The untouched hills and prairies of the Wild West had, for the most part, been replaced by modern infrastructure and communities by the time Raymond Chandler and Thomas Pynchon began writing The Great Sleep and Cry of Lot 49. As the “New West” became the “Black West,” liberality transformed into something closer to uniformity. The now more urban landscapes of the Noir West began to demand a different kind of toughness, one based on mental rather than physical strength. It was no longer enough to be strong and free-spirited; Being a “Black Cowboy” required more mental acuity than anything else, as demonstrated by both authors (Chandler and Pynchon) with Philip Marlowe and Oedipa Maas. The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler's first novel, served as the starting point for the hard-boiled detective. kind of fiction that his work would end up representing. Philip Marlowe, a private detective from the shady neighborhood of Los Angeles, takes on the archetypal role of a tough and fast hero, on the verge of the legal and the illegal. Marlowe represents a character capable of communicating with everyone; from a lousy criminal to a prosecutor. The detective is able to converse with even the most questionable characters on an equal footing due to his lack of fear, overconfidence, and overall mental strength. "Tsk. Tsk. I said without moving at all. “There are so many guns in town and so few brains. You're the second guy I've met in a few hours who seems to think that a gun in the hand means a world by the tail Put it down and don't be stupid, Joe” (Chandler 79). in a shootout in the Wild West Marlowe's collected presence under the high... middle of paper ...... case of missing mail, as well as what allowed Oedipa to discover and make sense of the. posthorn, the WASTE system and the Trystero If Oedipa had never written the posthorn and the acronym WASTE at The Scope or had never attended The Mail Tragedy with Metzger, she would never have noticed Koteks and would probably not have thought twice about the word Trystero If Detective Marlowe had never camped outside Geiger's house that fateful, rainy night, he would never have heard the flash, the scream or the sounds. gunshots that led him to the bodies of Carmen Sternwood and Geiger. Unlike the cowboys of the New West where instant gratification was typically achieved through physical means, black cowboys typically undergo some sort of investigation, unable to obtain gratification until days, months, or even years after initial introduction of the conflict..