Entertainment :: Books
Philip Marlowe’s Guide To Life by Howie Green
EDGE ContributorSaturday Nov 5, 2005 Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life is a short compendium of the best phrases and quotes from the troubled, bitter, cynical and hilarious mind of fictions’ most acerbic and best-loved detective Philip Marlowe - brought to life by one of the 20th Century’s greatest writers, Raymond Chandler.
Nobody, but nobody, could coin a phrase like Chandler. Whenever I want to read something to take me away from it all I always reach for Chandler. I read the first paragraph and I’m hooked. Having only written a dozen or so books in his career it’s easy to read through Chandler’s entire catalog and then start over again. Chandler’s masterful command of the character driven, internal monologues set the standard that very few fiction writers have come close to. Even Boston’s own brilliant Robert Parker, whose best-selling ’Spenser’ novels are close to being modern day counterparts to Chandler-like fiction, couldn’t quite match the master’s style when he wrote the 1991 sequel to "The Big Sleep" called "Perchance to Dream." Great book, but still not Chandler.
Whenever I’m reading Chandler I’m just waiting for some bit of purple prose to stop me in my tracks and make me either laugh out loud or stare in wild wonder at his ability to create such passages. As a matter of fact, my all-time favorite line in all of literature is from Chandler’s book "The High Window" -- ’She had eyes like strange sins.’ WOW! I don’t even know what that means, but I thought about that phrase for days when I read it for the first time.
If, like me, your knees go soft when you delve into one of Chandler’s noir detective stories then Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life is a perfect pocket companion for you. The small book is only 80-pages long but it’s the best of the best. Editor Martin Asher has combed through the Marlowe books "The Big Sleep", "Farewell My Lovely", "The Long Goodbye", "Trouble is my Business", "The High Window", and "The Lady in the Lake" and pulled out all the juiciest quotes. The quotes are organized by subjects that range from ’Advertising’, to ’Women’ to ’Wildflowers’. Here are a few samples to wet your whistle:
"She looked as if it would take a couple of weeks to get her dressed."
"She had an iron smile that could count the money in your hip wallet."
"I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun."
"I didn’t feel very well, but I didn’t feel as sick as I ought to, not as sick as I would feel if I had a salaried job."
"Dinner tasted like a discarded mail bag and was served to me by a waiter who looked as if he would slug me for a quarter, cut my throat for six bits, and bury me at sea in a barrel of concrete for a dollar and a half, plus sales tax."
"A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back."
… and it doesn’t get any better than that!!!
by Martin Asher
Alfred A. Knopf Publishers
80 pages, $14.95
Howie Green is a Boston-based artist and painter whose portrait of rapper Biggie Smalls appears on the 2007 compliation album "Incredible". He was winner of Absolut Vodka’s 25th Anniversary art competition and he painted 3 of the cows in the Jimmy Fund’s Cow Parade 2006. He recently painted a series of Pop Art Murals at the Dimock Center in Boston, MA and completed a large art and mural instllation in Delray Beach and Jacksonville, FL. He is also a multi-media designer and author of several books including "Jazz Fish Zen: Adventures in Mamboland" - and he once sang back-up for the opening act at a Shaun Cassidy concert in Madison Square Garden.
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