Like The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep is
replete with unsavory characters. I think these characters are even more
depraved in Chandler’s book than in Hammett’s. I’ll get into the rest of the
characters in another post, but I wanted to highlight four characters that Chandler
gives. They chain together, responsible for the destruction of the next
character, and themselves. This is only tangentially related to the central
premise of the book. Their plots and lives simply intersect with what is
ultimately the mystery of who killed Rusty Regan.
Arthur Geiger
He owns a
porn library with the laudable (and laughable) front of a rare book store. As
if this wasn’t enough, he’s taken to blackmailing people (we know of Carmen,
but there must be more) in the guise of magnanimously offering loans to cover
gambling debts. He freely engages in the use of recreational drugs, which makes
it all the easier to get women into poses for his smut books.
Owen Taylor
The
Sternwood chauffeur who has a crush on Carmen. He stalks her incessantly, even
showing up at Geiger’s place. In a rage he attempts to rescue Carmen, but
really all he does is take out Geiger who is exploiting her. If he had true
intentions to rescue Carmen (who is supposed to be the love of his life) he
would not have left her naked and drugged next to a dead body while he ran out
of the house with naked pictures of her.
Joe Brody
A
small-time hood with aspirations of grandeur, he wants a slice (okay the whole
thing) of Geiger’s pie, and makes off with Geiger’s stock at the earliest
opportunity. He also is indirectly responsible for Owen Taylor’s death after
concussing the man and stealing the photos of Carmen (Owen would then go on to
try to drive back, but lost control of the vehicle. Murder but not). Brody
constantly thinks he can play with the big boys, but he doesn’t have the size,
the bearing for it. He’s nervous with a gun and easily tricked into giving up
information. It was only a matter of time until he would end up in jail or dead
from his own choices.
Carol Lundgren
He is Geiger’s
homosexual lover and a young man with a mouth on him. He believes himself to be
a tough guy. He’s got a foul mouth and is easy with using a gun to kill. He doesn’t
even hesitate to do so on first sight. He wants revenge for Geiger’s death, and
so guns down Joe Brody right after the door swings open. No questions. No
statements. Just hot lead. The problem? Joe didn’t do it. Sure, Joe was guilty
of stealing Geiger’s stock, and he was there the night Geiger was murdered, but
the murder was Owen’s crime. Carol, grief-stricken, gunned down the wrong man,
and now he’ll go to prison for life, or maybe be executed.
I bring up
these characters to show how Chandler has created an interconnected web of
these characters destroying one another. They are all depraved, though each in
a somewhat different way, consumed by their quest for various vices. I have no
doubt if Ellroy and Penzler had a story just focusing on these acts they would
declare it a noir story. And it still makes me wonder: Why does the presence of
a crime-solving PI make so much of a difference?
As I move
forward with each of these posts, I can see more clearly that necessity of
having loser characters as a definition for noir, and I have even found a way
to examine the PI as that same kind of character. So the definition is both
true and not, but that doesn’t make any kind of sense. I know I’m reaching
towards something, but don’t quite have all the pieces yet.