My old friend Rich di Giulio interrupted a viewing of The Big Sleep one evening to leave a long-forgotten bit of dialogue on my answering machine. It had been at least a dozen years since I'd reread all the novels of Raymond Chandler,
but they have remained on the shelf because I knew that one of these days I would certainly want to read them again. So The Big Sleep was right there where I'd left it, and in it was Phillip Marlowe's introduction to Marcel Proust in 1939.
"Well, you do get up," she said, wrinkling her nose at the faded red settee, the two odd semi-easy chairs, the net curtains that needed laundering and the boy's size library table with the venerable magazines on it to give the place a professional touch. "I was beginning to think perhaps you worked in bed, like Marcel Proust."
"Who's he?" I put a cigarette in my mouth and stared at her. She looked a little pale and strained, but she looked like a girl who could function under a strain. "A French writer, a connoisseur in degenerates. You wouldn't know him."
"Tut, tut," I said. "Come into my boudoir."
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