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Looked up this passage, because it was the only bit that stuck with me from an early Raymond Chandler story, before he hit his stride. The story turned out to be "Smart-Aleck Kill" Basically, the detective's search takes him to a louche house party:
He went past the blond man down the hall and turned under an arch into a big old-fashioned room with built-in china closets and a lot of shabby furniture. There were seven or eight people in the room and they were all flushed with liquor.
A girl in shorts and a green polo shirt was shooting craps on the floor with a man in dinner clothes. A fat man with noseglasses was talking sternly into a toy telephone. He was saying: "Long Distance-Sioux City-and put some snap into it, sister!"
The radio blared "Sweet Madness."
Two couples were dancing around carelessly bumping into each other and the furniture. A man who looked like Al Smith was dancing all alone, with a drink in his hand and an absent expression on his face. A tall, white-faced blonde weaved towards Dalmas, slopping liquor out of her glass. She shrieked: "Darling! Fancy meeting you here!"
Dalmas went around her, went towards a saffron-colored woman who had just come into the room with a bottle of gin in each hand. She put the bottles on the piano and leaned against it, looking bored. Dalmas went up to her and asked for Miss Crayle.
That's not even a case of period sleaze coming off as charmingly quaint by modern standards. That is the sort of thing that David Lynch copied years later. Nothing so obvious as nudity or open drug-taking is going on, but everybody's just... off. It's terribly effective. I still can't recall the rest of the story.
He went past the blond man down the hall and turned under an arch into a big old-fashioned room with built-in china closets and a lot of shabby furniture. There were seven or eight people in the room and they were all flushed with liquor.
A girl in shorts and a green polo shirt was shooting craps on the floor with a man in dinner clothes. A fat man with noseglasses was talking sternly into a toy telephone. He was saying: "Long Distance-Sioux City-and put some snap into it, sister!"
The radio blared "Sweet Madness."
Two couples were dancing around carelessly bumping into each other and the furniture. A man who looked like Al Smith was dancing all alone, with a drink in his hand and an absent expression on his face. A tall, white-faced blonde weaved towards Dalmas, slopping liquor out of her glass. She shrieked: "Darling! Fancy meeting you here!"
Dalmas went around her, went towards a saffron-colored woman who had just come into the room with a bottle of gin in each hand. She put the bottles on the piano and leaned against it, looking bored. Dalmas went up to her and asked for Miss Crayle.
That's not even a case of period sleaze coming off as charmingly quaint by modern standards. That is the sort of thing that David Lynch copied years later. Nothing so obvious as nudity or open drug-taking is going on, but everybody's just... off. It's terribly effective. I still can't recall the rest of the story.
