R. Chandler – The Big Sleep

by Patrick Badonnel and Claude Maisonnat

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Extent: 112 pages

Publisher: Klincksieck

Subjects: Literary Studies, Medieval Studies

Language: French

Paperback (Published)

(October 1995)

ISBN: 9782864602552

Price: $19.00

Out of stock

The Big Sleep was published in 1939 and was immediately labelled as ” hard-boiled “. TheNew Yorker described it as a ” terrifying story of degeneracy in Southern California by an author who almost makes Dashiell Hammett seem as innocuous as Winnie-the-Pooh “. Chandler, much more than any other detective story-writer in America, has established a tradition of which leading contemporary writers like James Ellroy could be regarded as the inheritors. As W.H. Auden wrote : ” Chandler is interested in writing, not detective stories, but serious studies of a criminal milieu, the Great Wrong Place, and his powerful but extremely depressing books should be read and judged, not as escape literature, but as works of art “.

  • By (author) Patrick Badonnel
  • By (author) Claude Maisonnat