The [hotel] clerk snapped at Degarmo’s back like a terrier.
“One moment, please. Whom did you wish to see?”
Degarmo spun on his heel and looked at me wonderingly. “Did he say ‘whom’?”
“Yeah, but don’t hit him,” I said. “There is such a word.”
Degarmo licked his lips. “I knew there was,” he said. “I often wondered where they kept it.”
from The Lady in the Lake, 1943, by Raymond Chandler
Out of Babel 
I still don’t know the correct way to use whom, so I rarely use it…
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As far as spoken English goes, it is basically obsolete …
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Raymond Chandler? I’m surprised. He’s even too old for me.
>
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Ha ha, well, I guess if I can read Homer, I can read Chandler …
Seriously, you are right that some of the bon mots in his books have aged so much that rather than being clever, they are just confusing. But others are still spot-on.
It is fun entering the original noir world of the 1940s. I picked up a Chandler compendium at the library because Andrew Klavan cut his teeth on him.
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