Yeah, I was reading about Lou Reed, and found out that he was influenced/inspired by Raymond Chandler. Chandler created Philip Marlowe, the hard-boiled Private Eye, who always found himself in the middle stories that would always get curiouser, and curiouser. And that template is sort of a description of our situation in life. There's a mystery. Something happened. And we try to figure out what it is... but there's always something just out of reach...
And the language of those great Raymond Chandler novels, well... the language is addictive, illuminating... etc.
"What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell." - R.C.