Philip Marlowe is Funny as Hell

I just finished reading Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely featuring the iconic detective Marlowe. The book reads as a first person narrative from the perspective of the Private Eye and with much cracking of wise, hilarity ensues.

ie: Chapter 29 pg 191

It was a gray morning with high fog, not yet warm but likely to be. I heaved up off the bed and rubbed the pit of my stomach where it was sore from vomiting. My left foot felt fine. It didn’t have an ache in it. So I had to kick the corner of the bed with it.

Lolz

and also:

Chapter 8 pg 48

...The door opened silently, and I was looking at a tall blond man in a white flannel suit with a violet satin scarf around his neck.
There was a cornflower in the lapel of his white coat and his pale eyes looked faded out by comparison. The violet scarf was loose enough to show that he wore no tie and that he had a thick, soft brown neck, like the neck of a strong woman. His features were a little on the heavy side, but handsome, he had an inch more of height than I had, which made him six feet one. His blond hair was arranged, by art or nature, in three precise blond ledges which reminded me of steps, so that I didn't like them. I wouldn't have liked them anyway. Apart from all this he had the general appearance of a lad who would wear a white flannel suit with a violet scarf around his neck and a cornflower in his lapel.

OMG ROFLCOPTER

In all seriousness though, Marlowe has such a fast wit and easy going nature, it was impossible for me NOT to like him. Even if the book is rife with sexism, racism, classism, chauvinism and all sorts of other delightful byproducts of the nineteen thirties and forties. ( Some of that stuff is kind of endearing. Like how he always drinks before he drives and sometimes while he drives. ) In general the whole thing made me want to read another one of Chandler's Marlowe stories. That or watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit The Maltese Falcon.

The Happiness Project — Gretchen Rubin

[Subtitle: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun]

"A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it's often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit. Neither a scientist nor a philosopher but a novelist, Lisa Grunwald, came up with the most brilliant summation of this happiness principle: 'Best is good, better is best.'" (p. 178)

"We expect heroic virtue to look flashy — moving to Uganda to work with AIDS victims, perhaps, or documenting the plight of homeless people in Detroit. Thérèse's [Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the author's chosen "Spiritual Master"] example shows that ordinary life, too, is full of opportunities for worthy, if inconspicuous, virtue." (p. 212)

[On the subject of "the most serious criticism of happiness: it's not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world"] "Refusing to be happy because someone else is unhappy, though, is a bit like cleaning your plate because babies are starving in India." (p. 216)

"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself." (p. 216)

"It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted." (p. 217)

[Under the section labeled "FORGET ABOUT RESULTS."] "An atmosphere of growth brings great happiness, but at the same time, happiness sometimes also comes when you're free from the pressure to see much growth. That's not surprising; often, the opposite of a great truth is also true." (p. 231)

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft--Stephen King

"Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story . . . to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all."