Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Talking like a Raymond Chandler novel


[Zippy, January 2, 2018.]

Someone’s been reading Raymond Chandler.

The Big Sleep (1939): “The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.”

Farewell My Lovely (1940): “Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

Raymond Chandler had strong responses to figures of speech. He famously faulted Ross Macdonald for describing a car as “acned with rust.”

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