Chandler’s novel is vague about the plot. Scriptwriters have to work hard to make the story work on screen.
Category: writing
Dylan Thomas seventy years on
He was the best-known poet in the English-speaking world after the war. But his work still gets lost in his reputation.
George Smiley as the anti-Bond
Reading the first George Smiley novel, 60 years after publication, it’s striking how fully formed Smiley already is.
Driving in the dark
The film of The Big Sleep is famously confusing. Chandler did this to send the reader on the wrong quest.
Working on power
Robert Caro has spent 50 years working on biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson. His short memoir is illuminating.
Living in a mirror
Roberto Saviano has spent his career writing about drugs gangs in Italy and elsewhere. His life on the move, under police protection, is an image of those he writes about.
‘You never heard such cheering’
Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe, and other American icons
Damsel in distress
A brief review of Wodehouse’s novel—cleverly plotted once you adjust to the life of the aristocracy
Get out as quickly as you can
The opening to Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be The Verse’ is the most famous f-word in English poetry. It can survive parodies and remixing.
Lost in music
A fictional detective who tracks down lost records and gets into—and out of—trouble as a result. What’s not to like?