Episode 86: More About The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Anthony Dean Rizzuto

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

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Sarah Harrison  02:01

I’m super excited. We have such a knowledgeable guest. But before we get into that, we have a really fun listener of the episode.

Carolyn Daughters  02:11

It’s Vicky Simms Adams from Calvert, Texas. Thank you, Vicky, for being our listener of the episode. We appreciate you, and we’re going to send you an amazing sticker.

Sarah Harrison  02:25

We don’t just appreciate you emotionally. We appreciate you with a sticker.

Carolyn Daughters  02:28

And with this wonderful shout out. I might throw in a Longmire Days bookmark. It’s the whole package. So today and so, thank you very much, Vicky. And for everybody who is listening, following us on our social media platforms, who is a Patreon supporter of our show,  following us on their favorite podcast platform — we appreciate you.

Sarah Harrison  02:29

While you’re there, go ahead and put those five stars down and tell everyone why you enjoy Tea, Tonic and Toxin so other likeminded listeners can find the podcast.

Carolyn Daughters  02:29

That is excellent advice.

Sarah Harrison  02:29

It is not straightforward, to get the algorithms working in your favor.

Carolyn Daughters  02:29

Sarah is chock full of excellent advice, I always say.

Carolyn Daughters  02:29

We need to write that down. Sarah is chock full of excellent advice.

Carolyn Daughters  02:35

It has a flow, a ring to it.

Carolyn Daughters  03:39

So today, we’re going to talk The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, which was published in 1939. When a dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmail of one of his two troublesome daughters. Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion, kidnapping, pornography, seduction and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in. The New Yorker says Chandler wrote as if pain hurt and life mattered. Library Journal says Chandler is not only the best writer of hardboiled private investigator stories, he’s one of the 20th century’s top scribes period. Raymond Chandler was a British American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age 44, he decided to write detective fiction after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first story, Blackmailers Don’t Shoot, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. Raymond Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, he published seven novels during his lifetime. The year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America, one of our favorite organizations. Raymond Chandler died on March 26 1959 in La Jolla, California.

Sarah Harrison  05:06

We are super excited to welcome back our fabulous guest, Anthony Dean Rizzuto. Anthony teaches English and heads the writing program at Sonoma State University in California. He coedited The Annotated Big Sleep with Owen Hill and Pamela Jackson. This amazing book is in our Amazon storefront, so check it out there. I’m really interested in seeing all of the goodies he put in there. And he wrote a critical history of Chandler’s romanticism entitled Raymond Chandler romantic ideology and the cultural politics of chivalry. Welcome back, Anthony. Thanks so much for staying.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  05:42

Thank you. This is wonderful.

Carolyn Daughters  05:45

Anthony, we would love to have you read from The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. I think you’re gonna pick your favorite area for reading. Maybe I’m wrong. Or, pick your least favorite.

Carolyn Daughters  06:08

You’re the one that wrote The Annotated Big Sleep.

Carolyn Daughters  06:10

You’re our resident expert, you choose what you would like to read.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  06:25

My co-editors, by the way, are Owen Hill and Pamela Jackson. It’s definitely not all me up here in my head, rattling around, though, it’s pretty much all me. Well, the latest one, I had three candidates, and the last one that I wanted to read was a paragraph from chapter 30 where the mystery has pretty much been resolved in Marlowe’s mind, but the reader doesn’t know yet the payoff. Marlowe gets summoned into the department of missing persons, or what Raymond Chandler calls the Missing Persons Bureau, by Captain Gregory. This is so multi layered. Captain Gregory knows now that Marlowe knows that Captain Gregory was in on this cover up the whole time. The cops knew that Rusty Regan was dead. The cops knew who did it, and the cops were working with Eddie Mars to cover it up. And that’s the world that, according to Raymond Chandler, we live in, and that is expositorily defended in The Simple Art of Murder. He says this in didactic terms, right? He just says it. But here he’s seducing you into believing it, as you were saying earlier, Sarah, about what you want from your fiction. He’s not simply stating it. He’s showing it to you, illustrating it to you with these characters. So the captain, Captain Gregory, wants to talk to Marlowe, just to partially justify himself to Marlowe, and he says, “I’m a copper, just a plain ordinary copper, reasonably honest, as honest as you could expect a man to be, in a world where it’s out of style. That’s mainly why I asked you to come in this morning. I’d like you to believe that. Being a copper, I like to see the law win. I’d like to see the flashy, well-dressed mugs like Eddie Mars spoiling their manicures in the rock quarry at Folsom alongside of the poor little slum-bred hard guys that got knocked over on their first caper and never had a break since. That’s what I’d like. You and me both live too long to think I’m likely to see it happen, not in this town, not in any town half the size, in any part of this wide, green and beautiful USA. We just don’t run our country that way. That packs a punch. Ouch.

Carolyn Daughters  10:07

It’s incredible. One question I have is, why does Captain Gregory want, in your opinion, why does he want Philip Marlowe to know this. Why does he want him to come in? Why does he want to say this to him? Ostensibly, he’s not saying this to every third guy who comes into his office. Why does he want to say this to Philip Marlowe?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  10:36

Such a great question. Totally. Why you wouldn’t expect that, and maybe there’s a little hopefulness to go back to that question. Not so much in Philip Marlowe, who’s like, basically, his response is, yeah, yeah, whatever. You’re bought and paid for. I don’t need this. But in Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep. Because Chandler definitely depicts, through his novels some completely bought and paid for and vicious police. But he also depicts police who seemingly became cops because they appreciated the rule of law, like seemingly Captain Gregory did. And then he learned on the inside, as Marlowe did when he was employed by the DA’s office, that you can’t be honest and work in that system. So Marlowe was fired. Captain Gregory made his peace with it, but seemingly Captain Gregory has a conscience where he wants to justify himself to the person who refused to play ball with the corrupt system. And I think it’s really interesting that Marlowe really doesn’t have the sympathy that Gregory wants.

Carolyn Daughters  12:10

So I guess that’s a follow up question I have. That’s an interesting statement, because at times I feel like he does. Philip Marlowe does have a very clear understanding of the world in which he’s living and working as a private detective, and also of the role of various police officers. And at one point, Vivian Sternwood says to him something like, and I could find the quote, but I’ll paraphrase it poorly. Most people don’t get a fair shake. That’s not the system, that’s not the way the world works. And he says something to her, like, well, it’s not all that bad. So I feel like he almost confuses me, but maybe this is just his complexity of character. But I’m not fully certain where he stands. Like is he looking out with this lens, saying, This is a dark, dreary, rainy Los Angeles world that is of moral decay and corruption, or is there more moral ambiguity happening here, where the story is more complex, and Philip Marlowe gets that complexity.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  13:35

Such a good question, you’re so right. It’s almost like Philip Marlowe is being triangulated. He’s got Captain Gregory, who’s  just allowed himself to be absorbed by the Borg on one side. So he’s outside of that, on a spectrum. But then Vivian Sternwood is much more cynical than Marlowe is, and there’s character development. I think, actually, Marlowe starts very right that that first scene where he’s well dressed and he doesn’t care. He’s so buoyant, and he’s so looking forward to this adventure that he’s about to have. And by the end, he’s just so worn down and jaded by it. Vivian’s already there in that scene that you’re referring to totally, she’s like, that’s our system. And you’re right. Marlowe saying, no, not entirely. Come on, don’t be like that. The very beginning of that chapter 30, the first sentence is, “This was another day, and the sun was shining again.” And if you compare that to the opening, where he’s talking about how the sun wasn’t shining, but in such depth, this glorious detail of how the sun wasn’t shining, and the hard look of rain in the foothills and the green lawn and just going on and on. There’s hope just in the expansiveness of description. And here it’s just like, it’s a day. Right? It’s a day.

Carolyn Daughters  15:14

To quickly follow up then, Hemingway is obviously a huge influence on Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. And the 1926 book by Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises. It’s not the sun sets. The sun also sets. It’s like, so, one could argue the most hopeful part of the entire book is the title of the book. It’s this really complex thing that Raymond Chandler is doing here in The Big Sleep, where it does feel like this rainy, dreary LA, and yet, I think the difference is this man or Harry Jones or Silver Wig. There are these people, and they almost pull you out of the darkness in which you can fall. And you say, if there is hope, it is in human beings.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  16:15

Nice. Thank you, Carolyn, for bringing me out of the depths that I had fallen.

Carolyn Daughters  16:29

This is just me brainstorming and spitballing here. I’m interested in your thoughts. And Sarah, I know you had follow up questions about Hemingway.

Sarah Harrison  16:42

I don’t know that I had any questions. I just really liked the connection. I haven’t read so many mysteries, but I have read some Hemingway and The Sun Also Rises was my first back in high school. So I just love the connection between these authors.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  17:05

Definitely, if you’re a Raymond Chandler person and drawing a genealogy, there’s the romantic stuff that approaches into Chandler’s writing brain from one angle, and then the other angle is The Sun Also Rises, specifically to Dashielll Hammett, and probably The Maltese Falcon most. And then to Raymond Chandler, for sure. I like that you said that. I liked what you were saying. It reminded me a little bit of a literary critic, not a critic, a theorist named Frederick Jameson, who’s written on Raymond Chandler and talks about how Chandler’s description of very minute detail recalls to us the details of the lives that we live that we sometimes can’t see. Like describing ashtrays or, back in those days, spittoons or something. The floor, the cracked marble of a floor, or something like that, the detail like that. Raymond Chandler reawakens us to our surroundings. And maybe that’s only tangentially related to what you were saying, but I think there is that psychological sense of communality or togetherness that we’re all in this world together when you read this. I love that. It’s more hopeful as a reading. We readers get to be hopeful, even if Philip Marlowe is not.

Carolyn Daughters  19:09

Two other characters that stand out as people that Philip Marlowe may feel a connection with, are General Sternwood, who several characters, including Philip Marlowe, go to great lengths to protect. And then Rusty Regan, who is more symbol than man, almost, because we never see him alive in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. And yet, this guy was worth finding and fighting for. Like, how do we find this guy? I just want to make sure he’s okay, General Sternwood says. But on some level, if I extrapolate, I think Philip Marlowe wants this guy to be found, also, because this is the kind of guy who sits and keeps company to a man who is dying, and is ill and really wants somebody to sit in the greenhouse with him. He’s looking for this company. This is the kind of guy who did it, and he has faraway eyes. He’s not greedy looking at the money in front of him. In fact, he used to carry a pretty large amount of money on his person without thought. This guy is an outlier, the general in some ways, maybe because he’s elderly, maybe because he’s feeling this affinity, he’s an outlier. Silver wig, Harry Jones. These characters stand out because we’re seeing them through Philip Marlowe’s eyes. And we’re already thinking, okay, Philip Marlowe is our flawed hero. And he’s saying, essentially, these people are heroic in one way, shape or form.

Sarah Harrison  21:02

I think Regan is almost like a alter ego of Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. He’s passed off that way in the book. But I also want to talk about protecting Sternwood. He’s in a bad position at the end. I liked when he came clean, and he was like, Look, maybe it’s my pride. I just didn’t think I was that bad a judge of character. And he really wants to know that Regan’s okay and that he was the person he actually thought he was. But to find that out, to find out he’s the correct judge of character, he has to learn that his psychopathic daughter shot him for fun and buried him in the oil field. And so to protect him, they’re also like wounding him. So what’s the way to protect the general here? I mean, everyone chooses the way of not telling him about Carmen is that? Is that the way?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  22:06

It’s really important to Philip Marlowe.

Sarah Harrison  22:10

I didn’t get the impression Marlowe was going to tell him either.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  22:13

No, that’s right.

Sarah Harrison  22:15

Like, I’m only going to tell him if you let Carmen stay free. You’ve got to put her away.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  22:22

He wants justice to be served, to a certain extent. I think that’s why he says at the end that he’s part of the nastiness now. He knows about all of this stuff. He’s not going to turn Carmen over. It’s not a mystery like that, right? It didn’t start with the corpse. It wasn’t whodunit. He wasn’t hired to find out who killed anybody. Then he finds out someone is dead, then he finds out who murdered him, and he doesn’t have her arrested or brought to justice, just confined so that she doesn’t do it again. And for some reason, Philip Marlowe feels very responsible for protecting what life is left in General Sternwood by not telling Sternwood the truth.

Sarah Harrison  23:22

It leaves General Sternwood in this sort of purgatory. I mean, maybe that’s the better purgatory. Maybe better to think I don’t know if I’ll ever have judged his character correctly than to find out definitively that your daughter is a lot worse than you thought,

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  23:41

Well, can I bring it back down from where Carolyn brought us up? I think he’s gonna die really soon. I think it doesn’t matter, because Philip Marlowe says at the end, “soon he will be sleeping The Big Sleep too.” I mean the novel’s title The Big Sleep is death, right? In the same way as Red Harvest is blood. Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is death, and it’s like mortality hangs over everything, even when Marlowe isn’t aware of it. There’s mortality hanging over everything. It’s a theme. By the end, Marlowe is hyper aware of it. So he’s just saying, well, Rusty’s sleeping The Big Sleep down there. Soon the general is going to be down there. And so will I, so will we all. The end.

Carolyn Daughters  24:41

But also like to that end, right, once you’re in The Big Sleep, nothing else can affect you in this life. And so it’s almost as if he’s trying to give the general … let’s carry him through what few days he has remaining, and then he will sleep The Big Sleep, and nothing else can touch him then. It feels like Philip Marlowe is most moved, haunted, moved, changed, inspired to become part of the nastiness if a human being is involved, and he sees the merit or value of that human being.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  25:28

Totally. I think there is a little bit of a male code there, too. He sees the man that General Sternwood used to be brought down into this wheelchair and near death. And then Sternwood was getting life vicariously through this other man, Rusty Regan, who’s very manly. I love that you remembered that he has faraway eyes. Harry Jones says he was looking over into the next valley all the time. He wasn’t scarcely around where he was, which is a great line. And also,  it makes you think, is that a great way to be. Rusty isn’t like super present, but he’s obviously got this virility. Philip Marlowe makes a point of saying to Eddie Mars, your boys couldn’t have taken him down. So he knows Mars didn’t do it. There’s like that male code. I think that brings up the question: what about the women.

Sarah Harrison  26:43

You’ve done some thinking. You’ve done some writing on this. What’s your take here?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  26:49

I think that Raymond Chandler in The Big Sleep is charting these male connections that are attributable to the masculinity of the men. But I think Chandler is also commenting. He talks about how the men signify their manliness and masculinity, and they’re trying. Chandler’s writing these characters not as just being manly men, but like Sam Spade is right. Like I think Dashiell Hammett did with Sam Spade and the Continental Op. But they’re trying to signify being manly men for an audience, a social audience, for women and other men, mostly other men. And I think he writes that sophistication into his women as well. Vivian Sternwood is trying to protect her father and her sister. She’s not evil. She’s not a femme fatale. Carmen may be. Well, Carmen definitely is. She’s a fatal woman, for sure, but Vivian isn’t. She’s not evil. She doesn’t have any underhanded. She’s just trying to protect her sister. And she’s got very few options in the society. Her dad is rich. What’s she gonna do, go get a job in 1939 become an oil executive like Raymond Chandler was. Society is totally stacked in favor of the patriarchy. Options are limited. And so really, what can Vivian Sternwood do but work through the men who are empowered by the patriarchy? Right? So I think Raymond Chandler is aware of that, and writing very strong women who are confined by the social limitations that existed at the time, not Carmen, but Vivian Sternwood and then Mona Mars, I think, are strong, intelligent women working within social constraints that Raymond Chandler makes a point of including. There is a Victorian archetype of the angel in the house. Have you heard of this? Right? The woman who’s at home running the house. The man is out making money and being public, and the woman is keeping the domestic sphere going and raising the kids or supervising the nannies who raise the kids, if you have enough money. That whole cultural archetype and line that was given to women, Virginia Woolf wrote in 1931 that killing the angel in the house was part of the occupation of the woman writer. I don’t know that Raymond Chandler was quite that level of feminist, but he was raised by a single mother. His wife was several years his senior, and he respected her. She was idiosyncratic and very strong. He clearly had a veneration of strong, intelligent women. And I think he’s depicting the scenes of society that that restrict them and the way they negotiate those roles that they’re given. And at the same time, Carmen.

Carolyn Daughters  30:32

Yeah, Silver Wig, who is Mona?

Sarah Harrison  30:36

You reminded me of her name. I’ve just been calling her Silver Wig.

Carolyn Daughters  30:39

For one brief moment, I was like, who’s Mona? Wait, are we talking about The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  30:45

Mona Mars.

Carolyn Daughters  30:45

Mona Mars, who he call Silver Wig. She’s wearing this wig because she’s cut her hair quite short. She’s out hiding because her husband has asked her to. There’s all kinds of evidence she already has and that Philip Marlowe is going to present to her, like, this guy is a terrible human being. And she’s like, No, he’s my husband. He’s wonderful and great, and he would never blackmail.

Sarah Harrison  31:14

He’s not a killer.

Carolyn Daughters  31:15

He’s not a blackmailer. And this is part of the reason Philip Marlowe seems so drawn to her is her passionate defense of someone she loves. To me, it was so interesting.

Sarah Harrison  31:36

You think so? That wasn’t what I got from that conversation.

Carolyn Daughters  31:43

Really, what did you get?

Sarah Harrison  31:47

I felt like he was having an argument with her, and that’s what he was drawn to, that sure she justified her husband, but he pretty much was like, you think this, that’s not right, and you know it. And then she went and cut his ropes, because she did know it. I felt like she was on a different level of, more of an intellectual equal he could argue with, and who was going to make a choice against her own good, against her own husband.

Carolyn Daughters  32:20

I could see that, but I also saw or felt that, because he has no family ties. I mean, for all intents and purposes, he emerged fully formed and whole at the beginning of this book. We don’t understand anything about him really previous, except for a few details about his former life as a cop. But she feels like family to him in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler and also Farewell, My Lovely makes references to like this particular character feels like warm slippers and a fireplace on a cold winter evening. They feel like home to him and comfort, security. And I think she, to some degree, like resonated with him, because he wanted that sort of devotion from somebody, though, when he has opportunities to ever have it, from what I’ve seen in the books thus far, he spurns those opportunities. So it’s like that’s for other people to have. It’s this desire that he has, but it’s not one that he’s going to work to fulfill.

Sarah Harrison  33:35

That’s one of the things I like about The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler — he leaves it a little bit vague.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  33:43

Oh, for sure, like life, right.

Sarah Harrison  33:45

Carolyn and I had really different readings of what happened in a particular scene.

Carolyn Daughters  33:50

Can you give an example of that? Because I want to get Anthony’s take on that one scene,

Sarah Harrison  33:54

All right, but I’m here to argue.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  33:59

I actually don’t. It’s funny. I don’t think you’re disagreeing.

Carolyn Daughters  34:02

I don’t, either.

Sarah Harrison  34:05

Well, I didn’t think that that’s what motivated him. I thought the arguing is what motivated him to see her as a woman that’s not a pushover. This isn’t a woman that’s a shyster. This is a woman that was doing her best, and I had a fight with her, and I reasoned her to my way. And she risked her life to save a guy that wasn’t anything to her.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  34:30

So where does the kiss come in, in your reading.

Sarah Harrison  34:34

He was into that.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  34:43

Well said.

Sarah Harrison  34:45

So the other thing Carolyn and I disagreed with, right? So you can weigh in on this. It was Harry Jones, right? Harry Jones, the little guy. I really liked his character. He felt out of place. He was suddenly interjected for me, but then I liked his character, and he comes up to his office, and he overhears the scene with Canino. Canino is trying to get Agnes whereabouts out of him, and in the end, Harry Jones dies of cyanide poisoning. Carolyn read it as murder. I read it as suicide. Do you have a take? Should we start arguing?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  35:39

Well before I didn’t think that what you were saying was mutually exclusive, but I do think that obviously these are mutually exclusive.

Sarah Harrison  35:48

There’s some ambiguity in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, because he’s listening outside the room, and we both walked away with a different take, and the movie had a really distinct take, which we can talk in next episode about. But I was like, Huh? And Carolyn’s like, that’s exactly what I thought happened. And I was like, that is not.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  36:07

No, I think, I think this one, I’m sorry, I think this one is a right or wrong one, and I have to go with Carolyn on this one. I think that it’s made clear that Canino is giving Harry Jones … I mean, I could be wrong, but in my head, Canino gives Harry Jones a drink that has the cyanide in it.

Sarah Harrison  36:38

But he doesn’t.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  36:40

Okay, give me, give me the page number. Let me follow you edition. I do this edition as well. Page 174.

Sarah Harrison  36:50

So where I’m starting is towards the bottom. Canino says, “No reason. You got good sense. You and me will go out and talk to her.” This is right after Harry Jones gives a false address for Agnes. And then Canino, says, we’ll go out and talk to her.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  37:07

Which page? 174.

Sarah Harrison  37:11

He gives them this false address. I think Canino suspects it. So he’s like, Okay, we’ll go out together. And that’s where I think Harry Jones perceives that this false address is only going to buy a little time, right? If he goes out with Canino, Canino is either just going to keep torturing them, or he’s going to force him to tell him where Agnes is. And he’s already shown to your chivalrous comments from the last episode, he’s said pretty explicitly, once you’re my girl, I’m not gonna rat on you, even though she clearly doesn’t care anything about him.

Carolyn Daughters  37:47

I think the guy, Canino, assumes he has ratted her out because they’ve known each other for 14 seconds. I think he’s like, Oh, we’re gonna go out together. But the way I read that is, we’re gonna both pretend you’re living through this, let’s have a drink.

Sarah Harrison  38:02

That’s how Harry Jones says. He’s like, why should I front for that twist? And suddenly he acts like he’s throwing her under the bus, but he’s not. Then Canino says, Fine, let’s dip the bill. Got a glass. And then it goes into the passive voice. A drawer was pulled open. Something jarred on wood. A chair squeaked, a scuffling sound on the floor at the top the next page, Harry Jones said softly, success. And then he died. And so that’s where I was like, okay, he didn’t want to go with Canino. He put the cyanide in his glass and said “success” because he was trying to off himself, so that he wouldn’t be forced to give Agnes away.

Carolyn Daughters  38:48

This is complicated. This is one of these areas where it Raymond Chandler doesn’t, I don’t, he’s not super clear.

Sarah Harrison  39:01

A drawer was pulled open, and we’re just listening to the sounds, and these are the sounds, and then we each came up with a different story.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  39:10

I love this possibility, but I can’t quite see it. So you’re right. Harry Jones, it’s his glass. Harry Jones gets up and gets the glass. Philip Marlowe is not seeing it.

Sarah Harrison  39:25

Then Canino had a gun out. We know that as well. Canino already had a gun out. So it seemed weird to me that he was forcing cyanide. And we know Canino doesn’t mind using his gun. Suddenly cyanide is in the picture.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  39:41

So Harry Jones takes the drink. It’s poisoned. Who put the poison there? The purring voice said, gently, you ain’t sick just from just one drink, are you pal? Harry Jones didn’t answer. There’s labor breathing, and then basically he dies. And Canino says, “So long little man.” If Jones had done that to himself, that’s a weird way to write Canino’s response, I think. Although that’s not conclusive.

Sarah Harrison  40:24

It’s weird that Harry Jones would say “success.”

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  40:31

I interpret that as somewhere in one of the things I wrote, I actually said that that’s ironically true in this chivalric code that I say Philip Marlowe actually isn’t chivalrous, but the novel presents these other people like Rusty Regan, right? Regan is chivalrous. He doesn’t go with Carmen. He doesn’t cheat on his wife, and he dies for it. And Harry Jones just succeeded by throwing Canino off the track and not giving in to the superior knight in a way.

Sarah Harrison  41:13

Page 178, too.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  41:17

Okay, you’re not giving up easy. I like it.

Sarah Harrison  41:22

I’m not saying that it has to be this way. That’s how I took it, for sure, it was too explicit. So he said “You lied to him and you drank your cyanide like a little gentleman. You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you’re no rat to me. The way I took that was that he lied. That was his action, he drank his cyanide. Part of being a gentleman was to save the girl and take the death and save the girl.

Carolyn Daughters  41:49

I took that as he was served cyanide and knew what it was. But it’s super interesting how, without Raymond Chandler just putting explicitly on the page, Hey reader, this is what I mean.

Sarah Harrison  42:08

He could have made it super obvious, without a question.

Carolyn Daughters  42:15

I’m just fascinated by this idea of devotion and love, where Mona, Silver Wig, will do anything to protect her husband, and where Harry Jones will do anything to protect Agnes, including die. Owen Taylor, the chauffeur, will do anything to protect Carmen. We see Lundgren killing for love. He kills the wrong guy, but he still kills for love, and he’s honoring the body after the death. Like true love, man, that is like, it’s worse than being put in prison for the rest of your life in The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. Like true love is detrimental here It feels to me.

Sarah Harrison  43:01

Do you think it’s true love?

Carolyn Daughters  43:02

Well, true love chivalry or some sort of truly honoring and being devoted to another person to one’s own detriment.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  43:15

That’s, I think that’s throughout the novels. You’ve exposed the main theme throughout. Love kills and the more devoted you are, the more you uphold that ethic, the likelier you are to wind up dead. But, Sarah, it’s true that Raymond Chandler doesn’t say that Canino poisons Harry Jones and then later Philip Marlowe sniffs when Marlowe goes out to Realito and comes up with art and Canino in the garage, and Canino offers him a drink, and he smells it.

Sarah Harrison  44:09

He did check for cyanide.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  44:13

In your interpretation, that’s Philip Marlowe thinking that Canino poisoned him. But that doesn’t mean that Canino did poison him. So I think I want to hold the window open for a little ray of light into your interpretation. It’s possible.

Sarah Harrison  44:28

I mean, I don’t even know if we’re supposed to decide, or if it’s like, it could have been this. It could have been that doesn’t matter.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  44:40

Tight. He’s sleeping The Big Sleep.

Sarah Harrison  44:44

All right, well, goodness, Anthony, we are out of time for our second episode again.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  44:49

Oh, is there a third? Is there a fourth?

Carolyn Daughters  44:55

45 episodes left to go.

Sarah Harrison  44:58

Episode 72, coming right up.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  45:01

Well, thank you so much.

Sarah Harrison  45:02

We want to keep Anthony on if we can, if you’re available to do a chit chat about the movie version.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  45:09

Sure, absolutely,

Carolyn Daughters  45:11

Let’s talk movie. Let’s talk the way it does and does not align with The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

Sarah Harrison  45:16

Oh, thank you so much. It has been a complete delight. For those folks looking to follow you, do you have any social media, media handles or anything that they can check you out on?

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  45:28

I don’t. I don’t. I just have these publications. I have an essay on Thomas Paine and Race in the United States coming out in the spring. Other than that, it’s all in writings.

Carolyn Daughters  45:47

We highly recommend our readers check out The Annotated Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler really. Reading The Big Sleep is amazing, but the annotated version, you’re going to learn so much. You’re just going to be on board with this hardboiled school because, just very rich information provided there. We will provide links to the book on our website.

Sarah Harrison  46:13

Thank you so much. Thank you. It’s been a delight.

Anthony Dean Rizzuto  46:17

It has, thank you.

Sarah Harrison 
We hope you enjoyed this episode on Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and Philip Marlowe. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.