing to be high. I mean, it was the 30s, but, like, laudanum was falling out of favor by that point.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was. I believe you could still get it pharmacies, though.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe ether was trendy.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I don't know.
>> Grace Todd:I don't know either.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I can't speak to that. But, yeah, I believe that's what, ah, she's high on. we talked already about a bit of the, like, ambient temperature of misogyny, and I wanted to give you a little bit of that, here, because Marlowe has a repulsed reaction. Carmen's naked, but it's unseemly and he's so gauche. Yeah, it's. It's worse than that. let's just read it. She had a beautiful body. Small, live, compact, firm, rounded. Her skin in the lamplight had the shimmering luster of a pearl. Her legs didn't quite have the raffish grace of Mrs. M. Regan's legs, but they were very nice. Keep in mind this. They're sisters, so, yeah, I looked over her without either embarrassment or ruddishness as a naked girl. She was not there in that room at all. She was just a dope to me. She was always just a dope. he does not. He has never thought much of this girl. Yeah, that continues. But there's. I felt a bit of a misogynistic undertone to this.
>> Grace Todd:That's. I find that really interesting because I think part of what it. It feels like part of what he's saying is that she's too dumb to be hot.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes. Yes, I would agree. I would agree.
>> Grace Todd:Which I kind of get like.
>> Drew Nietzsche:But there's ways you can say it without being so contemptuous. Sure.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I mean, I may be a little off. Off base by saying, oh, yeah, this seems misogynistic to me, but that was just the vibe I caught when I read it. Oh.
>> Grace Todd:It's all. To be clear. It's all deeply misogynistic.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:I just, like. It's interesting to me because having, you know, as I think listeners are aware of at this point, partly because of my academic background, like, Victoriana is really my wheelhouse and where I spent the most time.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Right.
>> Grace Todd:and it's just interesting to me because it is a different. It's an evolved misogyny from what I am used to. And what's interesting is it's what is jumping out at me is it. Is. It is not as bad as. As what you get in the Like Victorian and Edwardian, the 1800s, very early 1900s, up through even the 1920s. And then we.
>> Drew Nietzsche:The evolved misogyny.
>> Grace Todd:And then what's. What's interesting to me is that it, gets so much worse again later.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Like a. Like a lot of the stuff in the 60s and 70s would have been so much more awful toward her, if that makes any sense.
>> Drew Nietzsche:For sure.
>> Grace Todd:Like, really would have underlined how, like, how disgusting she was.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well. And I think, you know, building up to the 1920s, what happened in the early part of the 20th century with women, we got the vote.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And it's like the culmination of the first wave of feminism, which is interesting. Everybody, when they got the vote, everybody was kind of like, we're done. We can go home. Which is sort of, you know, how the queer community reacted a decade ago when we got gay marriage and.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, God, yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And now look at the backlash we're dealing with. And Susan Faludi wrote a great book called Backlash in the early 80s, that's all about the backlash to the second wave of feminism, which I think is what you're pointing at.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And it may be that what you're pointing out in the Victorian, Edwardian is the backlash to the first wave of feminism. This is somewhere in between the two waves.
>> Grace Todd:Well, that's. I think that's what's. What's jumping out at me is that it is very much a product of an. Of an inter period where it's like, I'm gonna treat women like three quarters of a person.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Okay. But let's. Let's continue with our story. Basically, Marlo's first thought is, I'm looking at Carmen. She's naked. Over here is Arthur Geiger, and he is shot dead. Whoops. This is not where my client is going to want his daughter to be found. I have to get her out of here. So he smacks her to try and bring her around. Classic cliche of the era. We gotta smack women in the face when they're being hysterical.
>> Grace Todd:Pull yourself together.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep. And he checks the camera because he thinks there's gonna be film in here with naked pictures of. Of our Carmen. No, it's gone. The person who shot Geiger took the film. Oh, so he searches the house, basically finds that someone had already broken in the back before he broke in the front. He assumes that's who shot Geiger. And there's. There's some fun little queer coded latent homophobia here that I want to read to You. This is going to come back. This is like the feather. We're going to get the whole chicken later.
>> Grace Todd:I like how the Chandler style metaphors are bleeding into your own speech at this point.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Oh, fair enough. let's see. The back door was unlocked. I left it unlocked and looked into a bedroom on the left side of the hall. It was neat, fussy, womanish. The bed had a flounced cover. There was perfume on the triple mirrored dressing table beside a handkerchief, some loose money, a man's brushes, a key holder. A man's clothes were in the closet and a man's slippers under the flounced edge of the bed cover. Mr. Geiger's room. I took the key holder back to the living room and went through the desk. There was a locked steel box in the deep drawer. I used one of the keys on it. There was nothing in it but a blue leather book with an index and a lot of writing in code in the same slanting printing that had written the IOUs to General Sternwood. I put the notebook in my pocket, wiped the steel box where I had touched it, locked up the desk, pocketed the keys, turned the gas logs off in the fireplace, wrapped myself in my coat and tried to rouse Mrs. Stern. Ms. Sternwood? It couldn't be done. So at this point, he's like, I. I mean, I started that passage where I did because I wanted you to see the kind of queer coding we're getting with Geiger, which will play into the story later. He's trying to get Carmen out of there, but he also wants to know what the heck's going on. He finds this book, and it's in code, so he decides to take it. And it matters later, but at first, he doesn't know what it is. But the main goal here is get. Get Carmen to safety. Sure. Make sure when the cops come, she's not here. So at that point, he gets Carmen dressed, sorta, and puts her in her car, pours her into her car, drives her home, knocks on the door, tells the butler like, hey, you need to do something with this. And the butler's like, oh, Mr. Marlowe. Oh, oh, okay. And, then he has to walk back to his car, which is still at Geiger's place. He goes back in, does more of a thorough casing of the joint. And what he discovers is Geiger's body. It's gone. Oh. he finds another bedroom, and that one is locked. But there's a key on the key ring he stole from Geiger, who's Dead and doesn't need his keys. And when he opens, has much more of a butch look, like. Like some ordinary kind of dude lives here. But there's nothing more he can learn from it. There's no identification or anything in there. he comes back out, looks and sees somebody dragged this body out the front door. He can see grooves in the carpet from the feet dragging. He thinks, well, okay, the killers didn't do this because they ran. Why would they come back? They wouldn't. And it wasn't the police. Cause they'd still be here with crime scene tape everywhere. So who did this? I don't know.
>> Grace Todd:Who knew he was dead but wasn't the murderer and came to take the body? Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:yeah. And. And the cops aren't there. The cops don't know. So he basically takes the coded notebook home and sits with the drink and tries to decipher it. He can't decipher it. All he knows for sure is its names and addresses because of the format they're in and everything. But he can't tell what any of them are. He thinks, all right, this is about 400 people. I'm assuming these are his porn businesses. Customers. But he doesn't really know what else to do. So he gets drunk, goes to sleep. Next morning, he gets up in the morning, goes down to buy a paper. And there's nothing in the paper about Geiger being dead. So he thinks, okay, the cops still don't know. Then he gets a call. This is Bernie Oles. And Bernie Oles, along with a fella named Violets McGee, are two minor reoccurring characters in the Marlowe world. And they're both like what is called in the Kind of Tropes handbook, the friend on the force.
>> Grace Todd:So, sorry, did you say violets or violence?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Violettes. Okay, choose Violet. cough drops.
>> Grace Todd:Okay.
>> Drew Nietzsche:He'll come up later. He's not. We're gonna talk about him later. We'll get there. But this is Bernie Oles. And Bernie Oles says, hey, the Stern Woods. Did you go out and see him? Marlowe goes, yeah, I took the case, cuz Bernie was the one who sent him. Said, you know, they don't want to do the police, but this guy could use good PI. And I know you're a good PI. Go see him. So he says, yeah, I took the case. He's like, oh, well, then you might want to know that their Buick is in the water off Lido Pier. Yep. And it's not Carmen, because Carmen was driving a Packard. This is like the car, the big car that the General gets driven around in, and there's a body in it. He's like, is it rusty, Regan? Bernie's like, I don't know, but I'm going up there. You want to come along? And Marlo's like, yep. So they meet at the station. They drive up to Lido Pier. It's basically made to sound like Bernie drives like a bat out of hell. And Marlowe is like, oh, my God, okay, I made it. I survived. And, they pull the. The Record True truck that's there to pull this guy in this car out of the water is pulling it out as they get there, and there's a guy in it. It's not Rusty Regan. It's somebody else. And Marlowe says, wasn't that the chauffeur who drove the General around? I saw him at the place. And Olds is like, yeah, it's him. In fact, I know who the kid is. His name's Otis Taylor. He worked for them, fell for Carmen. Oh. And when he fell for Carmen, they ran off to Mexico to get a quickie marriage. Well, basically, I don't know who. Maybe another PI But Vivian got somebody to go down there, drag them back, and, you know, soundly thrashed him and was like, now I hope you've learned a lesson. And basically sent him and Carmen to their rooms, and he still works there. They didn't even fire him. Marlowe and, Oles are both like, that's weird.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Drew Nietzsche:But, now he's dead. Well.
>> Grace Todd:Well, you don't need to fire him if you're going to murder him later.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, who did murder him? This is an intriguing conundrum and points us to another fact about Raymond Chandler and his writing style, which is he did no advanced plotting. This is a. This is a very famous story. The chauffeur is dead. They're making the movie the big sleep in 1945. Raymond Chandler is, at that time employed as a screenwriter in Hollywood. He's working on, I believe, Double Indemnity. Somebody calls him up. Ray. We can't figure out who killed the chauffeur. Who killed the chauffeur. And Ray telegraphs them back. I guess this is telegraphs. He telegraphs them back. Just two words. No idea. So there's no solution to this one.
>> Grace Todd:Good for you, Raymond.
>> Drew Nietzsche:He just is like, hey, nobody ever noticed that. I never said who killed the chauffeur until you guys were trying to turn it into a movie. So I guess it worked.
>> Grace Todd:And, you know, they had actual editors back then who edited their books properly. For realsies.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, but this is fun. You've noticed that.
>> Grace Todd:If you got that past your editor, Raymond. I am. I'm on board with it.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. So legendarily, he forgot to say, who killed this guy?
>> Grace Todd:Now, question. As a person, who read this book initially, like, for funsies.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:did you notice that?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Not until I heard the story many years later.
>> Grace Todd:So it doesn't jump out. By the end of the novel, you're.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Like, by the end of the novel, you've forgotten this kid is dead. You know, it's like, a lot happens. This is Killer in the Rain and other Stories. There are two stories in here, and they were both rewritten and combined into this novel.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, cool.
>> Drew Nietzsche:So there's a point in this narrative where I'm gonna break off and tell you a bit about Killer in the Rain, and then we're gonna come back, and then at the end of the book, we're gonna talk about the curtain, and then we're gonna come back, and that's kind of the spoiler. So basically, Marlo's, like, back to Geiger's store. Nobody seems to know this dude said, so he's assuming business as usual, but he goes in, and this time he takes the tack of like, look, I need to see Geiger. I'm trying to sell him something. He's in the business. I'm in the business. We know what this is about. And the blonde kind of panics, and. And. And she is trying to fob him off and say, oh, he's out of town. But the back door gets opened at one point, and Mar. What Marlowe sees is the porn library is being packed up.
>> Grace Todd:Oh.
>> Drew Nietzsche:So he goes outside, grabs a young taxi kid and says, follow that truck. And the kid follows this truck that they're packing the books into. It takes it to an apartment house. And who's registered at the apartment house but Joe Brody. Joe Brody was introduced at the very beginning. He was the guy who blackmailed the general the first time. so somehow he has come back around, and he's the one who's basically scooping up Geiger's books. Well, he's basically like, okay, what's going on with this? I should go back to my office and kind of try to figure some things out.
>> Grace Todd:I should drink some whiskey about it, for sure.
>> Drew Nietzsche:He goes back to the office. Vivian's there, And Vivian is like, I got a letter in the mail. They want$5,000 for this picture of Carmen Naked Kid. And. And Marlo's like, yep, I know what this is about. I, know what this is about. And, she's like, what? And so he basically says, we can figure this out, but why are you so panicked about this? What was the threat they made? And they said, she's mixed up in something. It'll get her arrested. And she needs to get$5,000 by tonight or we're gonna throw her in with the cops. We're gonna sell these pictures to the tabloids and embarrass General Sternwood and his family, the whole nine. Amarlo's like, yeah, I still know exactly what's going on. And then Vivian says, I could borrow the money from Eddie Mars, who is a guy who runs a well known local gambling house. And Marlo's like, what kind of connection do you have to that guy? And he's. She says, well, that's who Rusty ran off with, is his wife. Oh, so we just now found that out. Basically, the understanding is Mars is being cuckolded by Vivian's ne'er do well husband. And that's why a lot of this stuff is being played close to the vest about Rusty's disappearance. That's what she says. Is that true? We don't know. He goes back to Geigers. He's still like, what's going on? It has occurred to me. I didn't check the garage. Instead of finding something, in the garage, he finds Carmen lurking around the house. She's like, what are you doing here? And he unlocks the door, and she's like, you've got a key? And he's like, don't worry about it.
>> Grace Todd:Carmen go home.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, he drags her in, and he's like, what are you doing? And, let's see. I want to read you a little bit here.
>> Grace Todd:And then they kiss.
>> Drew Nietzsche:No, no, no, no, no. Not Marlowe and Carmen. No, it's Vivian. I neglected to mention it. Vivian propositioned Marlowe in the office. It was basically like, hey, big boy. And he was like, Anyway, so where are we?
>> Grace Todd:Just like, it's been so long since my husband fled, and I haven't been able to have sex with somebody my father can't have killed.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Sure. Okay. This is him and Carmen standing in the house. The place was horrible by daylight. The Chinese junk on the walls, the rug, the fussy lamps, the teakwood stuff, the sticky riot of colors, the totem pole, the flagon of ether and laudanum. All this in the daytime had a stealthy, nastiness Like a fag party. The girl and I stood looking at each other. She tried to keep a cute little smile on her face, but her face was too tired to be bothered. It kept going blank on her. The smile would wash off like water off sand, and her pale skin had a harsh, granular texture under the stunned and stupid blankness of her eyes. A whitish tongue licked at the corners of her mouth. A pretty spoiled and not very bright little girl who had gone very, very wrong, and nobody was doing anything about it. To hell with the rich. They made me sick. So.
>> Grace Todd:Amen.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, so this guy hates rich people, so he can't be all bad. But he's also curling his lip in disgust at the fact that Geiger was gay. So, you know, that's a,
>> Grace Todd:I mean, that makes him a paragon of 1930s masculinity for sure.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Basically, he tries to interrogate Carmen. What's going on? And she says, oh, I, don't know. He's like, who shot Geiger? She's like, I don't remember.
>> Grace Todd:She's like, homie, I did so much ether that day.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Right? Correct. Well, he basically goes, was it Brody? Because Brody is now scooping up Geiger's porn library.
>> Grace Todd:Sure.
>> Drew Nietzsche:And she goes, yes, yes, it was Joe Brody. That. And, you know, he's basically like, okay, so you really want it to be Joe Brody? But I don't know if I could trust this. And, hey, you know that. Then, okay, they're. They're confronting each other. Boom. Car shows up. Someone rings the bell. The. The two of them look at each other. You know, in mar. Marches Eddie Mars, who we talked about earlier. He's like, the girl can bounce, but I want to talk to you, soldier. And so he's like, what the hell's going on around here?
>> Grace Todd:Sexy.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. And. And. And. And. And Marlowe is basically like, what is it to you? And he's like, this is my house. I own it. Arthur Geiger is my tenant. And he sees, like, the blood stain on the floor. And Marlowe's, like, oh, so you had a. You. You were his protection. I see. And he tells him the books have been moved out of the store. Well, Mars didn't know that was going on. And basically, he calls in his guys, they get into a bit of a beef, and Marlowe stands them off, like, fine, call the cops. And then the guys are, like, gonna pull a gun and shoot him. And he's like, shoot me? And they don't want to do it for whatever reason. And he basically brazens his way out of this and leaves. But Eddie Mars is coming back.
>> Grace Todd:Notable noted cuckold slash landlord Eddie Mars.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Indeed. We're, gonna see him again. And gambling proprietor. Don't forget that. That's very important. So he thinks, all right, I guess I'll go brace Joe Brody. So he goes to Brody's, and he says, joe Brody answers the dory, says, hey, you got Geiger's books? And Brody is like, what are you talking about? And he's like, I know you do. I know you do. And I've got his sucker list. You should let me in. So he brings him in, and basically he then pulls a gun on him. And then the woman from the bookstore comes in. Agnes. So we've got Joe Brody and Agnes are both in here. And Marlowe is basically like, I know you killed Geiger so you could steal his books. And. And. And Brody's, like, pretty bold for you to come in here talking like that. Fortunately for you, no, I didn't. I didn't kill the man. I mean, I took his books, but I don't know who killed him.
>> Grace Todd:It is certainly not the most advisable thing to be like, I think you're a murderer, and I'm here at your house alone with you.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Right? Right. And then he's like, I know someone will put you at the scene. And Brody says that little. And so it's immediately like, okay, so you know it's Carmen. Why do you know it was it's Carmen? Because you were there. He says, yeah, yeah, but some guy broke in and shot him, and he ran. And I followed the guy, and, like, Brody, it turns out, wasn't even in there. He was spying on Geiger, too, and he was on the back street. Oh. so he saw the guy leave, heard the shots, saw the guy leave, tailed the guy, took the photos off the guy, and the guy fled in terror. He basically impersonated a police officer to get the photos off him. Well, it comes in the fullness of time that the guy who shot Geiger and fled in terror, that was the chauffeur. So assumedly, he fled in terror and drove off the pier, but he had been hit in the head. And Brody's like, yeah, I hit him in the head, but he was fine after that. So now it's, like, totally a question mark as to how he ended up dead in the. Did he kill himself? Yeah, it's just never resolved.
>> Grace Todd:Well, you know, concussions are very unpredictable. Symptoms can manifest later. Sometimes you just drive off up here.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Right? Right. Who knows? So Marlowe says, all right, buddy, give up Carmen's pictures. And the guy's like, I'm not doing that. I want money. I've gotta bounce with these books. I need some setup to get me going in the new place. And they go back and forth. And this is like kind of a classic noir trope of the era when it's like, where are we gonna go from here? These two are going back and forth. Boom. Somebody comes in the door with the gun. That's kind of a thing originated by Paul Kane's legendary 1934, I think, novel, fast one. And Paul Kane wrote that novel in like a week. And just every time he ran out of an idea, he just had somebody come in through the door with the gun.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, that is a very efficient way to resolve an argument you haven't figured out how to end.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah, yeah, well, so, boom. Here comes somebody buzzing at the door. And it keeps on ringing. Somebody's just leaning on the doorbell. Brody goes to the door, comes back, Carmen's there with a gun in his face. Ah. And she's like, how dare you? Blah, blah, blah. And, like, getting some done. Yeah. She shoots out a window, and it gets real crazy. And so Agnes has a gun, Brody has a gun, Marlowe has a gun, but he can't get it out in time.
>> Grace Todd:There's a. There's a metaphor in that. But then all of these armed women, and he just can't get his gun up.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I never thought of that. That is an interesting proposition. Well, what ends up happening is Carmen and Brody are struggling, so Marlowe manages to get the gun off Agnes and he pockets it. And then he jumps up and pulls Carmen off of Brody, takes her gun, and she has caused Brody to drop his gun because he panicked when she came in the door. Well, Marlowe has everybody's gun, and he's just like, carmen, go home. You know, and she storms out, and he's like, give me the pictures. We're not playing anymore. And. And Brody's like, fine, here are the pictures. And so he's basically asking him, why are you trying to blackmail Vivian? And he's like, cuz last time I blackmailed the general, I don't think I can do it twice. And so he's still like, can you give me a little money to get out of town? And Marlo's like, yeah, maybe. I'll see what I can do. But then the doorbell rings again. Brody goes to the door. Boom. He gets shot.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, shit.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep. And so Marlowe, doesn't see the shooter, but goes chasing after him. He tails him. The kid is trying to get away and the cops are coming. He tails the kid and, like, sees him walking down the street. It's a young guy wearing a leather jerkin. And he basically wheels around his car and goes and catches him on the other end of the block, jumps out, here come the cops. He's like, you want me or you want the cops? Like, I. I could prove you did this. You have the gun. The kid's like, fine, I'll go with you, but I want to read you this confrontation. The sound of the steps grew louder and the whistling went on cheerfully. In a moment, the jerkin showed. I stepped out between the two cars and said, got a match, buddy? The boy spun toward me and his right hand darted up to go inside the jerkin. His eyes were a wet shine and the glow of the round electrolears. Moist dark eyes shaped like almonds and a pallid, handsome face with wavy black hair growing low on the forehead in two points. He was a very handsome boy indeed. He was the boy from Geiger's store. He stood there looking at me silently, his right hand on the edge of the jerkin, but not inside it yet. I held the little revolver down at my side. You must have thought a lot of that, Queen, I said. Go fuck yourself, the boy said softly, motionless. Between the parked cars and the five foot retaining wall. On the inside of the sidewalk, a siren wailed distantly, coming up the long hill. The boy's head jerked toward the sound. I put my gun into his jerkin. Me or the cops? His head rolled a little sideways as if I had slapped his face. Who are you? He snarled. Friend of Geiger's. Get away from me, you son of a. This is a small gun, kid. I'll give it to you through the naval. And it'll take three months to get you well enough to walk. But you'll get well so you can walk to the nice new gas chamber up in Quentin. He said, go f yourself. His hand moved inside the jerkin. I pressed harder on his stomach. He let out a long, soft sigh, took his hand away from the jerkin and let it fall limp. His wide shoulder sagged. What do you want? He whispered. I reached inside the jerkin and plucked out the automatic. Get into my car, kid. He stepped past me and I crowded him from behind. He got into the car under the wheel. Kid, you drive. So basically, this is Geiger's boyfriend and he is represented as. As bad or Worse than Geiger for being queer. He uses a dirty word which Grace will have charmingly bleeped out, which is perfect because of the fact that it's just a long line in the book. But who doesn't know what this guy's saying, you know?
>> Grace Todd:Right. I was wondering why the narrative went out of its way to be like, he's actually very attractive. And it's because looking attractive is queer.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep. Correct.
>> Grace Todd:Men are not supposed to be attractive.
>> Drew Nietzsche:No. So he's like, all right, we're going back to Geiger's. And when they get back there, I wrote down in my notes in front of Geiger's house, kid and Marlowe fight. Marlowe wins because. Fact.
>> Grace Todd:Jesus Christ.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I mean, it's really how it feels. Marlowe handcuffs the kid, drags him inside. Kids unconscious. At this point, Geiger's body has been laid out in state on his bed. Marlo's like, oh, this,
>> Grace Todd:Where. Where does this man's body keep going and coming back from?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Well, they later find out it's been in the garage the whole time. And basically, okay, we're halfway through the novel here, but the Geiger murder is solved. He calls Oles. He says, you got this body over here in this apartment. That's Joe Brody. This kid killed him. Here's Geiger. I got him. The chauffeur killed him. You know, Brody told me before he died, he's destroyed the. The photos, and basically there's a confrontation with the DA And Marlo's like, look, I did what I had to do. You know, that. That kind of thing. We're like 110 pages into this 230 page novel. Why is this sort of kind of wrapping up?
>> Grace Todd:Well, because it's not wrapping up.
>> Drew Nietzsche:also true, but what if I told you that this novel is just two short stories that Raymond Chandler wrote earlier in his career, and he just kind of took all the pieces and put them together in a different order and that became this novel.
>> Grace Todd:Wait, so you're telling me that this novel is two short stories wearing a trench coat?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes. That is a really good way to put it. Yes. Now, I believe we're about to end our episode, but when we come back, before we proceed to the second half of the book, we're going to talk a little bit about a story called Killer in the Rain. And that's the. That's half of the story. And at this point, we've basically heard all of Killer in the Rain, at least as it exists in the current form. But what's interesting about it is that Raymond Chandler did these things in a way where if you'd read the other story, it would feel like a different story, even though it isn't a different story. So I think it's worth looking at before we go on. But again, we're have to save that for next week.
>> Grace Todd:All right, that's. It's very interesting. I feel like we used to be a lot more tolerant of novels that were kind of episodic in that way.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. Perhaps.
>> Grace Todd:Like I. This is not the order everything will air in, probably. But I am currently rereading Dracula because we're going to do a Nosferatu episode.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Sure.
>> Grace Todd:And on top of being epistol. Er, so. Eh, well, Dracula slaps.
>> Drew Nietzsche:I've read it like three times. It's great.
>> Grace Todd:It's so good. But I always forget that it kind of feels like two books. You basically have a Lucy narrative.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep.
>> Grace Todd:And then you have a Dracula pursuit narrative.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yep. And the Dracula thing starts out for a little bit and then we switch to Lucy for a couple hundred pages and then we go back to Dracula for the big final confrontation. And they're tied together, but in a way where they might not have started out like that.
>> Grace Todd:And I feel like that is a lot more. Used to be a lot more common that you would have novels, that have a really natural kind of end point right in the middle and then.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Pick up for an Act 2. And now I feel like the thing with novels is that they're not allowed to relax at all. Like everything just has to be all momentum.
>> Drew Nietzsche:It's a symptom of modern life. Movies are like that too, a lot.
>> Grace Todd:Of times, and it's exhausting.
>> Drew Nietzsche:It can be. What I will tell you is that this book, A, Killer in the Rain and Other Stories, contains eight stories. Three others in the book were cut up and rebuilt into Farewell My Lovely. And three others in the book were cut up and rebuilt into the lady in the Lake. So three of Chandler's eight novels were made out of other stories.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, why write a whole brand new novel if you can just take your short stories and put trench coats on them?
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yeah. He called it cannibalization.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, Drew.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:Thank you so much for being here with me today.
>> Drew Nietzsche:Of course. I'm glad to do it.
>> Grace Todd:And if people would like to find you, would you like to remind them where they can do that?
>> Drew Nietzsche:you can read my weekly show column@theauricular.com I spelled it at the beginning so I won't do that again. I have basically eliminated all social media other than Blue sky because it's the only one where I don't feel like I'm supporting people who want me dead to use them. So if you want to find me on Blue Sky, I'm at ah, annihilate this week. BSGuy Social, or however the heck they write usernames over there. beyond that, I'm not really out there and I kind of even want to get rid of Blue sky because I'm too addicted to it.
>> Grace Todd:That's fair. It is. The social media is ruining all of our lives for sure. well, thank all of you for being here with us this week. We thought it would be fun to do a little, detective drama, give us all a bit of a break from the modern moment and focus on dames and revolvers. Anyway, we will be back next week with part two. And in the meantime, as always, if you can, this week, this month, this pay period, consider supporting a living author because they could really use the love. Bye. Didn't Read. It was created, written, researched and recorded by me, Grace Todd. Maddie Wood is our co producer and social media maven. editing by Tally, a true podcasting professional, and Grace Todd. Our theme song is books 2.0. Written, performed and recorded by William Albritton. Our logo was designed and illustrated by the incredibly talented Jess. Versus Special thanks to blackiris. So Social Club in Richmond, Virginia. Reach out to us with questions, concerns or academic scrutiny at. didn't readititpodmail. Uh.com sat M.