Airplane Reading, California Book

My California reading project got away from me for a while because I was very preoccupied with shipping all my stuff out of California and back to Michigan, organizing rides and luggage, disposing of trash and old clothing, and you know the kind of things.

On the plane, though, I read the perfect California book which was also the perfect plane book. Character, plot, and dialog are what usually captivate Chandler's readers, and are definitely why his books translated into such good film noir. Reading this, I also realized how good and terse his descriptive passages are.

The novel starts on the West Side of Los Angeles in the "vast black and gold lobby" of the Treloar Bulding where Chandler's private investigator, Marlowe, is heading for a meeting with a man who wants to hire him. The reception room of the seventh-floor offices where he goes "had Chinese rugs, dull silver walls, angular but elaborate furniture, sharp shiny bits of abstract sculpture on pedestals and a tall display in a triangular showcase in the corner." (p. 3) The details may vary, but I'm convinced that this affected modernism still appears in photo essays in the online L.A.Times.

Shortly into the novel, Marlowe needs to interview a man named Lavery who lives in "the beach town of Bay City" which was "spread out on a bluff above the coast highway." Finding the house, Marlowe reports:

I drove past it, turned the car in the paved half circle at the end of the street and came back to park in front of the lot next to Lavery's place. His house was built downwards, one of those clinging-vine effects, with the front door a little below street level, the patio on the roof, the bedroom in the basement, and a garage like the corner pocket on a pool table. A crimson bougainvillea was rustling against the front wall and the flat stones of the front walk were edged with Korean moss. The door was narrow, grilled and topped by a lancet arch. Below the grill there was an iron knocker. I hammered on it." (p. 18-19)

Los Angeles in 1943 is the setting of this novel: the background is war, soldiers leaving, shortages, etc. But the house and the street could be in the southern California that I just left yesterday morning.

Soon after Marlowe's encounter with Lavery, his detective work takes him east, to the mountains where people have recreational cabins on little man-made lakes. Between Los Angeles and the mountains, the temperature is "hot enouh to blister my tongue" says Marlowe. Before long, he's driving up a steep grade. "In fifteen miles the road climbed five thousand feet, but even then it was far from cool. Thirty miles of mountain driving brought me to the tall pines and a place called Bubbling Springs. It had a clapboard store and a gas pump, but it felt like paradise. From there on it ws cool all the way." On the lake were canoes, speedboats, and casual fishermen.

Then "The road skimmed along a high granite outcrop and dropped to meadows of coarse grass in which grew what was left of the wild irises and white and purple lupine and bugle flowers and columbine and penny-royal and desert paint brush. Tall yellow pines probed at the clear blue sky." Oak, ironwood, and manzanita trees; squirrels, jays, and woodpeckers: Marlowe's California comes through in a few strokes. (p. 34-35) I still recognize it.

Urban Los Angeles also plays a role -- the climax of the novel occurs at Bryson Tower: "a white stucco palace with fretted lanterns in the forecourt and tall date palms. The entrance was in an L, up marble steps, through a Moorish archway, and over a lobby that was too big and a carpet that was too blue. Blue Ali Baba oil jars were dotted around, big enough to keep tigers in." (p. 230)

Today's California still reflects the trends that Chandler captured. You wouldn't read the book just for these descriptions -- but they are fun to watch.