An Old-Fashioned Future

Crumbling on my bookshelves are most of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels in editions brought out by Penguin Books in Britain in the early 1970s. Despite being priced in obsolete shillings and pence, long ago abolished by progress, the volumes are startlingly modern, their designs featuring 1930s lettering and cleverly colorized stills from Hollywood movies, mainly featuring Humphrey Bogart. I well remember being in love with them when they were new and I was a student Marxist, but I had not opened them for many years, fearing they would have staled on me. They have not.