Proust and Chandler

I'm reading Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" - rather late in the day, I admit.

From Chapter Eleven:

"Well, you do get up", she said..."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."

*****

I think I'm going to be reading more of Chandler than of Proust. Chandler once worked, briefly, as a journalist/reporter for the Western Gazette. An extraordinary thought - almost as improbable as the fact that John Steinbeck once lived near Bruton, Somerset..