8.19.2009

HOW NARRATIVE WORKS

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.

[...]

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn’t have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

7 Comments:

Blogger Maurice Burford said...

this is great!

what is it from?

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Kasey Mohammad said...

Raymond Chandler, yo!

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Maurice Burford said...

Which book, yo?

I'm mad into his prose, honkey!

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Alli Warren said...

The Big Sleep, yo!

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Maurice Burford said...

Thanks, home skillet?

I'm gonna try and gank a copy of Amazon, unless Kasey's got a copy he can loan me.

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Alli Warren said...

You can have mine. Found it in Buuck's pile. I can't read it without "ganking".

19 August, 2009  
Blogger Kasey Mohammad said...

What would WMP say? Suppress that gank reflex!

19 August, 2009  

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